Dragon Quest Builders Demo: Not my cup of tea

There are some developers/publishers out there whose RPG offerings I can purchase blindly, knowing that I will always enjoy them. These luminaries of mine include Nihon Falcom, Sting, Compile Heart and a few others that never failed to satisfy me with their awesome RPGs. Powerhouse Square Enix, on the other hand, is not part of that list of gaming happiness purveyors. In my personal ranking, their RPGs range anywhere from cult classic (Dragon Quest IX) to abject failure (Adventures of Mana) and everything in between (Final Fantasy Explorers). There is basically no guarantee of satisfaction with Square Enix as far as I'm concerned; their RPGs can enthrall me just as readily as disappoint me. In an effort to preserve my bank account and spare myself some disappointment, I decided lately to do some thorough checking before purchasing any Square Enix RPG instead of blindly jumping on them like I used to do. I applied that brand-new treatment to Dragon Quest Builders, whose demo was released on the PSN lately, to figure out if that Dragon Quest spin-off was worth a spot in my precious collection.

It turns out that the answer is no, which makes me glad I've given a try to that demo. DQB didn't click with me at all, leaving me bored stiff after a mere hour of play. Here are the main points that bothered me during that time:

—The graphics are unappealing. While Minecraft's graphics have some sort of pixelated, low-fi charm, DQB's graphics just look like your average phone game graphics. It doesn't help that the colour palette is dull and washed-out. I expected to find some Dragon Quest graphical touch at work there, but the sad truth is that there is no visual reminder of the series apart from a couple of slimes fooling around and an avatar with distinctly Toriyama-esque features.

—Too much camera fiddling. Any game that actually requires me to control and manually orient the camera is a no-go, so DQB is more or less doomed from the start.

—The controls are messy and lack precision. Now, this may be due to the fact that I'm not familiar with building games à la Minecraft, but I found incredibly hard to position blocks properly—despite the outlines kindly provided by the game. A big part of this issue can be blamed on the fact that the analog stick doesn't allow for precise positioning; and while I'm sure that it's possible to get the hang of that positioning thing with practice, my first frustrating steps with it didn't exactly encourage me to persevere. To make matters worse, I don't like the menu interface at all and I find the commands really confusing.

On a more fundamental level, it turns out that I'm not fond of the whole building thing. Building games invariably failed to enrapture me when I was a kid, and it seems that this lack of interest is still alive and well. While playing this DQB demo, I realised that the prospect of erecting huge structures didn't thrill me in the slightest; as a matter of fact, it sounded much more like a genuine chore to my ears. The conclusion is unplacable: Dragon Quest Builders is not a game for me, and thus it won't join my precious collection. That makes more room and money for another game, and that's great.

On a more general note, playing that demo makes me wonder about Square Enix's policies of late. It seems that their main gaming formula these days consists in ripping off a successful gameplay style and slapping a heavy-duty layer of in-house fan service on top of it. Final Fantasy Explorers was basically Monster Hunter with a shiny Final Fantasy varnish, and DQB is Minecraft with a Dragon Quest sugar-coating. The upcoming FFVII remake seems to be borrowing heavily from the Telltale Games formula, and I just wonder: is this their new way of creating games? Are they just content with milking off their famous franchises while borrowing gameplay styles they didn't create and tweaking them ever-so-slightly? If they've really come down to this, that's a little bit sad—but hey, whatever floats their boat.

At any rate, my thorough checking plan worked perfectly, and I firmly intend to apply the same treatment to the upcoming World of Final Fantasy. I've lost all excitement for that game after my recent string of disappointements with Square Enix RPGs, and it will have to prove really stellar to deserve a place in my precious collection and not share DQB's fate. And now, I'm diving back full force into my beloved Rainbow Moon. We were not apart for long, now were we? Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!