Dillon’s Rolling Western

Genre: Action / Tower Defense

Players: 1

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Review:

Dillon’s Rolling Western is an Action game with Tower Defense elements released on Nintendo 3DS in 2013. This is the first game in the Dillon series, followed later on the Nintendo 3DS by Dillon’s Rolling Western: The Last Ranger and Dillon’s Dead-Heat Breakers. This game features anthropomorphic animal characters and a Western-style atmosphere (as the indicated by the game’s title), and has players taking the role of an armadillo named Dillon who finds himself helping towns protect their livestock (piglike “Scrogs”) from invading rock monsters called Grocks.

The visuals in this game are mostly pretty good, with decent-size 3D landscapes and fairly detailed 3D characters, with everything overall having a colorful, stylized look to it that works well for the game. This is backed by a fittingly Western-themed soundtrack.

The gameplay here is really what sets Dillon’s Rolling Western apart from everything else. Players can opt to move Dillon around using the circle pad, but usually it’s far more useful to have Dillon roll across the landscape at high speeds, which also doubles as his primary attack. Players do this by dragging the stylus in the direction opposite where you want Dillon to go, sorta’ like pulling back on a slingshot. Moving Dillon around in this way is wonderfully visceral, and is generally one of the better parts of the game.

However, this is more than just a character-driven Action game, this is a Tower Defense game, and to that end… well, while it works, I don’t think it works especially well in this format. The towers are pretty far away from each other, which makes going back and forth between them a pain to manage. What’s more, I feel like you get resources somewhat slowly, meaning that upgrading them in a significant manner will take a fair amount of time. In addition, when Dillon enters combat by coming into contact with an enemy, it’s initially really fun to keep slamming him into foes one after another, but before long, the process gets a bit repetitive.

As a result, Dillon’s Rolling Western is a game that feels like it has some very good components, but those components don’t really come together in a way that forms a cohesive whole. Despite its flaws, it is still a really unique game, and still worth checking out. But this is not quite a must-play game.

tl;dr – Dillon’s Rolling Western is a game that combines Action gameplay with Tower Defense elements. That action is pretty fun, with players using the stylus to roll Dillon around and have him bashing enemies, but it can get repetitive pretty quickly and the Tower Defense stuff doesn’t feel like it quite fits in this game. As a result, this is still a fun and unique experience, but not an essential one.

Grade: C+

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