Dragon Quest XI

[DANGERMAN]

My god this game is adorable

 

It's a bit sickly to begin with. I really liked the english voices in DQ8, while it was hardly the Witcher it had the slightest of rough edges to the characters, so far everyone has been far too nice. It's the wrong side of cliched too, you the born-again saviour, abandoned in a small village and have just discovered your origins and this is so far the worst thing about the game. Dragon Quest 5 has one of the great JRPG stories imo, 4 is unique, 7 is fairly decent, but the last couple have a really plain protagonist and a nothing story

 

It's too easy to begin with too. I'm still very early, and I've been running around the area outside the first town, getting in to fights against things I'd actually quite like plushies of, and for the most part I'm one-hitting, or only taking 2hp damage. It will get more interesting later on though, especially once there's a few more party members

 

It's very familiar, which is nice, I like the Dragon Quest games, and it's simple. They've brought back a couple of developments from past games. There's the 'pep' system I'm sure I used in something, I can't remember what though, but essentially, if you get hit a few times you become 'pepped up' (not enraged because, like I said, this game has no edge), and become more powerful. There's also skill points when you level up (once you're a bit in to the game). You'll still unlock spells naturally, as you gain levels, but there's other attributes and skills you can spend points to buy, opening up a hexagonal skilltree with each skill you pick. This might mean picking a special sword attack, a boost to your attack, or extra spells I'm not sure you'd otherwise learn

 

The pc version is very much a console port. I was playing it in 4k before and it looks ridiculously nice, but the graphics options are all on a scale of 1-3 (or 1-5), with stuff like shadows and AA being as far as you can drill down. There's also a console quirk where by, you can shut the game down from the menu in the game, but if you go to a church to save (there's sporadic autosaving, it really could do with something better on pc given you can't suspend), save, then when asked if you want to continue select no, you'll go back to the title screen, but there's no option to shut the game down from there. Not the end of the world, you can just alt F4, and the port itself runs perfectly well so far, just an odd thing I noticed

 

anyway, the main thing is it's adorable 

 

 

[radiofloyd]

Spot the glaring error.

[DANGERMAN]

Here's the thing, it wasn't a typo, I genuinely forgot what number we were up to 

[retroed]

I've had a lot on my plate recently and completely forgot this was out. I think I'm going to have to grab some cheap PSN credit and get a digital copy.

[DANGERMAN]

I should say, I've not played a huge amount more, but the story has a bit more to it now. Obviously it's not suddenly turned in to Shin Megami or Witcher or something, but there's a bit more meat to it

 

It's also opened up more moves, I've got a 2nd character with me. Hopefully I can play a bunch more today

[DANGERMAN]

I think I might have just got a blow job off a man wearing a horned gimp mask

[Jimbo Xiii]

8 minutes ago, DANGERMAN said:

I think I might have just got a blow job off a man wearing a large man wearing a horned gimp mask

Is that a typo or some kind of inception type blow job situation?

[DANGERMAN]

@Jimbo Xiii the joys of typing on a phone

[Craymen Edge]

58 minutes ago, DANGERMAN said:

I think I might have just got a blow job off a man wearing a horned gimp mask

 

I had to check this wasn't the shout thread, and your new running route hadn't taken a dramatic turn.

[DANGERMAN]

To give a proper update on this, I'm 10 hours in and it's really started to come together now. 

 

The area I'm in now, a desert palace area has been brilliant, genuinely funny. Tonaly it does something I don't associate with Dragon Quest, being funny when you don't think it's intending to be, it's certainly a long way from how it starts. 

 

The difficulty has picked up a little, it's still not hard, it's still a little mindless at times, but with 4 characters, all with different abilities it has got more interesting. The 2 spell casters have a perk that lets them recover magic regularly, it might be why they're physically so weak as you don't have to shy away from what they're good at. It is still very simple combat though, I think there is a subtle weakness system but it's buried. 

 

Something that does annoy me about the combat is the pre-emptive strike. Landing an attack prior to the fight starting does a small amount of damage to the enemy. In Persona it means you have the advantage in combat, here it doesn't, you can still be on the receiving end of a surprise attack even though you caught the enemy napping 

[radiofloyd]

Had my second session on this tonight and I’ve explored the opening area of Helidor. The game is obviously a love letter to DQ fans/DQ history and is a very traditional Dragon Quest game. The music and sound effects are instantly recognisable. You still smash pots and open wardrobes. The game looks lovely but I don’t think there would be any trouble porting it to the Switch.

[radiofloyd]

Reached the town of Hotto now and I’m really warming to this game. It’s absolutely beautiful. I wish I could have something like Breath of the Wild running beside it to compare them. The scenery is beautiful, the character designs are beautiful, the enemy designs are beautiful (and I like the enemy’s death animations) and the cut scenes are just...

 

Compared to games like BotW and XC2, DQXI feels very stripped back. Especially in terms of collectibles, exploration, systems, complexity. It’s just a traditional Dragon Quest game, with beautiful modern graphics. I mean there are some new touches like the forge (although I seem to remember there was crafting and recipes in VIII) and the character builder, but they are pretty modest additions. I like them though. 

 

The music is lovely, but if I had any criticism of the game so far, it would be the voice acting. The voice acting has been pretty bland/forgettable so far, especially compared to the wonderful voice acting of XC2 (in Japanese at least). I seem to remember liking the voice acting in VIII a lot too. But still I would rather a game had bland voice acting than no voice acting.

[radiofloyd]

Absolutely loving this. Around 17-18 hours in and I’m currently in the Venice-like town of Gondolia. The towns are wonderful in this game.

 

I love the level of detail in the NPC dialogue in the game and how it changes following events in the game. In the town of Gallopolis there are a couple of major events where the NPC dialogue changes each time. For example, an old man is giving betting advice on a horse race. After the race the NPCs are berating him for his bad advice. But then in the end he is kind of vindicated and his dialogue changes again. Same goes for a couple who are arguing and who eventually reconcile after the events of the main story. There’s also a nurse who is looking after a soldier and they end up becoming a couple...and so on.

 

The continuity in the NPC dialogue also extends to other areas, like the books in the game. In the town of Hotto you find the diary of a character called Tetsu the Blacksmith (Tetsu means iron in Japanese), who sets off to solve the mystery of the mini medals. In Gondolia you find the second volume of his diary which gives you more information.

 

And so on and so on. I love this game.

[radiofloyd]

Bombing my way through this. Around 30 hours in now and I have a full party of all seven characters and access to the open sea. Currently in the town of Lonalulu. 

[DANGERMAN]

I think that's not far off from where I've put it down. I'll go back to it next week, I did some stuff with a mermaid (not puff-puff sadly) which opened some stuff up, I can't remember after that though 

[DisturbedSwan]

 

So pleased to see this has done well (in the US at least) ?

[radiofloyd]

I had a busy few days but I went back to it today. Explored the girls boarding school where you can trade in more of your mini medals. Did a lot of crafting and improving my existing equipment, currently have nearly 40,000 gold in cash so I’m feeling pretty flush. Next stop is the Eerie Eyrie or whatever it’s called.

[radiofloyd]

Of course I had to go into their rooms at night to experience the additional dialogue.

[radiofloyd]

Finished up the story in Phnom Nonh which gave me the magic key, so now I can open red doors. All my characters are around level 31-33 and I have over 50,000 gold.

[radiofloyd]

Around 45 hours in now, I’m in the town of Arboria and I have all six orbs. I’m expecting a story twist or development along the lines of DQVIII at some stage, maybe it will come soon.

 

I want to save my overall opinions of this game for when I finish it, but in brief:

 

It’s a solid rpg as you would expect but I don’t think it’s one of the stronger Dragon Quests like 4, 5 or 8.

 

I’m not someone who crys our for originality in games but DQ11 does suffer from over-familiarity and a lack of bringing anything new to the table, and certainly a lack of ambition when you compare it to something like Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

 

The music is shockingly repetitive. There are lovely pieces of music that play at various points during cut scenes in the game, but in general you will hear the same one or two tunes over and over again. In every town the music is the same. Again, XC2 (and Breath of the Wild too I think) cast a long shadow over this game.

 

There are other things I could get into but that’s enough for now. Currently the game I would say is sitting on an 8/10 for me, and it could go up to a 9 or down to a 7 depending.