DragonQuest 11 - A simple yet beautifully enjoyable RPG

[CriticalGaming]

If you have ever played previous Dragonquest games you'll already know what you are in for with DQ11. The simple turn-based combat, a story that inserts many mini stories within the framework of a more overarching plot, the colorful and humorously drawn monster and character designs, and fantastic orchestral soundtrack, everything the series is known for is here in DQ11 and remains just as good as it has always been.

If anything can be said about DQ11 is that it is simply more of the same. Which after decades of developmental progress in RPG's in general you might consider that to be a good or bad thing.

Frankly I find it refreshing, considering that most JRPG's these days have to bombard you with over convoluted mechanics that ultimately add jackshit to the gameplay itself (see Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for an example of terrible combat that is complex for no reason), it is nice that Dragonquest remains a very simple, turn based rpg combat system. Select your character's actions form a menu, and take turns beating the shit out of the enemy. It's classic, and to this day it is still good and engaging. IMO DQ11 benefits from it's simplicity by allow the player to have a straightforward system of actions they can do and leaves no mystery on whether the player is struggling because they are failing at a mechanic that they don't quite understand.

Additionally the story in DQ is simple, at least the mini stories within the main story. Many of the storys play out with the same formula:

1. Arrive at new place
2. Witness a problem within the new place.
3. Go solve that problem.
4. Come back to new place reap reward and progress the main story a little which in turn send you off to repeat step 1.

It's charming in how it gives the characters in every area a bit of life. You care about them without knowing much about them because they are just so charmingly presented.

If you love JRPG's and are looking for something that is old-school, yet has beautifully next gen graphics, then I highly recommend DQ11.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

I like the game so far, but after playing Octopath I wish it had a similar system of pressing left or right on the d pad to swap weapons. I've played all the DQ games other than 7 and 10, and I still have no idea what is weak to which element if at all.

I usually ignore attack magic over just using boomerangs/whips or other weapon skills to hit more than one enemy. I also felt spoiled in Octopath being able to see the exact turn order.

I already like Erik way more than Therion. I just got Veronica and Serena, and I'm already ready to replace Veronica with anyone else.

 

[CriticalGaming]

I like the game so far, but after playing Octopath I wish it had a similar system of pressing left or right on the d pad to swap weapons. I've played all the DQ games other than 7 and 10, and I still have no idea what is weak to which element if at all.

I usually ignore attack magic over just using boomerangs/whips or other weapon skills to hit more than one enemy. I also felt spoiled in Octopath being able to see the exact turn order.

I already like Erik way more than Therion. I just got Veronica and Serena, and I'm already ready to replace Veronica with anyone else.

Octopath is another game that missed widely on it's potential. While the combat system was decent, the way the game inflates enemy health just to make them feel threatening is poor to me. Not to mention the story itself flops by not having any of the character mean anything to any of the other characters. It's like 8 stories that do not connect and each person just randomly has helpers in battle. I feel like the developers were too concerned with making sure the game's graphic style was amazing (and it is) that everything else got pushed aside. I was highly disappointed in Octopath.

 

[meiam]

It looked good but the only DQ game I really got into was 8, Tried 9 and it didn't do it for me and 10 looked really meh.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The voice acting though, Jesus Christ! Don't know if there's an option to change it to Japanese, but I was getting Ape Escape 2 flashbacks.

 

[Foxcubwendigo]

I think DQ11 is a good game, but it's just not gripping me, I'm afraid.
I'll probably give it a go again later, but for now I'll stick with Octopath.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

The voice acting though, Jesus Christ! Don't know if there's an option to change it to Japanese, but I was getting Ape Escape 2 flashbacks.

DQ is meant to be silent. There's no Jp language option, you're supposed to switch off the voices completely to get the original experience. A lot of the animations are extra dramatic to compensate that lack of voice acting. The best way to describe DQ is like you're reading a living shounen manga drawn by Akira Toriyama.

The English dub was added just to the localized version cause for some reason they thought it'd make it more palatable. Sadly, anime look combined with the English language leads to horrendousness.

It looked good but the only DQ game I really got into was 8, Tried 9 and it didn't do it for me and 10 looked really meh.

10 was an MMO so that's natural. 9 was great though, not sure what about it you'd dislike if you liked 8. Still, this game is a main console game and not an MMO so it's more akin to 8 than the other two.

 

[meiam]

It looked good but the only DQ game I really got into was 8, Tried 9 and it didn't do it for me and 10 looked really meh.

10 was an MMO so that's natural. 9 was great though, not sure what about it you'd dislike if you liked 8. Still, this game is a main console game and not an MMO so it's more akin to 8 than the other two.

9 was the DS one right? Because you made your entire party none of the character had personality and felt like they were real, just a bunch of doll you carried around. The class system just wasn't that interesting, with no interesting combination or development. The basic story was just so paint by number on top of that, I just didn't see a point.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

It looked good but the only DQ game I really got into was 8, Tried 9 and it didn't do it for me and 10 looked really meh.

10 was an MMO so that's natural. 9 was great though, not sure what about it you'd dislike if you liked 8. Still, this game is a main console game and not an MMO so it's more akin to 8 than the other two.

9 was the DS one right? Because you made your entire party none of the character had personality and felt like they were real, just a bunch of doll you carried around. The class system just wasn't that interesting, with no interesting combination or development. The basic story was just so paint by number on top of that, I just didn't see a point.

DQ9 is supposed to be played multiplayer, meaning, the other 3 party members will be player controlled characters, so they can't have a story since each one is "the protagonist" in their respective game.

The protag, however, definitely had his own story as an angel and so on which was on par with other games. If not more so than VIII's protag who only gets a bit of the spotlight near the end. You see the whole angel business through and while the story does focus more on the world events and not on your own personal party members, I found those events as being thoroughly charming and fun to experience.
It's a world-driven storytelling approach as opposed to a character-driven one and as long as it's done well I like either one.

Also the classes were a LOT more varied than what you could do in VIII. VIII just had each party member locked as a sort of class hybrid between two of them while here you got a lot more freedom to mix and match. Not sure if you got to the post-game but that's where the class really shines. DQ9 has pokemon-levels replayability with the postgame dungeons and if you don't really delve into that for a hundred hours or more you won't even have scratched the surface of the class system.

 

[meiam]

9 was the DS one right? Because you made your entire party none of the character had personality and felt like they were real, just a bunch of doll you carried around. The class system just wasn't that interesting, with no interesting combination or development. The basic story was just so paint by number on top of that, I just didn't see a point.

DQ9 is supposed to be played multiplayer, meaning, the other 3 party members will be player controlled characters, so they can't have a story since each one is "the protagonist" in their respective game.

The protag, however, definitely had his own story as an angel and so on which was on par with other games. If not more so than VIII's protag who only gets a bit of the spotlight near the end. You see the whole angel business through and while the story does focus more on the world events and not on your own personal party members, I found those events as being thoroughly charming and fun to experience.
It's a world-driven storytelling approach as opposed to a character-driven one and as long as it's done well I like either one.

Also the classes were a LOT more varied than what you could do in VIII. VIII just had each party member locked as a sort of class hybrid between two of them while here you got a lot more freedom to mix and match. Not sure if you got to the post-game but that's where the class really shines. DQ9 has pokemon-levels replayability with the postgame dungeons and if you don't really delve into that for a hundred hours or more you won't even have scratched the surface of the class system.

Even though the class system was a lot freer than DQ8 statics system, it was just so shallow at what it tried to do (at least from the first 10 hour which had 0 hint of anything complex ever happening) than it felt like a failed system. I'd rather a system that has modest potential and succeed than one with big ambition but fail to deliver anything interesting. There just wasn't really any interesting choices to be made, you just picked a class and that was kinda it. From what I understand the end game is just grind fest central, with little interesting choice and decision and only rely on accumulating more exp.