Welcome to the world of ‘SAND LAND’, a game based off of the Japanese Manga created by Akira Toriyama. Some of you might know of this amazing designer and artist more famously known as the creator of the popular Manga/Anime, ‘Dragon Ball’. Unfortunately, he passed away this year leaving a lot of people, me included, shocked and saddened.

SAND LAND developed by ILCA, Inc. and published by Bandai Namco Europe, looks both similar in art style to the anime show currently on Disney + and some of the ‘Dragon Ball Z’ games also published by Bandai Namco.

SAND LAND follows the story of Beelzebub, the prince of demons and son of Lucifer. He, along with his companions, Thief, Rao and Ann, seek the legendary spring. Set in a barren desert wasteland where the only source of water is controlled by a greedy king backed by a menacing Supreme Commander., you must fight monsters, bandit gangs and the King’s Army. You must search for the spring to bring hope and much-needed water to the poor people of SAND LAND.

The gameplay is fun and sucked me right in. There are two forms of combat; one as Beelzebub himself and vehicle combat with various types of transportation tanks, motorbikes, jumpbots and cars, to name a few.

Vehicle combat especially in the tank is my favourite and on top of the combat, there is the customisation of your assault vehicles with improved weapons and engine upgrades to decals and paint options. There are activities like materials gathering, ruin diving and bounty hunting as well as a large open world to explore so there is no shortage of fun to be had.

There are options that allow you to change the vehicle controls to determine if the tank moves in the direction of the camera or just the way it is facing. Hopper Aim changes the tanks firing toward the camera direction or the tank same as the above.

There is another option for the other vehicle so you can adjust things to suit your style of play. There is also an autopilot function that I used once as it only accelerates, and you don’t choose a location and automatically drive there as I thought. Since you still need to steer not having to accelerate wasn’t that big of a deal so I didn’t really use it, but it is available, and you may choose to use it.

As you level up you will gain ability points that you will use to unlock new abilities and passive abilities, you will also get points to unlock abilities and passive abilities for your companions. Leveling up feels pretty slow to me and despite putting in hours, I have not unlocked everything yet, which is good though as it gives you something to strive for.

Throughout the story, you will gain access to the storage capsule. This lets you store up to five vehicles that you can switch to on the fly; a very handy tool.

As stated above, the art style is pretty much the same as they use in the anime with bright and colourful characterising. Obviously not exact as animation isn’t cheap, but as I was also watching the anime at the same time, I appreciated the effort put in to make it very similar. The landscape has some amazing hand-drawn-like views but eventually, it all looks the same though being a desert wasteland you kind of expect it to start looking familiar.

The voice acting was great but the music had nothing jump out at me or was overly memorable, but to be fair I was pretty engrossed in the game, itself. The sound effects for the cannons, explosions and engines roaring added to the absolute joy of the vehicle combat, again probably my favourite part.

I had a lot of fun playing this game; more than I thought I would. It is even more extensive than I ever imagined it would be. As an avid reader and watcher of manga and anime, I give this adaptation into a gaming experience a thumbs up.

Written by: Adam Brasher