Fans of the manga “Sand Land” by Akira Toriyama are currently getting their money’s worth. After last year's film and this year's Disney Plus series, the official video game for Sand Land is now coming. In our test, this presented itself as a kind of child-friendly version of Mad Max with a focus on varied vehicle action.
A notice: The PS5 version 1.0.2 was tested.
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What awaits you in the Sand Land game?
Sand Land tells the story of a desolate world devastated by perpetual conflicts and wars. Water supplies are becoming scarce everywhere, and the selfish king of the country claims the few water sources for himself or sells them in bottles at a high price to his people.
The resolute Sheriff Rao doesn't want to see this any longer and therefore asks Belzebub, the prince of demons, and his loyal servant, master thief Sheef, to accompany him in the search for the legendary spring and to put an end to the water shortage.
This is the start of an adventure that not only takes you to all corners of Sandland (that's the spelling in the German version), but also tells the story arc of Woodland, which the mangaka Akira Toriyama, who unfortunately recently passed away, developed exclusively for the game and designed the Disney Plus series. This also adds another party member, mechanic Ann.
In terms of play, Sand Land can best be described as a light role-playing game, in which you almost exclusively take on the role of Belzebub, while the other party members passively support you. The biggest focus is clearly on the construction of the city of Spino and the vehicle gameplay with over a dozen different vehicles.
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On foot, yuck, in a tank, yuck
As a demon prince, Belzebub has a lot up his sleeve and can deal a lot in fights against soldiers, bandits and wild animals. However, the combat system is quite simple. There are a few hit buttons, a few special abilities and you can dodge. Rao, Sheef and later Ann can support you passively, but you can never control them yourself.
The exception is Sheef, who you can control in a few sneaky situations. You have to move crouched and avoid soldiers. If they spot you, they sound the alarm, and you have to start the section again. So sneaking is not optional in some areas.
Both the combat system on foot and the stealth mechanic seem to be half-baked into the gameplay and could have been left out. Because the clear heart of the game is the movement and combat with the many vehicles in the game. This is where Sand Land can flex its muscles and develop its true potential.
Sandland is very spacious, and vehicles are the be-all and end-all of the game. There are motorbikes for fast movement, jump bots for reaching elevated levels, or a hover car for getting across bodies of water. But the most important thing is your battle tank, which you will receive very early on, and the battle armor. The latter is a combat bot that is both nimble and powerful.
Above all, the many vehicles are a real eye-catcher. The unique, capsule-like vehicle design, only known from Akira Toriyama, comes into its own here. All the more so because you can mod all vehicles in several categories. In addition to the main and secondary weapons, you can change the engine, which not only affects performance, but also changes the appearance of the vehicles. There are also various paint finishes and stickers that you can use to further customize your vehicles.
As nice as the design of the vehicles is, the menu navigation and the construction of new vehicles are unfortunately more annoying. An example: To build a new vehicle, you first need the frame and the individual components. You first have to build the individual parts using the menu in the garage. Once you've done that, you have to select all the parts again from another menu so that they can then be put together.
But all of this only on the condition that you also have the appropriate materials. And to see what you need, you have to keep clicking through the nested submenus in the garage. Then you have to remember or write down what exactly is needed so that you can produce the necessary resources in the workshop or buy them in the store. There is a lot of potential for improvement here in terms of menu navigation and convenience functions.
The structure of the city of Spino
In addition to the vehicles, the city of Spino is the heart of the game. This settlement in the heart of Sandland was completely run down when you arrived and you want to gradually rebuild it to its former glory. You can also complete over 70 different side missions in the game. The NPCs you meet in these quests then move to your village and sometimes also open shops where you can get additional items for the workshop.
Spino automatically develops visually over the course of the game until it can even compete with the royal capital. The side quests have a playfully simple structure, but tell more or less interesting stories with sometimes different endings that lead to different consequences. For example, through your dialogue decisions you can sometimes determine which NPCs come to Spino.
However, Spino remains a purely optional game element. If you just want to focus on the story, you can easily do so and ignore Spino completely.
What does the open game world offer?
In the open game world you can explore both sandland and forestland. Both areas differ significantly from each other both visually and architecturally. In Sandland there are vast deserts, canyons and open areas. Woodland is more wooded, mountainous and more semi-open. There are many roads and mountain paths here.
To uncover the map piece by piece, you can activate radio towers and thus unlock additional activities and visitable places nearby. These include ruins, grottoes and hills where you can find important items and resources for building items. There are also races, bounty hunts and a battle arena where you can let off steam.
However, all of this is nothing more than average gameplay and not very exciting. Unfortunately, you notice here that this is just filler content to populate the expansive game world. All ruins and dungeons in the game look almost identical and are reassembled using the same level building blocks.
Conclusion on Sand Land
With Sand Land, a little less would have been more. For an open-world game, the JRPG doesn't offer enough varied content that motivates beyond the main quest. I would probably have liked a linear story experience including a fun fleet of vehicles a little more.
Sand Land remains above all a shallow but fun action game with light role-playing elements that is primarily tailored to a younger target audience. The game packs the dark initial situation into a beautiful story about the unusual friendship of demons and humans who save the world together.
A notice: Unfortunately there is no German language output in Sand Land, only German texts and subtitles. Optionally with English or Japanese voice output.
Strengths and weaknesses
Coherent game world and characters written by Akira Toriyama. Many different vehicles, tanks and combat bots ensure variety. Long playing time (approx. 20 hours of story, approx. 30 hours of side quests and other activities). Construction and development of the city of Spino ensures for motivation.Half-baked sneaking and on-foot combat system.Convoluted menu navigation when building vehicles.Not very exciting open-world activities.