'Dragon Quest Builders' is for 'Minecraft' fans who want noble quests, too
With 100 million copies sold, it’s no wonder that Minecraft’s build-anything sandbox has been a target for copycats. Few manage to capture the charm and magic of Mojang’s phenomenon, though.
Square Enix’s Dragon Quest Builders makes the short-list of successful Minecraft descendants, because it takes the concept in a new direction. For those that haven’t been able to get into the LEGO-inspired construction game because of its open-endedness, Dragon Quest Builders offers up a more guided experience without completely robbing players of freedom.
A noble quest
In Minecraft, the story is yours to craft. Each time you start anew, you’re put into a procedurally generated world with new terrain and resource placement. For some players, that isn’t enough to sink the hooks in deep.
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Dragon Quest Builders is a “what if?” tale based on the original game in the Dragon Quest series (released on the Nintendo Entertainment System as Dragon Warrior in North America). The game supposes that the hero of that game succumbed to the evil Dragonlord and the world of Alefgard was plunged into ruin.
Humanity was robbed of its ability to create, as cities fell into disrepair and mistrust fractured society. Your character (male or female, with limited customization) is the prophesied “Builder.” Alefgard’s goddess, Rubiss, wakes you from a long slumber. As the only person left in the entire world that can create, it’s up to you to restore the world to its former glory.
However, Rubiss makes the point that the Builder is not a hero. This isn’t a traditional RPG, and like Minecraft, prowess in combat comes from equipment and not stat progression. Despite that admonition, you’ll take on a number of traditionally heroic tasks, including defeating monsters and rescuing refugees. You might not be a hero in name, but Dragon Quest Builders does a wonderful job of making you feel powerful.
There is still freedom to create and customize your base. The light narrative woven throughout, via dreams and assigned tasks from NPCs, is more a nudge in the right direction than a precisely paced, linear adventure.
Building with purpose
Dragon Quest Builders puts you in the role of the prophesied “Builder” tasked with restoring the land of Alefgard to its previous glory. You’ll have a limited area in which to build your base, which will attract new refugees to your growing city. These individuals will lend their muscle to combat invading monsters, construct items each day for you to collect, and drive your exploration.
Citizens offer up tasks that will send you further from base to acquire new materials, learn new combat techniques, and discover additional recipes to fortify your stronghold. It’s an extremely satisfying cycle, especially as you learn to create more complex rooms.
A basic empty room requires four walls at two bricks high, a light source (torch, sconce or brazier), and a door. Add two beds and it becomes a basic bedroom. Add two stools and an armoire instead and it’s a dressing room. There are similar combinations for workshops, kitchens, treasure rooms and more.
Each of these adds points to your base meter. Adding flourishes like furniture and flooring boosts a room’s value, with the goal of reaching the next level and attracting even more residents. More townsfolk means more quests, propelling the game ever onward.
A magical inventory takes the hassle out of crafting
In the early stages, Dragon Quest Builders presents players with a traditional RPG inventory management conundrum. You’ll have access to chests early on, but a limited on-hand inventory means frequent treks back to base to store your spoils. Thankfully, that inconvenience falls away shortly into the adventure.
One of the townsfolk will task you with building a “Colossal Coffer.” With this enormous chest, you’ll have access to your complete inventory wherever you roam. If your pockets are full, newly collected materials will automatically be sent back to the coffer. You can withdraw anything in there via the menu, wherever you are in the world, too.
Dragon Quest Builders also pulls from your entire “cloud-based” inventory whenever crafting. You won’t need to have the specific goods on hand in order to create new items. Instead, the recipes will automatically pull from the coffer or your on-hand slots to fulfill ingredient needs. This is no small improvement to Minecraft’s approach to inventory management, freeing players to spend as much time gathering as they’d like before making their way home.
Nostalgia without cloying
You certainly don’t need to have played a previous game in the series to enjoy Dragon Quest Builders, but long-time fans will find their loyalty rewarded. At key points in the game, your character will dream while sleeping. In those visions, you’ll see the game’s locations as they were ages ago, before the fall of Alefgard.
Those glimpses of the past are snippets of the original Dragon Quest. Builders loosely follows the footsteps of that game’s legendary hero. In this version, that champion was flawed, making a terrible mistake.
The nods to the long-running franchise’s roots are pure fan-service, but don’t intrude in such a way as to alienate those new to the series. Dragon Quest Builders is a creative adventure, that retains the charm of the source material (complete with adorable, smiling slimes). Square Enix has blended its substantial RPG pedigree with the ever-popular sandbox genre to create something that stands out among an enormous field of me-too building games.
Dragon Quest Builders is out on Oct. 11 for PlayStation 4 and Vita. Each version is sold separately. The two editions do not offer a cross-save feature.
Chelsea Stark was the Games Editor for Mashable, where she covered everything from AAA titles, mainstream consoles, indie gems, mobile games and gaming culture. She handled news, feature stories and reviews. Before that, Chelsea was Mashable's Multimedia Producer, where she helped develop visual storytelling aids, whether they were photos of video. She came to New York in 2010 to pursue her master's degree in journalism at NYU's Studio 20 program, which focused on innovation as journalism is changed by new technology. Before coming to New York, Chelsea lived in Austin, where she did online journalism and social media for the local CBS affiliate. She loves good beer, classic Nintendo games, and all things geeky, and spends her time attempting to find anything close to good Tex-Mex in Brooklyn.
