While Dragon Quest Builders 2 has been available to the Japanese audience since December 20, 2018, we were able to get a hands-on preview with the western localized version of the game this year at E3.

While there are other 2D and 3D block building games on the market, the most popular of which are undoubtedly Terraria and Minecraft respectively, the Dragon Quest Builders spin off games attempt to weave not only 3D block building mechanics, but an engrossing RPG storyline and battle mechanics as well.

While the first game was relatively well received, garnering an 81 and 83 Meta score on the Switch and PlayStation 4, Dragon Quest Builders 2 improves on many of the areas where the development team and fans alike felt the first game was lacking.

Introduced in Dragon Quest Builders 2 are several new transportation modes and new areas to explore. Players can now paraglide through different areas of the game, fly, fast travel, and also build, survive, and fight underwater.

Players are also now able to build higher and more elaborate structures on their own island once the game has progressed far enough.

These home base islands will allow players a place to store their goods, in addition to showing off their building skills through the games elaborate multiplayer system.

Players will be able to invite others to their islands, as well as visit other islands to gain insight on what other people are doing and building.

With the new multiplayer system, when a player is on another player’s island, and they see a structure they like the other player has built, they will be able to gain the blueprint of that structure and bring it back to their own island.

As long as they have the materials for it, players can then either build the structure themselves, or have their NPC townsfolk build it for them.

In the examples given to us during the interview, say another player has the Notre Dame Cathedral on their island; you could gain the blueprint of that structure, take the blueprint back to your area, and build an exact replica of that player’s Notre Dame on your own island.

The demo we were able to play was timed, so we weren’t able to explore very far into the depths of the game. What we did see was a very fun experience.

The player will take on the role of “The Builder,” a character in the story who is able to build any number of different objects and structures in the game to help the citizenry rebuild various locations throughout the world.

The Builder is fully customizable to fit the type of character the player wishes to explore the world with.

Combat is very similar to the first game, relying on basic and special attacks to take down enemies.

As the player progresses, they will be able to find and craft increasingly more powerful and useful arms and armor as they explore an alternate version of the world first explored in Dragon Quest 2.

One of the other new major changes to the game is that Story and Exploration / Building are more closely knit together.

In the first game, you had the option of just exploring the world and building what you wanted, or playing through the story mode. In Dragon Quest Builders 2, both options are brought together in one cohesive package.

It is unclear whether or not players will still have the option of a pure exploration/build mode separate from the main story mode though.

All in all, Dragon Quest Builders 2 seems to have fixed many of the issues players and fans of the first game had, and looks to be a very solid and enjoyable action-RPG builder game.

We were also lucky enough to sit down and have an extensive interview with three of the core team behind the RPG builder game: Director Kazuya Niinou and Producers Noriyoshi Fujimoto and Takuma Shiraishi.Please stay tuned for our translation and upload of the interview in the coming days. All three gentlemen gave great insight in to the development.

Please be on the lookout for our eventual review, as well as our in-depth interview with the directors and producers coming soon.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 is launching for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch on July 12th in North America and Europe.