There is no voice acting but there are grunts and cheers from the games humanoid and monster characters. Classic synth style orchestral sounds are matched with similarly classic sound effects. The soundtrack of the game will be familiar if you’ve ever played a Dragon Quest game before. The Music is Alright, the Gameplay Can Be Great There is so much more focus on things outside of farming that any type of penalty system like that would have led to me quitting early on. It’s a much more forgiving system than something like Stardew Valley and it is the right choice here. Crops are timer-based, though once grown they never go bad. You must eat to keep up a stamina meter and to restore your health. It can be a bit strange to plant and grow cabbage, then have it turn into a 2d sprite when it’s finally in your hand and you’re chomping away on it. As a Minecraft-style RPG having clear patterns to denote which block is which is key, and though it’s a bit odd I got used to the fact that the 3d models of food are replaced by 2d sprites once you harvest them.
DRAGON QUEST BUILDERS 2 REVIEW SERIES
Playing on an Xbox Series X the resolution was crisp, and the 60fps never seemed to drop on my Variable Refresh Rate enabled monitor.
DRAGON QUEST BUILDERS 2 REVIEW FULL
The Dragon Ball manga’s famed creator and style are here on full display, and I love it. Things are clean, the colors pop, and the character and enemy models are classic Toriyama.
If that sounds interesting to you then great, but for me I found slowly pressing A or B to get through it, the waiting as music played, and the non-stop losing of player agency as the game would pull me out of having fun to watching an animation to be incredibly frustrating. The sheer amount of written dialogue in this game is staggering. Many hours of my game were spent scrubbing through text boxes so I could desperately try to get back to having fun. The issue that never goes away is the constant interrupting of the actual fun part of the game, playing it. Without the laughs and wit behind it I could not have made it through as much of the story as I did. The dialogue is often hilarious, and whoever did the translation to English deserves a raise. The story was surprisingly deep, engaging at times, and way too long.
Each main area becomes its own bespoke land where your inventory does not carry over to the next, and over the course of roughly 60’ish hours you’ll make people happy and uncover the truth about Malroth (well you already know, but your character doesn’t). The first island focuses on farming, another on mining, then fishing, and so forth. Building is darned useful though and as you travel throughout the land you quickly turn their followers to your side. The Children of Hargon believe Builders are evil, and they want to kill you and every builder out there to appease their God. With you are two other survivors, the ancient master of destruction (with no memory that he is, though the game makes sure you know it) Malroth, and an incredibly annoying character named Lulu. After some basic tutorials in the starting ship area there is a storm, you crash, and end up on the first of many islands. For all the cutesy looks there is a surprisingly adult story behind everything. You are the hero, a builder who has been kidnapped by the baddies known as “The Children of Hargon”. Constantly losing control of my character for fanfares to play, or the unbelievably long dialogue-driven cutscenes are anything but. The act of grinding out materials and then farming, fishing, building, etc. Few games have started so strongly yet soured so thoroughly for me. I “like” Dragon Quest Builders 2 or should say that I want to like it. SSGSSGoku Sadly Did Not Fit Taking Away User Control Is Not Good