Sand Land

Sand Land’s vehicular focus shows potential, but devolves into a by-the-numbers open world action game with storytelling that only occasionally manages to live up to the joys of the original work.

Sand Land's fantastic vehicular combat and adherence to the source material are let down by bland and repetitive stealth, melee combat, and mission design.

Sand Land proves once again that Akira Toriyama and video games are a perfect match.

Sand Land is just another forgettable tie-in to add to the existing anime game pile.

Sand Land has its shortcomings and feels a little overlong despite seeing credits around the reasonable 20-hour mark, but it maintains a charm throughout. Toriyama’s fun sense of humor is front and center with Beelzebub taking on the adventure primarily so his dad will give him an extra hour of video game time every day. I may not have had strong connections with most of the cast and was annoyed with a number of specific sections, but I liked spending time in Sand Land (and beyond) and seeing my garage upgrade and grow.

A great premise with fun characters becomes a boring, empty wasteland in itself, as Sand Land makes adventures in customised tanks uninteresting and desperately repetitive.

Broken down into individual pieces, Sand Land doesn't do anything particularly amazing, but when taken as a whole, this is one of the best anime-based games that we've played in a long time. It's got plenty of great story moments, its open world structure is moreish, and combat is satisfyingly solid. A robust and lovingly crafted adventure that charms from start to finish.

Sand Land for Xbox Series X|S not only does a great job bringing one of Akira Toriyama's arguably lesser-known works to life, but is also a lovely way to say goodbye to a man who has had an incredibly huge impact on Japan's manga and anime industry as well as the world of video games. Although it's not necessarily an evolutionary experience on the action RPG front, it should still be a fun ride from start to finish for fans of the genre and source material.

Children and Akira Toriyama fans will probably love Sand Land.

That's Sand Land in a nutshell, though. It's a vibes game more than anything else, charming, sometimes surprisingly incisive, and daring enough to be its own thing. That thing isn't always as engaging as it could be, but it's certainly unforgettable.