Man... I wanted to like this. I really tried. I even played through all of DQ4 shortly before so I'd be able to understand all the little plot references, and... it didn't actually help me any, because the only link between this and DQ4 was awkward plot contrivances. I don't know, maybe it's on me for expecting coherent storytelling from a DQM game. I haven't played the previous entries, maybe it's just not something these spinoffs Do.

Even going off that assumption, though, there was just nothing right with the writing in that one. Toilen could have been a fun character, but pretty much only existed to take part in some contrived, unearned character beats. Rose was about as passive all throughout as her DQ4 incarnation, despite accompanying Psaro on his adventures. As for Psaro... him being a silent protagonist really hurt his characterization, and it really felt like anything he did was only because he had to in order for DQ4 to happen. One of his conversations with the Zenith Dragon was especially egregious. Maybe "I don't want to renounce my monster blood" means "I want to kill all humans" in the dragon language, I don't know. I know the game is technically an AU, but it feels like the writers weren't sure how much they should deviate from the original plot, other than making sure someone else did the worst of Psaro's war crimes so he could still be a sympathetic protagonist. Sadly, that fell flat for me since DQM3 Psaro wasn't enough of a character to elicit any feelings, be it sympathy or otherwise.

The villains... existed, I guess. I kind of wish the game had delved deeper into Psaro's messed up family dynamics. I mean, it ostensibly is about that, but it's hard to take seriously when it seems to be entirely told through Psaro getting his own backstory exposited back at him by random monsters. I love me some Evil Women so Azabel conceptually appealed to me but she only really showed up in one flashback and one fight so... eh.

Moving on to the technical side, the game doesn't look great. Sometimes the art direction makes it work (I do like the color palette of the circles of conquest) but environments overall reminded me a lot of Rune Factory 5: too big, too empty, with too-low-res textures. To be perfectly honest, I don't need everything to be Ultra HD Now With 4K Sephiroth Skin Pores; my main issue here is that despite looking straight out of the WiiU era, the game just doesn't run well. I saw some improvement in the lower echelons after updating the game to the latest patch, but when I got to the upper echelons everything was back to looking like a slideshow. In all fairness, I haven't tried playing the game docked, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect it to run a little smoother than this in handheld mode.

I also wasn't a huge fan of the seasons gimmick. It was neat in theory, but in practice the places only reachable in a specific season were often just... empty. I think a lot of them were egg-spawning spots, but it's kind of a bummer when you get there and there's nothing. At least there's ways to cycle through seasons.

Oh, and there's day 1 DLC that should really have just been part of the game, because of course there is.

I've been overly negative, though, so I'd like to mention the things I did like. One big thing was, thankfully, the monsters! DQ as a game series is consistently full of delightful little guys. I don't know if the comments I've seen saying that the models were just ported from the 3ds entries are true, but despite the textures being a little blurry I really did like the animations and special effects, and this is coming from someone who tends to prefer spritework to 3d models. On the gameplay front, being able to make messed up little creatures was definitely a highlight, though I feel the exp scaling could have been a little more generous to make new monsters easier to catch up to speed. As it is, I made a cannonbrawler with bang virtuoso somewhere in the early mid game and never felt like it was worth swapping it out because it was coasting on its higher level all the way up to the final boss. A lot of these bosses are weak to explosions, huh?

I've also seen people complain about the voice acting, but I thought the actors were quite nice and competent, even if it felt a lot of characters shared VAs. I can live with that, though. I've played a lot of Bethesda games.

For some closing words, I'll say that I hope there's a next entry in the series, and that it's better than this. A franchise having low budget spinoffs is fine, but that one was just rough.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 is a great iteration on the formula set by the original Dragon Quest Builders. It's longer, more polished, with a lot more items to play around with, and a better written story and cast. Do I like it more than the original? ... Eh.

But I'm just being cheeky. It really is a better game! It's just that I feel the first one was funnier and more experimental. I do like a lot of the quality of life they added in (traversing the world in the first game did not feel great, it's much better in this one) and it's fun watching Malroth go through his growing pains. The new items are great, and swapping blocks around has never been faster and easier. That said, I'm not a fan of the changes made to cooking, and I do miss the points system when it comes to town-building. I feel like ultimately I didn't actually have to do much building to finish the game, especially since it has NPCs handle a lot of the structures for you. On one hand, I can understand why; the main blueprints are often massive, and would be slow and complex to build and gather for alone. On the other... well, maybe I did want to build more of the giant pyramid on my own, game. How about that!

Overall, though, this was a better experience than the first game, and I would love to see some version of this where it's possible to have more rooms and more little guys on your island. You have a great creative mode in there so it's sad that you can't do whatever you want with your main island.

"I like builder games," I thought to myself sometime in 2023, "what if I played the Dragon Quest minecraft clone despite not having played a single DQ game?"

It turned out to be a great idea, actually! I had no idea what any of the references were, but I still had a fantastic time. As far as builder games go it's a little jankier than most (getting your tools yanked away from you every chapter felt kinda bad, and I dreaded getting into combat near my town because I'd have to rebuild everything manually) but the writing was often uproariously funny in a way I did not expect from a game about stacking blocks until they're vaguely room-shaped. And when I say "vaguely," I mean it. I've built some truly hideous houses in that game.

I don't think I'll really mess around with the creative mode, though. Part of it is that the second game is a lot more solid, part of it is that the story turned out to be the main appeal for me. Funny how that goes. For what it's worth, it did convince me to finally check out what this dragon questing was all about.