Anyone else picking this one up? I love Dragon Quest and I love Minecraft / building games. So this is a no-brainer for me.

It's cool that this is sort of a follow-up to the original game. It at least takes place in the same world. I'm hoping for nostalgia overload (which is pretty much a given every time a blue slime draws near!)

I tried out the demo earlier this week. The hand-holding is brutal as they bombard you with dialogue boxes that interrupt gameplay.

After.
Every.
Single.
Action.
You.
Take.

but the concept and story seemed like it could be fun. If the game flow interruptions start to taper off after the initial stuff, I would be definitely interested in this game.

Haha I haven't played the demo, but the interruptions sound about right. I was annoyed by that in Dragon Quest Heroes last year. It didn't help that the story wasn't particularly great, so they just kept babbling about stuff I didn't really care about.

Supposedly, after you complete the first chapter, it opens up a sandbox mode, which I would (perhaps incorrectly) assume has minimal, if any tutorial stuff.

Heavy amounts of text just seems like Dragon Quest's style. Like in Journey of the Cursed King, there was SO much text during battles that you could barely have time to read and look at the action.

Not really a fan of building things, or Minecraft, so this is gonna be a pass for me personally.

It's great to see the game getting some nice reviews. I'm so excited to start my journey tomorrow :)

It figures that the one game I've really been looking forward to this year is the one game that Amazon (or maybe UPS, not sure) lets me down on. I still haven't received my package and although Amazon never notified me, I logged in and saw it had been delayed. It's now scheduled to arrive between yesterday and Friday. Awesome.

Maybe if they wouldn't wait until the last minute to ship it the night before, this wouldn't happen grumble, grumble

I love Minecraft, but never played any Dragon Quest game. Interested to hear what you think Moho (once it finally arrives that is...lol)!

Well, it finally arrived last night and I've managed to play about 3 hours so far (had to get up super early to sneak some extra time in hehe). My initial impression is THIS GAME IS AMAZING!! Seriously, it's EXACTLY what I thought / hoped it would be. You run around in a blocky world, collect some materials, craft stuff, build stuff, defeat monsters, complete quests, etc....all in the wonderful world of Dragon Quest. As I mentioned before, it receives bonus points for being a sort of continuation of the first one. Just seeing the town names and hearing that amazing music completely broke my nostalgia meter.

My only qualm with the game so far is the controls, which take a bit of getting used to for a MInecraft (and sandbox / survival / crafting game) veteran. I even have Minecraft on PS4 and this game feels a lot different. It's partially due to the game being in third person, but some of the bindings just seem backwards to me. I keep pressing X thinking I will jump, and I bring up the stupid menu. Likewise, I hit Triangle thinking it will bring up a menu and it attacks instead. Perhaps you can change them, not really sure, but I didn't see anything in the options menu when I was in there before I started playing (so I should probably check again).

I'm getting used to it though and by the end of my play session this morning, I was zipping around crafting and destroying monsters like a madman. It took about 2 hours before the training wheels came off, but I feel at this point I can do pretty much whatever I want. I love that the townfolk give you quests since it keeps the game moving forward, which is a huge bonus over pretty much all of the procedurally generated sandbox games I've played.

Cool! Glad you're enjoying it! Definitely keen on hearing what you think about the post-tutorial part of the game, as that's what I was hoping would really sell it to me.

I liked what I played in the demo, and my only real gripe was the amount of textboxes you had to go through. I know in DQ games the dialogue can be a bit long-winded at times, but merging the tutorial with the dialogue seemed to exacerbate the problem for me.

I think I'm done with the tutorial part of things, or at least the "spirit" or whatever that would explain every...little...detail...I think that all stopped around the two hour mark and now I'll still get popups when I learn a new recipe or a new mechanic is introduced, but nothing like the beginning. The NPC quests are basically mini-tutorials, so if you're counting those, then I suspect they'll last the duration of the game :P

I was checking out some of the challenges, which apparently open up after you complete a chapter for the first time, and I'm slightly annoyed that there are essentially speed run challenges by having to complete a chapter in 20 days. It seems completely counter-intuitive to this type of game where you want to absorb the environment, build things, etc.

My copy arrived Tuesday and I've been playing. I don't play Minecraft, I can't play games with first person perspective and to be honest I prefer the structure of quests to sandbox play.

The Dragon Quest elements are great if you're a fan. If you're not, I think a lot of the humor will be lost unfortunately because a lot of it comes from battles and the messages you get when fighting enemies (ex. Cats that lick their paws instead of taking a turn during battle).

Also I think if you do the speed run after your first play through rather than during it you might be better off. That said, simply adding a speed run requirement does not make a game worth playing more than once. I decided I'm not going to rush through the first time, and it's possible I might not run through it a second time to get the speed run, and I'm ok with that.

I do wish they had a quest log and I also wish the quests weren't doled out so sparingly. I understand the need for story related quests to be sequential, but not so much for other quests. Give me a bunch of side quests at once to work toward while I'm running around collecting things.

Well, I've already put in over 17 hours in less than a week, which is absolutely insane for me. I'm really enjoying it so far. I've finished the first two chapters and the second one went a lot faster. I did rush a little bit through it since I was able to satisfy my curiosity a bit in the first chapter and wanted to get the speed run challenge first. I'm definitely going back to get the remaining challenges and just explore though.

I keep waffling on this one. I want to get it, but I keep thinking I could allocate my gaming budget to several games on sale instead. It's extremely tempting though. Have a feeling I'll pick it up at the first sale it gets, haha