Review #374: Dillon's Rolling Western

 Rolled me to sleep it did.

 Dillon's Rolling Western is an action/tower defense game that also happens to be pretty boring. It received a lot of publicity ever since it was first released, heck, somehow it managed to earn itself a sequel as well as a cameo in the prestigious Smash Bros franchise.

 Taking the role of Dillon the Armadillo, you must defend 10 different towns from attack. Each town will be under siege by Grocks throughout 3 days and you must stop them. Each day begins with you going out into mines, gathering minerals to fortify the town's walls, repair or equip different towers with weapons to aid you. After a few minutes it will turn dark, and you will have to defeat the Grocks. Towers will either weaken or destroy Grocks that pass through their crosshairs, but you'll have to do most of the work. Bumping into an enemy will take you into a small square arena where you will have to do battle with a few enemies, however, as you partake in these fights, the enemies will still be on the move, so you must be quick and efficient.

 The game is very repetitive and boring. While there are a bunch of different enemy types and ways to deal with them, everything takes a while to perform. After you roll into an enemy, to attack it, you can either grind on them, for bonus drops or perform slash attacks, which are stronger but won't reward you as much. Rolling around through the terrain should've been fun, but it feels like a drag... literally, as 90% of the controls rely on the Stylus. Regardless, the game does attempt to alleviate the tedium, every level introduces something new, be it a new attack, a new enemy or a new item, there's always something new waiting for you.... but it doesn't help! Stages take way too long to complete, Stylus-only controls are gimmicky and the enemy AI is simple.

 You can upgrade your equipment before each day, but equipment breaks frequently, so you must always invest more on upgrades that you lose, which manages to make you feel as if you are never progressing. It's not a fun mechanic, and if all your equipment breaks during a raid, you are all out of luck until you make it to the next day, if you make it to the next day. It will also force you to grind, y'see, unlocking new stages isn't simply a matter of beating the previous stage, you must also score high enough to earn stars. Initially, making it through with three stars out of five will cut it, but the final stage requires at least a four star ranking(assuming you got all threes), so if you are short of stars... you will have to replay another, long, boring stage and hope to make a better score. Idiotic.

 In short, Dillon's Rolling Western isn't very fun and the gameplay leaves something to be desired, but at least it's not an absolute mess of a game. For what it's worth, I think that maybe with some polishing, it could make for a good game, so maybe, maaaaaybe the sequel is a better game.
 4.0 out of 10