Dragon Quest Builders 2 (PS4)
Oct. 23rd, 2019 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroIt seems that despite the three Scions of Erdrick defeating Hargon, his cult is still around, and they’re gathering up Builders to sacrifice to their Master of Destruction. You are one such Builder, but a little thing like a giant cult dedicated to your demise won’t stop you from building up a thriving collection of islands.
They made a number of quality of life improvements over the first game: Weapons don’t break, for one. You have a glove tool that lets you move items without having to smash and re-place them. Townspeople take more direction regarding tasks, and can even be encouraged to build things without you. Teleporting doesn’t require a consumable, and you can teleport both to your town and to any waypoint you’ve activated on the current island. If you do the “Explorer’s Shores” island, it gives you infinite amounts of basic crafting materials (wood, coal, iron, etc) so you never have to worry about gathering them. Having Malroth—who levels with you, can be equipped with better weapons, and both fights and gathers—makes a lot of exploration more pleasant.
I wasn’t crazy about the fact that cooking, smelting and forging certain magical items now involves waiting time. Also, while I’m sure many people appreciate the addition of a first-person mode, I freaked out when I accidentally entered it and thought I was stuck.
Boss battles that are a combination of building/puzzles and working with your townspeople to beat the boss are nice. Townspeople play a much larger role in this, actually: In the first game they were basically quest-givers; now there are areas where they’re doing the majority of the work for you. (Fighting, building, and gathering too!)
Each major island does a semi-reset of your capabilities (you only get to bring what you’ve equipped and only certain recipes are available at the outset), but your level doesn’t reset and you never have to re-learn anything. Consequently, your level caps in each area, but it isn’t hard to hit that cap. There are a few places where they have to stretch the game system to keep you on the story path because of this. The third island, which is really more of a sub-chapter, is the prison island, and it sees the worst of that: They remove all your equipment when you enter, and the remove everything you’ve gathered at one point to keep you on the rails. (Then they make you do a goddamn stealth sequence, but thankfully you can ignore the NPC’s directions and just scurry around the cliff faces with homemade catwalks.)
The first island also become the “free build” area, which was kind of an afterthought in the original game. Now it’s full of bonus quests that unlock new recipes and serves as the interim segment between each main area.
I had been warned that the second island was “Mines & Misogyny”, which isn’t terribly inaccurate, as the plot relies on the town’s only woman (for about half the chapter) teasing the miners into working harder with the potential of her putting on a bunny suit and dancing for them. Arguments can be made that she has all the agency and blah blah blah, but it’s not the best setup. That said, I had not been warned that the entire setup is a gigantic pun, as you help the golem Goldirox restore the legendary Three Bars, and that was glorious when it finally hit me.
Overall: Different than the first game but stronger in a bunch of ways. I miss the chapter-constrained setup a little bit, but I like the over-abundance of mini-goals and the quality of life improvements. Definitely a solid game and lots of fun.
They made a number of quality of life improvements over the first game: Weapons don’t break, for one. You have a glove tool that lets you move items without having to smash and re-place them. Townspeople take more direction regarding tasks, and can even be encouraged to build things without you. Teleporting doesn’t require a consumable, and you can teleport both to your town and to any waypoint you’ve activated on the current island. If you do the “Explorer’s Shores” island, it gives you infinite amounts of basic crafting materials (wood, coal, iron, etc) so you never have to worry about gathering them. Having Malroth—who levels with you, can be equipped with better weapons, and both fights and gathers—makes a lot of exploration more pleasant.
I wasn’t crazy about the fact that cooking, smelting and forging certain magical items now involves waiting time. Also, while I’m sure many people appreciate the addition of a first-person mode, I freaked out when I accidentally entered it and thought I was stuck.
Boss battles that are a combination of building/puzzles and working with your townspeople to beat the boss are nice. Townspeople play a much larger role in this, actually: In the first game they were basically quest-givers; now there are areas where they’re doing the majority of the work for you. (Fighting, building, and gathering too!)
Each major island does a semi-reset of your capabilities (you only get to bring what you’ve equipped and only certain recipes are available at the outset), but your level doesn’t reset and you never have to re-learn anything. Consequently, your level caps in each area, but it isn’t hard to hit that cap. There are a few places where they have to stretch the game system to keep you on the story path because of this. The third island, which is really more of a sub-chapter, is the prison island, and it sees the worst of that: They remove all your equipment when you enter, and the remove everything you’ve gathered at one point to keep you on the rails. (Then they make you do a goddamn stealth sequence, but thankfully you can ignore the NPC’s directions and just scurry around the cliff faces with homemade catwalks.)
The first island also become the “free build” area, which was kind of an afterthought in the original game. Now it’s full of bonus quests that unlock new recipes and serves as the interim segment between each main area.
I had been warned that the second island was “Mines & Misogyny”, which isn’t terribly inaccurate, as the plot relies on the town’s only woman (for about half the chapter) teasing the miners into working harder with the potential of her putting on a bunny suit and dancing for them. Arguments can be made that she has all the agency and blah blah blah, but it’s not the best setup. That said, I had not been warned that the entire setup is a gigantic pun, as you help the golem Goldirox restore the legendary Three Bars, and that was glorious when it finally hit me.
Overall: Different than the first game but stronger in a bunch of ways. I miss the chapter-constrained setup a little bit, but I like the over-abundance of mini-goals and the quality of life improvements. Definitely a solid game and lots of fun.
