As I said when I got a chance to get a first look at this game about a month ago, I feel like Sand Land’s time is now. Since I wrote that preview, the Sand Land universe has extended to include a Disney+ series (now properly released), alongside last year’s feature film based on the 2000 manga series by anime and manga legend Akira Toriyama. While the first six episodes of the series and the film both told the story already put forward by the manga, the back half of the series – and the game we’re all here to talk about – venture into uncharted territory, even for previous fans of the series. While they tell the story of Sand Land, a world where water is a scarce resource and racial tensions run high, they also go beyond, exploring the past of a new character for the series and offering an expansion beyond the desert world.
From the game’s beginning, the long-standing tension between demons and humans in this sandy world is made clear. So when Sheriff Rao, a mysterious and classically gruff man decides to ask Beelzebub, the ‘Fiend Prince’ and son of Lucifer, the kind of darkness himself, for help, the levels of distrust between the unlikely duo are high. But they share a common goal. After noticing Beelzebub engaging in an act of kindness towards a human child (something the young prince would vehemently deny), he recruits the young demon and his friend Thief to join him in search of the Legendary Spring – a water source that would bring health and happiness for both humans and demons alike.
It doesn’t take long for the little group to learn how to work together, and their unlikely alliance causes them to approach relationships with various misfits they meet along the way with a different eye. Misinformation has been running rampant throughout the land, and as they learn more about each other’s pasts, they begin to advocate for racial harmony as well as general peace. It’s all very heartwarming well-trodden territory for a story like this, but it’s told with an absurdity and lightheartedness that draws you in, even when the plot is at its most predictable. I was pleasantly impressed by how quickly a lot of this game’s antagonists and general nuisance-doers were willing to quit fighting our heroes once they realised it was easier to work towards a common goal. It bothers me to no end when you can see how easily a problem could be resolved between characters and they just refuse to accept it, drawing out fights for no good reason. Sand Land suffers from no such flaw.
If anything, the criticism could be that this game has too many Big Bads, simply because the story is too good at only allowing people to fight when they have a cause to fight for. The problem with solving your in-world problems is that peace is, apparently, not interesting, and a source of conflict needs to exist. So, the game introduces a constant stream of new mid-level bosses, with boss battles that usually just require you to use the same strategies to defeat them. It can grow a little tiresome, but it’s also part of Sand Land’s charm. It’s throwing a lot of things at the wall, and they mostly stick, and somehow that works to fuel the narrative here. In another game, I might be less forgiving, but… something about Sand Land just oozes charm.
Some of it comes from the characters. Beelzebub, in most anime series, would annoy the hell out of me. He’s a petulant child who constantly starts petty fights, boasting about how evil he is while he actively goes around helping out those less fortunate than himself. But he’s also adorable, and given he is the literal child of Lucifer, he has demon powers that allow him to back up his abilities. He’s fast, smooth to control, and can pack some real punches in a fight, and has some powerful abilities that allow him to really smack down larger foes. When he makes threats, he can back them up, and controlling him feels exactly as you’d want controlling a feisty demon child to feel.
His companions, Rao and Thief, each have their own set of skills. Rao, with his military background, helps you out on the battlefield, attracting enemies and unleashing fire with his own skills. Thief, as his name suggests, is stealthy and great at finding materials and treasures scattered throughout the world. Sometimes, he does it dressed in a Santa suit, and the game doesn’t really explain why – but there’s a lot it doesn’t explain, so the urge to question it was somehow not really present for me. It does come in handy during at least one side quest, which was an absolute delight.
A third companion, Ann, features throughout most of the story, but doesn’t become a proper party member until you’re quite a way through the game. And damn did I wish she’d been around earlier. Firstly, it’s nice to actually have a female character around, but secondly, it’s nice to have someone who can help you out with vehicular combat. Given you spend a lot of your time in a vast desert, a lot of your combat will happen out in the open inside one of the game’s many vehicles, and all I wanted for most of the game was an ally to assist me with that. Ann’s background is interesting, but it’s heavily tied to some plot points that (at least in the beginning) are some of the game’s biggest secrets – so I’ll let you find that out on your own.
Ann is also a mechanic (hence the vehicle powers), and is endlessly useful in upgrading and customising your vehicles. The game offers a range of them, all fit for different purposes – tanks for heavy duty battling, motorbikes for speeding across distances, Jump-Bots for leaping to high areas, and more – and all of them can be customised with different builds and upgraded bit by bit to suit your playstyle. While all the vehicles are versatile, there are times when it’s very clear which one the game wants you to use, and it does a great job of prompting you to switch between them frequently to overcome vehicle-specific obstacles. Sometimes, it’ll even require you to use them to destroy junk or cross large distances inside a contained area, like a ruin or a dilapidated building, just to remind you that the vehicles aren’t only made for the open road.
Once you encounter a certain NPC, you can also change the aesthetic of your vehicles – and this is where it becomes particularly fun. You’re given a chunk of paint to play with as soon as the painter becomes available to you, which I used to make my whole fleet into a matching set of obnoxious blue-purple beasts. There was never going to be any question which tank was mine in a sea of largely-beige vehicles. The vehicles aren’t the only thing you can mess with either. One of the game’s largest undertakings involves rebuilding a local town, Spino, by encouraging various random people you meet on your journey that they should all move there and set up shop. This means you’ll eventually have a nice hub of vendors, customisation-assistants, and even a furniture store at your fingertips.
And what does a hub city need? A room of your own to customise. There’s almost no good reason why there should be a house-decorating part to this game, but I love that there is, and it’s great fun to make yourself a little room for Beelzebub, or base for your party, or whatever you want to use the space for. The customisation options are fairly limited, but there are more than I expected, and you can easily lose a few hours to rearranging bookshelves on the tiny grid of your room.
Aesthetically, Sand Land is just as beautiful as I hoped it would be. The cell-shaded style they’ve gone with to capture the game’s manga beginnings really works in its favor, adding dramatic lines and a comic style to what is, in many ways, just a game about a big brown desert. They’ve added colour where they can, leaned on some cool character designs, and for the most part, biomes are distinct from one another. By creating this big brown world, they’ve also ensured that when you do get those moments of colour and life, they make an even bigger impact. Sand Land is noticeably dry and desolate, so when you see greenery, it’s a nice reminder of just how beautiful trees are – and how much we take the environment for granted.
Sand Land is a strange game. It wasn’t even really on my radar until I played the preview, and then when I did, it took almost no time for me to be hooked. It’s hard to explain just why it works, but there’s something about its combination of somewhat absurdist humour, engaging base-building and vehicle customisation mechanics, smooth movement and combat, and unique art style that makes it feel like something special. It isn’t always smooth sailing. Sometimes vehicles are hard to control, or Beelzebub’s jumps will suddenly have a mind of their own. The world can feel a little empty, and there were times I wished I didn’t have to do so much traversal of what felt like a wasteland.
But I also know that those aren’t the things I’ll remember. I’ll remember the weird little guys that came on the journey with me, the world filled with interesting characters (even though many are caricatures), and the group of enemies known as The Swimmers who dress in swimsuits and are named after fish but have never been swimming because they live in a desert hellscape.
This game is more fun than it has any right to be, and as soon as I’ve finished this review, I’m going to spend four more hours needlessly customising Beelzebub’s room behind the Spino garage that nobody is ever going to see. Thus is the allure of Sand Land.
Sand Land was reviewed on Playstation 5 using a code kindly provided by the publisher.
