Dragon Quest 11 is a JRPG masterpiece, and all fans of the genre owe it to themselves to play it

Tibarn said:

I have only played Sky Trilogy and Cold Steel 1, and even if I'd say that Cold Steel 1 has worse pacing than the Sky Trilogy, it's not that bad IMO. I enjoy world-building a lot. I will play CS2 soon, so I'll see. And I strongly disagree that Xc1 or Xc2 have bad pacing, the games feel exciting all the time to me. I know that Xc2's chapter 4 is famous for being boring, but I didn't even notice that. I enjoyed both games from start to finish.

On the other hand (and to return to topic), the pacing in DQ XI felt really bad to me, the short stories that were not interesting (a half of them maybe) and the overall lack of a good villain or global plot made me feel like everything was slow and uninteresting. And Act 2 was the worst offender of all, returning to all the cities with minimal changes and no fast travel, and the shorter and less impactful stories destroyed any sense of good pacing for me.

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Oh I would agree on CS1 being worse than the sky games but it's not like bad, BAD. CS2 and CS4 have real issues especially when it comes to the main story. CS3 was extremely well paced though.

I generally play games with a completionist approach so Xenoblade 1/2 are actually atrocious pacing wise and I very much like those games. Xenoblade 1 is actually one of my favorite JRPGs but you can't deny the onslaught of very mediocre quests after every main story section is a big yikes. There is barely any intention and flow to that side of the game as if someone just copy pasted certain quest archetypes until they reached a certain number for each area and not bearing in mind how it would play.

Compare that to the sky games where you have like ~4-5 sidequest average each new place which also drive learning to know a place(well maybe except the extermination missions although kiseki has used some of those for subtle foreshadowing). There is waaaaaaaaaay more intention in the pacing there than for Xenoblade 1/2.

It's okay for me. A solid RPG with bad music and a cliche story even if it's executed alright. The story reminded me of solid kid animes like Pokémon and such. The combat was surprisingly nuanced for being so classic and I love avoiding enemies for the most part and just fighting bosses, mini bosses, and quest monsters. Played on hard enemies and no shop equips.

For these who this game their GOTY, what difficulty you played the game on?

Holundrian said:

I generally play games with a completionist approach so Xenoblade 1/2 are actually atrocious pacing wise and I very much like those games.

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Ah Ok I understand, I was talking about the pacing of the main quest. TBH any game with open world aspects can be really bad paced if you go to do all the usually mediocre sidequests that are there to fill the world with something. I agree that the side quests in Xc2 and especially in Xc1 are bad, but I consider them an "extra" for people who really like the game and want more hours of exploring and combat.

I do think that both games are packed with action and good story moments, and if you go to the main plot without stopping for side content, the experience should be IMO well paced.

Tibarn said:

Ah Ok I understand, I was talking about the pacing of the main quest. TBH any game with open world aspects can be really bad paced if you go to do all the usually mediocre sidequests that are there to fill the world with something. I agree that the side quests in Xc2 and especially in Xc1 are bad, but I consider them an "extra" for people who really like the game and want more hours of exploring and combat.

I do think that both games are packed with action and good story moments, and if you go to the main plot without stopping for side content, the experience should be IMO well paced.

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I mean I don't disagree on the action and good story moments at all but that doesn't relate to pacing right? Pacing especially when it comes to games I'd say relates to how your different systems and segments follow up on each other to create an engaging rhythm(and to harken back tangentially to a page back I feel people often mistake them not being engaged with any of the systems/segments themselves with the pacing being bad). Trails in the Sky 3rd I would say in general is like an actually VERY well paced game even in the context of a lot of other games. The rhythm in which you get a new weapon, quartz, a new story bit, a new party member, a new place to explore etc is very meticulous.

As I said I can't really speak to experiences where you just mostly skip stuff and critical path the main story since that's kinda not how I enjoy games(like the trails games for me would be so much lesser if I didn't talk to every npc and did everything they have to offer same for a majority of the games I choose to play).

But based on how I regard pacing I wouldn't necessarily agree on most open world games being badly paced. Games like Witcher 3 and Horizon very much have a certain rhythm in how visiting a new place relates to getting a certain amount of quest and what it does for you etc. Spiderman is another example of actually being a pretty well paced open world it seems given how many people didn't mind just platting it and that game to some degree also has not the most engaging side content but it's smart about how it rolls stuff out. Basically when you look at it structurally I don't think open world games really suffer from what xenoblade 1/2 suffers from.

Also remember for xenoblade 1 shit gets just ballooney once you unlock the colony and suddenly you're not just checking a new place for stuff no the game also kind of wants you to backtrack to every place to see if something new is unlocked.

DQXI is not without flaw. Indeed the silent protagonist might put people off. DQ follows the strict rule that the protagonist must be for self-insert, that he must be devoid of any personality. That's something that can change. I'm not saying he must talk, but he can be more humanized, like Link in Zelda games.

But overall there's nothing like it. It feels genuine and subtle. No forced melodrama, no contrived twist, no edginess. It's a JRPG but without the main issues of the genre, which kinda makes it feels less like a JRPG. I would complain about how lack of spice the game is, but the truth is, JRPGs are full of strong flavors, a cup of water is really what I need.

Sean said:

Nah, not for me. The "post-game" arc combined with the abysmally shitty music over 120+ hours kinda killed it for me. There's crazy narrative problems there that I have issues, which really sunk the how I felt about the characters and their growth, plus one of the "rewards" you get in a Trial thing is one of the most unearned and miserably idiotic things I've seen recently.

Spoiler

How they deal with the characters when you go back-in-time and completely erase major character arcs is addressed fucking horribly and the "Now you're suddenly married!" Wish just bugged the shit out of me.

I was really, really into the story and character arcs and then... THAT happened. Just, yeah, I'm not going to remember this game fondly - especially since the insanely bland and repetitive music just blurs so much of the game together over the course of completing it.

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I really liked the game up until then, but yeah this sort of killed my enjoyment. It's just unbelievably stupid. I also agree with the music. It's odd because I've enjoyed some of the midi-fied dq OSTs in the past, but this game's was not very good. The overworld theme is bad and then the second overworld theme is just ripped straight from DQ Heroes 2?

sllp3030 said:

For these who this game their GOTY, what difficulty you played the game on?

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Super tough monsters turned ON for the first two acts (the other Draconian variables can fuck off though). Slightly after starting Act 3 I turned the strong monsters Draconian since it became too difficult and I quickly learned that act 3 even on default difficulty can be challenging as well while also being fun.

And yes. DQXI is my 2018 GOTY

sllp3030 said:

For these who this game their GOTY, what difficulty you played the game on?

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Hard monsters, no other modifiers. There are maybe two points where it feels unfair, the rest is perfect. Act 3 can be a little rough at first since some bosses are immediately accessible but are meant to be tackled last.

aSqueakyLime said:

The overworld theme is bad and then the second overworld theme is just ripped straight from DQ Heroes 2?

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sir, it's the overworld theme from

ffs, sold.

Buying on PS4 despite thinking of waiting for the Switch ver.

Cheers op lol

Welp, I needed the push to play this, and if it gets Phantom Thief's seal of approval, I'm in. Love the chill, jolly vibes I get from the game.

Probably won't be what I go-to after sinking 100+ hours into RDR2, but it'll happen early next year for sure as 2019 is looking like the year of the backlog for me.

How does everyone have their battle tactics? Right now i only have hero set to "follow orders"

Idk if this has been posted but it's at $33 in Play Asia if anyone is interested

sllp3030 said:

For these who this game their GOTY, what difficulty you played the game on?

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Harder Enemies + No Shops + Reduced/No XP from weaker enemies + Can't Flee

I'm currently at the final boss of the 2nd act which is a big jump in difficulty from the previous encounters. LVs in the low 50s. I've upgraded some equipment & changed some passive trees around so I'm debating on whether I should give the battle another shot now or if I should get a couple more LVs first. Probably best to get a few LVs first since I hear Act 3 is rather tough.

I love the game and the difficulty options are a big part of that since I feel like for the most part, the game does a good job of staying challenging but not ridiculously challenging when you play it with a few increased difficulty mods. In contrast, I really liked Octopath Traveler at first when it came out earlier this year, but I felt like it didn't handle difficulty all that well due to its more non-linear nature - the game pushes the player to do all character stories since if you try to just do 1 character's story all at once, the difficulty jumps up too fast, but if you do everybody's storyline at the same time, it's too easy to become overpowered.

My main problem with the game (besides the fact that the difficulty options can't be freely adjusted back and forth) is that it's just so long which combined with the game's slower pace & high difficulty (with the current options I have set) means that I feel like I can't really play it unless I have a couple hours free at a time. At around 80 hours so far, I'm considering putting the game aside after I complete Act 2 for a month or two before coming back and doing Act 3 (post-game) content since I feel like I could use a break from focusing on just this one game.

Would be nice to have the 3DS version officially released in NA, but will settle on waiting for a fan translation if I have to.

Mr.Deadshot said:

Never really understood the universal love for these games. They are kinda boring and badly paced.

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The second half of SC and all of 3rd are some of the best RPGs I have ever played, did you get to those? I will say that Turbo mode saved me like 100 hours when playing through them and that helped a lot. Love them to death.

There is a reason people love them, the characters and how all the games are basically one huge ass story is something I've never seen in gaming, and apparently Zero/Ao are even BETTER and that blows my mind, can't wait to play them when the fan-translation is done.

I'd ask how far you have played any of them, even if you may still not like them, not every game is for everyone.

FallenGrace said:

Ha ha, I'm working on it. Playing it on s friends PC though as I don't have one so it's slow going. In chapter 5 now :)

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That's when things go for amazing to insanely amazing. Good.

sllp3030 said:

For these who this game their GOTY, what difficulty you played the game on?

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Hard Monsters, the game sounds boring as hell without that.

I certainly enjoyed my time with it as my first proper romp with a DQ game. The music was bad though and I wished much of the time i could play Spotify but the game blocked it making it doubly painful. Music is so important to me in a JRPG so that took this from a 9 to an 8 for me.

Is the normal difficulty in the western release the same as the japanese version, difficulty-wise?

I played through 90% of the jp release and didn't think it was as easy as most ppl say the normal mode is in the western release...

I love it and it's definitely one if my favorite games of this gen but I wish they would have gone a bit of a different route with the 2nd and 3rd acts. Still great though.

It was good, but the second half and post game were pretty disappointing. Masterpiece is a bit much.

I just beat the entire game including the post stuff and holy shit! The ending is so damn good!

Omegamon said:

Idk if this has been posted but it's at $33 in Play Asia if anyone is interested

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Holding out for that Black Friday 29.99

disparate said:

It was prior to it coming out... like at launch, though I don't think even orchestral renditions can pull me back in.

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Understandable man, sorry.

Sean said:

Nah, not for me. The "post-game" arc combined with the abysmally shitty music over 120+ hours kinda killed it for me. There's crazy narrative problems there that I have issues, which really sunk the how I felt about the characters and their growth, plus one of the "rewards" you get in a Trial thing is one of the most unearned and miserably idiotic things I've seen recently.

Spoiler

How they deal with the characters when you go back-in-time and completely erase major character arcs is addressed fucking horribly and the "Now you're suddenly married!" Wish just bugged the shit out of me.

I was really, really into the story and character arcs and then... THAT happened. Just, yeah, I'm not going to remember this game fondly - especially since the insanely bland and repetitive music just blurs so much of the game together over the course of completing it.

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I really like it, lost steam in the 2nd half tho, will finish it eventually

sllp3030 said:

For these who this game their GOTY, what difficulty you played the game on?

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Normal.

Doubt I would have platinumed it if I was playing with draconian mods on. Lighthearted JRPGs like this don't need to be difficult imo.

Waiting for Switch version. No way I'm playing a JRPG on my PS4...

jrDev said:

Waiting for Switch version. No way I'm playing a JRPG on my PS4...

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why not

Phantom Thief said:

Now, I do want to address the major point: Sugiyama is a trash heap of a human being. I understand many will not want to buy this game, no matter how great, if it funds his anti-LGBT/war crime denying rhetoric. What I can say in that case is, track down a used copy of the game, so that you at least can still enjoy what is a great work, without any of your money going towards Sugiayama, or Square.

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Thanks, OP. No, really, for acknowledging that one. I'm probably in this camp.

Not happy with the puff puff stuff though, but I do like JRPGs, so a certain obligation to play this one is there indeed. How is the combat on the harder mode?

Not the best DQ. I enjoy it though.

Currently level 55, about to auto-pilot the final boss and walk away from it.

Shawn The Wonder said:

why not

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Rather relax and play/travel with games like this...PS4 only for exclusives...

Mauricio_Magus said:

The second half of SC and all of 3rd are some of the best RPGs I have ever played, did you get to those? I will say that Turbo mode saved me like 100 hours when playing through them and that helped a lot. Love them to death.

There is a reason people love them, the characters and how all the games are basically one huge ass story is something I've never seen in gaming, and apparently Zero/Ao are even BETTER and that blows my mind, can't wait to play them when the fan-translation is done.

I'd ask how far you have played any of them, even if you may still not like them, not every game is for everyone.

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This actually gets me thinking. I played around 10 hours of PSP and then close to 25 on PC. Maybe I should push a little bit further. I mean I don't "hate" the game, I just found it rather boring and slow. What is that Turbo mode you mentioned? Seems like exactly what I need to speed up the battles and moving around. Is it a mod or a feature I oversaw?

I brought my used copy back. The beginning hours are extremely boring and I wish I had known about stronger enemies being near mandatory for anyone who has a little bit of experience with turn-based JRPGs. When you get Sylvando and the ship, the game finally gets interesting but I have no intention going through it again this soon and without the orchestral mod. Once Sugiyama kicks the bucket, I will get the PC version (unless the Switch release features orchestrated music).

Mr.Deadshot said:

This actually gets me thinking. I played around 10 hours of PSP and then close to 25 on PC. Maybe I should push a little bit further. I mean I don't "hate" the game, I just found it rather boring and slow. What is that Turbo mode you mentioned? Seems like exactly what I need to speed up the battles and moving around. Is it a mod or a feature I oversaw?

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Turbo mode is a feature on PC, you can set this up in the setting of the game, it's pretty simple and I had the Turbo button as my right trigger. I do find the battles to be hellishly slow in the series and it helped a ton.

I had the game go x3 during normal gameplay and x6 during battles. As I said, I'm sure I saved like 100 hours when playing the trilogy earlier this year. It made the game SIGNIFICANTLY better for me.

Another thing is that on PC, if you do some searching around, you can find that there's a mod so the games have basically FULL VOICE ACTING and I can't begin to explain how amazing it was to experience these games with every single important line being voiced by the characters, even a lot of random NPCs have voices, it's pretty incredible.

I really hope the Switch version will turn out well. Still waiting.

Mauricio_Magus said:

Turbo mode is a feature on PC, you can set this up in the setting of the game

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It was added last year, it was a new feature they programmed inspired on the same feature Durante created for the Cold Steel PC port.

Mauricio_Magus said:

It made the game SIGNIFICANTLY better for me.

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I played most of the game on "normal mode", but yeah, it helps a lot during sidequesting, long battles or travelling to already visited places (my biggest complaint with the game is the crazy area re-use, not only during FC or SC, but also between the two games).

I've been consistently jumping between this and Persona 5 and I'm trying to figure out if I even like either of them (and I adore jrpgs).

Persona - Had it on hard but it was complete RNG. Enemy could possibly one shot my MC and it's all over then. Lowered it to Normal and finished first palace but worried now it'll be too easy. Hmmm :(

DQ11 - Draconian mode is fantastic. Just beat the Sand boss and it was hard! But the area music....same music over and over and over and over and over and over and over. It's going through my skull. I tried turning it off completely but it makes things worse and I don't mind stuff like the battle music and such..but that overworld theme on repeat??? Good god.

Mauricio_Magus said:

Turbo mode is a feature on PC, you can set this up in the setting of the game, it's pretty simple and I had the Turbo button as my right trigger. I do find the battles to be hellishly slow in the series and it helped a ton.

I had the game go x3 during normal gameplay and x6 during battles. As I said, I'm sure I saved like 100 hours when playing the trilogy earlier this year. It made the game SIGNIFICANTLY better for me.

Another thing is that on PC, if you do some searching around, you can find that there's a mod so the games have basically FULL VOICE ACTING and I can't begin to explain how amazing it was to experience this games with every single important line being voiced by the characters, even a lot of random NPCs have voices, it's pretty incredible.

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OK, cool. I will try with that speed up again eventually. I have to finish some other games first, but this might motivate me in the future again when it makes the game significantly faster. Thanks.

If you are still on the fence about this game, I recommend this video:



It's also an endearing and fun watch, so there is nothing to lose!

just bought it over the weekend because of PSN sale -

I just got into the first dungeon (sewers) and the bridge collapsed and I was like "this feels boring AF"

I should be loving its old school but man, I really hate the voice acting.

If the second act didn't suck and bring the game down a whole ton it would have been one of my favorite games ever.

Still a great game though

Probably has my favorite jrpg end game ever. Can't wait to play it again on Switch. Gets this game guys.

Best JRPG of the generation, unless KH3 dethrones it. Excellent pacing, story, characters, mechanics, world. The complete package.

I'm close to finish the first act, but I can't motivate myself to keep going, specially since lots of people haven't talked positively of the second half of the game

sibarraz said:

I'm close to finish the first act, but I can't motivate myself to keep going, specially since lots of people haven't talked positively of the second half of the game

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The second act is the highlight though. It's great.

Ascheroth said:

The second act is the highlight though. It's great.

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Is longer than the first act?

sibarraz said:

Is longer than the first act?

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Hm, I'd say it's about the same or a bit shorter.

I'm a huge JRPG fan, but I've had incredible difficulty getting into DQXI. I currently in Act II, about 38 hours in, and have to force myself to turn it on. I'm still trying to fully grasp why the game doesn't click for me. I like turn-based battles, I like big JRPG stories, I like DQXI's graphics....

The best I can come up with is that DQXI's story, at least so far, hasn't really grabbed me (minus some little side stories like the ). And the battle system isn't super fun, whether or not I turn on Draconian difficulty. That's just made it harder, not more fun.

This game has challenged my usual thinking of "if you're not having fun playing a game for a substantial length of time, stop playing it", as I feel like the fun must be right around the corner. Is it? Am I wasting my time, or should I keep pushing to "post-game", which most critics, like Jared Petty, say is the best part of the game?

jrDev said:

Waiting for Switch version. No way I'm playing a JRPG on my PS4...

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I am waiting as well, I'd much rather play on the go as well.

I'm only about 20 hours in, just got to the Arena, so far it's great but also none of the scenarios have resonated with me like the best of 6 and 7 yet. And yeah, the music is as bad as everyone was saying :/ it's repetitive, has so few songs (why do all the towns have the same theme even though they look radically different in design? This ain't 1988...), and the sample quality is garbo. The world map song reminds me of Stand Back by Stevie Nicks.

Other big complaint is tying some quests to the randomness of the Pep system...

Will have to give it more time to ascertain whether or not it's the best of this gen, since I loved Octopath, Persona, Xenoblade 2, and especially Nier Automata. Been a great gen for the genre.