Builder games like Minecraft was never a game I got into. I’ve heard about it all over the place and its popularity was, and still is, immensensely high, but it’s core gameplay and presentation never rubbed me in the right place. Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to download Minecraft for Wii U. That experience was short lived and my attention quickly shifted back to my normal gaming pleasures.
Crafting and building type mechanics never interested me, until recent games like Stardew Valley and Dragon Quest Builders. The difference with those games is that the game isn’t solely focused and designed around those mechanics, but rather an element added to the main gameplay mechanics. What you get from Dragon Quest Builders is a simplified and watered down Minecraft experience with RPG elements based in a Dragon Quest universe. It may sound strange to combine these two games together to form a hybrid experience, but that’s what Builders does and it does it well.
The game takes place in an alternate timeline, after the events of the first Dragon Quest in the world of Alefgard. Instead of rejecting the Dragonlord’s offer to rule half the world, the Hero accepts it. The Dragonlord does not keep his word and this leads to the fall of Alefgard. After some time, a mysterious person is woken up in an unknown crypt and this is where the game begins.
You play the role of this person who also happens to be the Legendary Builder. In this alternate Alefgard, the people of this world has lost their ability to build and it’s your job to build these once bustling towns back to former glory and drive back the Dragonlord’s forces that infest these lands.
The story is predictable and not at all epic, but the minimalist approach is understandable since the game it is based on was created back in the 80s. The story to me is really not a big factor in a building game and it kept me engaged till the very end, but from an RPG standpoint, it lacked substance.
The localization is top notched and is expected from a Dragon Quest game. Accents are written eloquently and the writing does a fine job of showing the characters unique personalities. I mostly enjoyed interacting with the characters of this world and even made me care for them, which made it hard to leave each chapter whenever I was done with that area. It helps that the main player is a silent protagonist and made me feel more immersed with Alefgard and it’s residents.
Each town you visit, which is defined in chapters, has a seperate cast of characters and themes, which helps set a different style of gameplay and overall tone for each town. For example, the first chapter takes you to the town of Cantlin, where its surroundings are open fields and castle themed. The chapter focuses more on building traps and a strong defense. The second chapter, however, brings you to the town of Rimuldar, where its surrounded by poisonous water and swamp themed. The chapter focuses more on building medicine to counter debuffs and planting seeds to gather specific materials. This progression works well since Builders does not let you carry your experience and inventory through each chapter.
I enjoyed the change of pace and scenery during my play through, but things did get a bit repetitive after about 20 hours in. When it came to the quests and objectives, it suffered from the typical boring fetch and gathering quests quite a bit. There were a few memorable changes to the formula which made those quests interesting and more enjoyable, but I felt there were not enough of those.
The building aspect is very limited compared to Minecraft, but that doesn’t mean it’s shallow. In the story mode, building is only important on a very small area of the entire map. This is the town. You gather materials from the world by breaking them with weapons, and with these materials you craft blocks, furniture, food, more weapons, and gear. There are many recipes to craft these items, but not so much that it’s overwhelming. Nearly everything in this world is breakable and salvageable. There is essentially no wrong way to build your town, which makes multiple playthroughs different each time.
You eventually acquire blueprints which are templates to put on a ground to build certain types of rooms. This helps when moving rooms around to accommodate for space limitations as you will certainly forget what is needed to build a specific room. Problem with this is that the game does not give you a modern approach to access this information. These blueprints are items that take up space in your inventory and because you start fresh every chapter, you lose these blueprints. This approach basically forces you to either physically note down these blueprints or look online, which can take you away from the world and the lessen the immersion. Luckily, some of the more basic and mandatory rooms don’t require complicated builds, so playing through the story just to finish it won’t significantly slow down progress. There are also builds that are unique in each chapter and which are only useful in those chapters.
I found the building objectives to be fun and time consuming because although the game gives you an exact blueprint on how to build these rooms, it doesn’t care where you build it in your town or how you build it after the objective is met. This freedom really made me care about the layout of the town and the depth of ideas got me spending a lot of time trying to make my town unique and intricate.
Majority of my time was spent salvaging materials and making my town look cool. One of the most satisfying parts of the game was building a town that was both functional and creative. I found myself spending a lot of time coming up with ideas to create interesting traps or expanding my town by adding floors. The fact that I built this town block by block makes me even more proud of all the work I put into it. It’s not all just for looks either. The people who reside in your town will make use of all the facilities and structures that you build by creating items for you or equipping themselves with stronger weapons. It’s nice to see the game reward you for putting time into improving your town.
Your town is able to level up depending on how much points you accumulate. You gain points by building your town with more structures, placing decorations, and upgrading materials. Bringing the town level up is set at a good pace just by playing through the story. Not once did I have to grind and farm materials to up my town level. I was always at the right level at the right time. As far as I know, town level is mandatory to progress through the story and it helps a lot as the monster attacks get more fierce as you advance the story.
To gather these materials and learn new recipes, the builder will need to go out and get them. Survivors will start coming to your town as your town flourishes. You will receive quests from these survivors and completing them will reward you with items or recipes that may progress the story forward. There are additional side quests that won’t advance the story, but completing them will grant you useful items and sometimes rare trinkets that will help you substantially in your adventures.
The game’s combat is not one of its strong points and can be get repetitive real quick. It is a action/RPG esque style similar to Zelda. There is not much depth. It’s basically a hack and slash frenzy with not much mechanics involved. The only two moves you got is a normal slash attack and a charged spin attack. You do get projectiles later which do add a little strategy to your fights, but not significantly. It’s combat just feels clunky, slow, and boring. You do encounter enemies with different fight patterns once in a while, but there is not much variety at all. If combat was more fleshed out, it would have been a nice distraction from all the building missions and gathering quests thrown at you.
Boss fights are more interesting. Instead of the normal hack and slash sesh involved with the overworld baddies, these bosses need to be taken out with the unique tool given to you in that chapter and used in an engaging way. Think Zelda dungeon bosses. They’re not too difficult to solve and some can be quite clever.
During these chapters, you will acquire these teleporters that bring you to other islands to explore. It’s worth noting that the land where your town is isn’t that big and it’s not that easy to get lost, even without a map. Same can be said for the islands. The games gives you a “Bird’s Eye View” function which essentially gives you a bigger view of where you are by extends the camera view up into the sky. I would have prefered a customizable map instead where it would fill out automatically as you travelled through these areas and where you could mark it with points of interest. There were many times I wish I remembered where I could get certain materials and fight certain enemies, or mark reminders to areas I would want to visit later. I mean, the game encourages you to go exploring, what with caves and secret areas to discover. Why not give them the tools to make their experience even better.
These teleporters give you more to explore with different materials to find and monsters to fight, but I couldn’t help feeling like this land was a little less… grand. I would have prefered connected continents or some sort that would make it feel more huge and epic, with waypoints for fast travel, but that may just be my personal preference. I don’t think it would have much impact gameplay wise.
It’s fair to note that as you progress through these chapters, the game does get more difficult. The first parts of the game does a great job of teaching you the basics and eases you into more complex challenges as you progress. Combat gets more hectic and healing items become hard to come by unless you farm them. At first, the game may be very generous with food and materials laying around in abundance, but as you get further in the game, those amenities soon become scarce. This makes you plan out your trips more carefully and prioritizes which tasks needs to be tackled first. For instance, in one chapter, I found myself building a stronghold as quick as possible to defend against enemy attacks, but in another, I was more focused on gathering food and material to build weapons and keep my character from starving. Overall, I felt the game throughout was very well paced. The game is good at throwing challenges at you with the right tools at your disposal. The combat leans more on the easy side, but not to the point where you can simply play the game on auto pilot.
Aside from the story mode, there is another mode called Terra Incognita. This is basically the Minecraft playground mode for Dragon Quest Builders. I did not spend much time here since after finishing the main story, I was fatigued from the gameplay and was ready to move on to the next game. However, I did spend a couple hours on it, and from what I’ve played I enjoyed. If you are the creative type and love the building aspect immensely, then this is the mode for you. A lot of the content, like obtaining materials and items, need to be unlocked by finishing the main game first, which I suggest doing since it’s more fun to build wildly with all the resources available. There is even a unique mount that can be earned early, which makes travelling quicker and is very useful in this mode. Lastly, there is an online mode for sharing your creations and vice versa. Sharing is limited and confined to a small area, which can be a tad disappointing. It would have been cool to download other people’s world and get lost in it.
The graphics are OK and I don’t have much to say about it. The art style looks fine and blends well with the blocky aesthetics and overall tone of the game. Performance and port optimization to the Switch is good. I had no issues at all with dropped frames or force closes.
Verdict
Dragon Quest Builders is a unique approach to the RPG genre by adding building elements and mechanics. What seems like a strange mash-up at first, turns into a unique adventure that can be enjoyed by both genre fans.
4/5
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