Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
5 
Report this post
I wish they used unity, at least that way we could use BepInEx.
Well, at least some basic reskins or audio mods shouldn’t be too bad… I think. Been ages since I’ve modded myself, and I’ve only ever modded Source games.
But DQB2 cost a lot less and earned a greater return on investment.
The mainline games (ie, XI and XII) take several years of development and very large staffs. DQB2 was turned around in about a year with far less staff. Sure it doesn't have as many sales (something like 1.5-2 million vs 6.5-7) but the profit per sale is greater.
Builders (at least #2) has done a lot better than most other recent DQ spin off series like Heroes. And its still making money and claiming retailer shelf space 3 - 3.5 years after release while most spinoff games have puttered out and ended up in the bargain bin after that long.
1) A continuous open world with less limitations in general
2) Seamless online (and local?) multiplayer for free build and campaign
3) Better combat/refocusing on tower defense with optional permanent consequences
(Easy DQB2-style/Hard DQB1-style)
They have all the-- excuse me-- building blocks already there in DQB2 and the story of DQ3 which will be rereleasing soon in 2.5HD. (DQ3 literally has a town that the player helps build from the ground up.)
My biggest wishes for DQB3 for solo play is lessening the impact of player combat. The Builder should be practically *useless* in combat. It's all about the defenses you build and the gear you craft to equip your warriors with. Focus should being on *building*, oddly enough.
Lots of elements of DQB2 removed player agency and punished acting ahead of the story. This needs to be removed. For example, instead of "Build this monstrous building right here with these exact materials that the NPCs will really just do for you," it should be "We need an inn. Follow the rules of what is considered a 'room' and add these furnishings before we can use it to functionally progress".
I actually disagree that this is a negative. There's a lot to explore with original content that isn't explored in the base DQ3, especially if DQB3 follows the What If? theme.
Say we start in Immigrant Town which seems to be the go-to assumption. We have the old man who starts the town to characterize. He needs a Merchant that, in DQ3, the Hero provides. That's a second character. Then there's you, the Builder, the third person to literally build this town.
Now, I don't know about you guys, but I *never* gave away a permanent party member in DQ3. I always recruited someone new and immediately sent them off to Immigrant Town to progress that quest. We can use this to characterize the Hero (or Erdrick) as the villain of this story.
There's also Ortega, a prominent character that we don't often see in DQ3. Instead, we can have Ortega bumming around Immigrant Town, perhaps too cowardly to fight Boromos in the first place furthering the Hero's resentment for his father and a villainous arc.
Now where that would go, I have no idea, I'm just trying to demonstrate that there are plenty of material and characters to explore without altering more thoroughly written characters from IV onward.
They should be able to fight, but not very good with it at first, plus it also depends on the subclass, like if their subclass is merchant or jester then yeah they would suck in combat.
I concur that a DQB3 based on DQ3's story will undoubtedly involve the Immigrant Town (or New Town as its called in some games.) But this is more of a memorable place than person. Certainly memorable places would be reused. Revisiting familiar places was even a much more prominent feature of DQB1 than DQB2. (And something I'd wished DQB2 did more of.)
As far as people goes, the first three DQ games did not establish a strong link with its NPC characters besides a few. In DQ1 its limited to perhaps the King, Princess Gwaelin, the Dragonlord, and arguably the Golem of Cantlin or Axe Knight of Hauksness are memorable. In DQ2, its even worse: just the three scions, Malroth, Hargon, and Hargon's trio. What would DQ3 offer? Zoma, Baramos, Ortega, Luisa/Patty, Tania, Norton, and maybe the hero's mother? Perhaps some more minor characters like the King of Romaly and the old man at New Town? The cast of DQ3 just isn't as strong or impressionable as those of later games, where much more focus was placed on character differentiation (and larger ROM sizes or new hardware that made more engaging storytelling possible.) You can look to the Heroes games as guidance: they didn't include a single character from DQ 1, 2, or 3, but about half the heroes of 4 - 8. Those from 4 - 8 (and now 11 as well) are just more memorable across the whole series. (9 and 10 could have been there too but lack of ports has robbed some of their characters, like Stella and Aquila from 9, from maintaining prominence they may have held when their games were newer.)
I looked for, but didn't find, a ranking of significant DQ characters across all games. Disregarding the hero as basically personality-less, Ortega would probably top the DQ3 list. But I'd find it unlikely he'd place in the top 10 across the whole series, and I personally doubt top 20. Meanwhile I'd expect a significant portion of the main cast of DQ4 - Ragnar, Alena, Torneko, Meena, Maya, and Psaro - and at least Bianca and Nera of DQ5 to be top 20. If someone locates such as a list, I'd be interested to see if anyone from DQ3 other than the hero appears near the top.
That doesn't mean DQB3 based on DQ3 story couldn't be any good. Yuji Horii and Koya Tsukada are excellent writers and could surely come up with a compelling story. But I'm just not sure we'd encounter as many returning characters that stand out and the ones that do may need a lot of fleshing out. They'd need the treatment Galen got in DQB1 and the King in DQB2: a minor reference in the original games but a lot more backstory added for them in Builders. Possible yes, but maybe not as exciting as dropping the Golem in as the boss monster of Cantlin, returning the Princess of Tantegel, or exploring Malroth's humanity. These are exciting because we recognize these characters. And we'd recognize Immigrant Town. But the old man at Immigrant Town? Maybe not so much.
I think the decision to go chibi was correct and natural.
First, the larger heads help identify your NPCs more clearly. Most games have a smaller cast of characters to whom the player interacts, often restricting them to a single location or period within the game. DQB games (especially DQB2) have a very large cast that runs freely over large areas: each named character is designed to be immediately identifiable even if their clothing changes.
Second, the game requires a bit more zoomed out view than a closer over-the-shoulder view of something like DQ8 or DQ11. With cutscenes occurring at a similar angle and distance, the larger heads help identify characters on smaller screens (PS Vita probably led to this decision for DQB1, and now a Switch is the limiting factor.) DQ8 and DQ11 would simply reorient camera to be zoomed-in nearer the character and pan around in an environment known to be free of obstacles to focus on each character as they talk, but DQB games just can't do that. A single block placed in a key location could potentially block the camera's view and ruin such a cutscene. (Technically you can build tall walls to block some DQB2 cutscenes in similar fashion, but its harder to do and few players would encounter it in natural play. In other cases you can move the camera around during a cutscene and find something to block it's view.)
I fear that for natural-sized characters to be as useful as chibis, either the mobile device screens have to get bigger or higher resolution (and thus more expensive) or the camera system has to get a lot smarter than it is.
Most of the cutscenes default to around a 30 degree angle above builder, with about 17 blocks horizontally from where the builder stands. This makes the builder about 180 pixels tall on a 1080p screen. At this angle and distance, the residents can form a circle around the builder for events and most of them would be within the frame.