Quick Look: Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

Seems kinda crazy to not have Brad on this one, considering his clear love for the original.

Don't cut yourself on your edge there.

I can’t explain in words how much I’ve been anticipating this game.

Puff-puff can be a variety of boob-related stuff, but this series also likes to do bait-and-switch gags with it.

Toriyama is a gag comic, at heart, and he likes to use sex for comedy.

I notice that the color of the enemy names seems to reflect their relative HP level. That's something new.

The voices/accents alone make me want to get this!

Too late, im bleeding out! Quick, pass me a bottle of Russian vodka and Rambo 3 to preserve my manhood before its too late!

Content warning: huge slam on Guided by Voices out of nowhere.

Otherwise A+

Hotsprings almost ALWAYS a bad thing in JRPGs.

Am I the only one who hears this game's battle theme and is instantly reminded of Get Smart?

Dragon Quest 8 was the bomb. This is such triumphant fucking music. Bring on the whimsy. I'm only an hour into it but loving it so far.

The Dragon Quest enemy names have always been great

This thing is called a Crabber Dabber Doo

And this is a Peahooter

People complain that the localization takes too many liberties and how changing "evil crab" into "crabber dabber doo" goes against the spirit of the game but I like it. DQ would be too dull if it was played straight.

The excellent town exploration and characters combined with caring just enough about the overall plot makes this game worth playing for me, but I have to turn off the voice acting to enjoy the main plot.

Unfortunately the game fails as a dungeon crawler since there is no risk/reward system for exploration, you can easily outrun enemies and explore regardless of whether you are leveled up enough for it, and even if you die there's no real penalty, so leveling up becomes just a chore to get through before being able to fight a boss.

But at the appropriate character levels with Harder Monsters enabled the boss fights ARE engaging enough that I care about improving my characters.

The music is occasionally good but even as someone who usually prefers MIDI orchestration to orchestral performances in JRPGs this particular music really does not benefit. I will also play a JRPG just for the music so it's a real shame it's not better.

I am going to take a guess that Ben is talking about Joy Division at 12:17. If I am wrong, I am afraid love will tear us apart...again.

/shades slowly put on

Quite possibly the best game I've played all year, and it wasn't even on my radar until this past week. Big ups to Jeff for mentioning this game on the podcast and piquing my attention.

SLEEEEEEEEEP!

*Stab* *Stab* *Stab* *Stab*

@orborborb: You don’t lose gold or anything if you die? I remember that was a thing in 8.

It's great to see how into this Jeff is - I hope he sticks with it!

@drflapjack: One has literally just been released in Japan (edit, turns out it was a couple of years ago, but RPGamer only just reviewed it):

https://rpgamer.com/review/dragon-quest-monsters-joker-3-import-review/

Chances of it coming over may be slim though, as it's on the 3DS.

did ben just try to make a crush fetish joke

You're right about the difficulty. I made the difficult decision to restart the game with harder monsters after playing for like 15 hours and immediately felt a lot more engaged with the combat.

For anyone who wants a decent challenge out of the game, there's a "Draconian Quest" menu at the name entry screen where you can choose from a bunch of modifiers to make the game harder. It's very easy to miss. You can disable them at any point during the game, but you can only enable them at the very beginning, so it's worth starting with them just in case.

The heavy accents are ruining this game for me. Some of the sentences are barely legible or understandable. It's hard to take any of the characters seriously during dramatic scenes.

Also the framerate when moving the camera is making me motion sick. Dunno if there is a motion blur but its not a smooth camera pan.

@mosthigh: Are they any specific points with the game that you take issue with, or is it just a general feeling? The music sounds quite cheerful, to me.

I\ve never played a Dragon Quest game but this looks fun. I'll probably get this at some point, too bad I don't like the music at all.

Earthbound auto-sold back equipment in Year of Our Lord 1994

I am really confused about how this is considered good voice acting.

Shame they didn't show the other, infinititely better camera mode for the battles.

I can't understand why this "run around" mode is even in the game, or why on earth it is the default setting!

I am way into this.

Great, you've ruined this entire game for me. I mean, how do you unsee that?

The look of the characters are so of-putting, the look of the enemies are fantastic!

@mosthigh: Because DQ8 and 11 turn the nostalgia knobs and make me feel like Im 12 again.

Gorgeous looking game

I'm actually really enjoying the normal difficulty as it basically means no grinding. I tried restarting on the harder difficulty but after 5 hours it was just too tedious. I basically fight each enemy once or twice in each area and then go for the boss, this lets me enjoy the game at my own pace while still proving a challenge in spots.

Also, I can't praise the voice acting enough, particularly Veronica and Sylvando.

Dragon Warrior Monsters is soooooooo goooooooood.

This seriously might be the most inviting looking JRPG that I've seen in a while. I may pick this up before the year's end, we'll see.

I want to buy and play this, but I wish it was more like DX9. I'm still very happy it got translated. Don't take these things for granted. Looking at you, Seiken Densetsu 3.

The cartoon graphics against the realistic backgrounds looks really bad imo. I also really don't like the character design. Enemy design looks a lot better though.

It's refreshing and interesting to see Jeff love a traditional JRPG this much.

This looks like a very polished but basic JRPG. Nothing wrong with that, but i do always enjoy when a JRPG brings something new & exciting to the genre. To be fair, that crafting minigame seems somewhat fun to do. At least more engaging than just bringing the required amount of components to a station and press a button.

I don't think i like the voice acting at all though. I wanted to grab Veronica by the pointy hat and swing her away :P

I'm not sure if I could get into a JRPG-ass JRPG nowadays, but this one seems nice, I could probably give it a try. I love how excited Jeff is about it

Just wanna say that the sounds Ben makes when Jeff is breaking buckets with his feet is the WORST THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO ME

Since Jeff likes this, I'm wondering if he'd be a Tales fan if he'd give it a chance.

I think you're just being thrown off by the accents. Overall these voices are well done.

Phight Weissly is my favourite Dragon Quest character.

I'd love to see a rpg market menu option be:

Buy sword Yes/No?

Equip new sword Yes/No?

Sell unequipped sword Yes/No?