Dragon Quest XI [PS4/3DS/SWITCH]

[gbaplayer]

No Dragon Quest XI thread here?

The gameplay and intro video which was released a few days ago looks awesome.
Can´t wait to play this game. Should come out next year in Japan and hopefully worldwide too.

Will get the 3DS and PS4 versions.

https://youtu.be/5LCDEMxTX34

[soprano1]

I might get the 3DS version if it's not a watered down version of the Switch version.

[Xyga]

I don't know if I should be hyped or not for a new 'traditional' DQ, but if I'm gonna play some current gen JRPG I'd rather play that rather than FF shit.
It's been a long time since 8 so it'll be okay I guess, if absolutely unoriginal at least it does look great with that smooth unreal engine.

If the base structure/gameplay remains as conservative as in the other mainline episodes it'll be probably be - once again - a 'play through once' trip without any replay value at all. DQ was not good at innovating big anyway.
The only thing they could do to make it a little special without violating the 'tradition' too hard, would be a great story, but that's asking for a lot I think. :p

[BryanM]

At the very least, I think this might have a different development system than the one 8 used.

They've said that Dragon Quest Monsters Joker 3 Professional With A Vengeance was the final release in that sub series, so perhaps no more skill points or weapon-based skill paths.

.... not a fan of how the translation with inevitably make everyone talk like a drunken Scottish man with gravel in his mouth.

Oi, remember when they changed "Bikill" to "Twinhits" then to "Ommmph" and "Jigo Spark" to hellblast or whatever the hell it is now? I have no idea what anything is anymore. Is this real life.

[Sumez]

Don't know if this is new to this thread (which is a year old, after all), but I hadn't heard of this before, and it gets me kinda hyped for the 3DS version.
Apparently it will have two styles, you can switch between, including a Famicom style display (although with more 16 bit looking graphics and color palettes). Although I'll probably end up going with the PS4 release, I kinda long for a more classic style RPG, which the 3DS seems to capture completely.

3D + 2D comparisons from the 3DS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmgTRkjs_HQ

Oi, remember when they changed "Bikill" to "Twinhits" then to "Ommmph" and "Jigo Spark" to hellblast or whatever the hell it is now? I have no idea what anything is anymore. Is this real life.

You know what would really help with the confusing Dragon Quest spell names? Icons.

[gbaplayer]

Can not wait to get this game released in the west in 2018.
It looks so awesome. Famitsu score 40/40...must be a perfect game...

[Sumez]

In the meantime, maybe we'll be lucky to see localizations of the new 3DS/PS4 releases of DQ1-3:

http://www.siliconera.com/2017/08/08/dr ... tendo-3ds/

They seemed to be based on the mobile versions which already exist in English, so hopefully it will go faster with those, and hopefully we'll see physical copies. I would love to own the entire DraQue series on a single platform.

Personally I really need to catch up on at least 5, 7, and 8 before I get my clammy hands on 11.

[BryanM]

I would love to own the entire DraQue series on a single platform.

Man, I remember watching this guy try to marathon all of the games in one sitting. He looked absolutely destroyed by the end of it.

Poor dude, you can't marathon 5 hour long+ games like that : /

It's weird to feel this way after getting screwed out of 5 and 6 during the 90's, but I feel like we have an ample surplus of remakes for these games. Too many - would rather have DQ10 or a new game: retro 8 bit style throwback.

[Sumez]

5 hours is setting it pretty low. I'm not sure you can even speedrun any of the games (save the first two) in that time.
edit: Ok those times are actually impressive, this guy must know the games inside out.

It's weird to feel this way after getting screwed out of 5 and 6 during the 90's, but I feel like we have an ample surplus of remakes for these games. Too many - would rather have DQ10 or a new game: retro 8 bit style throwback.

I don't know if I'd say there's a surplus. It's barely 10 years ago not a single game in the series had ever been released here in Europe, and most of the remakes over time have been exclusive to Japan.
1-3 are the ones I'm still missing. The NES versions are a bit too archaic for my taste, or at least to pay their asking price, and I'm not a fan of the "downgrades" made to the GBC versions, so I'm really holding out for an English physical release of these titles - especially the third, which I have yet to play. People usually cite it as one of the best.

[FinalBaton]

speaking of remakes : my favourite way to play 1-3 is by far the Gameboy Color version. It cuts some of the fat of the Famicom games and progresses a bit faster. Also, the view being zoomed in means that they had to reaarange the map to make it smaller, which means that it's quicker to move around. And the sprites look gorgeous IMO.
(I know we can now play the translated SFC ROM, but TBH I like the GBC one better. It looks better and it's zippier to move around).

Granted it's not a modern remake, but when played on a GBA AGS-101 (or other modded Gameboy fitted with an AGS-101 screen) it still looks very sharp. And you can play it at home on the Gameboy Player. So not bad

Of course like everybody I also hope that the new 1-3 remakes will make their way to the west

[Sumez]

I can't help feeling that the low resolution on GBC looks incredibly cramped though, which I think takes from the world building that's a huge part of DQ.

[Blinge]

5 Hours?? That must involve a lot of running from battles right? Sounds awful to me, considering how likely running is to fail.
There's nothing I dislike worse than spamming run to get away from a battle and it failing multiple times resulting in a round of damage.

As for the translated SFC version of 1&2 - I played and enjoyed them, considering them 'podcast RPGs'
- However there's a gamebreaking bug in 2 - do NOT sleep in the inn in the water town at the southwest end of the world.

the 3DS version of the new one having sprite display in one screen sounds like a unique experience for me, I might pick it up.

[Sumez]

It's not a split view with 3D on one screen, and 2D in the other. It's two separate "versions" of the game you can switch between during the game (in churches I think).
The video just sets them up in a split view to demonstrate the differences. I believe parts of the video changes it up to actually display both screens in the same version at times.

edit: Hmm maybe I'm misunderstanding something. From what I've heard from people who played it, it's something you switch between, but now that I'm looking at it again, it definitely looks like a split view running at the same time...

[BryanM]

My understanding is that the prologue has both at the same time, and after you get past that the UI overlay shows up and you pick one style to use at a time.

It is indeed pretty neat they're making two completely separate sets of art for the game. Goes to show how important the 3DS has been for jRPGs.

5 Hours?? That must involve a lot of running from battles right? Sounds awful to me, considering how likely running is to fail.
There's nothing I dislike worse than spamming run to get away from a battle and it failing multiple times resulting in a round of damage.

DW3 speed running involves RNG manipulation, which causes the random encounters to go down to essentially zero. I think they undo it once they can start grinding up on metal slimes.

He does that game in 3 hours. Which makes a lot of sense if you think about it: that game has *very* few boss encounters in it. Which is for the better imo - the formula we've been stuck with since is a bit tired:

1. Enter a new region.
2. Suffer through a cutscene.
3. Go through a vignette which has nothing to do with the war with the demon kings.
4. Go through a dungeon.
5. Kill a boss.
6. Repeat.

Dragon Quest 7 has about a billion bosses, and I can only recall around three of them. I do wish more games in the genre would invest in depth instead of breadth..

[evil_ash_xero]

I'm pretty excited about this game, but I hear the difficulty is non-existent, for the most part. Which is disappointing.

People always try to say that DQ is an "entry RPG", and the difficulty is usually low. That hasn't always been the case.
Short memories, and all.

[Sumez]

Difficulty is a strange concept in this type of games, and especially in Dragon Quest. Most of the "difficulty" in the older games could be mitigated by grinding (and often the game is even designed towards that being the suggested approach).

That said, I'm not totally against grinding. There's something strangely satisfying about doing that in an old schol barebones console RPG such as this. I love not being able to afford all the cool gear you can get once you hit a new town, and then slowly build up gold and sell your own equipment to afford new stuff and feel a clear improement. It's archaic, but charming, and so few games do that anymore.

[Xyga]

Predictable, seeing how much effort and communication they've put into this game they don't want it to be bashed by the masses for being too niche/retrohard.

Could be okay if there's significantly more challenge in the form of side/post game contents (and not exclusively hardgrind/fetchfest, hopefully)

EDIT: is there?

[BryanM]

People always try to say that DQ is an "entry RPG", and the difficulty is usually low. That hasn't always been the case.

Eh, it's never really been a hard series. You grind a little at the start until you have the endurance to last through a dungeon, then cruise through the rest of the game.

That said, I'm not totally against grinding. There's something strangely satisfying about doing that in an old schol barebones console RPG such as this. I love not being able to afford all the cool gear you can get once you hit a new town, and then slowly build up gold and sell your own equipment to afford new stuff and feel a clear improement. It's archaic, but charming, and so few games do that anymore.

Yeah. It's been said before that gold in particular has no meaning in modern jRPG designs. If you can buy everything, or the stuff you can buy doesn't even do anything, why even have gold? It at least meant something in Dragon Warrior 1. It was pretty much the only strategic decision you made in the game, your "equipment build order".

EXP is also similar - unless it's a cruel masochistic hell to level up, there's little pressure to get, as they say "gud".

Not that Dragon Quest's combat system is really complicated enough to allow too many errors.

[Xyga]

It's not really 'difficulty' but depending on how you play there are multiple places where you'll hit a wall if you're unprepared, haven't reached a certain level, grabbed some necessary things, missed a hint etc. Leveling up just once won't cut it if that's what happens and the grinding isn't especially fun in any DQ as far as I remember (haven't played all but still).

Can also be stuff like the classes or monsters and village 'n shit that demand a lot of time and aren't even necessary to clear the game, it's slow fat imho. I mean DQ's can be boring in that aspect if you don't have all the time in your life to in-depht these things.

It's all expected classical JRPG shit alright, but the old DQ way isn't exactly cut for worldwide audiences. They needed to cut into some of the tediousness.

[evil_ash_xero]

There's a difference between "slight challenge" and "cakewalk".

DQ VIII had it's moments. You'd have to grind, and would get killed time to time, if you weren't ready.
The remake of DQ VII...you just coast. You honestly almost don't have to look at the screen, during fights. I'm not being hyperbolic here.

[soprano1]

The 3DS features seem interesting. Anyone who played the JP version already? How's the combat system? The graphics seem similar to VIII's port.

[Sumez]

Could be okay if there's significantly more challenge in the form of side/post game contents (and not exclusively hardgrind/fetchfest, hopefully)

EDIT: is there?

There's definitely postgame content. It's been a DQ staple for a while (also, it's confirmed by people who beat the game)

[BryanM]

Looks like there's a password system, and I get the vague vibe from my spider sense that you can play with your characters using your old Dragon Quest 1 or 2 passwords.

The details of this are hard to discern from the oracle, as it's clogged up with annoying press releases and it's not a topic at the top of the forums. Is someone here a wizard who knows all about this stuff? Is it a real feature? Does it just plonk the old character into the DQ11 world, or is there a separate world map?

The craziest thing would be if there were an entire remake of DQ1 or 2 in this thing, just for the hell of it. It doesn't get much more fan-servicey than that.

[Sumez]

I didn't hear anything about using DQ1 or 2 passwords, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of them doing something, it would be a fun easter egg. One thing I did hear though is that you aren't able to control anyone other than the main character in the PS4 version. You CAN remove him from the party, for the sake of battles, but the didn't add the necessary animations to play with any of the others in the "overworld", so I doubt they'd had DQ1 or 2 chracters in his stead either.

What the password system does allow is continuing your 3DS game on PS4 or vice versa.

Also, the first DQ IS included with XI, but as an unlockable after beating the game.

[gbaplayer]

Are there any reviews out there yet? Can´t find anything...

[Sumez]

All I know is Famitsu gave it a perfect score, but that's not really worth a lot these days.

[soprano1]

http://www.siliconera.com/2017/08/16/sq ... s-version/
I hope this doesn't reduce the chances of localization for the 3DS version.

[Sumez]

While I would love to play around in the faux-16bit version on 3DS, the PS4 version looks way better than the 3DS one objectively speaking, so I don't think it's weird that it's outselling the other. I'd assume most people getting the 3DS version either because they don't have a PS4, or because they are double dipping.

[evil_ash_xero]

Are there any reviews out there yet? Can´t find anything...

The people that are playing it seem to love it. I haven't heard anything bad about it yet. But I quit paying attention after the first batch of days of release.

[Sumez]

I have seen a LOT of feedback on the game already. From Japanese media as well as people playing imports both with and without understanding of Japanese. And pretty much everyone loves it unconditionally. But since these people are all bound to be super fans of the series to begin with, I'd say it's alright to factor in a bit of bias. (but still, even among fans, DQ9 was quite divisive compared to this)

The only thing close to criticism I have seen is that the game is much "easier" than the standard for the series. However, there's a set of "hard mode" challenges you can enable on your game file before starting out (they can be disabled, but never re-enabled) that supposedly makes the game extremely hardcore.