Dragon Quest Builders 2 (PlayStation 4)

Also available on Xbox One, Switch, and Windows

Dragon Quest Builders 2 answers the question "What if Minecraft had a purpose?"  I loved the first Dragon Quest Builders, and the sequel just takes what made the first one great and expands that.  It's got the block-based building that folks expect from Minecraft-esque creative games, but it marries that with the typical good-vs-evil Dragon Quest storyline.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 has you start as a prisoner aboard a prison ship run by monsters serving the Children of Hargon, a cult dedicated to destroying anything and everything and the sworn enemies of builders.  Eventually, the ship is caught in a storm, and you end up shipwrecked along with two other survivors on the Isle of Awakening, your "hub world" for the game.  You meet a hammerhood spirit who gives you ownership of the island and guides you as through your journey to restore building to the island.  After a brief stint on the island, you start the first of the four "main" sections of the game.  For each of the main sections, you're sent to another storyline island.  One is a formerly lush island focused on farming and wood items, one is a desert island focused on mining and metal items, one is a snowy island focused on stone construction, and one is a spoiler.  Between each of these island chapters, you have tasks to complete on the Isle of Awakening as you build up your own island.

The main "quest" of the storyline is to travel to these islands and recruit people to come back to your island with you to help build and populate.  Wherever you go, however, you're hounded by the Children of Hargon.  The cult is determined to prevent the return of building to the islands they rule, and they're consistently attacking you and the settlements you're trying to build back up.  That's where the combat comes in; you'll have NPCs helping you in battle, but you'll definitely want to make sure that you're keeping your equipment upgraded when possible and gain as much experience as possible so that you have the HP to survive increasingly powerful enemies' attacks.  The combat isn't difficult, but you'll definitely need to get a feel for healing, knowing when to fall back, and knowing the timing of your enemies' attacks so that you can dodge and avoid damage.

As with Minecraft, the most addicting part of the game is building up your own island.  I have spent dozens and dozens of hours working on completely non-story related things, just building up my island.  You'll end up with three main settlement areas on your island - one green and grassy, one desert, and one snowy and desolate.  They pretty clearly mirror the first three story islands.  In the grassy area, for example, I meticulously flattened land to build sprawling fields for my farms (gotta keep the peasants busy) and a huge six story wooden apartment building to house my peasants.  In the desert, I built individual rooms in a large building and a separate bar building with a restaurant on top of that and a makeshift brothel above the restaurant.  Because sex work is real work, and the island dutchy of Ehrenfest is a place of equality, and the ruling Archduchess Rozemyne is a stalwart proponent of feminism.  My crowning achievement of my island, in my opinion, is the massive castle I constructed (complete with dungeon where all bards are immediately incarcerated) and the massive rail system connecting the dock, builder's temple, and all three settlements together.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 is addicting to say the least.  It's kind of like Civilization except instead of "Just one more turn..." it's "Just one more structure..."  Every time you unlock a new recipe, you'll have some idea of "Oh, that would make a cool room..."  The only thing I genuinely hate about the game is that you're limited to 100 recognized rooms on your island; I wanted to build sprawling towns with multi-room houses for reach of my residents and a wide variety of recreational buildings.  Still, though, 100 rooms was enough for me to do most of what I really wanted to do, and you can always demolish a building to rebuild or remodel a room.  It can get a little janky when trying to get exact placement of blocks and items, but all in all, it's a pretty easy to use system.  I guarantee that however much time you think you'll spend with this game, you'll end up spending more.

My Rating - 4 Neps