Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes sees a party of heroes go on adventures for the king of Diceland and engage in RPG style battles. But the twist here is that the game is a mixture of board game and RPG, with each world you visit being another board game table. You move by rolling a die to send one of your heroes forward through the world and you will land on various spaces. Some spaces will be spots for healing your character, and others will be spots to interact with NPCs.
What are most important though, are the spots that trigger enemy battles. These battles, as mentioned, are turn based battles you would expect from an RPG, but if you land a hit or your opponent lands a hit depends on dice rolls and who has a bigger number. You can do more damage depending how much bigger your number is, but your opponents might throw stuff at you to knock you at to prevent you from acting, so be careful.
Each character has their own weapons and armour they can use, but also different spells they can unlock. While you can only send one character out at a time to explore the world and level up, you will often end up finding some characters have different interactions with NPCs and this can open up different paths to explore. As such, it is beneficial to keep playing the levels with each character just to see everything and level up.
Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes has a quirky aspect to it and some of the enemy encounters are actually pretty funny for how the enemies look, and there are jokes made all the time of varying quality. What I loved especially about Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes is how there is a lot of choice offered for a board game RPG. You can choose to level grind in some areas, or explore some sections in a different way, which encourages multiple playthroughs.
Of course, this would not be a Ratalaika release without enhancements and additions and Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes has them. There are the typical cheats included such as infinite life, infinite mana, infinite gold etc, but then there are some enhancements that were rather surprising. Ratalaika completely redid the 8 bit visuals and music in a 16 bit style, although you can choose to turn this off an play with the original visuals and music. It is an excellent addition and really helps to make this release standout more.
Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes is a game that feels truly unique. Others have done board game RPGs since this game released, but they are not as fun as the experience here. The humour, exploration and combat all combine to make a great experiencem and the new features and presentation from Ratailaika has made the game stand out even more.
I hope Ratalaika gives this treatment to the other sequel, because its work with Sugoro Quest: Dice Heroes is excellent. This is an amazing re-release of a retro RPG and it is finally able to be enjoyed by all. Give this one a shot as you will not regret it.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
