I had kinda given up hope that the classic JRPG franchises could be done nowadays, mostly because of money, scale, design decisions... I was always an FF player, with some Suikoden, Legend of Dragoon, etc. here and there.

But FF changed! Some people might enjoy what the games became from XII onwards, but I can't stomach them. I'm also not too much of a fan of the Tales Of games recently, I find their characters unbearable and cringeworthy. And so many other franchises that dominated in the PS1 era are just completely gone! So after hating my time with FF15, and then enjoying FF7Remake in a "close enough" sorta way, I really thought it couldn't be done.

I had ignored DQ for a long time after not enjoying VIII too much on PS2, a very beloved entry, I just found its systems and character progression a bit too simple for my liking, didn't give it much thought... But then I start playing 11S on game pass. I couldn't keep resisting how good the enemies and the world looked, and Persona 5 had made me crave another RPG, a classic globe trotting one, and so I started.

What a surprise! The scale, the pacing, the characters, the exploration, the systems, the leveling, the forge, the world... Everything just clicked, the feeling of playing classics like FF9 or Breath of Fire coming back. And immediately it had more character variety and system personality than DQVIII, my only other dip into this series.

Despite how LONG this game was, it never stopped throwing new stuff at you, be it story or systems wise, with each detour to explore a side area or really get the feel of the land always rewarded not just with some random items, but interesting and charming interactions, extra character development, and meaningful rewards.

I thought several times "I'll just finish it in game pass" but ended up not only buying it but almost 100% it (I bet I'll go back to do it one day)

I'm an old JRPG fan. I loved all the old FF, Suikoden, and I also love some modern RPGs, such as Skyrim, and Mass Effect. I thought I'd love DQ11. It got a lot of love from critics and users alike. But 10 hours in, I'd have enough. Here is an overview of why:

Pros:

-Colorful

-Interesting enough forge mechanics

-There are skill trees (albeit very simple ones)

Cons:

-User-friendliness: it seems every time you try to do something in DQ11, you need to acknowledge 13 times. Would you like to rest? Are you SURE? Do you confirm that you are SURE? Another example: why in the WORLD does a game still give characters separate bags? You need to have items equipped on different characters, and it's mostly manual. It seems half the game is navigating menus to TRY to do what you want to do.

-Difficulty: very easy without draconian settings... with "monsters are very strong", you can get wiped out by chance without getting a turn when monsters get first strike (if you don't grind like your life depends on it.. because it does!)

-Exploration: the world feels... empty and flat. It doesn't feel lived in, and doesn't feel like is has much of a personally. Apart from running around getting treasure chests that seem way out of place (why are they chilling in the middle of the plains in plain view??)

-Character and monster design looks terrible (ymmv)

All in all, I hadn't played Dragon Quest since the first one on NES, and I thought it might be time to revisit this serie. I was wrong. If you ARE a fan of the series, perhaps there is something for you there. If not, stay away, there are better JRPGs out there that deserve your time before this one.

4/5

This is it, chief.

This game hits different. It seems to derive spiritually so much from the JRPG classics of old in both its strengths and its weaknesses, but the game is so much more than the sum of its pros and cons.

Let's start with the gameplay. It is fantastic, simply put. It's classic. Turn based RPG with no active time battle system at all. You have abilities, spells and pep-powers which you can activate - simple. I played the game with stronger monsters on and no exp from weaker monsters and it was deliciously challenging. The kind of challenging where you don't (necessarily) have to go grind if you're hitting a wall - you just have to think differently. Are there any debuffs I can use on this baddie? How can I buff my guys to survive his attacks? What accessories can I use to negate his debuffs? It asks you to prepare for each boss fight differently in order to defeat them. Without stronger monsters I have heard the game is a bit of a cakewalk, but with it - it definitely hits a difficulty sweetspot.

Character building is also super satisfying. The skill grids are very simple but they do their job well - it's like a more granular job system. You can pick what you want your characters to be good at and spec them accordingly, there is a great weighing up of decisions here as well because in the early-game, you can't be good at everything. The exploration through the landscapes is also fun - lots of useful goodies to find. I love it when games reward exploring with things that make your characters stronger - in this case better equipment often. So simple, yet so rare. The way the crafting system works here is engaging, and you are constantly on the lookout for recipes and materials. I will say the minigame for crafting can be frustrating, until the late-game it is RNG dependant and can eat your time in a unsatisfying way.

Now let's talk about the story. It's serviceable in its construction. It's not very complicated, but surprisingly it is pretty engaging considering how run of the mill it is. It doesn't ever become stupendously predictable which keeps things interesting. At times, it hits on its emotional notes very effectively also (particularly in the little side-stories of each town) - often bluntly and never with precision - but effectively nonetheless. I think the best part of the story is how the main story ends at the end of Act 2, and seemingly out of nowhere comes an Act 3 with a curveball time-travelling adventure. This "post-game" is fantastic. Lots of bosses, more side-stories and retellings of old stories to explore, and heaps of fun-to-get loot. I will say I do have one regret, which is that I turned off stronger monsters for the final boss of Act 2 due to not wanting to grind - and therefore had to play the rest of the game with it off - I sincerely missed that sweetspot of difficulty it provided.

The presentation is rock solid. There is a downgrade in graphics for the definitive version which I played but I think it looked fine for a JRPG and with this aesthetic style. Some of the landscapes you explore look great as well, but a lot of that work is done in the design, the actual texturing and rendering is nothing special. The animation work is wonderful and lends so much character not only to the main cast, but the monsters - they never cease to delight. The UI and UX in the definitive version were also great, lots of QOL changes and tweaks that made the experience seamless - in particular ultra fast battle mode. The music sounded great and really carried that adventure spirit that a JRPG like this needs.

DQXI also carries with it a lot of the faults of the old JRPGs. It is long - too long. Act 3 itself dragged on for about thirty more hours in my case - bringing my total to 89 hours. I couldn't bring myself to forge the final evolution weapons and get all of Drustan's wishes, mainly because I had spent my fill of time with this game. The idea of going through the same trials again was just abominable. Getting everyone's final outfits was very satisfying however. This game doesn't respect the player's time in a way that most modern games do. You have to do a lot of backtracking for quests, the pacing of the story beats is glacial for large parts of the game, and even cutscenes seem to drag at times. I think a big part of overcoming this is meeting the game at it's level. I found playing an hour or two every other day over a few months to be much more palatable than trying to storm through the whole thing in a couple of weeks. Nevertheless, I think the entire experience including Act 3 could be edited down to about 60 hours easily.

Like I said at the beginning though, this game supercedes the sum of its parts. It's an experience I havent had anything like in a very long time - one that gives you old-school adventure vibes, an addiction to progressing your characters and watching your power grow, and a heap of strategy to employ in battles. It easily overcomes it's flaws for a high score.

EDIT: Few extra thoughts I've had since beating the game that I wanted to put down here.

I stand by my praise of the music in its ability to generate an atmopshere of adventure. One problem however, there isn't enough variety in the music you encounter - especially considering the plethora of environments and locations you travel across. The same themes would be repeated across different areas which led to two big issues. One is you lose that effect of each location being partly characterised by its soundtrack. Xenoblade Chronicles did this very well. Each location loses a bit of character as a result. The other is that the field and city music really starts to grate on you over time, there simply isn't enough variety in it.

The other thing is the existence of the Draconian Quest options, which I briefly touched on. I'm not sure if it's a new addition to DQ, but it's great. It allows you to tune the difficulty of the game perfectly to tailor your own experience. I especially like that you can turn them off at any time at a Church, and that once they're deactivated you can't reactivate them on that playthrough. It makes the decision to turn them off a weighty one, and may give players pause to think about alternate strategies instead. Admittedly, I turned mine off and later regretted it.

I've done it. After starting and failing to finish many JRPGs in my life including FF7, FF9, DQ8, Ni No Kuni, Several Pokemon Games, Persona 4, and probably several others I'm forgetting, I've finally finished a JRPG.

I've just never been very into turn-based combat systems. I find them boring, to be perfectly blunt. But I also WANT to get into JRPGs because I know how immersive and captivating they can be, I have INCREDIBLY fond memories of playing FF9 as a child despite never finishing it. But that core gameplay loop just isn't enough to sustain dozens of hours of playtime. The combat is never WHY I want to play these games, I just want to exist in these worlds.

I think my finishing DQ11 can be partially attributed to age. I'm more open to something slower-paced, I have a stronger ability to commit to something and see it through. I'm hoping I can build on this momentum and start knocking out more JRPGs going forward.

But I think a large part of the credit does go to the game itself. It's gorgeous to look at, the vibes are immaculate, it has a perfect blend of wholesomeness, humor, and darkness, and the pacing is phenomenal. The end of act 1 has a major shake up in tone, the state of the world, and your party. The end of act 2 does the same fucking thing again in a different way. Really helped to keep things fresh.

If you've ever liked one of the classic Japanese fantasy RPGs or wish you could get into them, and haven't got around to Dragon Quest XI, you should seriously consider trying it. Building on the previous single-player console entry (2004's Dragon Quest VIII, which I played right before this), the latest in the series is a hugely successful continuation of the essence of the genre's classics in a great-looking, user-friendly, polished modern context. Its detailed and immersive world, lovable characters, fun combat, and great story make it not just a throwback to the genre's best, but one of the RPG greats in its own right.

It hits that balance between tradition and modernity so well, particularly in the 2019 "Definitive Edition". While you can choose to make the experience more difficult or longer in multiple ways, its main story path on the default mode is clearly set to be completed by as many people as possible, as conveniently as possible. Even with all the conveniences like skippable encounters and easy objective hints, it holds on to a few more rigid classic mechanics like saving in churches, resting in inns, and so on. The game's many towns have a lot of care put into them, and it makes the right call in still asking you to slow down sometimes and just live in this world. I felt that the only out-of-place outdated thing was keeping the protagonist silent, which is usually fine but causes some voiced one-on-one conversations to feel awkward.

I definitely wanted to soak it in, as the colorful art is well-rendered to be very pleasant to look at, and very memorable when it comes to character designs and fun little animations. The localized script and voice acting do a lot to emphasize a distinct flavor for each area. This occasionally becomes a fault, as I think they got a bit too ridiculous with some characters (do the people in the village with canals and gondolas really need to insert words from Italian 101 into every sentence?), but in general there's a charm to it, especially when it gets into more poetic writing styles.

The game's long story has some great tragic moments but largely is a light and fun time that only occasionally stumbles over weird inconsistencies. I'd say it starts out pretty good and takes a while to get great, not necessarily putting its best stuff in the first several chapters but really shining once you get more party members and get into the meat of things. The pacing is surprisingly good for such a long game, keeping me heavily addicted. It only really fumbles that pacing in a couple places, most unnecessarily in the Definitive Edition's interlude between Acts 1 and 2, which is mixed in quality and awkwardly-placed. Some needed tying up of loose ends is saved for a post-credits Act 3, which was weaker story-wise and too much "Content" for me after an already-long game.

A big improvement over DQVIII is the skill progression system. Like in that game, you are building out each character with multiple different "classes" of abilities to invest in however you'd like, but here it's more of a nonlinear grid where you make a chain of individual abilities instead of just dumping points into a category. The grids are well-designed to naturally emphasize synergies between different skill trees, and withhold strong abilities while giving you multiple ways to reach them, and the game so clearly lays out how you can synergize these abilities with your gear. A surprisingly fun crafting minigame and some slight rotation of your party in the story make character- and team-building a great time throughout the whole game.

That is all in support of the combat, which was quite fun despite being pretty easy on the default mode. The synergies between the characters feel great. I mostly ran 1 or 2 heavy melee hitters with the rest of the party supporting them with buffs and healing, but there are whole trees of spells and other weapon types that also seemed fun. All characters get access to special abilities requiring a hidden "pep" meter to fill, and these really help keep things dynamic as different combos of characters having pep active can produce many different effects. If you've built your team decently enough, you can have some or all characters auto-battle through more basic encounters with a range of chosen tactics. That may sound boring to some, but I found it helps make the game a chill experience and saves the hands from more routine, repetitive actions.

This pretty unquestionably felt to me like one of the better RPGs of the 2010s, despite any of its flaws. I tried it once a few years ago and just didn't get into it, but this time I came in after getting into another Dragon Quest game and was more prepared to give it time to develop and vibe with its style I guess. I do think with a proper understanding of what you're getting into, this should be a great place to get into the series. It pays loving tribute to prior entries, but requires no actual knowledge or experience with them. It has so much of what I want out of this kind of game, and I had a thoroughly great time playing it.

(DQXI S DE, epic games PC release)

I give it 92 out of 100, my main points of interest are:

• This game is a pleasure to play, probably the most polished and highest quality gameplay that i've experienced in an RPG
• LOTS of content, the first time they rolled the credits, after defeating mordegon, i thought that it was the end but there was a solid 30% of game remaining
• The story in general sounds generic (you're the legendary hero that has to defeat the evil lord to save the world) but it's well written and they manage to keep things interesting, which is an impressive feat when your game is 90 hours long on average. Still, it's not it's strong point
• Technically FLAWLESS. I experienced 0 bugs, glitches, crashes or slowdowns. The game is very well optimized too.
• OST is good, specially the orchestra version from the definitive edition, but i believe there weren't enough tracks or maybe some where variations of others that didn't sound different enough. There where many times where i thought the music wasn't the best fit for what was happening in my screen, mostly happened with the DQ theme song. I get that the song is an emblem of the franchise so it's normal that they play it while crucial/key events from the story are happening, but the theme song is just not epic enough i guess

Finally i want to say wtf why is the final boss so tough