Dragon Quest Builders 2 is cute. Dragon Quest Builders 2 is simple. Dragon Quest Builders 2 is the game that I’ve been playing until 1 AM all week, completing “just one more task” before bed. If this is a measure of whether or not a game is good, then the game is excellent.
Loved the first one, it seems like I will love this one too. It has a real slow start but I just rung the bell at the farm and that feels like the first point where it opens up a bit. For example, you can build a nice looking room! The farm looks terrible right now, but I am so looking forward to making it look nice, building some neat things for the little people. This is the first game in some time I’ve been stoked about enough to buy pre-order.
I fell off of Dragon Quest Builders after the second island, partially because having to start from scratch again was a bit of a bummer, especially considering most of what I’d done on the previous island was basically useless (i.e. most of the recipes I’d learned weren’t applicable in the new area).
Still unclear if that’s the case in 2, but from what Cameron wrote it looks like he had a similar feeling in 1, and if It feels better then I’m down.
FWIW, I was listening to - I think - the Kotaku Splitscreen podcast, and they talked about this re: 1 vs. 2, and it sounds like it’s not the case in 2 because you have a central island “hub” that you’re working on, and so you aren’t constantly starting over there as you do the other islands.
I played the demo for the first and charmed the hell out of me, but I never actually picked it up. I’m sorely tempted.
Been really loving it so far, absolutely absorbing. Big fan of the first area plot focusing on an angry priest watching a tree grow while getting increasingly excited about beating the shit out of it.
My farm’s looking pretty lovely if I do say so myself:
Yep. Jason Schreier pointed out this distinction on Splitscreen. There’s also an entertaining stream with Jason and Tim Rogers that covers some of the differences.
I’m still fairly early in (about to start the second island), but it looks like once you finish a main island you can freely travel between it and any other completed island without dropping your stuff off, so while you need to start off fresh each time, eventually everything becomes a sandbox.
I’m a little confused about the hub/main island. They say you can build and do whatever you want, but there are enemies everywhere, unlike the story islands where the enemies stay out of the designated town area. And after completing island 1 it still didn’t really feel possible to have much fun with the main island, like without the ability to break hard blocks for instance. So instead I just moved on to island 2, but maybe you are supposed to.
Quick tip so you don’t waste a couple hours like I did rearranging buildings: the game doesn’t explicitly tell you what the radius of villages are, but you can tell where it cuts off since the town music will stop and the “town level” UI will disappear. I’d recommend finding the corners of each town and setting a marker down, since villagers won’t use any facility that’s beyond that invisible radius.
My next project is figuring out if you can build high-rise apartments.
Yeah, the main island seems to be mostly geared towards after finishing the 3(? This is a total guess on my part) main islands, since that way you’ll have all your toys and building materials.
I stuck around a bit, built the furrowfieldians a nice cafe, and some private rooms, but I wanted more stuff
Definitely feeling some of the skeeviness of the second island, but it’s not as bad as I was expecting at least. I’m enjoying how Babs is 100% just playing all these muscleheads. It’s fun to play off too, you better believe I put those meatballs in a massive dormitory while I share an equally massive 2 star fancinesss private room with my Gal Pal Babs. Directly above the dorms no less! Living like queens.
I love this game. I watched DQB1 from afar and didn’t pull the trigger. All of the coverage on Kotaku as well as @ckunzelman’s piece convinced me to make the purchase. This is the perfect before bed or before work game for me. I sit down, play for 20 minutes to half an hour and it makes me feel nice.
As a human person I actually struggle with planning and list making. It’s not a skill I developed for one reason or another. The fact that everything is broken down into the smallest possible task really works for me. It’s something that I recently started doing at work to keep myself from getting lost while working on larger projects.
I look forward to making my starting farm nicer.
Biggest problem with the first game is it had too much combat. This is for sure a big problem with this one as well. Further into the game the combat gets more frequent and more difficult. No matter the situation the combat is never fun anyway, so it does wear down my enthusiasm a little. Sort of rushing through island 3 so I can get back to Isle of Awakening and have fun again.
Hey friends, I’m about to jump into this game with no real experience with the first one. Any beginner tips?
Follow the main questline for a bit when you get to a new island, let that guide your building for a while before you start trying to get Extravegant. It’ll give you a lot more to play with and you’ll be less likely to come up against quests that need you to build stuff that clashes with your existing designs. And it’s not really explained properly, but there are things you can build after a bit called Doormats that aren’t just for decoration, you can use them instead of doors to designate something as a room, which lets you make outdoor “plazas”. I use them a lot and I wish I hadn’t had to figure it out myself. Oh, and once you unlock the invetory thing that gives you 9 pages of storage space, don’t stop storing things in chests back on the Isle of Awakening, you will eventually hit that limit thanks to the sheer number of different things there are in the game.
You’ll get a useful ability in the first area to immediately clear out a 3x3x3 patch of blocks in one swing, so don’t try to do any major construction efforts before then.
Also I wouldn’t recommend getting too fixated on making the settlements really fancy like I did, there’s a lot of tools you’ll get over the course of the game.
I agree the combat is not great.
But, that makes getting that battle flag at the end of the third island all the more rewarding, basically negstes having to fight enemies yourself.
In the story islands, wait for the game to give you building objectives, instead of just making an elaborate town yourself and then having to destroy it to make room for what the gsme requires to continue the story.
I’m a little mad at the Isle of Awakening. I beat the story a while back so now I was thinking of just messing about there a bit more. But why did they have to make the layout like it is? Why so rocky, with cliffs and mountains and stuff? It makes it so much of a hassle to make it look pretty. You need a ton of dirt or grass seeds or some combination of it that works for the worm. Not to mention the time to do the work. Would it have been so bad to give us a flat green area that looks nice from the start!
What good does infinite dirt in the crafting table do me if I can’t use it with the transform-o-trowel!
