Dragon Quest Builders Game Review

Pros

• Building things and design towns is creatively and mechanically rewarding
• Quest lines help introduce more complex systems
• Handcrafted worlds allow for special challenges

Cons

• Controls and camera are fiddly, especially inside
• Fight is fairly fundamental and wonky

About the Game

The world lies in ruins; you are the only one who can restore it to its former glory. It's a platitude among platitudes, and it's one that Dragon Quest has shown in since the chain’ beginning. Dragon Quest Builders needs to do something a bit different, though. Rather than going from city to city using up things and destroying creatures, Contractors actually wants you to create, to use your own two hands to craft your tools, rebuild towns, and cleanse the world of evil through the magic of building.

Dragon Quest Builders places itself as sort of an alternate sequel to the initial match in the group, create after its hero decides to strike a deal with the Dragonlord to join him and rule the world with an iron fist. With the world destroyed, you awaken (after character creation - determining your sex, skin color, and character name) in an underground cavern, the only one in a barren land who comprehends the finest method to create. Over four chapters, you'll travel to distant locales to rebuild hamlets, fight an outrageous quantity of slimes and other Dragon Quest fundamental foes, take on quests for new residents, and find the needed things for the magic weapons you'll need to take down each region's supervisor. It is cartoonish look and story might appear straightforward, but it's as charming and bubbly as any other match in the set, with well-written characters and the brand stylings of group artist Akira Toriyama. It's total Dragon Quest fanservice, complete with a soaring orchestral soundtrack by original show composer Koichi Sugiyama.

 

Gameplay

To describe its gameplay in the most clear-cut terms, Dragon Quest Builders is a mix between survival and crafting games like Minecraft and action RPGs like The Legend of Zelda, joining the resource collection of the former with the quest-recognized progression and fight of the last. When you start, you are going to only have access to an introduction of fundamental, wooden matters, which break easily and can only deconstruct the simplest elements. As you help villagers with their requests - whether that's bringing them a smattering of special matters, slaying creatures, or building and designing rooms to their terms - you'll get access to new recipes, which therefore give you access to more things, tools, and materials.


It might appear that its two halves - the boundless imagination offered by its crafting systems and its more exact storyline and quest-recognized building - would be at odds, but they actually complement each other very well. Besides the occasional pattern (which drives you to build a room to exacting specifications), you're largely free to build each town yet you love. The only requirements to designing a room are that it is a wall two squares high, a light source, and a door, and once a room is completed, you’ll be rated for your efforts. Different combinations of buildings will create special kinds of rooms, which add motivators to your town, like letting your villagers cook food for you when you are away or let them more powerful weapons in conflict.

Building

Extremely building matters, for the most part, is relatively painless, and even if you screw up, a couple whacks will transform whatever you've put back into a tiny version of that thing which you're capable to pick up and place again. But the most remarkable thing is seeing your hamlets develop and blossom as time passes. When you first arrive in a location, you are going to perhaps have room to craft matters and a fundamental bedroom with straw mattresses. By the time you're finished, you are going to have a bustling town with a half dozen other folks milling about, each leading in humble but helpful manner. It feels incredibly amazing to look back and see the progress you've made and the things you've built.


Handcrafted building, Dragon Quest Builders can provide extraordinary challenges you WOn't see in other procedurally-created games. By the end of chapter one, you've likely got a handle on the best method to build defensive structures and the means to upgrade from wood to steel, to silver, and on. Once you step through the portal site to the next chapter, though, your health, things, and equipment are reduced to the bare minimum once again, and the mineral-rich areas of chapter one give way to a barren, poisoned wasteland, where even fundamental elements like wood are quite uncommon. It's a small bummer to lose everything at first until you understand this new world now holds an entirely different set of challenges that force you out of your comfort zone because you simply don't have the exact same material reachable. Each chapter comes with its own set of exceptional setting and challenges to conquer, and while the main quest is relatively clear-cut, there are numerous side areas that want you to find keys or solve puzzles to get the advantages hidden within.

If you're hunting for some more freeform imagination, the Terra Incognita manner is considerably closer to a typical Minecraft game, which drops you into a map where you're able to create to your heart's content without stress about creature strikes. It is possible that you get portal sites that take you to the universes of the chapters you've cleared, so you could fight enemies and get access to exceptional parts to customize your private universe, and after that share your creations with other players online. You won't find a creation bundle as deep as Minecraft’s, but you have enough tools at your disposal to create some impressive-looking structures, provided that you've got time and resources available to do that.

Quests

While the building and quest are well-performed and fleshed out, just the same CAn't be said for Contractors’ fight, which is really crucial and eventually kind of wonky. Most fights are little more than watching for enemy wind up animations and trying to go out of the way while mashing the attack button and trusting your weapons don't break mid-fight. There are the occasional town defense quests, which require you to fend off several waves of attackers while using the defenses you've built, but the moments where everything comes together (and the enemy AI joins forces with your snares) are relatively unusual compared to how the rest of most encounters tremble out. Eventually, the action just isn't all that hefty and satisfying, especially when held up against its more rewarding crafting and town-building systems.

Game Controls

Contractors' camera and controls may also fight against you occasionally, and usually at the most unsuitable minutes. Most of the time, they may be serviceable, but when you're in the thick of fight or in enclosed spaces, you are going to likely long for more responsive and precise controls and a camera that'll actually show you what you must see. If you wind up deep underground, as the camera pulls in so tight it's extremely difficult to see what's occurring. A clear-cut first person fashion could have done a lot to mitigate these discouragements.

But even with these issues, Dragon Quest Builders is simple to recommend. It may not be as hefty as its genre counterparts, but its mashup of crafting, survival elements, and RPG questing location in the lively, cartoony world of Dragon Quest is a rewarding and breezy delight for players of all levels of creative ability.

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