The PC version of the game is, as stated before, essentially the same with regard to gameplay on the console. You get some extras, but you’re going to get that same game — and you want that very much! PC players will be delighted to know how well the game works on their systems, as well as delighted to know that the game is more impactful than the first title in the series. I think that Square Enix certainly went back to the drawing board for the second game and found out that they could make the experience far more meaningful. As I felt in my first review of the game, as restated above, this time around had a bit more purpose in story and cohesiveness in gameplay design. The fact that the developers found a better way to play the game through mouse/keyboard means that you certainly have a better experience to look forward to with Dragon Quest Builders 2 being on the PC. It’s the entire package on the PC, and should give something a bit different to those playing that Minecraft thing.
For the record, I still hate Minecraft. It’s tough to love that game, but I do understand it from afar. That’s all I can give to it at the moment. Maybe when the 4K version of it finally comes out I will rethink this opinion, but until then I will stick to LEGOs for building.
Okay. Not going back to that game right now. Let’s move on.
Anyway, Square Enix sent us a code for Dragon Quest Builders 2 on the PC, and everything that made it fun/special on the console has made it here to the PC platform. There’s a lot to be said about using a PC for this game, especially when it comes to using a keyboard and mouse. I’m not sure I would have ever said that in my life. It’s much more fun and easier to control the game, which is based on building (like Minecraft), and when you’re armed with two accurately quick devices it makes the experience a lot more engaging. It’s a bold move to go the PC route with a game that was truly built for consoles, but Square did a good job with firmly getting all the right hardware pieces moving with this one.
The graphics side of the equation, the game does look just a slight bit better and moves better (as stated above). It never hurts to relish in the power of a PC’s GPU when you’re looking for a reason to play it on the platform. The looks and frame rate are always a big selling point to PC players. I know that this game looks sharp, I know the frame rate and draw distance are better (they have to be, right?), so it’s an easy visual sell for me when comparing this version to a console. The game is pretty. We were using an NVIDIA 1060 to run this puppy, which was more than enough. You’re not going to get much more if you use a 1080 or a 2080 — it does have a stopping point with visual improvement. But for those elitists looking for something special, well you got it here.
Anyway! Let’s move on.
If you were fortunate enough to dive into the first Dragon Quest Builders game, then you understand the idea behind Dragon Quest Builders 2. If you’ve never played the first, then let me sum it up for you — you build, survive, and improve. Those are the main components of gameplay design in the series, certainly ones borrowed from Minecraft’s ideals, and the components that will keep you there well after the game’s story has concluded. This second game in the series adds a thicker layer of RPG elements to the entire process, a better story, social engagement, and new building pieces to expand upon the creative freedom the first game provided.
Starting with the story, the crux of Dragon Quest Builders’ gameplay is wrapped in a narrative that features a dominant religious cult who has ravaged a land down to its bone (that sounds familiar…hmmm), and who is spreading their dogma to everyone whether they like it or not. Your character (mine was named Larry David) starts the game trapped on a boat with this religious group, who is verbally abusing him, but ends up in a boat crash due to a mysterious weather storm, and marooned on an island with another boat crash victim. As you can imagine, you gain a partner and begin to search the land for material in order to survive the situation. During your survival journey, you run across other folks who are persecuted by this religious cult and who need help/guidance to survive, as well as a bit of boosted confidence to overcome the religious groups’ hold on their livelihood. The game’s story presents you with two goals:
1) Help out the people of the ravaged land re-build their lives figuratively and literally.
2) Take down the religious cult.
The story has a lot more twists and turns, but this is the gist of it. For me, instantly this makes the idea of a Minecraft-driven game far better than it should be. It gives the building element a purpose. Gives everything reason, and the story actually motivates you to build bigger and better things because people’s lives are at stake. I know that last part sounds ridiculous, but the story puts together enough emotion to create that feeling for ‘need’ when you’re trying to progress. It gives you well-constructed goals that make sense within the world it built for you. It’s ultimately good narrative design that makes proper use of its Minecraft backbone.
Staying with goals, the game lives and breathes off the goals it requests of you. Much like every open-world game, DQB2 features main quests you have to accomplish to progress the story, as well as side quests that mostly come from monsters, farming residents, and a bevy of other characters. The main quests, as I’m sure you might guess, are massive in nature and depend on your patience. For example, during the first 10 hours of the story, you’re going to build out a farm. That farm will thrive if you locate seeds to grow material. Each fruit or veggie that you grow contains a series of instructions on how to grow them. For example, if you’re trying to grow sugar cane, then you have to build out a small pond for it to thrive in, otherwise, you’ll not be able to grow it properly. If you want to grow tomatoes, you have to locate wood in order to build a small support structure for the tomato to grow around. There are various steps and methods for this material to grow. Now, the quest. All of the above in mind, one main quest that I ran into was needing to plant 250 veggies/fruit in the village I was maintaining. It made sense why we needed it, but the tedious task of doing it was wholly other. I think that I spent 5-6 hours finding material to accomplish this. Granted, it probably didn’t help that I was distracted by building other things or that I wanted to explore the land a bit more (so that 5-6 hour timeframe is probably considerably smaller in hindsight), but it still was a tall task that was built on and depended on my patience to accomplish it. That’s how the main quests work. They will grind you a bit, but also give you actual purpose on ‘why’ you need to do them, which helps the process, and keeps the game interesting.
The side quests are missions that play off elements of main quests (or prepare you for them), but in much shorter stints. The side quests are essentially ongoing tutorials for you to discover particular options to use in your building journey, should you need them. Typically a side quest will consist of a villager asking/requesting you to build them something simple or search for a particular item. Once you discover this, you gain love (through applause) from the villager, some good instruction on how to ‘do that thing’ you just did, and you get XP. For example, there was a villager in one moment of the game that was concerned about the hygiene of the farmers of my village. He requested a bathhouse be built and provided a blueprint for said bathhouse. The side quest was easy, but it taught you how to read blueprints, taught you how to create a bathhouse and other small options that would lead to other opportunities in the game. Should I accidentally burn down my village, then I have the proper instruction now that would allow me to rebuild that bathhouse. Or create a proper toilet. Or create a room where people could eat. Or sleep. Or anything. Outside of providing you with additional skills, the side quests are actually there to provide you with temporary relief from some of the longer main quests. Sometimes it helps to shift away from finding/planting 250 veggies/fruit and then coming back to it all. Side quests are generally good, quick, and serve multiple purposes.
In all that ramble, I mentioned XP. By accomplishing the above quests, you gain XP. While there isn’t a particular leveling tree to follow, the game gives you small rewards in the form of recipes for your builder to obtain, as well as traditional RPG rewards of better health/strength and so on. The recipes allow you to build structures, food, and/or equipment. The latter of the bunch comes in the form of armor, shields, weapons, and tools. You build equipment with a well-placed anvil and can make armor/weapons/tools for other people in your journey. It’s a creative and expanding process that adds flavor and motivation to the game, as well as other items of interest to help you move to and fro. It also helps with enemies, especially bosses.
As for the other items you gain from these recipes, they come in the form of things you can construct. While all recipes, including equipment, require you to gather materials around the land to create whatever material you’re trying to create, it’s comforting knowing that you can improve your survival situation with an ever-expanding pallet of recipes that help to improve structures, as well as offering new ways for people to live/thrive better. For example, you could find a way to personalize rooms and set them for particular individuals in your group through one single recipe. You could also find a recipe that allows you to build roofs on your structures, which is tedious, but also satisfying. There are ways to make additional characters happy and to keep you building in fresh new ways, which makes the gameplay incredibly interesting. The game is carefully constructed to reward your progression and keep you engaged with it. That’s really quite good gameplay design.
Outside of earning rewards and recipes through quest completion, the game also throws in some puzzles so you can gain mysterious coins (not going to go into too much detail on those). You will find markers spread out throughout the land that you have to adjust/build/solve. If you solve them, you get coins. The puzzles aren’t too bad, though there is one that is huge and a bit of a brain teaser. Anyway, these puzzles help to offer up a different type of engagement that adds a different gameplay design path to the journey. They’re worth the trouble.
All of the above reasons help to make this more than just an open world/sandbox version of Minecraft with Dragon Quest characters. The gameplay design gives you a reason to push forward and keep going. Anytime you can provide gamers with a variety of tasks and puzzles to accomplish, on top of that Minecraft construction element, then you’re in good shape to have a worthwhile experience.
Shifting gears just slightly, if there is anything that the game falters on a bit, it’s the enemy variety. You have annoying blue slime, slugs, bat creatures that give you wood upon their death, and occasional big bosses. As you push through the game and open up new lands, the variety of enemies trickle out instead of pour. I do realize that the game is giving you what it can within the story it has built, but it just seems a bit too repetitive for my liking, especially at the forefront. Is it tolerable? Yeah, because I’m distracted by missions and building, but it’s noticeable, which makes it stick out a bit along the journey. I will say that the game requires you to be proactive in your journey and find things that you don’t realize exist readily, which expands and opens up new enemy opportunities, but killing the same peeps over and over again is just a bit boring. Again, as you progress and unlock things, the game and its enemy variety certainly become bigger, but it’s a chore getting through this aspect for the first 10-20 hours of gameplay.
All of this said, the PC version of the game is, as stated before, essentially the same with regard to gameplay on the console. You get some extras, but you’re going to get that same game — and you want that very much! PC players will be delighted to know how well the game works on their systems, as well as delighted to know that the game is more impactful than the first title in the series. I think that Square Enix certainly went back to the drawing board for the second game and found out that they could make the experience far more meaningful. As I felt in my first review of the game, as restated above, this time around had a bit more purpose in story and cohesiveness in gameplay design. The fact that the developers found a better way to play the game through mouse/keyboard means that you certainly have a better experience to look forward to with Dragon Quest Builders 2 being on the PC. It’s the entire package on the PC, and should give something a bit different to those playing that Minecraft thing.
