I’ve been playing it over the last few days. Cozy games aren’t my thing, and not for lack of trying. I played Stardew Valley with friends and I couldn’t stay interested. Pokemon largely hasn’t excited me since gen 2.
Minecraft, however, is something I really enjoyed, especially back when it was in beta, so I thought a “pokemon plus minecraft” type game might interest me. I’m not sure yet, but clearly a lot of people like it.
I’m somewhat disappointed. Mind you, I’ve only played via GameShare and watched my partner play it.
Coming from Dragon Quest Builders 2, which is phenomenal, I was hoping to get more of that. However, it’s not that. The areas feel quite small and the mining/building process felt more cumbersome to me. I could work with these drawbacks, but the biggest thing for me are all the non-voxel buildings you can (and sometimes must) create. They kind of kill the aesthetic and on top of that, I don’t vibe with the real time waiting times at all. Also, these buildings introduce loading screens.
In DQ Builders 2, you would place your blueprint, add all materials to a chest and the NPCs would literally take them and place every individual block for you. Every building was made out of voxels. Furniture of course wasn’t, but I’m fine with that. Watching them go was one of my favorite things to do.
Maybe it will click with me if I go for a full playthrough myself, but it’s certainly not the game I wanted it to be.
I think you just might have sold me on DQB2.
One of the mods I miss from older versions of Minecraft is the Millenaire mod, where villages were actually somewhat simulated, including builders making new structures out of blocks actually around the area. They would sometimes give you quests to get them materials too.
So it does work the way you explained it, at least for a portion of the buildings. you drop full individual block blueprints and supply all the resources and your npc’s will build it.
The confusion might be due to there also being the presence of smaller buildings that don’t work that way and also have loading screens.