DragonQuest Builders

 Rating: 10/10 😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻😻

All Ages

(No image because sometimes the internet is stupid)

DragonQuest Builders is what happens when you mash up DragonQuest/DragonWarrior and Minecraft. It results in a very fun game with loads of freedom to play it your way.

Just to be very very clear, this is the FIRST dragonquest builder game, NOT the second. I played the demo for DragonQuest Builders 2 and detested every minute of it. They took out everything I loved about the first game and gave me more of the things I didn't like.

DragonQuest Builders is a 3D cube world similar to Minecraft. You can smash things, dig up dirt and other cubes, explore everything you can reach, fight monsters, and build things. For me, the problem with Minecraft was that the world was too open. There were no goals or storylines, just piles and piles of raw materials. I like having some kind of checklist or guide to my gameplay. But I also like the wiggle room to do it my way, not just be railroaded down a plotline. DragonQuest Builders delivers on this.

You start with basically nothing except a mission to find the ruins of a town and try to survive. There are ghosts that roam at night and yes, they will murder you very quickly early in the game. Unless you can find a closed room to shut yourself into and a bed to sleep on. Because sleeping is the best way to avoid ghostly attacks. So you build yourself a dirt hut, roofs are not necessary in this game, and start searching for clues. The missions you get are pretty open-ended - mostly "go find X" - with no time limits. You do eventually have to do them to progress to new areas and new materials, but you could spend weeks just slaughtering monsters and collecting resources if you want. And other than following the blueprints you are given to get the prize from doing it their way, you can build the buildings any way you want. The room 'recipes' are just a list of things that have to be in the room for it to count as that type of space. Some rooms/buildings will give you bonuses so they are worth exploring.

There are boss monsters in the stories that are really annoying. I spent hours building my town just the way I wanted it, then the boss comes along and just trashes everything. So I smashed everything and started over. Just like in the Six-Million-Dollar Man show, "we can build it again, bigger and better." Or something like that.

The biggest drawback and worst part of this game are the boss fights. They don't feel like they are connected to the rest of the game play. They aren't even like the boss fights in the original games that this is based on. They are too finicky with the controls and timing and coordination. I handed off the controller to my son and had him fight the bosses.

Overall, this game is loads of fun. I adored the open-ended nature of most of the checklist items. It was fun to see how I could experiment to build the towns. I had one with eight stories above ground, most of them floating on a single staircase. When the monsters got inside my obsidian wall, I just knocked out the stairs so they couldn't trash the rest of my town, and slaughtered them.

The game also includes a free-play level that lets you pretty much play the Minecraft version of the game - no checklists, no goals, just sandbox free play.

The art is adorable, mostly. Even the ugly poison slug monsters are cute. Most combat is simple enough I was fine with it, although I still detest the wyverns. Stupid sneaky guys cost me more than one life.