I enjoyed it a lot for the atmosphere, the soundtrack really delivered on exploring a desolate wild world, with melancholic tracks that matched wonderfully with the game's cool colour palette and detailed, eerie backgrounds. I loved the characters too, it was a colourful cast that helped flesh out the world and offered very welcomed moments of respite and reflection among the games gloom and often rather grueling combat encounters.

Which was the thing that really held this back for me, the game is hard and on top of the health spongy enemies I often felt like I was struggling against the controls for combat. The max health reduction from each death until you can repair at the sparsely placed statues didnt add anything for me except for tedious backtracking while dealing with boss encounters either, and while I did like the idea of the variety of weapon options the game has, most didn't offer a big enough jump in fire power to make dealing with rooms any less tedious or to justify using them over more basic starting tools. Honestly someone else might enjoy the slower, more deliberate pace of combat but it lead to moments of frustration for me.

However, getting to see more of this beautifully crafted world was enough motivation for me to push through. Theres a lot to love here but most people would be better served with the game's easier difficulty option.

I recently went back to this game to try out various builds I never did at its original release, and see if my thoughts on it had changed at all since and largely, no! I still view this as a flawed masterpiece. The large interconnected world is a huge draw and at times a problem, its really fascinating seeing how various connect back on themselves and unlocking shortcuts can feel very gratifying but at the same time, backtracking can feel like a slog even with these shortcuts because of how late you unlock warping and the limited nature of warps compared to later entries. Worth mentioning too Im not a fan of bonfire layouts in certain areas, in some key bonfires are basically hidden and in others the spacing between them and the areas boss are just too far.

I feel the difficulty can be overstated, and part of it being its just an earlier game in the series and some of the bosses just arent as hard or interesting as later ones in the series, and a large portion of the struggle is figuring out how to build a proper character. Despite that some boss fights remained a fun challenge even with a well made and equipped character (I still dont personally enjoy the four kings fight), and the loop of learning and executing on boss attacks and timings remains engaging no matter how experienced you are. A caveat on that though, as much as I enjoy learning boss movesets the run ups to a lot of the bosses when/if you fail can be pretty atrocious, while you can argue its add to the difficulty to me its just annoying and I'm happy the latest entry Elden Ring removed this aspect almost entirely.

The weapon upgrade system is fine, most of them exist to service one kind of build and I think it would be neat if more upgrade paths served general purposes but it gives a form of progression, and I do enjoy how you can make further playthroughs a lot smoother by knowing where to get upgrade materials and being ahead of the damage curve for some boss fights.

The 2nd half of the game is overall a weird mixed bag, it opens up and the world starts to feel less hostile as player power grows, but its also rushed with more linear areas and one late game boss and zone in particular needing way more time than it got to feel fully realized. Having the DLC helps with this, the areas and bosses are much better designed and helps alleviate some of the problems the rest of the late game has by just existing.

The game does a wonderful job with building atmosphere, with sweeping vistas that sometimes let you see areas that youve passed through previously that add to the sense of scale in the world, and the soundtrack while not my favorite from their catalogue does a great job complimenting the areas and bosses theyre used with.

Mechanically the game is a lot of fun, its nothing special in it of itself but the deliberate nature of combat and considerations like terrain and weapon speed especially with longer and larger weapons adds enough complexity that action remains engaging throughout with how you have to consider spacing and timing on fights especially against stronger foes or groups of basic ones. I think Souls pvp can really highlight this (when ping allows), things like weapon swing angles and direction and timing can change how you should circle your opponent and when you have openings to move past them or attack though I'll admit a lot of this nuance isnt relevant for combat against the AI it just mostly shows how much geometry, timing, and physics can add to a system with so few inputs.

The story is fine! I have nothing against reading item descriptions to get pieces of world building, and the NPCs you interact with have enough character to be memorable and form attachment to the recurring ones (mostly Seigmeyer tbh), but the game does nothing to deliver it to you and if you were just playing the game you'd have pretty much no idea what was going on. If you do dig into what the game provides I think its compelling, and I like the themes presented about futility and hope and cycles of life but I think atmospheric and environmental storytelling works best when used to enhance a well-presented narrative and thats just not something these games try to do by design.

These games hold a special place to me for a reason and I think even if there are plenty of flaws, including some down right awful optimization in a few areas that discredit the game play, its greater than the sum of its parts and its a journey well worth taking even all these years later.

Huge improvement from the first dragon quest builders, with all the aspects I enjoyed about the original still there and plenty of QoL features to really improve the core experince. Basically minecraft but with concrete goals to work towards, the building is satisfying whether its in the plotted out areas for story progression or in the freeform island. NPC routines help automate some of the mundane stuff that too, like farming, which was a incredibly welcome addition from the first game, as is the enormous new inventory limit.

The story wasnt as interesting conceptually as DQB1's but I still enjoyed it, the themes around what is actually good and evil and origins dont define us arent really new ground but if dialogues humor lands with you it has its moments. There are a few places the pacing drags to halt, in particular on story sequence roughly in the middle of the game just KILLS the pacing and to me felt entirely unnecessary, but once it picks back up again it was mostly fine until credits rolled. The amount of excessive handholding in the game doesnt help the pacing problems either, they arent the end of the world but might be a major turn off to some as theres usually an amount of it happening each story chapter of the game

The story islands offer plenty to find in various locations to improve your character or unlock new equipment, but the combat is super bare bones and uninteresting. Building itself can be a little finicky at times but tools to make it easier are there in the games progression. The multiplayer experience is disappointing too, limited in scope and basic. The post game really leaving you free to just build and develop your main island is delightful though, I had a lot of relaxing evenings just making buildings and rail lines and watching npcs make use of them