After beating the game Dragon Quest 11 that goes of an elusive age definitive edition, I wanted to highlight the game for those who haven't played it
or for those that have started. But haven't completed the reason for this article is that I think reviews tend to spoil your enjoyment of a game focusing too much on the negative aspects that many people will probably not notice or consider a positive of course bugs glitches and false promises are important to know before you purchase a game.
But I personally try not to watch or read reviews until finishing the game myself and if I ever plan on playing it. So for this video, i'll try to avoid as much spoilers as possible. I will be discussing and showing off video of the main characters overview of the plot and features of the game.
A lot of people like to crap on games. They don't like, so this non review will just describe things I liked about the game. If you want to review that highlights and negative parts. I'm sure you can find a lot of those on other channels or just read the zero reviews on Metacritic. So with that let's just jump into it.
If I had to describe Why I enjoy Dragon Quest 11 so much. In one sentence I would say that it takes the best parts of older Dragon Quest games and is able to make it a polished entertaining an epic adventure for our new generation.
If you haven't played a single Dragon Quest game, no problem. Since
each game has its own separate story. But if you have you may recognize the art
style, enemies, items, music, weapon types and much more from previous
iterations even the running gag of puff-puff is still loud and proudly
displayed in the game.
There's something about Dragon Quest 11 that makes it feel more like a first party Nintendo game in combination with the great cast of characters the writing. The dialogue is one of my favorite parts. Each town you visit have characters who speak with different dialects it's like the Spanish influence Marthaville or I must give credit to the devs and the localization team for hitting this one out of the park the game is absolutely charming the beautiful environments and monster design.
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It's been a long time since I actually enjoyed talking to NPCs in town to hear what they had to say at first sight. Because of the bright colors and style some may dismiss this as a kids game. But I would best describe it as a family-friendly game that kids and all the way up to middle aged men like myself will enjoy.
I can't tell you how many times the names of towns like sniffle him or characters like Elijah made me laugh. There are even cows that try to predict the weather talking monsters who aren't all evil in the adorable spirits chuckles that roam around the land these are all small things that I found.
A lot of humor in the game keeps the tradition of the silent protagonist who is voice acted as a child. But as an adult doesn't voice any dialogue unlike Western RPGs with multiple dialogue options that generally tend to give players a false sense of choices this game.
Often presents you with options as a yes or no answer. But you are generally forced into one answer to progress. I'm not sure if this is some kind of meta commentary on choices in most video games. But I got a lot of pleasure out of saying the wrong answer.
Just to see how characters would react how
could you say that look at this poor little creature can you go to stone for
something. But there are a couple of standout moments where your choices do
affect how a certain section of the story plays out which caught me off guard.
This game is easily up there with the best JRPGs on the market. It's an epic game in every sense of the word my playthrough took about 60 hours and you can double that for those who are completionists the side quests are great and offer worthwhile rewards in the form of items crafting plans or equipment.
There's a lot of variety in these plentiful side quests instead of the standard fetch or kill quests like most games some can be done just as a fun detour while others are not as straightforward.
Requiring you to talk to specific NPCs and locate a specific item across the map these rewarded with better items making it feel more worthwhile. As you can always see ahead of time what the reward will be I love story driven games and the story here is good it's quite traditional and involves you in a cast of colorful characters who are trying to take down an evil wizard that is plotting to take over the entire world.
You are the chosen one the one that people call the luminary who was prophesized to conquer this evil and bring light back to the world sounds familiar. But each character has their own interesting and satisfying story luckily travel and many aspects of the game have been made much less punishing compared to previous installments of the franchise.
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You can easily zoom or quick travel out of areas and into towns or camps you previously visited. You have the option of purchasing items from a vendor or crafting equipment using the forge with the ability to spend gold to purchase missing ingredients this always makes you feel that gold is a valuable resource and making combat more worthwhile.
Of course the best weapons can't be forged by purchasing the missing ingredients. But it does tell you where to find each item you can also rework items up to +3. In the Forge to improve their stats except when traveling the open seas random battles have been done away with enemies can be seen in the environments.
You can choose to initiate battle with them or run around them there
are a variety of different dungeons and bosses. But not as time-consuming or
difficult compared to previous games. Of course if challenge is what you're
looking for there's a lot of extra content after the game that wraps up significantly Dragon Quest 11 does endgame content right doesn't feel tacked on or as filler.
It keeps up with the same quality of the main quest.
You can also start the game with adjustable track own Ian's quests. It's great that you don't have to unlock these which traditionally might be seen as a games loop gain + content these draconian quests help customize your play style such as preventing exp gained from weaker enemies going straight to a game if your main character dies in battle or not being able to purchase items from vendors.
This is just a few among many more these can also be adjusted in game. If you change your mind later the franchise's turn-based combat has also been adjusted and gives you the option of traditional or the new combat system. In the new combat system you can assign tactics to your party members to automatically attack use spells or focus on healing no longer.
Do you have to input your actions and hope that your character doesn't die before your healer turn. It gives you a lot of freedom on how you want to play. I choose to always input commands for my main character while letting the AI controlled at rest during important battles. I would take control of all of my characters as I wanted them to use specific attacks or buffs.
The new definitive edition on the switch also includes a new 2d mode where you can play the entire game in traditional 2d glory. You can check out where I took a side-by-side look during the first hour of the game this is a great addition.
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But the game is so beautiful that you would miss out If you skip the regular 3d version. But similar to the draconian quests and redoing your skill points this can also be accessed to replay certain chapters anytime by visiting a save point with a party size a four and eight total characters to choose from you would think that half of the characters would be neglected.
Luckily, characters not participating in battle also gain experience. So you don't have to spend extra time leveling them up unlike other RPGs of their past. You can swap out Kayode characters from your party anytime without skipping your turn or needing to rest them for this comes in really handy when going up against a tough battle the one downside is that dead characters won't gain experience by the end of the battle if they remain dead while playing RPGs.
I usually default to the tank DPS and healer arc types for my party in
Dragon Quest 11. While multiple characters can fill the same roles characters
don't learn the exact same skills as they level up giving them each a
distinctive style. For example one character may be good at group healing or
heal over time effects. But not as strong single target heels or resurrection
spells each time you level up you also gain a certain amount of skill points
the early skills don't require much.
But the most powerful ones require you to save up or reallocate your points while some characters can equip the same weapons or equipment each character has a different skill tree to advance. You can choose to have a character play a more support role or you can focus on skills that just increase damage.
There are also hidden panels in the skill tree that are generally better and require more of an investment to unlock. But if you decide that you want to reset your skill points or found a new weapon that you want to specialize.
You can easily visit any safe point and spend goal to unlearn them. This is great for those heavy investment skills that turn out to be not as useful as it first expected such as dual wielding. I always imagine dual wielding to be super epic and like how my characters look building to badass weapons. But often forget that the offhand weapon does less damage that together with how much more damage I take without a shield always has me switching back and forth.
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All this gave me reasons to play and consistently try out all the characters in the game. one main mechanic of the game haven't mentioned yet is the ability to become kept up during battle and unleash epic powers after dealing and receiving damage to a periodically enter a pepped up state.
Which causes their character to glow and gain increased stats for a few turns. You can cut this effect short by using a pet power. There are a variety of different pet powers you can learn along the way that have a variety of different effects such as dealing damage to the enemy or buffing certain party members.
You can unlock different pet powers through the skill tree and specific moves require specific members to be pepped up all. At the same time you can unleash truly epic pet powers the more characters that are a part of it. But at the same time you have to determine if that special power is worth using up the temporary buff of being in that pept up speed Dragon Quest 11 is not only a great game for JRPG and Dragon Quest fans.
But stellar game for RPG fans in general aside from Persona 5 be my favorite RPG I would
say that Dragon Quest 11 is a close second now that's available on most
platforms. There's no excuse not to play it. I hope this got you guys
interested in the game or motivated enough to continue playing it.
Another thing I almost forgot to mention is that whenever you load up the game, you get a short recap of what was taking place in the story. It really helped me jump back into the game after my schedule got busy.
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I didn't play for a while for a lot of games the more time that passes the less I want to return. Because I feel I might as well start over or fill the need to watch recap videos without being spoiled. But the game makes it really easy to catch up and pick up where you left off.
I can continue to gush about the specific features moments or quests I enjoyed. But similar to what I mentioned at the beginning you'll find more enjoyment if you discover these on your own. So I hope this article helped you.
