In a bid to pull my son away from Fortnite and into literally any other game, I asked for some help from friends and narrowed a list down to a few RPG/RPG-adjacent games. One of those was Dragon Quest Builders and, after showing him a trailer, he seemed interested. I snagged a copy of Dragon Quest Builders 2 on eBay for £20 which remains a bargain given the MSRP but after a few minutes, he got stuck and just gave up. Kids, eh?
Time passed and I decided to pick it up again after getting back into the franchise myself. Someone I follow on Bluesky gave it an added endorsement and that gave me an idea: what if we played the one-player game together? His main gripe was cut scenes and all that talking. I hear that! But with a franchise like Dragon Quest, you need to pay attention to what people say for the most part. DQB2 is fortunately handhold-y enough that you don’t get completely lost but it helps to read what the characters say. I decided to take over that responsibility and let him complete the actual tasks.
The results have been… mixed. I played A Button Simulator and took in the important information and relayed it to him. He was enjoying it until he said he “didn’t like the controls”. Then he said he wanted to play it multiplayer (this is possible but you have to jump through a few hoops and it’s not cross play which isn’t helpful when I only own one copy between us). But regardless of how he may feel now or in future, it made me realise that all single player games can be multiplayer if you want them to be. It’s co-op without the official co-op and the easier a game makes it to do that kind of play, the better.
