Welcome to my review of the newest entry in the Dragon Quest Builders franchise, where the story takes center stage and the great game mechanics got more refined. For this review, we tested it on both PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
To stop the worshippers of an ancient evil, you must join forces with the mysterious Malroth and build a ravaged world into the realm of your dreams. In this RPG adventure, you’ll explore huge islands, gather and craft with materials, design towns, level them up, and defend them from monsters and bosses alongside townspeople. As you progress, you’ll unearth crafting and building recipes. Dash, glide, swim, fast travel, and play in optional first-person perspective as you try to find them all. In the Isle of Awakening, you and up to three other Builders can explore together in local wireless; or play online together too.
Dragon Quest Builders 2 starts off with the tutorial, as to be expected, but the tutorial actually lays the foundation for the game and this is done perfectly. You are an aspiring Builder and you are caught by a bunch of monsters. Once they find out you are a builder, they use you to perform some menial tasks. This is all about learning the game mechanics.
Learn to use the crafting table to get some lights up on deck? Check! Learn how to pick up wooden crates to fill the holes made in the hull of the ship you are on? Check! Learn to talk to everyone? Yes, very much so, so once again you tick the box. All basic controls are learned in this short and actually fun interlude, having played the first game for such a long time on Switch, I mean it is in my top 5 of longest played game. Dragon Quest Builders 2 is similar to the original in idea, but not in execution.
The basics are all still here, you still need to build rooms, places to stay, things to sleep on and so much more, but it is no longer you, the builder, who faces this new world, you are joined by 2 people, Lulu and Malroth! Malroth is a cheeky guy that can be called cold at times. The first time meeting him, within minutes he asks you if it would not be best to just simply kill a fellow survivor because she seems to be sick. So cold, but I guess it’s thanks to his charm that he gets away with it?
His main role in the game at first, no spoilers from me like usual, is to help fight and collect items. This is so incredibly handy and I can not say it enough, I love this! It cuts time gathering ingredients and fighting enemies by quite a bit. He has his own weapons and you do get the added bonus (or difficulty) to keep track of his fighting prowess. I think it is a bonus, but I guess this is how you look at it? His role in the latter part is pretty clear from the start and is confirmed soon enough.
Once you really performed the few initial tasks set out by the girl Lulu, a fellow survivor, one of the three inhabitants of the island at the start, you are faced by the ghost of a hammerhead, the “deity” of the island, so to speak. He bestows the island onto the builder and teaches you about the networking possibilities like watching other players’ creations and in the end, gives you a better more potent hammer, then tells you to set sail and find more friends to join you on the island. Lulu tries to call the island Lulutopia and I just found the silliness in her words to be so funny, that I actually laughed out loud. The survivors are a weird yet funny bunch.
In true game fashion, a ship with a captain appears on the shores of the island and you learn of the existence of other islands. Islands that you must visit in order to get friends to join your island and also enhance your building skills so you can do more and make your island into a true kingdom.
Along the way, I even got a little doggie! (picture below is not my doggie…)
Dragon Quest Builders 2 is an incredibly nice game and while some differences between the original game exist, like the islands versus actual “worlds/levels” in the first game. I loved the improved graphics and having played a ton of hours on the previous iteration, I was looking forward to this game. I went as far as to play the demo of this game on Nintendo Switch. Playstation has much better loading times though I must say they did not feel incredibly fast when I was saving my games. Nothing that bothered me at all, just a small observation.
Graphically, I would not say there were any noticeable differences, I guess the inherent Chibi style is to credit here. The portability of the Switch versus the big TV screen is always going to be a tough nut in a comparison battle and I lean towards the Switch. I can play the game during my work breaks, even if just for 5 minutes.
This game still feels like the exact same Role-Playing Epos much like the first game, a great successor and I can only fear for my free time, with all those heavy hitters incoming later this month, just how many hours will I be able to invest in this game? The purest “first world problem” that you can think of, but I am sure I will try my very best to finish this game. At time of writing this review, I was around 20 hours into the game.
In conclusion, when your only negative point in a review is actually your complaint about not having enough free time, you just know how awesome this game is. Dragon Quest Builders 2 is a clear improvement compared to the original and deserves a solid 9 as my score. It is not perfect, but sure comes close!
