Once the player begins building up the town people arrive pretty quickly to populate the town. The primary role of NPCs is to give you quests, so the more you build, the more NPCs arrive, and the more quests you have available. Quests can cover a wide range of tasks, someone can simply request that you build them their room, while others may request you go see what is on top of a distant mountain or go kill a powerful enemy. You can put a sign in front of a structure to limit who can occupy the space. Or if there is an NPC you don't like, you can build a poor shack. You can also use this to force people to sleep next to each other. There is a lot of freedom in this game to do whatever you want.

Of those contributions, none were greater than Rock Band. In fact, you could argue that a big part of the reason the entire genre seemed to disappear so quickly is because there was no way you were going to top Rock Band as far as advancing the genre is concerned. It didn't matter who you were or your thoughts towards video gaming, the feeling of getting four friends together and rocking across the globe with the help of a massive list of classic hits had an appeal that could seize infinite nights and weekends away. Many games work endlessly to pursue that level of zen that accompanies the perfect multiplayer gaming experience, but Rock Band manages to mass produce that euphoria to the point where you almost become burned out on it like a raging weekend drug bender.

Another issue that impacted the episode as a whole were the amount of times that the members of the Order backtracked into flashbacks that told of the argument that disbanded them. While I understand that it's crucial to the story, it took away completely from the decision making and the story that revolves around Jessie and the Wither Storm. The characters, minus a scene with Petra, receive almost no depth and leave it to the environments and the little bit of dialogue to develop them. With the environments being the main reason to play the episode, the lack of exploration doesn't help its case. For a game that is meant to develop according to character choices, there didn't seem to be a whole lot of decision-making going to develop the story further. Hopefully, the cliffhanger ending will pose as an entryway to further Jessie and his friend's role in all of this instead of being focused on the Order.

Not in the traditional way. The character's special power is the ability to build and create. Your character will be able to create items and equipment which in the game is like a magic power but there will be no spells like other Dragon Quest games. Monsters on the other hand will have spells they can use against.

Sometimes, though, developers go the extra mile and build a vertical slice to demonstrate their game. This is a lot of work – even re-using assets from the game, you’re looking at many hours of scripting and scenario design – but the payoff speaks for itself. Bravely Default’s demo is essentially its own mini-RPG, with three dungeons to conquer, five bosses to fight, and a whole bunch of enjoyable grinding to do in the interim. It has condensed versions of the streetpass and job mechanics from the main Xbox Game Pass Addictive Games that allow you to familiarize yourself and get to the fun quickly. The demo may take all of its assets from the main game, but it uses them to craft an experience entirely distinct from it. In doing so, it gets straight to the essence of what makes the full game fun. What’s more, if you master the demo, you get rewards to help you out in the early game, as well as a head start on streetpasses.

The action from the first episode hasn't left at all and if anything, managed to speed itself enough where you practically have to do a second playthrough just to catch it again. There are plenty of moments that could have been explained more and it's upsetting that they weren't in the short time it took to finish the episode. Things like Olivia's disappointment in finally meeting her hero and Lukas' role in Jessie's group of friends could have been touched upon a little bit more but the fact that they weren't makes me fear for future episodes. It leaves you with a, "oh, that was it?" feeling that should never be felt while playing any game, especially right when you begin getting into the action and quickness of it all. Hopefully, the third episode will capitalize on a few more important moments within the main character’s development and slow down a little in order to give everyone the attention that they deserve.

Let me begin by saying that this episode is particularly short, like a little over an hour short. I guess that's what happens when the first two episodes are only separated by a few weeks, but the fact that to get the entire experience you have to play through it twice sort of pans out well because it then makes the episode about two hours long. Still, a much longer playthrough for the sequel was expected considering the complication of the events taking place. That being said, the episode covers the areas following either Elligaard or Magnus and each path allows you to follow and understand more of the world of Minecraft. There are a few inconsistencies that don't make sense and some new events that don't necessarily pertain to Jessie or his/her friends, but that doesn't label the episode as terrible. By inconsistencies, I mean there were points in the game where I thought, "why can't they just do this/that in order to progress?" One moment that comes to mind is when a character falls into a hole and can't seem to get out when they could have built their way out as they were able to in the first episode. The rest of the episode is littered with little things like that that make you scratch your head and ask those questions.