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Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age Definitive Edition

PS4 version, played on PS5

Dragon Quest 11 is one of the best games I have ever played and quite possibly ever will play. As I set my controller down on my last session I felt a sense of melancholy and accomplishment I rarely feel after playing a video game. I had devoted multiple of my days after my job to the game almost solely and I never once felt like I wanted to stop playing, even when I was done completely. From the moment you turn on the game it lets you know that this will be a special experience, with an absolutely gorgeous introduction cinematic that gives a near perfect view on what the game will be like when you get into it. You get glimpses of the hero going off on your journey, your future companions and little bits of their personalities shown off, the big adventure and the small personal moments. The best part though is the demonstration of how that your friends you make throughout the game will have your back no matter what. The bond of friendship you gain with your party is to me the most important part of the game’s themes and story as a whole. 

Before I move forward anymore, I would like to leave a disclaimer. I am relatively new to the JRPG genre. When I was younger I thought I hated JRPGs and that I was too impatient to them. I, of course, like most people who play video games at my age (22 at the time of this writing) and probably people younger and older but I know especially my age, grew up playing Pokemon. Pokemon is a JRPG. I don’t know why I thought I hated JRPGs. I think I had never actually put the effort into playing a JRPG that wasn’t Pokemon and then played like Final Fantasy 1 for an hour and got lost and decided I didn’t like JRPGs. I don’t know why I did that. I have, since, decided that JRPGs are possibly my favorite genre at this point. It started with Final Fantasy VII, and I will write about that at some point in the future. I just felt like this context was important for the rest of the essay.

Dragon Quest 11 starts, as many games do, with you as your first member of your party. In Dragon Quest 11 though, you are the only member of your party at the beginning, whereas with most JRPGs I have played, you get at least one friend at the beginning. The gameplay while you’re alone is still pretty fun! The enemies are weak and the dynamics are set up so that you can dispatch them relatively easily while learning the mechanics of the game. I bring this up because, as early as you meeting your first companion, Erik, you quickly learn the value of having your friends with you. With another person joining your adventure combat quickly becomes more interesting and dynamic, and the game slowly keeps giving you new abilities and party members, so that by the time you have enough party members to have a 4 person party, you are accustomed to understanding how your different abilities interact to make you get through in the most fun way possible. The mechanical advancements are reflected in the characters outside of combat too. You get to learn about your friends’s prior relationships, watch them become friends with you, and also become friends with your other friends and it’s very exciting. By the end of the game I had felt like they were my actual friends in real life. (I’m not sure if that says anything about me.)

Here is my quick off the top of my head ranking of my favorite of the friends you make: #7 The hidden character #6 Jade #5 Rab #4 Serena #3 Veronica # 2 Sylvando #1 Erik. This was actually a very difficult thing to rank because I actually absolutely love every one of them and in another game every single one of them could be my favorite character in a game.

As you progress through the story every single one of your friends is allowed to develop and have multiple events dedicated to them, instead of just relegating their development to just when you meet them, which can happen in other games. You learn a lot about them and they endear yourself to them very organically. I guarantee that even if you don’t like a party member when you meet them, you will love them by the end of the game, they’re that good.

I have heard that in Japan, Dragon Quest games are kind of treated like bedtime stories for a lot of people, where they will play it for a little while before bed, just like you would read a book to prepare for bed, and I believe it! The story plays out like a classic adventure story in a lot of archetypical ways, but is presented with an extreme amount of charm and with twists on classic formulas. Dragon Quest 11 is a celebration of the entire series and by being this they know exactly how to do a very classic story and make it still very unique and inspired, Yuji Hori, is from what I understand, a genius when it comes to this stuff.

Akira Toriyama’s art and designs for this game is incredible. Akira Toriyama is one of my biggest inspirations artistically and Dragon Ball is possibly the 2nd most important piece of media for influencing my interests. So when I see Akira Toriyama’s designs for everything in this game it excites me. The most interesting thing about it to me though is that his Dragon Ball and Dragon Quest are distinctly different, while keeping his trademarks there so you know it is him, no matter where you look. The monsters are masterfully designed. Nothing else looks like the monsters in Dragon Quest (besides the more dinosaur-like dragons, those do look like Dragon Ball dinosaurs). I love Akira Toriyama and his art is admittedly a very large attracting factor to the franchise. 

Dragon Quest 11 has gambling. I love gambling in video games. I spent at least 5 of my 120 hours in the game gambling. I want to put a casino into my video game. The casino in Dragon Quest 11 has a slot machine called Slime Quest, where you have the ability to look at the rates for how many bonuses the machine gets per how many spins it takes, and also has an auto spin mode, which is genius game design. I love the casino, I have gone on literally 2 hours long hot streaks on Slime Quest.

The game’s story is grand and exciting, the world is beautiful and every area feels distinct and fun to explore. It’s a really great time, and after you’ve done it all, there’s still plenty to do. There’s plenty of side quests, little collectibles to find, and, my favorite, getting new gear. I love creating a list of material I need to find to get some of the best gear in video games, and Dragon Quest 11 makes it extra fun. You can buy most materials straight from your crafting interface, while rarer materials must be acquired from treasure chests and from enemies. It creates a great balance between grinding and not having to work all that hard. Which is very lucky because all of the best gear is gained through crafting, so putting in the work necessary to consistently improve your team isn’t gonna cause any unnecessary stress or confusion.

I would describe most everything about this game as my platonic ideal of a JRPG, except for one major exception. Koichi Sugiyama done did write a repetitive OST. I wouldn’t even necessarily call it a bad OST as there are tracks that I really do enjoy, namely the overture during the intro cinematic, the act 3 overworld theme, and the city theme, however you will hear most every song in the game on constant loop for the entire game in just about every area of the game. I’m not really sure what happened there but it does unfortunately drag the experience down a little bit, but definitely not enough to ruin the game. 

Dragon Quest 11 was my first Dragon Quest game and it most certainly won’t be my last. I was obsessed with it the whole way through. When I took a break about 40 hours in so that I could play Nier Replicant ver. 1.22474487139… I felt bad about putting the game down, and when I picked it back up I never stopped until I was done. I want as many people to play the game as possible. It’s truly special. It made me cry at one particular point and most games don’t do that.