I’m probably about halfway through Dragon Quest XI (about 35 hours) and I’m still surprised that I like this game so much. First, there is almost no challenge throughout the game. It is hard to fail at anything, the game tells you where to go and what to do. The only time combat is tough is when you realize you’re under-leveled for a certain encounter because everything has been a breeze for so long. Everything is just quite simple and in this case that simplicity does lead to the near complete elimination of anything resembling difficulty. I would say the biggest challenge in the game is getting that sweet +3 item from crafting. The voice acting is not great as many of the accents are just awful. The character design is, for the most part, well outside of my personal preference, to put it softly. The main character being among the worst. So? Why do I like this game so much??
The story is really good, or should I say, it is told really well. The luminary, orphaned at birth, sheltered in his youth, exiled in adulthood, sworn to defeat the Dark one. Is it ground breaking? No, but it doesn’t try to be either. It is told like a Saturday morning cartoon, a good one, like your favorite cartoon, the reason you used to wake up early on Saturday, before anyone else in the house and sit eagerly in front of your TV with a bowl of Lucky Charms.
But there is so much more than just “The Story,” with each location comes a new plot arc and these are great. This is where the reason I really like this game starts to bubble to the surface. The personality of the world. It is just fantastic. Every town has a story, every story defines that town in some way, every story involves memorable characters in impossible situations that require the player to resolve the story. This formula isn’t new but the writing is just so darned good. The characters are so darned good. The locations are so darned good. The stories are so darned good.
This is where everything starts to come together. This is when I start to appreciate the character design within the context of some great looking environments. This is when that character design starts to feel like the story, just kinda comfy. This is when I realize that difficulty would destroy the pacing; in fact, this is when I realize that the underlying simplicity of this game exists to solely to serve this perfect flow from town to town, story to story. Each a self contained adventure. This is when some of those voiced actors don’t sound so grating. I dare say they become tolerable, serviceable, or even appropriate??? Idk, I really disliked a lot of the voices in this game early on but now like everything else in this game, it just works.
It all just works, really well. I do think the location based story arcs really pull it together for me. They are just refreshingly fun, cheerful, easygoing and exploding with character. This gives everything else in the game a place to find meaning, to get comfy and fit perfectly in this world.
I really hope it can hold this S-tier level of quality through to the end.