Games I Beat: Dragon Quest Builders

Dragon Quest Builders
Minecraft Clone
1 Player
System: PS4
Developer: Square Enix
Year of Release: 2016
Beaten: October 25th, 2016

Mixing Minecraft with Dragon Quest was never something I would have asked for, or even, frankly, thought of. When the first trailer came out I wasn't really interested. Which was good considering at the time there was no guarantee we'd be seeing any more Dragon Quest games outside of Japan for a good long time. Luckily since then the ebb and flow of Dragon Quest releases is back at high tide with Builders, 7 and 8 coming out recently/soon, and apparently more interest in bringing over other titles like the Monsters remakes, 11, and maybe even X, though I'm not convinced a four year old MMO is going to be making it's way over I'd happily give it a shot if it ever did!

I kind of lost track there, I fucking love Dragon Quest though, and more releases make me very fucking happy. After Builders was confirmed for release outside of Japan, and more trailers came out I began to strangely anticipate the game more and more. I think what won me over was the incredibly clever framing mechanic for the game. See at the end of the first Dragon Quest, right before you face off against the tyrannical Dragon Lord he offers the players power unimaginable. You can accept, but doing so results in a game over, or the bad ending. Alefgard (the name of the world) having fallen into darkness. Builders is the sequel to that ending, although it's never made explicitly clear how long it's been, or who exactly the protagonist is (default name of Bildrick, mixing the titular builder with the original English translation of the first game's hero of yore Erdrick). This is just brilliant.

There are a few callbacks to the original, but not overly so. Really the writing is very enjoyable and funny. Recent translated Dragon Quest's have been chock full of puns, and I've mostly enjoyed them, but this game had some genuine laughs tucked away in various dialogues. Of course they sometimes take too long to explain basic concepts, or just prattle on for a bit more than I wish they would, but overall I really enjoyed the writing.

Builders plays like a Zelda influenced Minecraft. You run or jump around and can attack both enemies and blocks, as the world has become inexplicably cubic, for materials. You never grow stronger through combat, which a few characters make reference to throughout the game, and you can usually easily avoid fighting monsters that aren't holding anything you need. After gathering materials you bring them back to your base and can craft all sorts of items. From there you build houses, sometimes to character's specifications, sometimes just whatever you want, and by doing so you level up the town. This doesn't do too much other than progress the story.

You are the legendary builder, the people of Alefgard have lost the art of building, and it's up to you to reteach them this necessary skill. As you build your towns more people show up, demanding new rooms, or new items. Having quests really helps to bring purpose into Minecraft. It's something I always felt was missing from that game, or the building aspect of Fallout 4 even. Every so often monster hordes will assault your villages and you must fend them off. After building the town back up the boss who's bringing darkness to the area emerges for some almost scripted battles. They're not very difficult, but they're different enough to be interesting. Though beware, they can tear your town up, requiring a bit of fixing up after.

Upon beating a boss the next chapter opens up, which is a whole other save and everything. You restart each time, which makes sense otherwise the last few towns would have very little sense of progression. Each town also introduces a new mechanic, these are just little things, like the second area has sick patients that you must build beds for and treat before they give you quests. It helps keeps things feeling fresh. Over the course of the four chapters I never felt burnt out. After you finish everything there's a free build island available that has new things unlocked as you make main story progress.

The most irritating aspect about story progression is challenges. See, after you beat a chapter you have the possibility of completing five challenges, like beating it quickly, having defeated certain difficult monsters, or finding rare items. The game doesn't bother telling you what these are until AFTER you beat them. I know with the internet you can circumvent this, but it's still bad design, in my opinion. You can reload your last save (hopefully after beating the boss of the area) and complete four of these whenever. If you failed the "beat this chapter in X amount of days" though, you'll need to start a new game for the town. It just feels like pointless padding, also making players rush through what is essentially a Minecraft game is kind of fucked up.

Any other complaints are nitpicks. Like other Dragon Quest games they let some jingles play out too long for no reason other than tradition, the combat is really rudimentary, placing blocks took a little bit to get used to, the camera inside tight buildings is awkward to terrible. None of these are game breaking, and the sheer fun factor and charm of Builders more than make up for all of these things.

I adore Dragon Quest Builders, sure it seems like a weird mashing up of genres at first glance, but there was a lot of love for both of those genres, as well as the Dragon Quest series overall put into this game. It is a bit of a hard sell at full price, but as a die hard fan of the series it was a no-brainer. For more casual fans I could understand waiting for the price drop, looking at how Dragon Quest Heroes fell in price I wouldn't be surprised if this one followed suit. If it sounds interesting I implore you to pick up, though I'll admit the reasoning is simply my selfish desire to bring more support to an amazing series in the West.