It’s a strange time for Dragon Quest fans. Sure, Dragon Quest VII hit Nintendo 3DS this year, providing a fix for those itching to get their hands on some new DQ, but most of Square Enix’s recent attention has been diverted to new takes on the series. Last year, Dragon Quest Heroes reset our expectations for the musou genre. Now, Square Enix has the resurgent sandbox genre in its sights and Dragon Quest Builders seems like the perfect game to continue spreading the Dragon Quest gospel to new audiences.
Dragon Quest Builders is set hundreds of years after the events of the original Dragon Quest, which saw an unnamed hero defeat the Dragonlord and save Alefgard, but the game takes place in an alternate timeline. One where the hero joined forces with (and was betrayed by) the evil overlord, leaving the rest of Alefgard defenseless against the Dragonlord’s monsters. Now, it’s up to you, the recently resurrected (and apparently legendary) Builder, to teach humanity how to build again. And you’ll have to rebuild a few of Alefgard’s towns along the way.
The game is best described as a sandbox RPG; one that emphasizes building and improving small settlements over grinding through hundreds of combat encounters. You’ll still swing a sword from time to time — monsters did take over pretty much everything after the DQ hero’s betrayal — and have the option to challenge the Dragonlord’s most powerful minions (they’re mostly dragons) if you really enjoy combat. But most players will spend their time focused on blueprints and block placement. The game’s story is split into four chapters, each featuring its own village in need of repairs. Resources don’t transfer from one chapter to the next, nor does your equipment; however, the player does retain some of their recipes as their efforts shift from one village to the next. Finishing each chapter of the campaign also unlocks a variety of recipes for Terra Incognita, the risk-free version of Dragon Quest Builders that lets players build without worrying about town borders, random quests from villagers or nightly monster attacks.
The Builder doesn’t have much to their name, as a newly-resurrected member of society, so your earliest constructions will be made of earth and (if you’re lucky) maybe a bit of stone. Your tools are equally rudimentary, allowing you to collect the basic building blocks that make further expansion possible. Before long, you’re smelting metal, improving living quarters and adding other amenities to each village to attract new residents. And the NPCs in Dragon Quest Builders actually contribute in a meaningful way too Residents will build new furniture to be used around town, cook food for the Builder, forge weapons and even help defend their home from monsters.
The action in Dragon Quest Builders is separated into days, though the game’s day/night cycle doesn’t play as a large of a role as we’d have liked to see. There don’t appear to be any special blocks, creatures or resources to gather when the sun goes down, nor are there any available at any other time of day. When the sun is up, you tend to experience a bit less harassment from the monster populace, the most aggressive of whom will actively hunt down the Builder once the sun goes down. But sleeping will immediately advance time to the following morning, saving you the trouble of trying to build or collect resources while under attack.
Some will accuse Dragon Quest Builders of being little more than an obvious Minecraft clone. The latest attempt by a major publisher to cash in on a major trend in gaming. Not just because you’re guaranteed to have a few bad apples among the 100-plus million Minecraft players out there. It’s not even because the user interface in Dragon Quest Builders is astoundingly similar to the one seen in the best-selling game since Tetris. Everything about DQB feels like a better iteration of Mojang’s hit sandbox game. And with a story to act as the icing on the cake, I’m not sure how else Square Enix could’ve created a more desirable package for those off-put by the directionless nature of so many sandbox games.
Admittedly, the breadth of gameplay in Dragon Quest Builders is fairly limited. Many of the activities we’ve come to expect from such fare, like fishing or local competitions, are absent from Dragon Quest Builders. In some cases, their absence makes sense. It’s hard to imagine the mayor of any town in DQB hosting a room decorating contest, or asking players to bring him the biggest fish they can catch, when the villagers are all constantly worried about having their homes destroyed again. But it does also give the player fewer options for spending their time.
By tying progression to the game’s building mechanics, and giving players the freedom to experiment with different room compositions, Square Enix makes even the Dragon Quest Builders story mode feel like a more rewarding afternoon in the sandbox. More importantly, it gives the game a clear sense of direction. Sure, you can run around each map aimlessly, fighting monsters and trying to find rare items for your village. But you’re not going to level up until you build an adequate room for everyone. And maybe even a few private quarters, if your villagers are picky. That’s more than I can say for Minecraft. Square Enix also does a masterful job of using visual feedback as a sort of “attaboy” for certain actions. I don’t really know why seeing a glowing pillar of light emerge from each correctly-placed block in a blueprint feels so great —it’s genuinely on-par with watching engrams fly out of the corpses of my enemies in Destiny — but I can tell you it was enough to keep me up much later than I should’ve been the last few nights.
Conversely, the game’s heavy-handed guidance of the player will immediately ruin the fun of those just seeking a stylized sandbox. Terra Incognita can be unlocked after a few hours, if you hurry through the first chapter of Dragon Quest Builders, but isn’t unlocked by default. Similarly, most of the recipes you’d want to use in such a mode must be unlocked by completing each section of the game’s story. But the game’s story segments give players a surprising amount of freedom, in how they restore each village, and Dragon Quest Builders does an excellent job of explaining how all of its pieces fit together into one cohesive image.
It’s still too soon for to give my final thoughts on Dragon Quest Builders. For starters, I still have a couple chapters of the story left to complete. I’m also going to spend some more time poking around Terra Incognita, trying to uncover anything special about that version of the game and/or attempting to find its seams. But what I’ve seen thus far has been impressive. Dragon Quest Builders succeeds where so many other sandbox games fail, providing players with motive and direction for their actions while simultaneously giving the same freedom the genre demands.
I’ll be the first to admit I was doubtful when Square Enix first announced plans to experiment with the Dragon Quest franchise. But the early attempts seem to be a resounding success. I liked Dragon Quest Heroes more than any musou game in recent memory. And Dragon Quest Builders feels like one of the best possible representations of the sandbox genre. We’ll have a scored review up on launch day but this is one game many players won’t want to miss.
Dragon Quest Builders is in development for PS4 and PS Vita. The game debuts Oct. 11.
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