SAND LAND

Sand Land is a third-person action RPG based on Akira Toriyama's manga of the same name, and it does something a lot of licensed games forget to do: it actually respects the source material. You play as Beelzebub, a young Fiend Prince, partnered with an aging sheriff named Rao and the lovably chaotic demon Thief. The three of them set out across a brutal, water-scarce desert world in search of a legendary spring. If you have never read the manga, the setup reads like a classic road-trip adventure with that unmistakable Dragon Ball DNA - goofy on the surface, quietly earnest underneath. The core gameplay loop splits between on-foot combat and vehicle combat, and the vehicle side is where Sand Land does its most interesting work. You build, upgrade, and swap between tanks, mechs, and bikes, each with distinct handling and weapon loadouts. Tank shells, energy cannons, and machine guns all behave differently, and swapping your build before a boss encounter genuinely matters. On foot, Beelzebub brawls with punches and devil powers in a floaty-but-functional combo system that never quite reaches the tightness of a dedicated action game, but gets the job done for the pacing the game is going for. Combat depth is real, even if it plateaus somewhere around the midgame. The open world is a mixed bag. The desert environments look gorgeous and carry real atmosphere - ILCA clearly understood that emptiness is the point in Toriyama's world - but the side content is thin. Fetch quests, resource runs, and "go eliminate enemies in this area" tasks pad out the runtime in ways that feel like leftover obligations rather than designed experiences. The base-building mechanic, where you develop a small settlement as you progress, adds a light progression layer that ties into unlocking vehicle blueprints, and it works better than you would expect. It is not Baldur's Gate 3 base camp depth, but it gives you a reason to care about the world beyond the critical path. Writing quality sits above average for the genre. The banter between Beelzebub, Rao, and Thief carries genuine warmth, and the game trusts Toriyama's original comedic rhythm instead of over-explaining every joke. Character arcs are modest - this is a short manga adaptation, not a 100-hour epic - but they land cleanly. Do choices matter? Not really in a branching-narrative sense. This is a linear story with a fixed ending, so if you arrive expecting moral dilemmas and consequence trees, reset those expectations now. What you get instead is a tightly authored character story with a satisfying conclusion, which is honestly the right call for the source material. At around 25-30 hours for the main story with reasonable side content, Sand Land knows its length. It does not overstay its welcome, which is more than can be said for many RPGs in this budget tier. The 88% positive Steam rating reflects a playerbase that largely got what it came for: a faithful, fun, mechanically solid Toriyama adventure that respects your time. Hardcore action RPG fans wanting massive build variety past hour 40 will find the ceiling a bit low. Everyone else who wants to drive a demon-piloted tank across a Toriyama desert while arguing about water rights will find plenty to love.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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