It's a great game if you're looking for a combination of Dragon Quest and Minecraft. The way it differentiates itself from Minecraft is that it gives you a story-based purpose to build and explore.
I was primarily interested in the story, so my review is based around that. There is a free mode too, with sections of it unlocked as you complete the story. The most interesting thing aboutIt's a great game if you're looking for a combination of Dragon Quest and Minecraft. The way it differentiates itself from Minecraft is that it gives you a story-based purpose to build and explore.
I was primarily interested in the story, so my review is based around that. There is a free mode too, with sections of it unlocked as you complete the story. The most interesting thing about it is that you can share your creations and explore other people's creations online without a PS+ subscription.
As a fan of the NES Dragon Quest games, I felt right at home here. Characters, monsters, music, and the story are all very similar. Assets, such as monster models and music, appear to be shared across the various PS4 Dragon Quest games, which isn't bad if you're like Dragon Quest, but I see how it can get a bit repetitive if you've played all of the games.
The four-part story revolves around you being the legendary builder. The Dragon Lord sealed humans' ability to build and plunged the world into darkness. Only you can rebuild the towns and return light to the four regions. That's really all there is to the story, but it's told in that cute Dragon Quest style though a god/goddess giving you occasional instructions and various people who request your assistance. The story is very direct, light, and not overbearing. I was interested in hearing what the NPCs had to say, and reading the rare book here and there that expanded the story. This is opposed to other RPG-like games, where you might decide to stop talking to every NPC and reading every book because much of that has no relevance to the main plot. Everything here is relevant.
There's no major issues with the plot. It's just very simple, which is better than a complex plot full of inconsistencies and unbelievable character actions (which is common in many recent Japanese games).
The gameplay is third-person Minecraft, which is a little strange. Placing blocks is relatively easy, but different from Minecraft due to the perspective. Destroying specific blocks and placing blocks beneath you while jumping is a little more complex than Minecraft. It's not great, but works well enough after practice. The biggest issue I had with gameplay was the camera. When going into a tight structure, such as a cave or small house, the camera stays outside of the structure and you can't see what's going on inside. You must finagle the camera around to get it to go inside. Having a first-person mode at the click of a button would have been great.
Combat plays a heavy part and gets more difficult as you progress. All enemies have moves that were easy enough for me to learn, but I can see less experienced players, or someone who is expecting Minecraft levels of difficulty finding this to be too difficult. Enemies frequently attack the towns you build, so you'll spend a lot of time setting up defense, which primarily consists of stronger walls. There are offensive type defenses, but they don't work very well and often work against your NPC townspeople, who like to rush out to defend against enemy attacks.
The quests you embark on to rebuild the four different towns are fun enough. For each town, you'll meet NPCs who will walk you through the basics and give you building plans to follow. The building plans are great for those of us who are not creative. Simply placing the blocks where the plan told me to was enough to make some fine buildings. As the towns grow, you meet more NPCs, each with different objectives and quests for you. Most of them involve building or crafting, but some require going out on an adventure to kill a monster or find an item. And of course, you'll often need to venture out on your own to find materials to build things.
As you progress through the four different areas, you get access to more item and block types. By the 2nd or 3rd area, I was quite impressed at the variety, as it had given me more than I expected from a Minecraft clone. Though note that all four story areas are completely separate (besides the plot) and you can carry nothing between them.
The biggest issues with the game for me is its repetitiveness and the simplicity of the required building structures. Each of the four areas are relatively the same: Save people, build a simple town, and beat a big monster at the end. Not much is different besides the colors, materials, and quest specifics. Also, as you progress through the towns, you're never asked to build any impressive structures, which would have been easy to implement with the game's plan system. So in the end, you'll end up with 4 dinky little towns that far surpass the game's requirements for progression, unless you went out of your way to make something better.
I had fun with the game, but I likely won't get the sequel unless there's major improvements or something different gameplay-wise.… Expand
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