Before I start this review, can I just say that I love it when games have demos? If it weren't for Dragon Quest Builders 2's (DQB2) aptly named XXL Demo I'm not sure I would've given this game a chance yet, as I never had any interest in Minecraft and this looking very much like that type of game… because it is, in a way. But there are several features that make it quite unique, such as it being a full fledged JRPG that incorpates the fact that you are playing as a genius builder that can use the sandbox in a million creative ways into its story and lore as opposed to the story just being tacked onto some Minecraft-clone.

I'm not super familiar with the Dragon Quest series, but having played DQXI I found many things that I loved also present in DQB2, such as the cute monster designs, the charming characters, the simple but endearing story that is often funny, playful, and - I don't know how to say this, maybe 'quietly emotional'? It never gets heavily dramatic, but the game being mostly light-hearted makes the emotional scenes have more depth than a more heavy-handed presentation during those moments would achieve, at least that's how I experienced it.

During the story you visit three big islands (there are two areas in the story that work a bit differently that I don't want to spoil) where you help the NPCs with their island-specific problems in the only way you know how - building! And fighting! Though the fighting is pretty simple and not too exciting, you can only attack and jump out of harm's way, and you only invest in stronger armour and weapons to get better. The boss fights with their own gimmicks are more fun.

Every island has one big goal you work towards to, but there are also smaller sidequests where NPCs want a certain type of room built, for example. 'Rooms' is where the fun begins: The game can recognize a variety of rooms, like a kitchen, a bedroom, a pool or a field, that NPCs will use accordingly; so cooking in the kitchen, sleeping in the bedroom etc. There are different types of NPCs that will do different tasks according to their job. So farmers will work on fields, playboy bunnies dancers will dance in a dance hall, soldiers will fight monsters. Everyone of them will use communal places, and you can also assign rooms to individual people. There are farm animals and many different crops, because you need food to function.

The tasks of what and where to build during the story don't leave much room for imagination, the main quest is essentially designed for you to learn what is possible to build in this game. In between chapters you return to your home island where you are free to build whatever. Though the game only really opens up after completing the story which took me (including side-questing and exploring) ca. 70 hours. In the late-/endgame you are encouraged to fulfill certain tasks to unlock better equipment that will really help with planning, building and terraforming.

There are several smaller islands on the world map that are randomly generated but always adhere to a special biome that has specific ressources you can collect. If you 'marked' every single ressource of an island once you unlock an infinite amount of the most commonly used ressources like wood and stone. You can also recruit new NPCs from these islands to come back home with you. In short, there's lots to do and to explore even late into the game and the game rewards you pretty much every time for it. And that's not even taking into account the things you build just for fun.

Regarding the Minecraft comparison, there were two big reasons I never tried it: I don't like the look, and I wouldn't know what to build anyway. DQB2 counters this on one hand with being a very pretty game that has more geometrical shapes than just blocks. Characters look like DQ characters, monsters like DQ monsters. There are of course many block shaped blocks to build structures and landscapes, but also a huge amount of normal looking stuff like furniture, plants and flowers, food and decorative food items, other decorative items etc. And on the other hand, the more restrictive nature during the main story and the NPC-usable rooms coupled with them having their own room preferences give an uncreative and not at all architecture-savvy person like me guidance enough for knowing what to build. It also gives my buildings purpose because they will actually get used by someone other than me. The world feels alive, and it's my mission to make it habitable. And pretty. And in a couple hundred hours I may actually achieve that… (No, you did not just see me building a mini Las Vegas-like entertainment paradise for 100 hours straight just to finish it and thinking, well, that was fun, let's bulldoze it all to the ground and build something new 🙃)