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Even Minecraft Haters Will Love This

Even Minecraft Haters Will Love This

One of my big gaming regrets is that I’ve never been able to get into Minecraft . It’s not that I don’t enjoy that kind of game. I love creative games that allow me to build things! It’s just that the combination of the primitive graphics, unfriendly UI, and time-consuming building and crafting system combine to turn me off the game. Even the various Minecraft-alikes have failed to catch or hold my interest, until now. Dragon Quest Builders is coming out in English this October, and I’ve learned enough about it to get excited. Could Dragon Quest Builders be just the ticket for people like me who want to build but can’t quite manage to catch Minecraft fever?

At first glance, the two games look rather similar. They’re both voxel (3D cube) builders with light survival elements (you’ll have to keep yourself fed in both). Both games let you collect materials and use them to craft structures, furniture, equipment, etc. However, there are three major things that set DQ Builders apart and make it a more inviting game for many people.

Dragon Quest Builders was created from the ground up by an experienced, professional team, and it shows. No disrespect to Notch whatsoever; when he created Minecraft , he didn’t have the budget or resources to create a base game that looked and felt like this. The DQ Builders world might be based on cubes, but not everything is made of them, and the 3D modeled characters and monsters look fantastic. Organic objects like plants and trees are also fully modeled instead of voxel-ified, giving the world a more natural look and feel. A more professional interface that includes things like blueprints and various crafting shortcuts makes everything more inviting from the get-go. This sense of polish and professionalism is missing from not just Minecraft , but most of its imitators, and it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.

It’s not just about looks, though. Dragon Quest Builders has the type of living world that will make fans of sandbox RPGs rub their hands together in anticipation. It has an overarching story and quests that can help guide your building ambitions while still giving you plenty of room to do your own thing. It has monsters that will require certain kinds of strategies to beat, like a golem battle that was demonstrated during E3 and required the player to block shots with a crafted object and use bombs to take the big guy down. Most importantly, it has NPCs are more than just random nobodies who wander brainlessly around your world. As you restore their towns and create crafting stations of various kinds, the NPCs will use the stations to craft furniture, food, equipment, you name it. Yes, you’ll have your very own army of crafting minions!

Even Minecraft Haters Will Love This

One of the coolest things about Minecraft is all the clever devices that players have created using the program’s building blocks. Let’s face it, though, most of us don’t have the ability or patience to make a Minecraft 3D printer or music composition machine. We can only watch the Youtube videos of these masterpieces. Dragon Quest Builders gives the power to create interactive objects to the people, with craftable bits and bobs that can be combined to create everything from monster traps to cannons to transportation systems. Although these pieces probably lack the true freeform possibilities of Minecraft ‘s programmable objects, they seem far more user-friendly for the average player.

Of course, Minecraft has plenty of features that DQ Builders does not. Multiplayer is the biggest of these, and I know that DQ Builders can’t hope to replace the amazing community that has built around playing Minecraft with friends. Still, for solo-focused players who want more polish, structure, and ease of use from a Minecraft-style game, Dragon Quest Builders looks like just the ticket. I can’t wait to try it out, myself.

What do you think? Are you a Minecraft cynic? Does Dragon Quest Builders look good to you, or is its lack of multiplayer a deal-breaker? Let us know in the comments!

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