Each named character is memorable in their own way due to some stellar writing, and though you rarely feel invested in what happens next in the plot, you grow to care for the various people living in your villages by virtue of how human they feel, a bit similar to how one grows attached to their neighbours in an Animal Crossing game. It’s clear from the get-go that the story (taking place after Dragon Quest II) is merely used as a vehicle for conveying information to the player and teaching them the ins and outs of the nuanced crafting systems, but we were rather taken aback by the charming nature of how it's presented. Malroth isn’t much good at building things, but he hits like a truck, and together you two set out on an island hopping adventure to find more survivors and maybe uncover more of Malroth’s mysterious past. Here, you come across a dark-haired, amnesiac man with aggressive tendencies named Malroth, who is evidently the resurrected form of the God of Destruction. Nonetheless, the fiends find plenty of use for you in patching up their ship, but things quickly go awry when a storm destroys said vessel and your character washes up on the shore of the Isle of Awakening. ![]() Though you’re technically their prisoner, it doesn’t take very long until you’re let out of your cell and taught the basics of your innate building and creating capabilities which, by the way, are extremely illegal. Once you’ve gotten through the character creator, your avatar wakes up on a spooky ghost ship patrolled by monsters and skeletons who collectively call themselves the “Children of Hargon”. As many sequels should strive for, this release proves to be a more refined experience than its predecessor, fixing many of its flaws, adding in a wealth of quality of life improvements, and generally providing a stronger case for its own brand of sandbox style gameplay. There were missteps, sure, but it was a solid blueprint for how a more focused gameplay experience could be hewn from the endlessness of a sandbox game, and now Square has decided to take another crack at the idea with Dragon Quest Builders 2. All the blocky aesthetics and open-ended crafting were present and accounted for, but these things were all couched within a wider narrative arc that included plenty of RPG trappings from Square’s storied franchise. Though the Minecraft formula has been iterated on to hell and back, Square Enix managed to offer up an interesting take on the sandbox classic with Dragon Quest Builders.
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