Dragon Quest XI Review || The (Almost) Perfect Dragon Quest

Dragon Quest 11 has been a long time coming, as Dragon Quest 9 is a DS original game and Dragon Quest 10 is a Wii-exclusive Japanese MMO. Since Dragon Quest 8 in 2005, we haven't received a fully 3D entry in this The legendary J RPG series leading up to its western release Dragon Quest 11 had a lot of hype around it and, for good reason, based on the images available, the game It looked incredible and upon its initial release in Japan, received rave

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s from fans and critics alike. Given Japan's absolute obsession with the series, this isn't surprising, but now that I've had a lot of time with the game, let's take a look at Dragon Quest 11 and see how it fares next to its contemporaries, as well as what came before it.

Virgil for core JRPG and this is my

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of Dragon Quest 11, echoes of an elusive era. If you've never played a Dragon Quest game before, let me ease your worries right away. Dragon Quest 11 is the best game to start with if you are new. the series is the prettiest, the most accessible both in terms of gameplay and where you can play it, and luckily for you, the games aren't really connected at all, there are minor callbacks of course, and some inferior stuff that you They'll love them if you're a Big Dragon Quest idiot like me, but nothing will leave you in the dark or confused.

The story in Dragon Quest xi is a standard affair, at least at first glance, you take control of the luminary, the reincarnation of the legendary Earth warrior he once saved. free the world from a great evil, once you come of age you set out on your journey to fulfill your destiny as a luminary and drive away the darkness that will plague the world once again, although there is nothing original in this setup, the execution of The story is actually quite good, there are many twists and turns that keep the story engaging from start to finish and thanks to the fantastic cast of characters, the story never stops being enjoyable.

The cast of Drain Quest 11 is simply stellar, possibly the best in the Erik School series. However, Veronica's so-so behavior and reckless attitude contrast wonderfully with her and Silvano's short stature, so Vaughn's donis are all incredible and such a diverse cast of characters that I loved spending time getting to know them as circumstances changed. changed throughout the story, new revelations deepened the bonds between existing characters and further developed others, this is certainly a cast of characters I won't soon forget, unlike other JRPGs that came out this year, the art direction Dragon Quest 11's gameplay is top-notch, aside from the odd oversight on texture work here and there, specifically on Zuman. the game looks absolutely stunning.

Akira Toriyama's distinctive style has never before been so accurately rendered in 3D, from the character models to the places you visit. Everything has Toriyama's authentic artistic seal. The characters are incredibly well animated and well acted. I was hoping they would and something that surprised me when I finally realized it was that the lip sync matches the English dub

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ly. It's probably among the best lip syncs I've ever seen, especially for a jrpg, and it's even more impressive. when you realize that the Japanese version didn't have any voice acting so this was something made specifically for the international release as far as the animations go, although the enemies easily stop the show they animate so fluidly and are packed with of charm, how this death looks.

The animation of this hooded enemy notes how when you kill him, his ax flies into the air before coming down and hitting him in the head. Almost all of the enemies have cute animations like that that really bring them to life more than just a standard mob. In a standard G RPG, some of their designs are also taken directly from the older games and it's amazing how faithful they are to their retro incarnations, especially considering that these are fully rendered 3D models, but from The front match

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ly with their 8-bit and 16-bit counterparts, this world that these characters and enemies inhabit feels so authentic and well-realized that it is packed with different cities full of shops, NPCs and side

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s to complete.

I was particularly impressed by the large amount of dialogue in the game, outside of one or two per town, you can talk to all the NPCs and they have a lot to say and every time something changes in the story or the environment, everyone in the city would have new dialogues to discover. I can't even imagine the amount of work that went into localizing the enormous amount of text in this game. It's also worth noting that during this localization they heavily updated the UI and menus to bring the game in line with other modern games. In Japan, the game had the same basic white text.

Regarding the black backgrounds the series has had since the NES days, this was clearly intentional and while there is certainly nostalgia, I'm glad they updated the game with proper menus. Square should be commended for their work here and, honestly, for bringing the game overseas. Not at all, Dragon Quest has never been a big seller anywhere other than its home country, so when I started seeing official announcements in the US, Dragon Quest accounts appear on sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. . I knew Square was putting its money where its mouth was and really giving Dragon Quest 11 a fair chance at success.

They pushed this game harder than any other western game and Dragon Quest. released and I really appreciate the effort here because the more people know about Dragon Quest 2, the better I'll say that how much you enjoy Dragon Quest 11's gameplay will depend on how old you like your JRPGs if you've played Dragon Quest. previous game, you're good, you know exactly what you're getting, however if you've never played Dragon Quest before you should keep in mind that the series has pretty much followed the if it ain't broke don't fix it model. Since the game's early battles are turn-based, there's no ATB, no turn order manipulation, just good old-fashioned turn-based gameplay, if that's not your thing then you probably won't like Dragon.

Quest Elevens will confront him, even if you can call. However, if you are a die-hard fan of classic turn-based gameplay and classic retro JRPGs, then Dragon Quest 11 will feel right at home. I will say at the very least that the game abandons random encounters like so many others. Modern JRPGs nowadays have the only thing the game does to try to mix up the formula is giving you the possibility to change the so-called battle mode. You can change this in the settings and have the option to choose between freeform fighting and classic camera The classic camera is self explanatory, the camera remains locked and we will give you the usual cinematic angles when attacking, healing etc. the option Freeform fighting, on the other hand, not only unlocks the camera, giving you full control during battles.

It also allows you to control and move your character around the battlefield during them. The only caveat is that the core gameplay remains unchanged, so yes, even though you can move, you'll still be taking turns and selecting options from a menu once it's your turn. and you can only move once your action has been selected, even then movement doesn't really add anything to the game. There are no positional advantages here, so attacking an enemy from behind, for example, will deal just as much damage as attacking them from the front. I appreciate the effort of trying to do something to change it, but in my opinion it really isn't enough and for the most part I recommend sticking with the classic camera mode before fighting; however, you will need some. equipment, of course, you can buy it in the various stores in the game, but that is not your only option.

Using the resources you find along your journey, whether through exploration or completing side

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s, you can forge all new weapons and armor to use in battle. To do so, you'll first need to find crafting recipes, which are obtained by breaking into various strangers' houses and scavenging through their things; Of course, a protagonist is one you must do during your adventures. Make sure you keep an eye out for the red books. will contain historical information about the city you are in or, more useful, the crafting recipes mentioned below. Once you have a recipe, you can set up camp, take a break reading your favorite novel before rolling up your sleeves and putting down the hammer.

Ironing to create all new forged gears is optional I guess, since most of the things you make can be purchased later for a price, so if it's not your thing, you can ignore it. I wouldn't recommend it as forged and what goes with it. minigame you use to forge our nice, quiet breaks from the action of fighting monsters in general there's always something to do in Dragon Quest 11 you can forge some dresses made of steel throw away your hard-earned gold at the casino playing poker break people attend the cosplay convention and much more, when the end credits finally rolled I had invested over one hundred and forty hours into the game, far more than any other JRPG main story in recent memory.

I'm sure you could shave off maybe 10 to 20 hours of that for downtime or just random exploration, but it's still an impressive 120 hours of content. There's the main story, which in itself is decently long, but the later game is meaty in its own right and the way Dragon Quest Eleven handles it is pretty interesting - honestly, it's something they could have gotten away with charging for. money as a DLC add-on because it will take you an extra 20-30 hours to see everything the later game has to offer, the great value here for the content you get in the game cannot be overstated.

I think my only complaint here is that the exploration was surprisingly linear. The second time I went somewhere, the story didn't directly tell me to go only to find out I couldn't do it. anything there until the story directly told me to go there, I completely stopped exploring off the beaten path. Dragon Quest has never been known for its extensive non-linearity or anything like that, but given how large some of the environments are, this continued. to be disappointed and discouraged every time it happened, moving on to the biggest disappointment and let's face it, everyone knew this was coming.

I can review Dragon Quest 11 without addressing the huge toy trumpet played by the elephant in the room, which is the game's music. What Drag Quest 11 lacks, the only place it fails

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completely is with its music at its best, it's passable generic RPG music at its worst, however, it's the worst, you've probably already heard the many complaints online about the music in the game, but if you haven't played it yet, you may not know that there are actually two huge problems with Dragon Quest Eleven's score. Let's start with the most obvious offender, which is the quality of the actual recordings.

Dragon Quest Eleven uses midi samples for its entire soundtrack, apart from, ironically, the opening video, which is the first piece of music you hear in the game, which by the way does a great job of showing you what you're missing, now this it is what MIDI itself inherently is not. bad, there are plenty of good, even great sounding, electronically sampled soundtracks out there, but when used lazily or cheaply you end up with a final product that sounds like this now, if that sounds good to you then we'll have to agree on disagree with this one because it was easily the worst piece of music I heard in the game.

In fact, I sat my controller down to watch it when the battle started. The images you just saw. I didn't go back and record that that was the first time I did that. battle and the first time I heard that song I literally stopped. I could hardly believe what was coming out of my television. It's not just that the game uses MIDI samples, which is no longer ideal, but it uses samples that are below average at best, I refuse to believe that in 2018 or 2017, if you want to go outside the Japanese release date, these are the best MIDI samples the team could have created, there are much better sounding samples in much older games and there really is just no excuse for the product we received on top of this, however I think the actual compositions are lacking here and many of the songs are pre-existing in tune, which I don't necessarily have a problem with, but the new compositions are not impressive in the slightest take on the casino theme, for example, both the MIDI and orchestral versions of this song are terrible because a bad song is a bad song regardless of the instruments used when you compare it to other high profile JRPGs, it's just embarrassing not only that Dragon Quest 11's score doesn't compare to games like Persona 5, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or even Octopus Traveler , which was ironically trying to be retro, doesn't even compare to what came before, whether you like it or not.

Square Enix set aprecedent with Dragon Quest. 8 and its accompanying score when released in 2005 in the US and 2006 in PAL territories, this was the first 3D entry in the series, having skipped 3D entirely for the ps1 for many people. Dragon Quest in 3D free is synonymous with symphonic score. It's part of what made 3d Dragon Quest 3d Dragon Quest in the case of Dragon Quest 8 gave the game a whimsical and

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magical atmosphere that, honestly, few other games I've played have been able to replicate and in the same way that the motion. to 3d was in a way the full realization of the worlds that Yuji Horii had created.

The orchestrated soundtrack was equally the full realization of all of CO HG Suzy Ami's previous work. There were orchestrated albums of his work on the earliest games sold in Japan. back in the day, but this was the first time you could hear Sugiyama stru's vision for his compositions. While he played the same games he composed them for and it was a powerful thing, the man is a classically trained composer, for the love of God, even his NES compositions, as limited by technology as they were at the time, were composed in the style of classical music, this is the reason they translate so well in the living room to begin with. of orchestra, all this without mentioning the fact that Sugiyama is famous for being overprotective of his work.

An orchestrated version of the soundtrack exists, but only as a product that Sugiyama wants to sell you. This is the only reason the game doesn't have a quality soundtrack so Sugiyama can sell these albums separately, this whole situation really bothers me, no doubt the man is a legend, but his stubbornness continues to affect the product quality, fortunately if you have a pretty decent gaming PC, there is a mod that swaps the original MIDI files with the appropriate symphonic versions of the tracks, they're even looped properly and everything, and let me tell you, it's a difference between the day and night, the whole tone changes. of the game and as a ps4 player it honestly breaks my heart that I won't be able to experience this the day I return to this game.

It will definitely be a PC game with this mod installed. I think the reason this bothers me so much is The missed opportunity of everything Dragon Quest 11 had the potential to be better than any other Dragon Quest game ever made in literally every way, but the music prevents it from achieving that feat and This, along with these stupid reasons behind it, make it incredibly awesome. It's a tough pill to swallow, that being said, Dragon Quest 11 is still an incredible JRPG, for the most part delivering the vision that Dragon Quest 8 set out to achieve on PlayStation 2. It has a vaster, more detailed world and thanks to Unreal Engine 4 Akira.

Toriyama's art and characters can come to life like never before. Dragon Quest's classic gameplay remains largely unchanged, but that's because it's tried and true, and the game's only major bug can be easily remedied with a mod, if you're playing on a PC. It's definitely the way I recommend playing, whether you're a Dragon Warrior veteran or someone looking to finally jump into the series Dragon Quest 11 is a fantastic experience for fans and newcomers alike, it's both the starting point. perfect and a wonderful throwback. to the same series that created my favorite game genre Hey guys, thank you so much for watching if you really made it this far in the video.

I seriously appreciate it. I know this review was a long time coming, but I'm glad I finally got it. is available for you, I hope you still enjoyed it, if you enjoyed it be sure to leave a thumbs up and leave a nice comment below. I have a lot of other things planned for December, so be sure to keep an eye out for that. Always thank you very much for watching. I hope everyone has a great day and I'll see you in the next video.