Dragon Quest XI Re-Review (2018)

As of this writing we’re nearing the western release of Dragon Quest XI, over a year after the original Japanese release, back then I made a review after having spent over 100 hours on the PlayStation 4 version of the game. Now I’m going to rereview the game, but by looking at the version that isn’t getting localized, the Nintendo 3DS version.

If you want to read that original review click here, but be warned, it’s very poorly written.

While I’ll be talking about the 3DS version keep most of what I’ll say applies to both versions, the 3DS version is just a pocket size version of the PS4 one with a smaller world and chibi-esque characters, but aside from that there isn’t much difference, the world layout is the same, monsters are the same, music is the same and gameplay are the same.

Most of the screenshots posted here were also taken by me after playing the game on an emulator and as such are upscaled to 720p, they were taken after completing the post-game at level 99 as I wasn’t planning to write this and didn’t took screenshots before hand, for the most part I tried to make sure not to spoil locations, characters, weapons or anything that doesn’t appear on the English trailers for the game.

And just to show you have much I played:

Still limited to only 3 save files 30 years later though.

I’d say I can give you an honest opinion on the game, also I beat the game months ago, so I have had time to cool down and make some thoughts on it. This review won’t have any kind of score, I’ll just give you my opinion on the different aspects of the game, make your own conclusions base on that.

Also, for the sake of bias, yes, I’m a huge Dragon Quest fan, so much that I played 260 hours of a game despite not speaking Japanese fluently and have played all games in the series (except 10), so this are also thoughts of a hardcore fan of the series.

Dragon Quest XI is a Dragon Quest game through and through, it’s not a reinvention of the series like Zelda: Breath of the Wild or a modernization of one like Monster Hunter: World, the game makes no attempts at being an open world title, or has any kind of player retention, once the credits roll and The End appears on screen the game is truly over, there have been no DLC of any kind or even any kind of performance patches, the game released as intended and the plan was to make a classic JRPG in every way.

It’s not as if XI has no improvements over its predecessors, but its still structured as a classic JRPG and it doesn’t try to break the mold in any meaningful way, if you haven’t been able to enjoy Dragon Quest in the past its unlikely this will be the game to win you over (not that it won’t, just unlikely), if you’ve tried the series before, likely with VIII or IX, then this game will surpass those in just about anyway, and if you’re a long time fan you’re in for one of the finest adventures in the series and a love letter classic fans of the series.

Rather than trying new radical ideas XI opts to fine tune the systems already in place to craft the perfect Dragon Quest experience, from the characters, combat, dungeons, world, story and pacing all take cues from previous games in the series and with the use of some more modern game design technique and more powerful hardware managed to realize what an old school RPG would be in fully HD.

And 240p as well

As mentioned before, this is not an open world game nor does it attempt to be one, while you do get to explore a vast and varied world, the world itself is split into chunks with a defined entrance and exit, if anything the game is more closed than previous titles, though I find this to be an improvement as they have to carefully craft each individual zone rather than having just one large space. While smaller, each chunk of the world is much more detailed than any of the large areas of Dragon Quest VIII, with the detail comes variety helping the game feel much more vibrant, aside from the typical grasslands, there’s desserts, snow areas and the like. There’s also a lot of verticality in the game, no more just flat stretches of land, now there’s plenty of mountains hills and more to move around.

Grasslands tend to have more than just grass and trees now too.

Higher level of detail probably isn’t the reason why the world is split like that though, they likely wanted just one giant world as in Dragon Quest VIII, but chances are that technical limitations wouldn’t let them, as moving from area to area involves loading. Mind you loading times aren’t too bad and you’ll only see a loading bar when moving to a large area or when teleporting, either way this wasn’t in the previous games, and its only present on the PS4 version.

Dragon Quest III took inspiration from the real world when crafting its world, as the world map of the game parallels ours, but one of the more interesting things it did was having the towns of the game be related to the culture that its there on real life, from the clothing to the NPCs to the buildings and the like, other Dragon Quest titles tried to follow suit, but most went for the typical JPRG tradition in which cities tend to have all a similar look and feel. XI went with the style of III where each town is distinct from one another, and with some having real world parallels as well, each town as its own layout and characters and role in the overall story, there isn’t a town that you visit one and do essentially nothing to never return as in with many JRPGs.

The japanese style village of Homura was one of my favorites

XI takes an approach similar to Dragon Quest VII where each town is its own little vignette, sometimes with characters and stories all they’re own, removed from the main story. Its not at the scale of VII, but its great world building and helps the world feel more alive and you’ll have to return to sometimes numerous time on your adventure.

Now about the living world, while it’s a step above previous entries is still not quite there yet, for the most part NPCs are still like in older games at a fixed position at day and other at night, with some moving around the towns on a fixed path, the most “living” this world gets is that certain monsters will be found sleeping at night but that’s about it.

Enemies tend to despawn and respawn very quickly on the 3DS version, you'll see this more often on the PS4 version.

Another aspect of world building typically found on RPGs are side quests and this is an aspect in which the game sadly lacks, don’t expect side quests on the level of something like The Witcher 3 or the Fallout games, the quest system in this game is essentially the same found on Dragon Quest IX, most side quests entail fighting a certain number of enemies or getting a certain number of items, so they’re typically fetch quests, and aside from helping a quirky NPC there’s not much story on them. The main difference between this and the one found in Dragon Quest IX is that quests in XI don’t have items that can’t be found anywhere else and as such the system can be ignored entirely without missing much, so they’re not a detriment to the experience but could be so much more.

The main cast of Dragon Quest XI is the strongest in the series, when considering how large the cast is, most comparisons will be to Dragon Quest IV. XI works by mixing how IV and VIII work, the cast develops throughout the entire game but also each one gets part of their game for their own, each character have their own story to tell and will get a lot of story to themselves before joining the hero and afterwards, also on the game you have the entire cast all the time, save for when characters leave for story reasons, but there’s no wagon or bar, if you want to switch characters out of your party you can do it at any moment, even during battle. This works in the story as in cutscenes the whole gang is there and all are important in the main story, some more than others sure but all take their part in saving the world and all have their own side story in addition, it also helps that all characters have fantastic designs and personalities so these are characters you care about, can’t say much else without spoilers though.

All characters are unique and useful in battle too, so its recommended to switch parties constantly as some will be more efficient than others in certain areas. XI builds up on the skill panel introduced in Dragon Quest VIII but its used at its full potential here, each character is proficient with 2-3 weapons each time you level up you get some skill points that can be used on the skill panel to unlock, well, a skill, which is a technique used in battle that can be used when the character is equipped with a certain weapon, that’s how it works on VIII and IX, what works in XI is that you can chose which skill to unlock depending on how many skill points you have, rather than the others where you just unlock skill points when reaching a certain number of skill points, this little change makes the game much more dynamic in battle as it better to have characters master multiple weapons as opposed to VIII and IX where is better to just settle for one, more importantly before purchasing a skill you can see what it does and plan accordingly as you grind, apart from offensive tactics skills can also unlock more strength, HP and MP and the like.

The new addition to combat are zone moves, at certain moments during combat characters may enter zone mode where they’ll start go glow blue, then you’ll be able to perform a special attack that uses multiple characters, not unlike the ones seen in Chrono Trigger. The more characters in zone the more devastating the move may be, it can get crazy, but zone is not something you can depend on as, from my experience, it seems to happen somewhat randomly, don’t expect to use them as limit breaks.

Aside from that, it’s Dragon Quest turn based combat, chose what to do, see the characters do it, see the enemies counter attack, rinse and repeat, same spells, same weapons and all, be it controlling the whole party or only the hero with 3 AI partners. Though the PS4 version has a new free camera mode where you can move inside combat, but it serves no tactical purpose or changes the gameplay, you just can move character around but that’s it, range or attacking monsters on the back changes nothing. No random battles either, all monsters are always visible in the world, so you fight when you want, though they’ll try to chase you when they spot you, unless you’re at high levels when they run away. This helps on the longer dungeons when the tedium can begin.

Talking about dungeons, this game has many, and they’re great, dungeons have the same verticality as seen in the rest of the world, overall the dungeon design of the game is great, no dungeons look alike and having great breaks between then help the monotony, never was I hoping for a dungeon to just end, there’s great variety in look, design, layout and even overall objectives.

Another new addition are the campsites, throughout the world and certain dungeons you’ll be able to set up a camp where you can rest, save, buy items and even chat with the party, certain party interactions are only present here. You’ll also be able to fast travel through campsites so going to a town isn’t always necessary, though you may only go to the ones in the overworld. Included in the campsites is another new mechanic, the foundry.

There's a mild spoiler here which I censored, but there was no way for me to get a better picture

The foundry comes as a replacement for the alchemy pot in Dragon Quest VIII and IX, and serves the same purpose, to forge armor and items, there’s a key difference however is that you can’t experiment on it, you may only forge items if you have the correct blueprints, so you can’t just pop a couple of items and see what happens, the game doesn’t do it for you, however, as you still need to forge the item, obviously with the blue print and materials. I was unable to fully understand this system on my playthrough, but you need some extra steps as to craft the item with good stats, though you can do a mediocre job to get mediocre stats, or just ignored the system all together, most weapons can be obtained some other way, even if later on, additionally you can improve items on the foundry, so if you get a hang of it, it should be very useful.

If you don’t enjoy turn based combat then this isn’t for you because that’s what it is, combat doesn’t evolve much throughout the game either, apart from getting better skills and enemies using more status effects it’s the same through the entire game.

The story is also great, the set up for it is the typical Dragon Quest stuff, ancient demon wants to put world in darkness and all that, but the game subverts expectations and does some cool stuff with its story, its not groundbreaking stuff but there’s a lot of fan service for old fans, and even then, great heroes, great villains and a great supporting cast makes it a ton of fun. One thing that contributes to the presentation of the story is the great use of cutscenes, the game has several of them, the most out of the series and the direction of them is excellent, great framing, great movement and grate pacing, most cutscenes are done in real time so no loading either, though there are a handful or so prerendered cutscenes in the game, saved for special occasions, overall cutscene quality if leagues above Dragon Quest VIII.

The weakest aspect of the game is easily the music, it’s not bad per see but taken the soundtrack is among the weakest of the series, though there are some beautiful melodies between very forgettable ones. A good chunk of the soundtrack is also remixes from older games, mainly Dragon Quest III, more so that the music reused in Dragon Quest IX. Sadly, if the quality of the compositions wasn’t bad enough the sound quality is weak as the tracks are midi, sound effects sound fine but the music really suffers is this game.

Minor nitpicks I have aside, I would’ve liked a difficulty option for the game would’ve been nice, if you know what you’re doing with skills and magic you can absolutely break this game doing 9000+ damage per turn. Mind you that you can create your own difficulty curve by just fighting the bare minimum and ignoring skills, but even then, I think having an option would be good. 

I didn’t run into any performance issues or glitches at all, so no complaints there, performance is solid, the music and the disappointing side quests are the only negatives I can give Dragon Quest XI.

I loved this game, it was just about everything I wanted for a modern Dragon Quest title and it’s the most fun I’ve had with a JRPG in a very long time, it comes with the highest recommendation to everyone who has ever enjoyed an RPG. To end just a final recommendation.

This adventure doesn’t end when you think it ends.