Infinity Strash: DRAGON QUEST The Adventure of Dai

I went into Infinity Strash hoping Square Enix had finally done justice to the Adventure of Dai property in interactive form. The Akira Toriyama creature designs, the Koji Inada character art, the shonen-flavoured Dragon Quest setting - all the raw ingredients are genuinely appealing. What arrived instead is a game that keeps tripping over the gap between its source material's charm and its own mechanical ambitions. The structure splits into two modes. Story Mode walks you through seven chapters covering Dai and the Disciples of Avan - Dai himself, mage Popp, martial artist Maam, and swordsman Hyunckel - as they fight the Dark Army. The narrative framing device has Dai recovering his lost memories, which works as an excuse to replay the anime's greatest hits. Each character brings a genuinely distinct combat toolkit: Dai leans on close-range sword work and the signature Avan Strash Coup de Grace, Popp presses Crackle and Kafrizz from range, and Maam hybridises melee hammer-spear attacks with a Magic Bullet Gun for support. Swapping between them in real-time keeps individual fights feeling snappy in the early hours. The problem is that the story is delivered almost entirely through static anime stills rather than in-engine cinematics or actual anime footage. For an RPG fan who cares about narrative delivery, watching a voiced slideshow for extended stretches is exhausting, and the pacing gets worse as chapters string together back-to-back story nodes with barely any combat between them. The Temple of Recollection is the second mode and arguably the more interesting one. It functions as a roguelite dungeon where you start at Level 1 per run, earn stat buffs room by room, and decide when to bank your rewards before the floors get harder. The tension of pushing deeper versus retreating early is a genuinely clever loop, and the Bond Memories system - equippable accessories that unlock manga scenes and boost character stats - gives you a reason to grind runs rather than just repeating the campaign. That said, balance wobbles are noticeable, and the mode does not generate enough variety to sustain long sessions on its own. The visuals are where Infinity Strash earns its most honest praise. The in-game character models and special-move animations capture the over-the-top anime aesthetics convincingly. Boss spectacle is real. The art fidelity fans of the manga will appreciate is consistent. But outside of combat, level environments are limited and repetitive, there is no world map exploration to speak of, and the whole experience wraps in roughly ten hours of story content - with another ten if you commit to the Temple grind. For a full-price release from a AAA publisher, that runtime stings. Steam user sentiment landed at a mixed 46 percent positive rating, and that number is hard to argue with unless you arrive as a dedicated fan of the anime who just wants to see the arc completed in a different medium. If you have watched the Adventure of Dai series and want a serviceable interactive companion piece with flashy combat animations, this scratches that itch. If you are a Dragon Quest fan looking for RPG depth, branching choices, or mechanical complexity past hour five, look elsewhere.

Monika · Scout Team

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