Dungeon of Windaria’s loose link to the source material

After seeing some screenshots for Dungeon of Windaria, it looks like Compile Heart took a generic dungeon RPG sitting on their shelves and slapped the Windaria license on it. Yes, Izu, Marin and other characters from the film are in the game. They are the key shallow ties that link the license with the dungeon RPG genre.

In Dungeon of Windaria you get to control Izu. The title is a little misleading because you’re not always walking in a dark dungeon! Famitsu shows him wandering in a forest. There are some cutscenes to drive the plot forward, but considering the tone of the tale centering the game on Izu’s adventures in randomly generated areas feels out of place. Hopefully, Compile Heart has some novel features in their sleeves like alternate story paths to explore or something to make Dungeon of Windaria stand out from the crowd of Nintendo DS dungeon RPGs.