Metaligatr
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.
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.
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.
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.
What a good time that was. I love when narratives switch POV characters around, and it blew my mind that Dragon Quest was doing this as early as the NES. My rating would probably be lower if I wasn't playing the remake with party chat patched in, but I really liked everyone in the crew even if the accents could be a bit much. Honestly, my main complaint on the character front would be that the hero is easily the least interesting of the bunch and I lost steam a little when I got to their part, but I suppose that's often the case with silent protagonists. I did finish it though, bonus chapter and all, and that's more than I can say for a lot of games.
Also, the DS spritework was absolutely delightful. Estark in particular was especially gnarly, I loved it.
Also, the DS spritework was absolutely delightful. Estark in particular was especially gnarly, I loved it.
You know, sometimes you play through an old classic, and despite the jank and outdated game design you can't help but think: yeah, I see why it's a fan favourite. This is definitely one of those games. Would I replay it? Maybe not (at least in this iteration - I'm excited to see what the 2D-HD remake does with it!) but I had a fantastic time running around with my team of little dudes (or as it were, little gals) and I really felt like I was seeing the start of the SNES-era JRPG design... despite this originally being a NES game. It wasn't perfect - I often felt pretty directionless once the world opened up and while interesting, the personality system felt a little too arcane to understand casually. But then, I suppose half the fun of these old games is the stories you make up inside your head, and having a little descriptor to assign to each of your party members helps with that. The job change system was also neat on paper, but a little too bothersome to deal with in practice unless you feel like grinding metal slimes for hours.
Also, I am once again going to be a curmudgeon and complain that the mobile and Switch remakes look like RPGmaker assets and static pictures. Come on, give me the animated sprites!
Also, I am once again going to be a curmudgeon and complain that the mobile and Switch remakes look like RPGmaker assets and static pictures. Come on, give me the animated sprites!
That one was fun! You can really see the step up from the first game, and what aspects went on to influence the genre. Expanding the party to three characters definitely helped give the game more flavour, even if the writing isn't anything special. I don't expect more from what was originally a NES game, though, so that's fine. The Switch version added some nice quality of life, though we once again lost the amazing spritework from the SNES remakes. Ah well. I still had a good time with this one, it's worth a look if you enjoy retro RPGs and videogame history.
2004
Games like these can be a little hard to rate. Should I rate them based on how fun they are to play now, to a modern audience, or how influential they were? I'm being a coward here by going with "a little bit of both", but I do know that despite how barebones DQ1 was, I had a fun time with it. I might have had a different tune if I'd played the original instead of a version with some quality of life added in, but it was a nice little game to zone out to. Sometimes, all you want in a game is Number Goes Up, and this one was short enough that the grind didn't overstay its welcome. It was also really neat to see what did or didn't eventually become a JRPG staple. If I had to make one big complaint, though, it's that the Switch version looks like a cheap RPGmaker port. When I realized the SNES version had great sprite animations instead of static jpegs I felt extremely cheated. What gives, Squeenix!