Dragon Quest Builders takes place in Alefgard, with players crafting, building and more to defeat the Dragonlord. There are materials to gather and buildings to create, creating towns where NPCs can congregate. Several improvements and quality-of-life changes are included, like Big Bash from the sequel, which allows players to destroy multiple objects in an area at once, and Undo for resetting objects.

Free stage Terra Incognita also now allows for stacking double the number of blocks. The Steam version will also contain all the released DLC, including Free Build Mode “Terra Incognita: Magic Carpet,” “Boss Monster Model Set,” “Astronomy Set,” and the “Pixel Ring.”

Stay tuned for more details en route to its release. Dragon Quest Builders first launched in 2016 and is available for PS4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android. Check out our review here.

#DragonQuestBuilders is coming to @Steam on February 13!

This definitive version includes upgraded crafting features and DLC from past versions all in one package.

⚒️ Pre-order now and get ready to build! pic.twitter.com/IJ1Y8H62Ys

— DRAGON QUEST (@DragonQuest) January 29, 2024

Square Enix found more success with the Dragon Quest Builder offshoot subseries than they had probably expected back before the first game came out- and that’s because both games were surprisingly more engaging, fun, and well-designed, enough to drive interest from audiences and critics alike. Following two excellent games then, it goes without saying that we’ll be keeping an eye on whatever it is the development team that worked on them will do next.

Questions about whether they’re immediately going to go straight to Dragon Quest Builders 3 (or if there even will be a Dragon Quest Builders 3) are pertinent- but as it turns out, they might not return to the builder-slash-action RPG anytime soon. Speaking in the latest issue of V-Jump (via Siliconera), Dragon Quest Builders 2 producer Takuma Shiraishi said the team is currently working on something new, and that it’ll be a while before they’re ready to show it or talk about it.

“We’re making preparations for a game different from Dragon Quest Builders,” he said. “Please wait just a little, er, actually a while longer, for an announcement.”

Dragon Quest Builders 2 is currently available on PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Steam, having launched on the latter just last month.

Builders is set in Alefgard, the world the very first Dragon Quest title was set it. In Builders’ alternate version of Alefgard though, at the end of the first game, rather than saving Alefgard, the hero ended up siding with the Dragonlord, leaving the world in darkness. You’re reborn as the fabled Builder into this ruinous version of the world, and your job is to rebuild it piece by piece, while also fighting to save its citizens. In and of itself, it works as a serviceable setup. It’s characterized by the classic brand of Dragon Quest humour, such as people constantly making remarks about how no one in the world but the Builder seems to be capable of building anything, and callbacks and references make it all feel like a very authentic spinoff.

"Dragon Quest Builders provides the same level of freedom to create and mine to the player as Minecraft, but manages to do so within a concrete structure that shapes the way you play in interesting ways."

It’s serviceable, but, as you might expect, nothing special. But then again, that’s because it doesn’t need to be. The narrative’s strength lies not in its writing, but in the structure it provides to what’s really the game’s best aspect- building. Dragon Quest Builders employs a LEGO-style of building and crafting that players of Minecraft will be very familiar with. What makes it work really well is that it’s easy to pick up (helped by the game’s concise and instructive tutorials), and then how far you take it is really only up to your imagination. The building aspects keep getting more complex as the game progresses, asking you to construct different kinds of rooms and structures, while also throwing in various kinds of materials that can be used, and the game keeps throwing new objectives your way, some uniquely creative, and others run-of-the-mill.

Rather than the aimless meandering and construction of Minecraft, Builders’ story demands that the player work toward certain objectives. There are four areas in the game, through which you progress in a linear fashion, and while each area is completely open for the player to explore, Builders cleverly makes sure that your focus remains squarely on the “city” in each area.  The game constantly has you in a loop of further developing your town further and bringing more people in, and then to complete more building-related quests on their behest, which further contributes to the development of your town.

Alefgard in Builders is a dangerous place though, being under the rule of the Dragonlord and all that, and the monsters that infest it (which include enough Dragon Quest classics – such as Slimes, of course – to please even the most veteran fans of the series), often attack your town. At such junctures, you have to defend your town against waves of enemies in tower defence sections, where you’re constantly in charge of defending your town from all four sides with the help of traps and support units. These sections inject a great deal of variety into the game, breaking up the mining-combat-building loop nicely.

"The game constantly has you in a loop of further developing your town further and bringing more people in, and then to complete more building-related quests on their behest, which further contributes to the development of your town."

The most vital thing this does, though, is it anchors you to your town. You’re constantly making sure that proper defences have been built, that you have your traps and the towers in the proper positions. Losing some of your town’s progress in these encounters can hurt, while your town’s strength is also instrumental in the chapter-ending boss fights, which means that while you’re building and developing your town, your ultimate objective is always to make it stronger and more defendable. As such, building in Dragon Quest Builders always feels very strategic.

The one issue that lets this down, however, is that every time you complete a chapter and move on to the next of the four areas, you lose all your progress. Having to start from scratch and building another town from the ground up can feel a little jarring, and the sudden sense of progression certainly stings a bit. There is an alternative to this though- for those who would rather opt for a more leisurely, relaxed style of building that allows the creative juices to flow, without the threat of a looming attack or losing your progress or having to adhere to a structure, Dragon Quest Builders also offers a free play mode, which is great for Minecraft-style sandbox play.

There’s a lot to do in each of these four areas besides rebuilding your towns, though. Each of the four areas in Dragon Quest Builders is a large and open map, and exploring these maps is a lot of fun. Alefgard is full of monsters to slay, caves to explore, and treasures to collect, and putting the main quest on hold to do these things is never a bad decision. There are a lot of areas that are crawling with overpowered enemies or reward you with rare loot that are completely optional for the player to tackle. However, sooner or later you will want to get back to building, since exploration can’t always hold the player’s interest for that long.

"Alefgard is full of monsters to slay, caves to explore, and treasures to collect, and putting the main quest on hold to do these things is never a bad decision."

That’s down to the combat. Combat in Dragon Quest Builders is very simplistic, essentially boiling down to very basic actions like attacking and dodging, and though you can upgrade some of your attacks, it never really goes beyond that. Sure, some might argue that combat is really ancillary to Builders, with its focus being somewhere else entirely, but it’s got enough weightage in the experience to start feeling dull and monotonous after a while. What also doesn’t help is that after a good couple dozen hours or so, there are times when the game starts feeling a little repetitive (which is compounded by the fact that you lose all your progress at the end of every chapter). Though it’s never repetitive enough to make you want to stop playing, it’s not entirely ignorable either.

Dragon Quest Builders manages to infuse the charm and personality of Dragon Quest with the addictiveness of Minecraft excellently. It runs very well on the Switch, and the lower 720p resolution isn’t all that noticeable either, thanks to the game’s reliance on a colourful art style rather than a more photorealistic approach, while the system’s added hook of portability also makes it an inherently more convenient and accessible experience. If you’re looking for a game to sink dozens of hours into on the Switch, look no further than Dragon Quest Builders.

This game was reviewed on the Nintendo Switch.

Sony’s stance towards the Switch so far has been rather surprising- not only has the company openly admitted the Switch is an additive influence to the industry that they can no longer ignore, but, via their Unties label, they have also put out a game on the platform- and now, their middleware engine, PhyreEngine, also supports the Switch.

This should come as no surprise to anyone- Dragon Quest Builders was built using that engine, and the game is out on Nintendo Switch in a few weeks. Unless it was ported to an altogether new engine, it follows that the engine would have to support Nintendo’s new console as well.

This, plus the fact that the engine already supports non Sony platforms- prior to the Switch, it was already available on Xbox 360 and Xbox One, plus iOS and Android- so this isn’t exactly out of character for Sony, either. Dragon Quest Builders launches on the Switch in February.

[ResetEra]

Dragon Quest 11 loos incredible on the Nintendo 3DS ad PlayStation 4- so it’s a bit of a bummer that those of us who live outside of Japan still can’t even be sure if we’ll be playing it. Localization of the game has not officially been announced- and according to remarks made by Square Enix producer Yuu Miyake in an interview with Polygon, that’s because it will all depend on how the upcoming Dragon Quest Builders, the Minecraft clone that the franchise is releasing, fares in the west when it releases this Fall.

“The series has a Japanese nature to it, a cultural nature, that people in Japan will get right away,” Miyake said. “Localizing [Dragon Quest Builders] has definitely been a challenge to make sure it has the same feel, the same warmth,” he said, before teasing that the localization of the eleventh game in the series could be contingent on how well or poorly Builders does.

Of course, I find this singularly disingenuous- not only have Dragon Quest games done well in the west of late (the DS Dragon Quest 9, in particular, did extremely well), but the 3DS ports of Dragon Quest 7 and 8, which are releasing later this year, would be better barometers to judge whether or not the eleventh game in the seres is worth localizing over sales of a low key spin-off. None of this is to say that I don’t think the localization is contingent on any such thing to begin with- I truly believe Dragon Quest 11 will be localized for PS4, and possible for Nintendo 3DS too. Horrific sales of Builders will not stop that.

The latest Media Create sales charts are in, revealing the top-selling games in Japan for the past week.

On top is Shin Megami Tensei IV Final which sold 96,349 units on the Nintendo 3DS in its debut. This was followed by Dragon Quest Builders on the PlayStation Vita which continues to see strong sales – it sold 24,536 units this week for a lifetime total of 248,943 units. Valkyria Chronicles Remastered also made its debut on the PS4 this week with 24,156 units sold. Dragon Quest Heroes 2 was in fourth place with 16,434 units sold and 190,587 units over its lifetime.

Dragon Quest Builders on the PlayStation 3 continues to do decent numbers with 13,233 units sold and 85,538 lifetime sales. Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash is still hanging in there with 13,095 units sold and 86,283 units sold. Interestingly enough, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 sold 12,187 units bringing its lifetime sales to 76,633 units. Splatoon, Yok-kai Watch Busters and Minecraft: PlayStation Vita Edition rounded off the rest of the list.

The latest sales for software and hardware from Japan are in courtesy of Media Create. According to its data, Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 managed to debut in first place on the PS4. It sold 64,446 units in its first week.

Dragon Quest Builders on the PS4 and PS Vita wasn’t too far behind though. It managed to sell 32,784 units and 46,391 units respectively for lifetime totals of 174,153 and 224,407. Even the PlayStation 3 version saw relatively good sales with 19,151 units sold in the week (72,305 units over its lifetime).

Despite its dismal quality, Nintendo’s Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash on the Wii U has been hanging in there with 17,856 units sold and 73,187 lifetime sales. At least Monster Hunter X on the 3DS is doing well with 2,674,914 units sold over its lifetime and 13,391 units in the past week. Splatoon has also stayed in the top ten with 13,391 units sold this week and 1,240,225 units over its lifetime.

We’ve seen the PlayStation 4 topping Japan sales but it’s not often that the PlayStation Vita manages to get one over on the New Nintendo 3DS XL. According to this week’s Media Create charts, it was Dragon Quest Builders which propelled the Sony platforms to the top.

Dragon Quest Builders debuted in first and second place in the software charts with 178,016 and 141,369 units respectively on PS Vita and PlayStation 4. The PS Vita managed to sell 45,114 units while the PS4 sold 32,556 units in the past week. Despite the debut of Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash on Wii U, which sold 55,331 units, the Wii U only sold 8,931 units.

The other big success in the charts was Monster Hunter X which continues to sell well. It hit 17,023 units with lifetime sales at 2,661,523 units. The New 3DS XL only managed to sell 22,593 units though.

Thoughts on this week’s numbers? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for more information.

Square Enix’s Tokyo Game Show lineup for this year has been revealed and it includes, well, a distinct lack of Kingdom Hearts 3 and Final Fantasy 15. But don’t panic just yet.

This is a preliminary roster though so expect more announcements as the show nears closer. Thus far, we can expect Dragon Quest Builders (special program), Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward (battle challenge) and Star Ocean 5: Integrity and Faithlessness which will be playable. Of these, two of those games are yet to be released and look intriguing. They’re all expected on PlayStation platforms and PC which is pretty much expected given the audience in Japan.

You can look for the stage events at TGS to be live-streamed. Tokyo Game Show 2015 takes place from September 17th to 20th. What are your thoughts on the current line-up for Square Enix? Let us know in the comments and stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks.

It had been hinted and rumored at for a while now, and it happened- it just was probably not what you all were expecting. After Dragon Quest Heroes, another PlayStation related Dragon Quest announcement was made, and… well, it’s interesting.

The game is called Dragon Quest Builders, and it will be coming to PS3, PS4, and PS Vita. It also appears to be almost entirely just like Minecraft. Actually, remove the almost entirely part. It’s Minecraft, plain and simple. It is so easy to mistake that screenshot that you see above as being from Minecraft.

That said, the gameplay will integrate some RPG elements, which should differentiate it from Minecraft a little. Players will need to rebuild Alefgard using various blocks, as it has been destroyed by the Dragonlord. It sounds compelling enough.

Right now, the game has no release date, either for Japan, or for the rest of the world. We will keep you posted.