Games I Played in 2025 - Sand Land

Console: Steam, PS4, PS5, XSX

Developer: ILCA

Release Date: April 26, 2024

Sand Land is an open-world action RPG with a large focus on vehicular customisation and combat. The game adaptation of Sand Land: The Series, which is an adaptation of the Sand Land manga, the Sand Land game serves as a retelling of the original manga by Akira Toriyama as well as the new sequel story created for Sand Land: The Series. As the manga was only 14 chapters and the anime 13 episodes (with the first 6 being the manga's story), making a 40-60 hour open-world RPG out of it was pretty surprising to me, even before I knew what Sand Land really was. Just how in the world do you even manage that?

WHAT LIES BEYOND THE DUNES

Sand Land is a shockingly big game, having not only a huge map for the eponymous Sand Land, but also a slightly smaller (but still big) map for the sequel story's setting, Forest Land. Using in-game measurements and keeping in mind these maps aren't squares or flat, Sand Land is about 11km by 10km while Forest Land is about 8km by 6km. I had some concerns that making a big game out of such a short series would lead to a bloated mess, but it all holds together for the most part. Sand Land is full of big empty sand dunes with nothing but rock formations and some scattered enemy groups, the roads being the tire tracks of people's vehicles drawn in the sand. Forest Land is full of lush greenery and dozens upon dozens of rocky cliffs, with actual concrete roads and a generally more 'advanced' look. It must be said that I think both maps look great visually, as Sand Land's overwhelming use sandy beiges and oranges really makes it feel like a desolate country clinging to survival, which just makes Forest Land's bright greens and grays stand out even more when you finally get there. You actually do feel the shock and awe the characters feel the first time they arrive. 

Both maps have a plethora of caves that will always house one of two things: a handful of chests, or a handful of ore veins, both of which give crafting materials to modify and upgrade your vehicles or their parts. There's also chests just scattered arounds the many towns and camps across both maps as well, so even though they're not incredibly rewarding, it's still rewarding the player's exploration in tangible ways. When treasure maps are acquired, they're all highlighted on both the map and minimap, making it even more fun to seek them all out. Each map also has radio towers that, once repaired with materials, will reveal part of its region's landmarks, such as caves and ruins.

There's also some more involved spots on the map, with ruins and bases. Ruins are mini dungeons with treasure and enemies inside, usually looping back around to the entrance once fully explored. These only take a few minutes to explore, typically, and they all kind of look the same, and are also always populated with the same enemies: cobras and/or scorpions. A handful of them are a little more involved, and at least one is used as an enemy base, but they're all made from the same modular assets, so exploring them is more exciting for the loot than for actually finding ruins.

The bases, meanwhile, are military outposts where the player has to sneak around to get all the loot scattered around the base. These are, once again, created with the same modular assets, but since these are essentially stealth mini-game sections, they all feel more different from each other due to how the enemies are placed around the base. Like the ruins, they're not terribly interesting and are more appealing for their treasure rather than their gameplay. Unlike the ruins, though, the bases are far more time-consuming due to stealth requiring slow, careful movement.

Sand Land's sidequests are also pretty unappealing from the gameplay side, typically being fetch quests with little interesting happening. However, the little stories attached to them are fun enough, and are generally satisfying to experience. The rewards are the main reason to do them, though: you usually get access to new faculties in the hub city, new items to purchase, new ways to get certain materials, or even new vehicle parts. A handful of them require sneaking around, while others lead to minibosses, but the vast majority just follow a typical, uninteresting fetch quest structure wrapped in a fun micro-story.

As for Sand Land's main story, it diverges quite a bit from Sand Land: The Series while still hitting the major points it needs to, especially during the Forest Land saga in the second half. Sand Land is the story of Beelzebub, the Fiend Prince, accompanying his fellow demon Thief and the human Sheriff Rao to find a legendary water spring to help humanity, since the King of Sand Land is monopolising the water for himself, only selling it at high prices. Sand Land is, as its name indicates, a desert country with no rain or oases. The first big change comes very early on, when Ann, a central character for the Forest Land saga, is introduced and joins the team. Since she is a mechanic, she handles vehicle customisation.

In general, the story of Sand Land is stretched out and padded when compared to Sand Land: The Series or the original manga, and naturally so, considering their differing lengths. Sand Land's additions and changes mostly add to the story, I think, adding a ton of worldbuilding and personality to the world of the franchise, which is especially helped by many of the naming conventions following what is already established in it. A lot of characters are named after mythological beings, or food. Even the regions follow such naming conventions, though I don't think the town names follow anything of the sort.

A big addition to the story is the handful of true dungeons you get to go through, which all take the form of destroyed, gigantic battleships. These are all huge, but also all made with the same modular assets, like the ruins and bases. However, they house some unique enemies (that are repeated in each, to be clear) and end with a real boss fight. On top of all the new cities and NPCs created, Sand Land makes its world go from an unexplored setting to a complete country that feels lived in for the most part.

The cutscenes are almost all nothing special: just characters standing around and emoting with generic animations. The ones that are fully animated, though, are a treat that captures the energy of Sand Land: The Series, not to mention just Toriyama's style in general, and they can be genuinely exciting and charming through motion rather than just be carried through the really great character writing. Beelzebub, Thief, Rao and Ann are characters with great chemistry all around and that's what carries a lot of the game's interactions, and it's put on full displays during the sidequests. You really get the feeling that these four care for each other a lot.

In the grand scheme of things, the Sand Land saga is not that much more different from the series or manga, beyond having new locations and some long detours, and all the key points are hit. The Forest Land saga, however, is very different from the series, to the point of having three new key antagonists added onto the pile and multiple events that don't occur in the same way at all, though the general idea is still there. Even though the entire ordeal for both sagas is drawn out, the story itself is still very good and enjoyable. It's all done in a way that feels like it fits the established story to enhance it or at the very least expand it.

The main flaw with the game being so long is that it loses the urgency of both sagas, almost as a necessity. Both the key antagonists also don't feel as developed in the game compared to the original material, if only because of how the game focuses more on the protagonists and doesn't really have cutscenes that occur without them involved in some way. The Forest Land saga in particular has more effort put into the game-exclusive antagonists than the true ones, which I found a bit strange, especially since they were handled perfectly in the series.

A major part of Sand Land is the hub town, Spino. Starting off as nearly a ghost town with only a handful of people living there, over the course of the game, Spino becomes a flourishing, bustling town with everything you could ask for in a video game hub. This is done through sidequests mostly: most quest givers from outside of Spino will end up moving to Spino at the end of their quest, bringing their services there or just becoming a background resident. It's one of the biggest highlights of the game to me, and it's one of the best RPG hubs I've seen in a while. It's just so satisfying to see Spino grow into the best city in the game. That alone made me want to do all the sidequests. Plus, Spino's musical theme also evolves as it grows bigger.

MORE THAN JUST TANKS

While the original manga and series only really featured tanks, Sand Land features about a dozen vehicles for the player to use, customise and level up. They are separated into categories: Tank, Jump, Car, Hover, and Battle. Each one feels great to use, though I had to change the Tank Control Type and the Hopper Aim Mode Direction in the settings to feel more natural; the Tank would move like an actual tank while the Jump vehicles would aim where the camera was looking rather than where the vehicle was pointing. The former especially really helped sell the feeling of being in a tank and it was a joy to use the whole way through.

Customisation is simultaneously deep and shallow. Each vehicle has four main parts: a primary weapon, a secondary weapon, an engine, and suspension. A lot of them overlap across vehicles in use, as there's little that feels very unique and you instead get, for example, multiple kinds of machine guns with different firing rates. It's a bit of a shame since there's a lot that could've been done with such a system. On the bright side, each of those parts are visible on the vehicle and can be recolored, allowing you to make vehicles that feel like they're your own to an extent. I question the feature to make multiples of one, as I didn't find much use in making three different tanks and instead preferred switching parts around whenever I needed to. You get to recolor every part of the vehicle from a limited choice of colors (which gets expanded as you progress with sidequests, though I question why half of the shades are locked behind this) and you can add decals as well, though only pre-made ones.

While you start with a tank, you soon find yourself needing to get different vehicles to traverse terrain. There's a couple of mandatory vehicles, but a few more than that are optional and earned through side content, essentially being alternatives that change what weapons they can use. In combat, I found that there's little reason to use anything but the Tank or the Battle Armors (unlocked later in the game), as the rest felt more like traversal options rather than combat vehicles, which indirectly makes all their weapon options feel a bit superfluous. This is aggravated by the fact you can only have five vehicles ready at any time, which does limit what you can do and can be a bit annoying in practice.

I have to point out that my favorite part about the vehicles is that outside of the Tank and the Car, every single usable vehicle is a reference to Toriyama's work. Dragon Ball's Red Ribbon Mechs being the Battle Armor, Dr. Slump's Caramel Man 001 being the Battle-Bot, to more obscure references that were drawn once or twice as random art for either series or even some other purposes, it's an absolute joy seeing such reverence to his work. Not to mention that, in my opinion, one of Toriyama's strengths was drawing vehicles and robots, which makes this game's focus on them very welcome.

With all of this emphasis on vehicles, it's easy to forget that Sand Land does indeed have melee combat. You play as Beelzebub, the Fiend Prince, and melee combat is extremely simple, with a light attack combo and a strong attack that can be put anywhere in the combo. It's rarely used, rarely necessary, and rarely fun, often degenerating into mashing the light attack combo and dodging when necessary since the strong attacks aren't actually that strong. And yet, for as little as this is used, Beelzebub's skill tree more or less focuses on this exclusively. When leveling up, you get skill points to unlock active and passive skills for both Beelzebub and either Rao, Thief or Ann (who all share the same point pool but have different skill trees). Since Beelzebub's are so uninteresting or rarely useful, it makes leveling up pretty unexciting. You'll essentially just be fighting outside of your vehicle when forced to by the story, which is very rarely.

JUNK AMONGST THE TREASURE

With all of that said, Sand Land is a game with a lot of issues, both minor and major. The first one that comes to mind is visible in the picture above: many characters have graphical issues on their faces when emoting, creating odd shadows and creases. It's also not uncommon for blinking animations to look off when characters are talking, and more than once I've seen characters that looked like they either had two set of teeth or a black line running through their teeth. In cutscenes, it wasn't infrequent that there'd be a few frames where environments were unloaded whenever there was a camera cut, even if it was just two people standing and talking. Also, this just might be me, but Rao in particular just looks a bit strange, like his face isn't quite right. I don't know if it's the shading style used, but he looks a little off while the rest of the main cast look fine.

Something that's sure to annoy anyone playing, however, is the amount of repeating dialogue during the bulk of the game. The main cast will chat while exploring, but their chatting is both too frequent and too repetitive, as it feels like every 15 seconds you'll have Rao giving Beelzebub the same advice on how to use a tank, or Thief tell a joke about cacti. To their credit, the chatter does change depending on where you are, but it still repeats too much to feel natural or really anything but annoying. The end of every fight is always punctuated with the same dialogue as well, even when it doesn't really fit (like in some story sequences).

Sand Land also doesn't really pace out its vehicle unlocks properly; I thought for sure that the game only had a few vehicle types until more were made available in the Forest Land saga (which is a solid 20-30 hours in). This'd be fine if it was teased properly, but it's not, and I think that has led to a lot of people feeling like the game has shown its entire hand, and I think that's really shown by the fact that even though more than 80% of players have the early trophies on PS5 (including those that take a few hours to do), that number drops by more than half when you look at trophies that are earned about halfway through the Sand Land saga. The way it's shown to the player, it feels like there's too much customisation for too little content for far too long, and it comes across poorly.

There's also a completely tacked-on function in Spino where you get to decorate your room in the garage, and there's a lot of effort put into it... but it feels superfluous for multiple reasons. First off, the room itself is only accessible through a loading screen, meaning it's not visible in Spino, and buying additional rooms merely gives you different rooms all separated by menus, rather than having them be connected. As a result, I found little reason to pay attention to this feature, and it feels like it should've either been implemented more naturally into Spino, or flat out removed to spare development time towards more interesting endeavors.

Enemy variety is also pretty bad, especially considering how big the world is. Raptors, pteranodons, panthers and scorpions make up a distressingly large portion of the enemies you'll encounter, with only recolors and different sizes to differentiate them. Even worse, every small enemy (which includes any human enemy outside of a vehicle) dies pretty much instantly to any vehicle's secondary weapon. To compound this difficulty issue, any enemy with projectiles will not lead their shots, so unless you're surrounded somehow, just slowly strafing will prevent anything from hitting you.

And yet, when you do get hit, it feels like there's not enough feedback to communicate that the enemy has landed a shot. If your vehicle is destroyed, it's game over, which surprised me the first time: having a loadout of 5 vehicles made me assume that the destruction of a vehicle would be a setback rather than defeat, which might have worked better in the long run. I'm not convinced by that, but it's an interesting thought.

There's also been a few occasions where an enemy would get stuck in a wall, even during a stealth segment once. There's also a unique enemy camp that had a boss with his minions... but they all spawned outside of their vehicles and were thus easy to mow down for some reason? It seemed like a one-time thing, but doing it again had the same result. It's pretty telling of the lack of polish in spots for this game. 

Furthermore, platforming while on-foot is janky at best: Beelzebub can grab onto ledges when he's missing a bit of height after a jump or double jump... sometimes. It feels like more than half of the ledges just don't work, requiring the player to either readjust their jumping angle or find another way up there... or just try again and hope it works that time. There are also a couple of moments, especially in dungeons, where the perspective will inexplicably shift to a 2D side view and the game will turn into a sidescroller for a few minutes. These are superfluous at best, confusing and off-putting at worst. The first time I thought it was a bug, it's that poorly signposted by the game. It adds nothing to the experience, and it fact takes away from it.

IMMERSIVE SOUNDS OF THE DESERT

There isn't much information I could find about Sand Land's composers. The credits list RH, Cory Tarrow, mifumei, Tetsukazu Nakanishi and Ryo Watanabe as the ones in charge of the music. Sand Land's soundtrack actually surprised me right off the bat: after the bombastic, orchestral title theme, you start the game in Demon Village and the music sounds... desolate and sad. I really respect the decision to not lean into the typical 'desert level' music with sitars and the like, instead opting for classical guitar and hand percussion, leaning into a full-blown orchestra with electric guitars when needed. 

The battle themes are not memorable in the least but fit in perfectly with all the gunfire and explosions happening. In general, all of the music lacks memorability while simultaneously adding to the immersion to the point that, when paired with the fun but repetitive gameplay, gives the game a sort of meditative quality that makes it really easy to zone out while exploring and finding loot. Standouts that are memorable outside of the game, to me, are the Demon Village theme, all of Spino's themes, and the Lisab Battleship's theme. The latter in particular I actually found quite stunning (while also not expecting something that sounded like that at all) and I ended up just standing around the battleship to take in the atmosphere. 

PROS AND CONS

PROS

• Great vehicle gameplay and variety in general, especially since they reference other Toriyama works.

• Very solid story that isn't dragged down by the added content.

• Really good voice performances from the Japanese VAs, like in the series, and likable characters overall.

• Soundtrack adds to the immersion and gives the game a meditative effect when just exploring.

• Two huge maps that are fun to explore even though they're not that varied.

• Sidequest stories are fun overall and highlight the Sand Land universe's strengths.

• Even when frustrating, losing a battle or getting spotted in a stealth segment only puts you back a minute at most.

• Overall a faithful, respectful rendition of one of Toriyama's lesser-known classics.

CONS

• Repetitive and bloated.

• Low enemy variety and low combat difficulty for most encounters since a lot of lesser enemies can be dispatched by one or two bullets from your secondary weapons.

• Player feedback when getting hit is not strong enough, so getting game overs from having a vehicle destroyed kind of stinks.

• General lack of polish in some areas, including consistent graphical issues, odd design choices, and some minor bugs.

• Ruins, bases and dungeons all reuse the same assets even across both maps, which makes them all pretty uninteresting after a while.

• Enemies with projectiles don't lead their shots, making most fights trivial.

• Lackluster skill trees.

• One-dimensional melee combat.

• Platforming on foot is pretty janky due to the ledge grab being unresponsive.

• Loses the manga and anime's sense of urgency, and at the same time somewhat devalues its main antagonists as a result.

WORTH PLAYING?

So here's the thing: Sand Land is not a great game. It's repetitive, bloated, spread thin, and it's clear some corners were cut. And yet, I had a great time playing it, letting myself zone out to the exploration of both Sand Land and Forest Land, while also enjoying the story for the third time and being interested in seeing all the new dialogue and how it was changed to suit the new format. I question the decision to make it this big open world affair when the source material is so short, and I think the lack of wisdom in that choice shows in most parts of the game. I can't deny that I had a lot of fun, but I also can't deny that the game is lacking in multiple areas, and like I've mentioned, it's very visible in how sharply the trophy acquirement stats drop off instead of petering out more and more the harder they are to get.

I can't exactly recommend Sand Land outright, but I do think this will scratch an itch for certain types of players. If you're someone who likes the PS2/PS3 game feel that lower budget games are often compared to, I think it'll be right up your alley. This is also going to scratch an itch for people who enjoy vehicle combat, as that is the majority of the game and it's done very well. It's also got a good story, and for some people that's all you'll need. However, if you're truly curious about Sand Land, I'd recommend reading the manga or watching the series instead, and then using the game as a companion piece if you feel like you want more from it. I also think Toriyama fans will like it up to a point just on its own merit as well. Either way, though, despite its length, I think it's worth waiting for a sale if you're interested at all, as I think the full price they're asking for is a bit much for what you're getting.