Malhalla and the final sequences of the game in general also up his Villain Pedigree tremendously. Here, the Malroth you meet at the start is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who gradually becomes friends with the Builder, and exactly what the Master of Destruction is, and what his relationship with the idea of Creation (as personified by the Builders) is, is a central theme of the game. Similarly, Malroth in the original game had basically no characterization whatsoever, being basically just being a big scary demon for you to fight at the end of the game since Dragon Quest I had established the tradition of needing a bigger foe at the end in the original game, and especially original English release, Malroth was barely even mentioned prior to his appearance.In the original game, Hargon and his minions had absolutely no motivation for being opponents beyond "we're the villains" here, the nature of their Religion of Evil is expanded on tremendously and it deals with the way monsters in general tend to see themselves and their place in the world (and how Hargon exploited that).DQB2 is pretty much "Adaptation Expansion For Dragon Quest II: The Game" and expands especially on Malroth and the nature of the Children of Hargon enormously. Adaptation Expansion: Easily the single greatest example in the entire franchise.Female villagers will also pitch in during battles, with some specifically suited to combat. This switches over to Absurdly High Level Cap in the post-game, where the cap instead becomes 99. Furrowfield is a prime offender here, as players will most likely hit Level 10 halfway through the chapter, especially if you bother to explore at all. Given the fact that the player gains EXP for enemies that NPCs kill in addition to the ones they fight themselves, they are all but guaranteed to be within 2 levels of the cap by the time of each of the bosses.
The game is set in Torland, the world of Dragon Quest II. It was also the final game Kazuya Niinou headed as director for Square Enix before moving on to join Type-Moon's BB Studio. It was released for Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch in Japan in December 2018, with a Western release following in July 2019.
Dragon Quest Builders 2 is a Wide-Open Sandbox spinoff of the Dragon Quest series, and a sequel to Dragon Quest Builders.