If you enjoy doing the activities this game offers, namely mostly laid back adventure exploration and simple environmental puzzle solving as well as the wild tank battles, then you'll have a good time throughout. It's a game that's clearly aimed at a younger audience so I can't complain that after about five hours I felt like I'd thoroughly had my fill. The sprite work is really awesome and the music is great too, especially the main town theme. The writing is also very fun and lighthearted, lots of good little jokes here and there.

I remember hearing about this game on YouTube when I was younger, how it's an underrated classic or a hidden gem of the console. As I was a huge fan of the Dragon Quest series, and still am to be quite frank, I was surprised that I never heard about this. So the first chance I got I made sure to pick this up and try it out, and I must say this is easily one of the best spinoff games in the franchise and one of the best games on the console as a whole.

You control a slime named Rocket who had his entire village kidnapped by a gang of Playpunks and it is up to you to find each one of the villagers and stop the evil group, thus saving your village. It plays like a fairly simplistic Zelda game, you explore each region of the map, solving puzzles and fighting enemies by jumping, stretching and throwing objects around.

Each area of a level feels meticulously crafted, built in a way to have a singular solution, and it always feels rewarding to find the next area to go to or to solve a puzzle of an area. You are constantly rewarded with items, enemies, and slimes to bring back to your home village. There are also boss fights that you need to tackle, which are creative.

However, that is only half of the gameplay. You aren't just collecting items to fill out a checkbox. They are instead ammo that can be utilized in tank battles all across the world. I didn't write that wrong, at certain points you will be tasked with managing a mobile tank while going one-on-one with an enemy. There is a great blend of resource management, with how you must use the ammo loadout you've created, strategy, with how you utilize your cannons and later team members for firing, and mastery over the controls to succeed in these sections.

The gameplay truly carries this gem, however the other aspects are still very good. The overall story of this game is pretty silly but effective. All the characters are likable and have that Dragon Quest charm about them. The music, as always, is iconic. Utilizing all the main themes in the different areas of the game, this is a great soundtrack though it is a shame that it is all MIDI instruments. Graphically this game is bright and colourful. The spritework is stunning and you can tell there is a lot of detail that went into this game.

I will be honest, there is one drawback to this game. As it is a game targeted at children, this leans heavily on the easier side of things. Except for some tank battles in the back half of the game, and a few tricky post-game puzzles, this game is not difficult in the slightest. I don't think it is a huge detractor though, as it becomes more accessible for a wider audience.

It is such a shame I am unable to play a modern version of this game. I truly wish we could get a port or a sequel available to us overseas, as this is truly a unique and quirky title that deserves to be remembered within the Nintendo DS' legendary library. If this game looks even remotely interesting to you, I highly recommend it. This is a genuine hidden gem.

I dropped it, but it's not like I heavily disliked it or anything. I actually enjoy many things about this game. The humor, recruitment stuff, even the tank battles are fun sometimes.
But the elephant in the room- it focuses on the tank battles/building too much for me. This combined with exploration feeling slow and you only having essentially one move bogs it down quite a bit.
My overall feelings towards this game lean on the positive side, but I don't quite have the motivation to continue it.

I wish I could like this game. It's really charming, the sprites are all super cute and it has references to a bunch of classic JRPGs.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is kinda boring. I understand it's meant to be a game for kids, but I think it's too simple to be interesting for too long. It lacks depth and it felt repetitive very quickly. I thought it was very unique at first, and it is, but after just a few hours I noticed it would be the same thing over and over with little to no changes, so I was disappointed.

That said, this is a Dragon Quest game, so the songs are on point. The art is incredible, each character has its own personality and the sprite-work is super pretty. Too bad this game is not for me, I think if I played this when I was a kid, I would have loved it.

Take the core formula from the original Slime Mori-Mori and throw in the tanks, and you've got Rocket Slime. Off the bat, there are already a ton of quality-of-life improvements, especially regarding the dungeoneering. All the trains cars/cargo floats now have a max capacity of four items (including yourself if you want to make a quick getaway while holding three items), so no more waiting around or meandering about to offload your goods! There's also no time-limit present in the dungeons anymore, so feel free to explore as long as you want while keeping in mind the day-night cycle that can affect enemy spawns. While there are still some instances of needing to carry around Bomb Rocks to blow up barriers or collecting other assorted objects to imitate totems and unlock doors, there's definitely a lot less of the former and the latter is simplified since objects are now located within nearby rooms instead of having to travel across the whole map. I also appreciate that much of the slower-paced platforming from the original has been replaced with movement-oriented obstacles (such as using the Rollerdash to traverse steeper slopes, or using cannons to both destroy sand castles and shoot yourself across fast-moving water), and that unlike the original, all destroyed and interactable hazards stay destroyed for good upon return trips (looking at you, Plob Balloons). The boss fights are every bit as ridiculous as the original: my personal favorite here has to be Pot Belly, who you must defeat by catching the materials he throws out of his magic urn and then chucking them back at him as he romps about. Finally, the transition from the GBA to the DS has not been missed: the visuals have gotten a nice bump with the DS's higher resolution, and there's a satisfying "YEEEEEOWWWCH" cry every time you slam into an enemy with the Elasto Blast. Just considering the basics that made the original so memorable, I can conclude that the sequel absolutely does all that and more.

What really add much more meat to the game, however, are the tank battles. It cannot be understated how much depth this adds to the core loop: in the original, materials sent back to town could only be used to repair the town (for aesthetics and to unlock some mini-games) or were to be sold for money. This time around, materials harvested from dungeons can now be transmuted with the magic urn once you've gained the corresponding recipes to produce more valuable material that you can use as tank ammo. Additionally, kidnapping monsters becomes much more valuable: send back at least 30 of any species, and you'll create a Bronze statue of that species in the art museum, allowing you to recruit that monster as a crew member for your tank. It's much more worthwhile as a result to forage about the dungeons and send back everything you find, knowing that it'll contribute to improving your tank warfare in some fashion. The tank battles themselves are the perfect mix of controlled chaos: you must fire upon enemy tanks in real-time, managing both the upper and lower cannon while fighting off any invaders trying to infiltrate your own tank and stealing ammo/destroying your interior. While most fights aren't particularly difficult, there is an element of strategy from figuring out exactly what to fire and when (ex: should I use shields to block off an entire line of enemy fire, or should I use carefully placed Kaboomamite instead to create a temporary wall of explosions while firing with the top cannon instead?), and if all else fails, you can just infiltrate the enemy tank yourself and blow up all their machines for the kicks. It never gets old engaging in these over-the-top fights, and the materials gained both for the fights and as a result of winning the fights makes the game's centralization around the tank battles that much more rewarding.

I've played hours upon hours of this game, both in my childhood and recently, and the only pertinent complaint that comes to mind is that the game is a bit too easy. In particular, most tank fights can be cheesed by infiltrating the tank via destroying the door/immediately shooting yourself out of the cannon and landing in the opponent's cannon room, and then just guarding the enemy cannon room to prevent anyone from firing at your tank. It doesn't take much more than a pulse to do so, since enemies can take a while to react to your Elastoblast and killing enemies will put them out of commission for a solid minute or two. I think this could have been alleviated if there were more fights that didn't rely on an enemy crew to fire or if there were more solo fights involved (i.e. just you as the only crew member vs someone else). Regardless, Rocket Slime is an incredibly entertaining and cozy experience that is every bit as charming as the original with tons of upgrades, and while there isn't much post-game to be found outside of the Tank Masters Tournament (which does at least have some entertaining tank battle variations, in fairness), I can respect a game that draws itself to a natural close and never outstays its welcome. It's even better if you can find a friend to play against via local multiplayer Wi-Fi so you can really get a taste of how crazy and complex tank engagements can become. Though, maybe don't pull out the Chili Pepper + Vulcan Bullets strategy if you still want to be friends afterwards. I learned that the hard way.