10.11.2019

I ordered this game within HOURS of playing the demo on the PS network, and I have to say it exceeded my expectations as far as what gameplay offers, the amount of things you can do and make and the general challenges. This game takes inspiration from games like Minecraft but exceeds on the emptiness of the game by giving you more to do and goals rather than just survival.I’d played the first game and although it was okay, it was disappointing as it was short visits to each world, and that was pretty much it, you couldn’t return, you felt no actual motive to really do anything in each world than build what was requested and that was about it. Here, it’s very much different.To start with,I have to say the only drawback about the game for me was the very long-winded tutorial which gets you into how to play the game. For people who’ve never played Minecraft, it’d be very helpful, but for me it was SO tedious. Unfortunately the demo doesn’t actually save your data to the full game so I had to replay it all entirely again which was painful. Once you’re through that, its good.So, first of all, you’re a builder, you get to give yourself a name and get some very limited choices on how your avatar looks (one hair style of varying colours, any eyecolour or skin tone but you don’t get to pick features, only the gender of the character and skin, eyes and hair). You end up shipwrecked on an island with a demon-looking guy called Malroth who follows you everywhere and does a lot of your killing for you (although you have to obviously help because monsters will still hit you) and an annoying little girl called LuLu. Everyone you come across seems to think a builder is the best thing since sliced bread. The game gets a little much when every time you meet a new character and they say “You’re a builder?” Its as if they’re asking if you’re a rocket scientist with superpowers who can magic up anything.There’s an enemy gang you have to defeat called “the children of Hargon” who want to stop people from building and be miserable for some reason that I’ve still not gotten to yet. There’s a long storyline and no voice work (other than cute little Kawaii type noises) and it’s a lot of reading and sometimes the quests can get long winded. I often find myself skipping to get to the point, but if you like storylines with cute overtones, it’s your cup of tea.The island you’re shipwrecked on is given to you, but it’s also inhabited by monsters, arid and dry and barren of most things like food and shelter. Barely any wood to build and a lot of stone you can’t destroy. But no worries, the hairy hermit in the mountain and the NPCs on your island will send you to various destination islands to go get supplies and bring back new people to inhabit the island and this is where the quests actually properly come in.Each island has a lot of different NPCs, different terrain, different materials, some you’ll find are lush and full with lots of resources for farming, lots of wood and bushes to make medicines with, others you’ll find are absolutely barren but rich with mineral like iron, silver and gold. You’ll find islands attached to a quest called “explorers shores” that upon landing you’ll be given scavenger hunts to find every resource on a list (at your own pace) and upon finding them all you’ll unlock unlimited resources at the workbenches wherever you end up later (which is quite nice).Each proper island (the ones that aren’t linked to “explorers shores” has a small community of NPCs who are struggling to survive, have very little food and no shelter and need you to help them rebuild and gather more members of their towns so they can fight the Children of Hargon. While you’re doing this you’ll learn new recipes, find new resources, and learn how to do things along the way. There’s also big challenges like you’ll be asked to build massive castles or Pyramids, however, at a certain point, the NPCs actually begin to help you build so you aren’t left to put down every block yourself. During your time in each island, your town will be attacked by monsters who’ll start to try to destroy the town, and leave you to repair some buildings which can be quite annoying. However, during quests, there’ll be a few massive attacks on towns and once defeating the monsters, the townspeople will actually rebuild everything for you which is nice. The quests you’re sent on can range to help them plant new farms and find new foods to grow, to helping them rebuild or open up mines or spy on the enemy, it just depends. There’s also a few fun quests like getting captured and having to do a prison escape with no tools and weapons which was really challenging.The gameplay is A LOT like Minecraft. You have freedom to build anything you want outside of the town perimeter, however the townspeople won’t use it so keep that in mind. You can be as decorative as you want with most rooms however, you don’t get freedom to build if requested to make something specific like a type of bedroom that needs to be small with certain amount of beds, decorative items, etc. Once those rooms are made and the quest is complete, you can add and alter later which is nice but you do have to be careful about building within the town boundaries or completion doesn’t work.Think of this game as how Minecraft could be if it had a really long story and wasn’t too complicated about how to build things. You get a workbench already set for you in each area and each workbench is limited to what you can make depending on what island you’re on. So say for instance you know how to make all kinds of cool decorations on Khrumbul-Dun, that doesn’t mean when you get to lets say...Moonbrook, you’ll be allowed to make those things - they simply won’t be there on your workbench to choose from. Building items in the game is super easy as long as you have the resources. And unlike Minecraft, you DON’T have to have the resources actually in your personal inventory. If you have them in any chest in the town boundaries, the game counts them as your items and will use them at the bench without you needing to retrieve them. Also, unlike Minecraft, your inventory is absolutely HUGE - you can have sixty items on seven separate pages in your bag. You’ll NEVER have to leave any resources behind. Also the game allows you to sort them very easily by what they are (you won’t get categories but it will put all the blocks together, all the food together, all the metals together, etc) so it makes it easier finding things. Unlike Minecraft though, the storage chests in the game are pitifully small and don’t hold much so often you might find yourself not clearing out your inventory much. Even the giant chest has the same capacity as the smaller version (don’t see the point in that myself).Once you’ve left an island, you can actually RETURN to it even if you’re on your own island building away. You can also bring NPCs from other islands back to the island with you to help build your island into a proper inhabited area. The game offers a lot of the same things Minecraft offers, like train tracks and mine carts (although it doesn’t have red stone). It offers simpler kinds of traps.The game has a food system a bit like Minecraft where food heals you and you have a hunger bar. If your hunger drops, you’ll get exhausted and struggle to do work and it’ll slow you down. Food increases attack power and defence, it’s just finding what does what that takes it’s time. For healing you can make medicinal herbs which you retrieve from bushes (which regrow very fast).Scattered through the islands you’ll find very large bosses to defeat, and defeating them will award you perhaps a rare resource to make something specific, or unlock a certain recipe you wouldn’t get otherwise. Islands also have puzzles (very easy to do) that upon completion award you medals which you can exchange on your island for accessories for your character to wear, and for tool upgrades, etc.Each island also allows you to gain ten levels (so first island you’ll go from 1-10, second 10-20 and so on. While you’re on your own island, you won’t gain any levels. And once you’ve maxed the level on any island, you won’t gain any extra experience. Levelling gets you new recipes for weapons and armour for you or Malroth (and you can actually make any weapon you can wield and give it to any of the fighting NPCs in the game to increase their fight ability).IN the game, there’s no death for you, you simply pass out if you lose your health and wake up in a bed with villagers having revived you. No game over. Also, the villagers don’t die (unless the quest stipulates it) so if the town NPCs ‘drop down’ or Malroth drops, a few minutes later they’ll revive.All in all, this game I’m enjoying far more than I expected. I’ve been on it for weeks now and I’m not all the way through yet. It’s a good game you can easily lose several hours a day in and not find everything or make everything. Lots to explore and find, lots of funny characters, lots of open areas to make different things on.Oh, I forgot to mention, there is a multiplayer option in the game but I actually haven’t played it. As long as you have an internet connection you can connect with other players. It’s not my thing but it might be fun for younger players who want to interact with others. I like solo play myself.One other fun thing to add, this game is obviously not a British game but whoever translated had a sense of humour and has put a LOT of British humour into the translations - I’m not sure if the American version will differ but you’ll find certain characters speak (the text panels anyway) differently and use colloquialisms like “bally good”, “ ‘ello, me lovely”, while others seem to be written to have dialects specific to London or Devonshire, lol. It’s quite entertaining really and it makes characters stand out. They’ve put personality into these NPCs so they aren’t too generic, so a lot of care seems to have gone into the game.I could go on about the game all day really. If you love Minecraft but want something with a story and with a population and interaction with characters, with quests and challenges, this is up your alley. It’s very kid friendly, violence is at a minimal of hitting monsters and them vanishing, no blood or gore. It’s challenging and a long game, but it’s a good unwinding type game that can unlock your creativity. A game where you can do everything at your own pace, no time limits, even with monster raids it’s still a very relaxed game.I really recommend this for people who need a long game with an open world and lots to do to relax and clear their mind.

25.9.2019

Contains Spoilers.The story is very well put together. The characters that get introduced all have their own personality and dialect. However, the story does quite a bad job at giving the player options or opinions. Any instance where the player is given a Yes or No option, the No option will always result in a loop where you MUST choose Yes: “Can I, please?” “Aww, I know you’re only joking, so I’ll ask again…” “Can I, please?” I get this is to have the story told in a certain fashion. The webbing of choices and outcomes would have the story unnecessarily extended beyond the intended playability. Some minor characters wouldn’t have been affected by this,and would have given the player more freedom in their choices.Blueprints make a return... A portion of the game and its missions revolve around placing blocks where the game wants you to place them. After you have dedicated spaces to these rooms and collected all the necessary blocks, you can then destroy it and build your own version. Or keep them destroyed, the game doesn’t really care about if they exist after that particular blueprint request anyway. I remember having made rooms such as a cathedral and having the game request I make a specified, blueprint based one instead. I then knocked down my entire cathedral and had to make the premade version. If I make a usable kitchen, the game should be able to label it as such, without me needing to complete the blueprint before I discover how to make a kitchen. I’m the builder, the room ideas should be able to be discovered before learning how to make them if they’re almost exactly identical contents-wise.Many times in quests, I’ve already completed the task: acquired the item or discovered areas long before the game gets to that point. I felt as though the player character is lead through many narrow loops, in order to get you to play a certain way and to progress in the story a certain way. People that buy this game quite possibly already possess a large imagination. The game just doesn’t expect you to be creative.There is some good in DQB2, in that it now rebuilds your town after instanced boss battles. Outside of these boss battles when monsters invade, your town gets destroyed and you’re going to have to manually rebuild it – just like the first game.You can customise your character a bit more and construct new clothing, which is welcomed. It’s nice to see the new tools and cool techniques you have in building walls and floors, as well as attacking monsters.This paragraph will contain heavy spoilers. It is written near the end so that the heavy text wall and prior warning at the start dissuades you from continuing. But you’re here now, so continue again at your own discretion. At a certain stage in the game, you’re taken in as a prisoner. It was quite fun to have this unexpected turn in the quest! Moving away from where you’re supposed to be in this quest results in the guards manually loading you back to where you should be. As I have some imagination, I manage to find numerous routes away from the guards. It should be noted that the guards on the prison island have your boat around the back of the map, and you’re unable to access it by playing the game normally. If you climb the sides of the mountain outside, you can actually get around the top of the map and over it in order to get to your boat. The game didn’t intend for this to happen, and some parts of the mountaintop still spawn you back at the quest path. It would have been nice to get an alternative quick progression due to finding my own creative path away from the prison island. Unfortunately, you just look at your boat, with your buddy Malroth next to you without any dialogue or notice from these characters. Similarly, in the final quest, you’re stripped of all your items (once again) and stuck into a nightmarish world. By being resourceful, I entertained myself by digging through a layer in the ground to avoid what I call ‘progression blocks’ and managed to find some of the items that should have only been discovered right at the end of the quest. (The wings, eyes and the temple including the secret basement room) already discovered.This is not me gloating about how I overcame the game. This is to try and explain that the game should have relaxed barriers, for creative players to find their own paths around worlds, missions and objectives. It took hours to discover everything in the last mission by myself, but I wanted to do it as the game felt too linear and nurturing to play as intended. If a player does something early, reward them for it.I felt the story was very well executed, but too linear. The game is based around creativity, yet I felt that a significantly large portion that is required to progress is entirely conjured by the developers and not drawn from my imagination.Due to the character count reached in review I cannot write more. I hope it is adequate enough for you to finalise your purchase decision.Read full review...

23.7.2019

I purchased this on the PS Store as I really enjoyed the first DQB. The download was just under 3GB, yes, that's it but this game is huge! I'm about 35-hours in so far I just finished the second island, unlocking my 3rd of 8 (I think) story related trophies so I still have a ways to go.If you enjoyed DQB 1 then this is much of the same but bigger. Bigger islands and areas to explore. A lot of new items, food recipes, buildings etc to craft. The addition of mini puzzles to unlock mini medals is a nice touch. You can fly/glide across vast areas once you unlock the ability which is pretty earlier in the game. The combat remains the same but with the addition of a companion who helps out greatly.

7.8.2019

I loved the mechanics in the first game. I got as far as 2/3 through Chapter Four when the fights got a bit too hairy. I watched the final boss battle on YouTube. There is no way I could have managed it. However what I did play I loved.Buying Builders 2 was a no brainier for me. It’s like a much refined version of Builders 1. The villagers interact with you more. You actually feel like part of a community and when they start building alongside you is a wonderfully moment. I spent about twenty hours on the the first island with the farm. Going back to my hub world The Isle of x I spent a few happy hours terraforming the landscape with a river, meadows and a forest ably assisted by some villagers who travelled home with me.

19.8.2019

Well, what an improvement on the first game! If like me you found the first one lacking a certain something, give the sequel a go. It is set after the events of the most recent dragon quest game, and it won't matter if you haven't played any in the series. It is in my opinion one of the best rpg games availble for the switch, second only to Zelda Breath of the Wild.My life has been on hols since buying it, the housework isn't done, the dog isn't walked, my friends have forgotten what I look like. Lol. Only kidding. But be warned, this game will eat huge chunks of your time.It is hard enough to be a challenge, without being so hard you give up. I have sworn at the tv a few times when battling the level bosses,

21.8.2019

Iv just finished the game, i wanted to finish it before I review it. But this game is one of the best games iv played on switch so far (that isn't zelda breath of the wild) it's so captivating and the story line is actually decent and is much better and much longer than the first game. There wasn't a single moment when I felt bored or tired while playing it and the building elements were not as boring as I thought they'll be.But I must say that the control at times can get a lil annoying but you can change them in the setting which I didn't realised I could do until I was near the end of the game, but by that point I gotten used to the controls ?My old complaint that I have is that the combat is lacking a bit,

12.7.2019

It arrived today! Four long minutes to update all the usual stuff, plus a minute more to download all the available extras and... I was playing! But wait! What's this? Remember all that pre-release blurb about this being a two-player co-op game? Well, it turns out that the powers-that-be omitted to tell us that this was to be yet another ONLINE cooperative game NOT, as I'd hoped for, a game that I can play, in my living room, with my child or one that she can play with her friends when they come round.I think this is a shame, not just for this game but for the gaming universe in general. SOME games, like the often compared to, not as nice to look at,

7.8.2019

After being hooked on the first DQB I was looking forward to the second iteration. This does not disappoint! I've played it for over 60 hours now and just getting near the end. The game balances building and quests perfectly - I'll spend an hour fighting monsters or completing further story points, get a little bored and then another villager will request a hotel build which keeps me busy for another hour! Graphics are cutesy but well defined, not much difference from the first game from what I can see.I love the idea of the central island - in the first game you went from one story line to another in a linear order and at the end had a sandbox area to build in.

10.2.2020

The characters are loveable and add lots of charm which this game has in abundance. You can pace the game at times but there are some set pieces which take away your control there are a few that irk as there is no escape. At other times you can knock off lots of building works.I love this game despite its many flaws which occur when you leave the game in standby easier with the annoying load times, but leaving it on standby means the text (which is to small) disappears have way through the dialogue. Closing game resolves this. Laying different items has to be done with facing it the right way, I've not worked out yet if you can change the direction whilst holding the item.

27.3.2020

This is one of the games my son wanted. It didn't appeal to me much at the time but I watched him playing it and it looked fun so I tried it - it is really good! It's similar to Minecraft in that you build with blocks. There is a story to play through and quests to complete for different characters. You have your own island to build up - some things you need to do as part of the story but generally it's up to you how you build it and what the finished piece looks like. Different characters come and live there as you progress through the story and there are many different items and buildings to unlock. There are monsters to defeat too - these parts get harder as you progress but not too hard.

8.8.2019

An excellent sequel to an already brilliant game. The blend of building and RPG elements are really fun, with loads of materials to find, modify and piece together. You can create a whole island, exactly the way you want it, and you can do it alone, or with friends!One to consider if you enjoy Minecraft or Portal Knights, the guided, mission driven style makes it a slightly different beast in feel but it's just as addictive as they can be. Farming, mining, building, cooking, combat and a myriad of other things make this one to enjoy for kids and adults. Fans of the Dragon Quest RPGs will also love the little details as each enemy, character and environmental style are all taken from the beloved franchise.

14.7.2019

The first game was fun, but the boss fights were too difficult without walkthroughs to tell you how you were supposed to beat them. This game follows a different format and I prefer it a lot more. There were other issues in the previous game that appear to be fixed now. No more deteriorating weapons and the mallet is now a tool which means when you are farming your crops you don't accidentally knock down walls (you use your sword to farm.)The monsters still occasionally destroy your buildings but this doesn't seem as annoying as in the previous game, its usually only minor damage to walls, not entire rooms.So far it's a very enjoyable game and if you liked the first one I would definitely

6.10.2019

This is a great integration of minecraft like building with a good story. You have the freedom to build, mine and fight as you want, although there is a lack of sub-terranean features. A lot of the story building is blueprint based, which ends up being interesting due to the designs you are following. The story click-though screens and reward-tune delays can be a bit tedious, but you always want to know what happens next so they add a reasonable pacing to the game. There are quite a few building side quests, which you are free to complete how and when you want, and the game is quite intelligent in figuring out when you have done them.

22.12.2019

The original dragon quest builder is a combination of minecraft and JRPG and it is a wonderful delight to play. However the four chapters are so disconnected, having to start a new chapter completely from scratch is a bit sad. This second instalment solved the problem brilliantly, having a hug Island (massive it is) connecting all chapters allowing you to bring all recipes and material back to the hub to build to your hearts content! The gameplay is the same but with quite some quality of life changes making it more fun than ever. Why are you still reading this review , go get it already !

30.7.2019

Dragon Quest Builders 2 Has an amazing lengthy story teaching you everything about the crafting world unlock new items as you play this epic tale following you the Builder and Malroth. Forge a lasting bond and play online with friends to make the best of the best on the Island of awakening from castles to farms restaurants ins and train circuit this game has you covered. Invent and discover endless recipes to better yourself in the battles to come. Simply Fantastic!

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