Dragon Quest Xi Echoes of an Elusive Age Review

Dragon Quest eleven review

A whole lot of game

By Aug 28, 2018, 9:00am EDT

Square Enix

I've had a complicated relationship with Dragon Quest 11: Echoes of an Elusive Historic period over the terminal couple of weeks, when I spent about 70 hours playing through it.

Dragon Quest 11 might but exist the all-time instance of a Japanese office-playing game I've always played: Information technology's a great case of the genre, but that doesn't necessarily make it a neat game. Information technology's been a long time since I played a turn-based JRPG, merely my problem with Dragon Quest 11 wasn't but the usual aligning menstruation when starting a new game. Information technology was with the game as a whole — because it's just a whole lot of game. And while information technology may seem absurd to complain about getting so much for the price, its length raises a comparing betwixt quantity and quality. Dragon Quest xi likewise often extols the virtues of the onetime at the expense of the latter.

Dragon Quest 11'south globe, Erdrea, is rendered in a gentle cel-shaded fashion that is fantastical, immersive and gorgeous. And Erdrea is huge. At that place are dozens of locations that you tin visit, each with its own visual mode and population of varying-degrees-of-helpful NPCs. You tin can figure out where you are in the globe by the mural or architecture, or even the manner the characters speak. As with so much of Dragon Quest 11, the scope seems enormous and deep, but turns out to be limited and fairly shallow.

And so beautiful, so little to practise.

Square Enix

All of those towns and locations you visit are unique — there's the desert-themed city, the Polynesian-themed city, the city where everyone speaks in haiku — and beautiful. Every city is populated with NPCs you can talk to, and each of them has something unique to say. Only after visiting a few of them, information technology becomes articulate that their individuality is not much deeper than a reskin. Every town has a save point, an item store, an armor and weapon shop, the person y'all talk to for your mission(s), and not much else. The NPCs might requite you a vague hint about where to get, but they're just equally probable to give a Chamber of Commerce pitch virtually the town. All the lavish detail that goes into making the Scandinavian-inspired city singled-out from the beach resort city fades into the groundwork when you're only at that place as a stepping stone.

Every city is a stepping rock because Erdrea isn't really open for yous to explore: Dragon Quest 11 is a linear game. You lot can always go backward to revisit places you've been — to do some shopping or pick up some side quests — but you're never free to just explore and discover on your own. That's not a trouble, simply its advent is somewhat deceptive. Locations like lavish-looking cities are invariably little more waypoints, existing only to move you to your next destination. Across beautiful visual variation, they lack depth. Sure, there are townsfolk to speak to, monsters to fight and items to collect along the way if you want to, only they feel insignificant. And Dragon Quest 11 won't progress until you terminate walking through the town corridor and unlock the gate to the next area. Too ofttimes, I institute myself rushing by intricately detailed locations just to go to the next waypoint.

All of the world-building that went into creating Erdrea illustrates the problem I had with Dragon Quest 11. It'southward clearly a lovingly crafted game, full of detail in a rich world, merely all that detail exists on elevation of the game. It pushes the experience from fully realized toward overcomplicated.

That overcomplication stands out — and becomes a trouble — because, at its centre, Dragon Quest xi is a simple game. Your progression through the main storyline is linear and (literally) heavily gated. You take to manage your team's abilities and gear, but y'all never control their base of operations stats, just their special abilities and what weapons they do the virtually damage with. NPCs and even your ring of heroes are always full of hints virtually where to go next, so you're never lost. The various miniboss fights make sure yous're prepared to progress to the next expanse and its more challenging monsters. It's a game that leads y'all by the hand (or the nose, depending on your mood) through a relatively narrow path, but that path is so stuffed with things of niggling to no consequence that information technology starts to feel claustrophobic.

I promise you lot love monsters with pun names and oversized tongues.

Square Enix

This is part of what led to my complicated relationship with Dragon Quest 11. It'south a "yes, but …" situation. Every bit an example, during combat, you can optionally make your heroes run around in the tiny boxing loonshit. This is a neat feature to tack onto a game where you don't really do much in combat beyond navigating menus — except it doesn't really practise anything. Where your heroes stand doesn't broaden their attacks or defense. There'due south no cover mechanic. There's no contrivance mechanic. Yous're just moving your character effectually. And so, yep, information technology's neat, only it'southward pointless.

Dragon Quest eleven is an quondam JRPG updated for today'southward audience and modernistic hardware. And as comfortable and familiar as that might feel, it may actually exist to the game's detriment. Yes, it ran flawlessly on my PlayStation 4 and rendered Erdrea beautifully, merely something simply feels wasted playing a text carte-based game on my big Boob tube. Yes, pressing a button to advance dialogue is pretty standard in the genre, simply it turns cutscenes into tiresome quick-time events instead of a cinematic moment.

In a game that takes 70 hours merely to complete the main story — and well over 100 to finish everything else — every complaint becomes magnified. Load screens get grating, and fighting monsters becomes an badgerer. Every obstacle between y'all and your destiny becomes "Thanks Mario! Only our princess is in another castle" padding, rather than something to overcome, unless yous're completely invested in the tropes of this genre.

Thanks Mario! But our orb is in some other castle.

Square Enix

There's an quondam Penny Arcade comic that says that the difference between a derivative piece of work and an homage is only whether or not the consumer likes it, and that sentiment underlies my relationship with Dragon Quest 11. The story is somewhere between a tried-and-true hero'due south journey and a fantasy-themed Mad Libs. The characters are fun archetypes or, if you start to get frustrated, they go slow (or even offensive) stereotypes. Those 70 hours of story are either a robust saga total of twists and turns, or only padding to fill out your time. Combat is either a adventure to pit yourself against the game's endless variety of enemies, or a time to auto-fight while you become a cup of coffee. It all depends so much on what you expect and what luggage you bring to the game.

A lot of my complaints are about the cadre conceits. The graphics and telescopic, while updated, are grafted onto a frail and crumbling skeleton. The huge map that amounts to hallways, the NPCs with endlessly frivolous dialogue, and the incessant load screens all betoken to an update — in hardware and software — rather than an evolution. Dragon Quest 11 is a beautiful example of what a JRPG can be after xxx years of lovingly guided evolution. Its success is irrevocably tethered to those decades of development, though, and that ways you probably already know if this is a game for yous. If you're non already ane of the true-blue, Dragon Quest 11 is unlikely to make yous a convert.

Dragon Quest 11: Echoes of an Elusive Age was reviewed using a retail PlayStation 4 disc copy provided by Square Enix. Yous can notice additional information most Polygon's ideals policy here .

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Source: https://www.polygon.com/2018/8/28/17763578/dragon-quest-11-review-ps4-pc