Dragon Quest Builders (PS4)
May. 22nd, 2019 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroMany years ago, a descendant of Erdrick ventured forth to defeat the Dragonlord and restore light to the world. He failed, and the Dragonlord stole humanity’s ability to create, dooming civilization to crumble. Now, the Goddess Rubiss calls forth not a hero, but a Builder, who can restore the world.
I got this mostly because it’s a fusion of ARR’s current obsessions, Dragon Quest and Minecraft. From the very beginning, I liked it better than Minecraft because it’s third-person view, nor first-person. He watched me play most of it, and did some of the more careful exploring for me. (Unlike Minecraft, this doesn’t have a “creative mode” where you’re unkillable.)
The story is told in four chapters, each presenting a different part of ruined Alfegard. You unlock each one by completing the previous area, but you can’t carry anything with you and you can’t return; you even have a different save file for each chapter. (You can return to old saves/chapters to try to complete the challenges that you missed. These unlock new recipes in free mode/Terra Incognita. However, every area also has a time limit challenge that you’d need to start fresh to unlock.)
The quests you get from villagers offer an ongoing tutorial through the game, presenting you with new things to build and new materials to find at a measured pace. It did irritate me that you can find some higher-level materials in the first chapter (ruby, etc.) but can’t actually do anything with them. For that matter, later areas give you different recipes for items you’ve already learned to make, compensating for different materials being available.
(Also, while you need to make your town moderately fancy to level it up, you can loot items from monster dens and ruined other areas; I don’t think I made a single table; and every town I built got a treasury with all the treasure chests the plot put in my way.)
To their credit, the later areas do expect you to remember what you’ve learned and take away some of the hand-holding. In Tantegel, I was briefly stymied until I realized that restoring the earth with holy water also changed unbreakable blocks into iron and coal, allowing me to charge forward with upgrading my armor and weapons and making continuing my quests feasible.
And though this is an action-rpg, the big boss battles are all dependent on things you build, not really your ability to hit things with your hammer. (Though you do that too.) I found that most of the mini-bosses and challenges could be cheesed by clever building—Green Dragons don’t move and are easy pickings with a ballista; and using a cannon to sink a Boss Troll into a hole so he can’t escape is much easier than trying to fight him face-on.
Overall: I can totally see myself getting the sequel when it comes out; I very much appreciate the quest/accomplishment-based building gameplay.
I got this mostly because it’s a fusion of ARR’s current obsessions, Dragon Quest and Minecraft. From the very beginning, I liked it better than Minecraft because it’s third-person view, nor first-person. He watched me play most of it, and did some of the more careful exploring for me. (Unlike Minecraft, this doesn’t have a “creative mode” where you’re unkillable.)
The story is told in four chapters, each presenting a different part of ruined Alfegard. You unlock each one by completing the previous area, but you can’t carry anything with you and you can’t return; you even have a different save file for each chapter. (You can return to old saves/chapters to try to complete the challenges that you missed. These unlock new recipes in free mode/Terra Incognita. However, every area also has a time limit challenge that you’d need to start fresh to unlock.)
The quests you get from villagers offer an ongoing tutorial through the game, presenting you with new things to build and new materials to find at a measured pace. It did irritate me that you can find some higher-level materials in the first chapter (ruby, etc.) but can’t actually do anything with them. For that matter, later areas give you different recipes for items you’ve already learned to make, compensating for different materials being available.
(Also, while you need to make your town moderately fancy to level it up, you can loot items from monster dens and ruined other areas; I don’t think I made a single table; and every town I built got a treasury with all the treasure chests the plot put in my way.)
To their credit, the later areas do expect you to remember what you’ve learned and take away some of the hand-holding. In Tantegel, I was briefly stymied until I realized that restoring the earth with holy water also changed unbreakable blocks into iron and coal, allowing me to charge forward with upgrading my armor and weapons and making continuing my quests feasible.
And though this is an action-rpg, the big boss battles are all dependent on things you build, not really your ability to hit things with your hammer. (Though you do that too.) I found that most of the mini-bosses and challenges could be cheesed by clever building—Green Dragons don’t move and are easy pickings with a ballista; and using a cannon to sink a Boss Troll into a hole so he can’t escape is much easier than trying to fight him face-on.
Overall: I can totally see myself getting the sequel when it comes out; I very much appreciate the quest/accomplishment-based building gameplay.
