Theme from Retro

3D Dot Game Heroes
3D Dot Game Heroes is about on par with Shadow Complex in that Atlus straight up jacked Legend of Zelda's gameplay, albeit with a wink and a nod. Thus the game provides a nice dash of 8-bit humor (the outrageously lengthy Freudian sword never failed to bring a smile to my face), but brings little else to the table. Eventually the tedious dungeons (particularly the last one which makes you relive every dungeon over again -- at once) and irritating time-sensitive questing evaporated any nostalgic goodwill I once had and left me itching to play the urtext as opposed to some cheeky facsimile.

Grade: B-