On game pass now, pleasant surprise.

I expected to merely check this out to see if my kids would like it,20 hours later I'm at work checking my watch because I can't wait to get back in. I believe Brad mentioned this during the QL, but minecraft with goals is just a recipe for success. Simple yet satisfying farming and population management has this game at the top of my fave games this year.

I accidentally put a barrel where it didn’t belong during the tutorial and uhhhh, basically stalled all progress and have to start over. So…

PRO-TIP! Don’t fill the hole on the deck with a barrel! You gonna get stuck that way!

Both Dragon Quest Builders games are hidden gems IMHO. My wife has put over a hundred hours into each of them.

@doctortran: it has some fiddly aspects like that for sure,but there is a ton more meat to this than expected. Hearing it's close to an 80-100 hour game so I can't vouch for endgame,but I'm building and living and loving it.

I loved them both but the second one has a ton of improvements. I spent well over 100 hours on it and a decent amount of that was after the storyline wraps up. Hope game pass gets some more eyes on it because they're both underrated.

That first game has a storyline that is like...surprisingly good for the kind of game that it's in and as such I remember it a lot more fondly I think. But all of the mechanical improvements in 2 are incredible.

Love this game. Played it on Switch upon release and got me through some less than stellar months while I was unemployed.

Having a blast with it! Although it seems to be stuck on 720p for me. Anyone else having this issue?

This game is pretty fun but the game is way too drawn out, hand holdy and rigidly structured for so long while also not doing enough to incentivize creativity and the building with systems. However, it is still fun and I think DQ Builders 3 can be amazing if it puts it all together.

@toughshed: the hand holdy nature is very annoying, but once you get to the big island and can build anywhere it's worth it. And as much as I skipped dialogue and mainlined quests, I found going through each islands little story quite satisfying

The game has charm for sure pretty much throughout. To me I just find that rigidity frustrating. A lot of it is teaching how to build elements, which is great, but given the free form nature more later it can feel by the numbers all leading up.

To me the next step would be to, throughout, embrace more of the sim/builder nature and have it all more free form, yet still try to weave in that character and story more organically that would make the game really special and cohesive.

I've always loved that genre and games like this are coming close to really being that narrative and charcter based version of the genre I've been waiting for to come along more.

Personally one of the things that I appreciate about these two games is that it has a very defined structure. I get bored very easily of other games in the genre that are just like.. okay hands off now go do whatever you want.

Picked this up on Gamepass after seeing this thread and am having a great time but I think I might be done now. I hit a bug a few hours in when no new quests were available and I ended up having to restart. This time through I got maybe 10 hours in and again hitting the same issue where no quests are available so I can't make any more progress. Real bummer.

*edit* I gave it another try and this time on reloading the save a raid on the village happened and everything's working again. Big relief, bug downgraded from bummer to annoyance.

@doctortran: Luckily the jank works both ways, I got the barrel stuck in the hole but could fall down myself and pick it up as I was falling (then accidentaly placed it in the ceiling as I was falling and after many fall finally picked it up from there too)

Returning to this thread to whinge that the game is unfinishable for me because a bug means the final boss doesn't die after hitting 0 hp. I've re-run the fight nearly a dozen times now trying different things but for whatever reason can't continue past this point, plus because of the way it ends I also can't just go do other stuff instead.

I had a great time with it though, I'm sad to put it down without proper closure. There were so many good and clever little design choices along the way and the writing is mostly pretty funny and only occasionally obnoxious.

I ended up giving up on the game due to constant freezing during saves, so frustrating. Loved building the island up but I lost progress one too many times

Thank you for the heads-up. I haven't checked GP lately and I probably wouldn't have found this for a good while. Good lookin' out.