The existence of Dragon Quest Builders makes me want to first talk about the travesty that is the representation of the Dragon Quest series in the US. I mean, there's not enough words to properly talk about just how important Dragon Quest really is on the entirety of the JRPG genre. And yet, here we are in 2024 and you would have virtually no idea. In fairness, almost the entire series is available on phones. But if you're a console gamer who grew up with Dragon Quest (like me), then it's a mess. You would think that owning a console from a Japanese company like Sony would entitle you to the availability of the series, but no. Of the mainline games, only Dragon Quest XI is on the PS5. That's baffling.
Nintendo gamers have it slightly better. At least the original NES trilogy is available on Switch. And truly, those games should also be on PS5. Not to mention Dragon Quest VIII, which was a PS2 exclusive and a high water mark for the series. Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are sister series now, but back in the day they were competition when Square and Enix were two separate companies. So how is that we don't have a Dragon Quest Pixel Remaster compilation yet? To really make this insane omission more understandable, how about a crash course in the JRPG genre? Ultima and Wizardry were released in 1981. Both of them were American games, but they were absolutely huge in Japan. Much bigger than in America. They were so big in Japan, that Henk Rogers (a Dutch programmer living in Japan who also had a hand in bringing Tetris to the country) created The Black Onyx in 1984. Although Rogers himself wasn't Japanese, he was living in Japan at the time and marketed the game in the country aimed at Japanese gamers. In many ways, it could be considered the first JRPG. And in 1986, Yuji Horii created Dragon Quest in an attempt to fuse the most accessible parts of both Ultima and Wizardry. A year later, Hironobu Sakaguchi built off the success of Dragon Quest with Final Fantasy, a game that was very similar but used a party system rather than a singular hero. All of these games graced the MSX by the way. Now obviously a lot of other games happened between 1981 and 1987, but I feel like if you're telling the origin story of the JRPG, these are the five most important games. Even if the first two aren't Japanese in origin, and the third wasn't produced by a Japanese developer. And yet only Final Fantasy has lasting representation in America. Ultima has been cast away as a relic of early PC gaming. It's obviously remembered by GOG, but that's about it. Wizardry was remastered by Digital Eclipse, but skipped consoles unlike most any of their releases. Why didn't console gamers get a Wizardry style take on The Making Of Karateke? The Black Onyx has never even left Japan. And Dragon Quest? Well, on PS5 anyway, I'm limited to the eleventh entry, and some spin-offs that play nothing like the core series. I tell you this in order to point out that I'm going into Dragon Quest Builders with a level of annoyance and frustration. It's a neat experiment, sure but I'd much rather be replaying Dragon Quest I, IV, V or VIII. Instead, my options are a Dynasty Warriors style hack and slash, or well, Dragon Quest Builders. So what is Builders then? Well the elevator pitch is quite simple. Imagine if you took Dragon Quest and put it inside of Minecraft. That's it. Maybe that description sounds bland, stupid and superfluous. But I have to say, Builders is much better than it has any right to be. I'll start by saying that it is very Minecraft. Like, there's no getting around it. The UI is straight up Minecraft. The way you break up materials, the way you craft, the way you get recipes, the way you need to eat, the whole day/night cycle with harder enemies spawning and hunting you out at night... this is very much a Square-Enix Minecraft game. And yet the story is interesting. The game takes place after the "bad ending" in the original Dragon Quest. So as far as plot goes, it's almost Dragon Quest 1.5. I like that. Now if I'm playing a Minecraft style game, then I'm probably looking to zen out. And there's nothing more zen than the classic Dragon Quest soundtrack. I mean, you can make the complaint that Square Enix has gotten lazy, and that so many DQ games have the same music in them. And that's valid. But for me personally, I just love this music and can't help but feel a sense of nostalgic soothe from these songs. And really, even if Dragon Quest Builders is an RPG at heart, the game is just so chill. Sure, combat is a thing. But I might spend a bunch of time just off trying to collect certain raw materials. Or I might spend time crafting. Or I might spend a bunch of time tweaking my town and trying to make it visually appealing and more importantly functional. So yeah, it's an RPG but it's also a total zen garden sandbox. Some critics compared this game to both Actraiser and Dark Cloud 2, and I commend those critics because they saw the bigger picture beyond this being just a Minecraft clone. Which is to say, there's some precedence here that goes back much further than Minecraft. One big difference between Dragon Quest Builders and Minecraft is the quests. In that sense, this game is much more objective oriented. And I think I like that. I mean, I guess I could ignore the quests and just build and treat the game as Minecraft's survival mode. But if you stick to the quests, you have basically micro objectives that continually unlock new recipes and access to new materials. The nice thing is that the bulk of the quests are easy to achieve, so it makes you feel like you're continually making progress. The combat is... there. Look, the combat is probably the weakest part of this game. Dragon Quest has long been a throwback to JRPGs of yesteryear. So switching things up to a more action RPG take is weird. Not to mention that it's just a little bit clunky. I've found that the best way to approach combat is to take a swing or two, and then dodge. Honestly, it's a little shallow. But building new weapons at least makes it feel alright. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this game is that although it apes Minecraft for the most part, at its core it is a single player RPG. It has a plot, it has story quests, it has progression, and it has a clear end goal. And yet, you can at any moment choose to ignore all of that and just play the game like a survival sandbox. And everytime I boot the game, I make the decision on which way I want to go with it. Some nights, I want to just stick to story quests and advance the campaign. Other times, I just feel like mining for materials and crafting some stuff to make my town awesome. Both are valid approaches, and more importantly both are legitimately fun. As I've said, if given the option I'd much rather that all of the mainline Dragon Quest games were available on PS5. But they're not. And yet Dragon Quest Builders is a satisfyingly fun game. A consolation prize, maybe. But it's fun.
0 Comments
|
Games
All
Archives
February 2024
|