Amazing game that improves on the previous in every way, even as it repeats some beats and structure. I thought I wasn't gonna like Malroth, only to get hit with a gut punch on how much I relied on him when he's not in the party. Near infinite storage early on, encouraging a craft alot and forget it strategy, and the first person mode makes this play like minecraft but also fine tuned block placing and allows for interacting in smaller rooms without the camera having a tizzy.
The best part is the progression and freedom to act. Yes, the pressure to fight of mobs is a thing every now and again, but most of the time you're free to run around the map, fast travel is a sinch and a thing and humorously handwaived as to how it works, but running to the distant edges of the map and then coming back when needed is the standard.
Unlike Builders 1, there is a less focus on minecrafty ore hunting- the questline for ore nets you more ore than you'll use in a day, and the game uses randomly generated islands for resource gathering, but a perk of them is that you complete a scavenger hunt, you get infinite resources of a particular item, and this includes ores. Later, rarer materials still need to be found, but there is no need to stripmine in this game. For extra challenge, avoiding using them except for plot needs, later chapters do have ways of getting things like iron, but with a bit more challenge and exploration, as otherwise, the infinite resources can make some things a bit too easy...but notably the crafting limtations of each chapter exist to prevent cheesing. You can have infinite wood very early on, but later chapters often give you crafting tables that don't let you make wood blocks, for example, or require something else , so infinite wood is worthless. They also as before, ensure you have no items when you reach each plot chapter.
I think the story goes in new directions, and is one largely of philosophy, remaining fairly lighthearted and cheeky even if it has reminders of fairly dark events in a previous game and some existential dread. But all in all, remains soft and fluffy even at its bleakest. The characters are all loveable jerks, the islands of the game's archipelago are vibrant and beautiful with the shading and cultivated set pieces, and each world shows off things you didn't expect could be possible after setting up your expectations.
My only gripe is I had a repeat of an issue I had with the first game, despite a different engine and team- Furrowfield got glitched out for some reason, a room wouldn't form, the game would just crash to title menu, and it would struggle to let me load my save. I managed this by trying to figure out what build was causing the issue, avoiding certain areas, constant saving and quitting from 'good' saves to lock in plot progression, and then when I finally cleared the map and moved on...it crashed on the way out. But because when transferring, it makes a save and declares your new current location, loading the save had me arrive on the Isle of Awakening...but I can never go back to Furrowfield under risk of a game crash as it fails to load. Not sure what I did, I tried visiting it late game and got so stuck I needed to use a save editor to put myself back on the home island.
As for the home island, it's a great development in that it's a home base, a resource and money farm for unlocking upgrades and crafting items, and an improved version of Terra Incognita from the first game, a big island you can build on. It has structure, often requiring you to do a few things before you move the plot forward, but unlike the islands, it is your persistant storage of loot, your builds, and then some. You way later get a proper 'terra incognita" in the form of Buildertopia, which you can build anything on from the ground up, and can move your villagers to, but the Isle of Awakening allows for some of that joy early on as you build up each area, with limitations- you can't build or harvest in future areas until you plot progress, and it cleverly uses hard rocks you can't break to limit your terraforming, but each area is a large enough playground to build up a village, make rooms, and try to make your villagers happy.
The villagers are the show here- their pathing, Ai, and habits are not out of Dwarf Fortress or similar, they go through routines based on their personality and skills. But whereas in say, modded minecraft or factorio, you'd make a machine to offload your crafting, manufacturing, the key here is to build a room so villagers can do some of the work for you- a Kitchen to have them cook ingredients, a farm to have them grow food, a smithy to have them forge ore into ingots, a bar to have them brew drinks. They all eat, go to the restroom, play games, work, and got to sleep, and if you build the rooms and supply the resources, they give you grattitude which is the game's currency, which you can use to unlock new builds, and later, buy resources outright, so finding ways to maximize happiness is important. But later, as you can recruit them into your party, and get monsters to village or party, you can take them out on adventures, fight unique encounters. Late game, you get an ability to play it almost like Pikmin or LIttle King's Adventure.
Visiting other people's builds and seeing them on loading screens is great- nothing makes me want to build more than seeing someone else's creations, and being able to copy builds using a "magic pencil" tool to then build with my villagers on my island, to then tweak or adjust, lets me take some ideas home with me.
Just like the first, it's Minecraft meets Animal Crossing or Dwarf Fortress, wrapped in Dragon Quest's polish. I picked this up to play because Pokeopia, which is basically this game's spiritual sequel, is more like Animal Crossing, while this one goes more Dwarf Fortress, and since I can't afford a Switch 2, I decided to play the sequel and was not disappointed.
