Ordinarily, I'm a huge Dragon Quest fan. It's a series I grew up with, and with some exceptions, I've nigh universally enjoyed it and many of the spinoffs. Unfortunately, some games in that franchise are not worth my time, and to my intense regret, Infinity Strash: Dragon Quest The Adventure of Dai is one of those.

The Adventures of Dai is an anime spinoff of the games. The games already used the art style of Akira Toriyama, but the anime spinoff tells a Dragon Quest-style story much like Toriyama's episodic Dragon Ball franchise and reuses many of the same storytelling tropes, just explicitly set in a Dragon Quest-styled world. The game this review is about is based on the first two-thirds of the 2020 anime version of The Adventures of Dai.

The basic story begins in media res style. Specifically, while Dai is fighting a rogue Dragon Knight who wants to destroy humanity (Dai is also a Dragon Knight, but wants to defend them), he winds up losing his memories of who he is. This forces the player to go back in time, retrace the steps of his journey, and piece his memories back together so he can overcome this latest challenge.

It's not exactly how I would have kicked off a game about reliving the anime, but it's a decent setup. Unfortunately, the story itself has a very low ratio of gameplay versus story, with less than 15% of your time being spent playing the game. The rest is watching a super condensed abridged retelling of forty or so episodes of the 2020 anime virtually frame by frame, with some brief playable segments in between. It's incredibly on rails and feels like a mobile game hastily reskinned for the Dai anime, and overall, I'd have to recommend the anime. The retelling of this title is such a non-stop infodump trying to cram 40 episodes into a mere fraction of the time needed to watch the actual show even veterans of Dragon Quest plots would find it difficult to follow.

The gameplay loop, for whenever they let you play, is based on playing as Dai and his later unlocked companions from the show. These playable segments take place in brief mobile game-style arena stages where the player must either defeat bosses or get to a goal while taking down all enemies. The intermissions allow the player to check status, equip different memory fragments (which determine stat boosts), and choose levels to play on a map screen. There is an unlockable roguelike mode for some more to do, but it feels like padding, essentially being a randomized collection of rooms for each playthrough based on prior areas from the game.

Again, it needs to be mentioned these gameplay sections feel very bland and uninspired. The feeling I was playing a generic mobile game given a Dragon Quest coat of paint could not escape me, and if you replaced the assets with some other generic property, you could have easily been playing any other game. And if you skip all the cutscenes (which is generally 90% of the actual content), that only makes the problem worse. This was an inexcusably lazy, subpar effort for something with the Dragon Quest name on it, and deserves nothing less than contempt considering the price they sold this for.

Graphically speaking, the Dragon Quest cutscenes and most assets are taken directly from the anime, frame by frame in many cases. While translated well to the brief playable sections and the anime retelling cutscenes, that's about it. The levels feel boring and generic and if you loved games like DQXI, then this will disappoint in how little effort was spent in making gameplay areas feel unique or interesting. I've played far better mobile games that at least compensated me for the cut-down stage designs by making what I do see very interesting, so this is inexcusable. The system requirements are fairly modest and if you can run most ports of higher-quality console games at high settings on your PC, this is not going to work your PC all that hard.

Sounds and music are again lifted nigh entirely from the anime, and honestly, I can't knock them, they are legitimately good. The voice actors sound good, if a bit hammy at times, but given its source material, that's not a bad thing. I just regret all this effort was wasted on such poor gameplay and poor level design.

This title has partial support for gamepads and also supports keyboard and mouse control. I highly recommend XInput style controllers; these are the only ones I can guarantee will work out of the box. There are unofficial workarounds for other types though. I used an Xbox One controller and that worked more than acceptably. The keyboard and mouse are doable but controller play is recommended. Keys can be remapped if need be, but default controls are easy enough to master.

The game is generally stable and loaded fine, if a bit slow at times, even on an SSD. There is a shader loading bug that the devs have acknowledged that causes this but as of this writing has yet to be fixed. This game is verified for the Steam Deck, but I recommend turning down a few settings to preserve battery life and performance, this game tends to overwork the Deck for some reason otherwise.

Morally, this is not an overly concerning game, save a few elements.

Violence in-game consists of fantasy swords and magic on both sides in the playable scenes, where bodies disappear immediately without leaving remains. The anime cutscenes can show mild blood displays and some injuries, but nothing overly graphic. Language, aside from the use of b**t**d at least once, is generally tame as well.

Being based on a series aimed at children, the sexual content is quite low. Nigh all the magic is uber generic fantasy stuff. There are some ghosts and zombies and demonic beings of generic fantasy per the tropes of the Dragon Quest series, but that's about it. Morally and ethically, the playable cast is typically heroic and adheres to moral authority when and where possible.

Overall, I cannot recommend this game. Technically, it's a glorified mobile game with a Dragon Quest coat of paint that is shamelessly overpriced. Morally, it's not all that terrible save for a few minor points of concern and can be handled by any young teen and up. As a Dragon Quest title and even as a game, this is quite disappointing and I urge any fans of the anime to stick to that, it shows more love and effort.