Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age

The latest main entry in the Dragon Quest franchise, Dragon Quest XI follows The Luminary. Born with a destiny to save the world from The Dark One. When the King of Heliodor declares The Luminary is the cause of the rising monster population, the Luminary is now on the run. Gathering a group of friends from all over the World, the Luminary is seeking to discover how it is he is supposed to defeat the Dark One as well as discover why Heliodor declared him the enemy.

Old School Combat is done well

There are no other franchises out there that stick to their roots like Dragon Quest. The core of the combat has remained unchanged since the series' inception, and the game does not suffer for it in the slightest. That isn't to say the combat is entirely derivative, the game does its share to help it stand out.

In part, you have Pep Powers, which I'll get into in a minute, and in part the way you can customize each character. Level up to get points you can invest in different areas. It works like a big grid where you have a starting point. Unlock a panel, and nearby panels open up as well. Each character has at least two paths that focus on weapons and one path for more passives and abilities that can be used regardless of the equipped weapon.

I will say that some weapon paths feel like traps, I can't find a good reason to ever use whips for example. Similarly, you can apply this to knives as well. There just never seems to be a great reason to use them for their status effects when normal enemies can be dealt with easily without them, and trying to hit bosses with them tends to be more trouble than it's worth. That said you can always reallocate skill points for a small fee, so even if your build is terrible you aren't going to get stuck with a terrible character.

Pep Powers are a fun, but bloated, touch.

So characters can pep up and gain stat bonuses for so many rounds, Peping up being slightly random. On your turn, there is a chance you will pep up based on abilities or equipment that affect it, low HP, and other party members being pepped up. When multiple members have Pep Up, you can use special techniques. Some require you to know specific abilities, for example, Metalicker on Eric and Metal Slash on The Luminary gives you access to Metal Medley, which deals multiple hits to all enemies, bonus effectiveness against Metal enemies.

A handful of Pep Powers are great, but there is a lot of bloat here of abilities you will never use other than to just say you did. This is honestly the overwhelming majority of them. It's a system that gives you just enough to help freshen up the gameplay, but honestly isn't something that is going to be a huge selling point. You either like the gameplay of the DQ series or you don't, and this will do nothing to sway you one way or another. But it is still a nice touch.

The giant world feels a bit empty.

There is a lot of dead space in the world. All kinds of explorable corners only to come across some random and easy-to-find elsewhere material. The larger areas also suffer a bit from feeling a bit too samey way too quickly.

It's a problem compounded when you realize how easy enemies are to just avoid. It's almost comical how in most areas the enemies may as well not even move because skirting them is a trivial task. So much of the game just starts to feel like a long slow walk where nothing eventful is happening. Most dungeons ended up feeling like having a dungeon was pointless. When you can just pick and choose any fight, other aspects of the game start to feel like a drag.

Overall decent story with many low points

I am going to start this off by saying Erik was my spirit animal in this game. You are on the hunt for the Rainbough to give you access to Ygdrassil. The person you are looking for that has it is already crossed the sea on a boat, but currently, the docks are closed for a festival. Immediately everyone in your party decides it's not a big deal and to enjoy the festivities, everyone accept Erik. He is insistent you talk to the mayor of town and try to get on your way since the world is at stake and all that. But nope, everyone just fucks off to enjoy the party. The writing of the game often frustrates me with moments like this. There are more, but I will avoid the worst ones for spoiler purposes.

That said, there are some great moments. Many of these are between The Luminary and Jade, and the history of them back when the Luminary originally went missing. The problem is by and large the story is just okay, with few great moments and a lot of moments that make me want to punch someone in the face. It kind of all works out to be an okay story.

Dragon Quest in 3D has always suffered due to Mini Medal hunting.

Mini-Medal hunting has always been a bit of a tedious process, but in every fully 3D entry of the franchise, it's made even worse. Having to move around the camera, and the extra animations of characters and objects, it just drags the time out significantly. I will admit, this is a bit of a minor point, but it wasn't a topic I could stretch out for a full 'Old Man Yells at Clouds' post, so here it is. :p

Overall

Dragon Quest XI is a good game, no matter what version you are picking up. It's got that old-school DQ feel, some unique enough changes to keep it fresh, and some fun story beats and characters (Rab, Jade, and Erik being the best of them). But it is held back from being truly great by a lot of redundancy, some bloat that didn't need to be there, and some aspects of the story that can get frustrating. I recommend it, but I'd not look too a lot of those old 10/10 ratings as an accurate representation of what to expect.