Dragon Quest Builders

2024-12-18
I finished this in Aug 2022 but I had originally played through about 2/3rds of it in Nov 2016. Coming back I was like "Damn, why did I not finish this? It's so fun." And then about an hour or two later I was like "Oh yep now I remember." It's an incredible game that marries Minecraft building and exploring with an actual story and structure. BUT that story and structure is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because Minecraft on its own, while amazing for me to play in the Alpha back in the day when nothing else like it existed, got boring because it's just...aimless.

DQB was great because you had stuff to build, resources to gather, all in the aim to rebuild towns. The problem is 1) it's pretty grindy. The resources you have to gather are often very numerous and you're kind of just bashing blocks over and over. 2) The story periodically resets the world. This means that castle you spent hours meticulously building is just...gone. Not only do they wipe out the progress you built into the world they also wipe out your character/resources progression. Oh you got up to the iron tier? Nope, that's gone. You're back to finding straw and wood to build the most basic things like tables. Those two things mean the game becomes extremely long in tooth about 10-20 hours in the game when the first reset hits and you realize all your shit is gone.

Beyond that the story is pretty barebones, nothing to write home about. The world and graphics are actually pretty beautiful, especially replaying it on a PS5 with a buttery smooth framerate. The music is classic DQ faire and I enjoyed it.

But for all the complaints the core gameplay is very enticing. It's kind of a survival craft em up but the crafting is really fun. I loved the idea that they give you blueprints for the types of rooms to build, e.g. this room needs 3 chairs and tub to be considered a bathhouse. And then you can kind of lay it out however you want. It's pretty genius and was refined near to perfection in the sequel.

A great game that admittedly serves no purpose to play when the second is entirely better. But I'm glad it forged the way ahead for that sequel.