Dragon Quest XI S - IS IT WORTH IT? - DQXIS Review - sackchief

Hey welcome back everyone, I’m here with video on the newest release of Dragon Quest XI, today we’re talking about the new version of Dragon Quest XI S out on PS4, Xbox One and PC and whether or not I think its worth buying based on my impressions with the game. I would like to thank Square Enix, the publisher of this title, for providing me with a copy of the PC version for review. This is my review of Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age Definitive Edition. Now if you’re watching this vid, you likely fall into one of three categories. You either have never played Dragon Quest XI before, you played the original Dragon Quest XI on PS4 or PC or you played the updated version last year on Switch, Dragon Quest XI S.

In any case, this video is for you, I think this’ll be a good opportunity to 00:48 - tell every person what they’re getting out of this new release of the game. We’ll be going over things like the graphics, the gameplay and the story so stay tuned. Now lets begin. What is this game? Well, its Dragon Quest XI, a game I think is the best RPG of the entire generation. Its a game that embraces its roots as a turn based RPG with modern quality of life features. Like in classic games, it doesn’t waste your time with long tutorials or hold your hand, you’re literally fighting monsters minutes into the game.

01:17 - Its a game about exploration and adventure that lets the players go off on their own to figure things out by themselves. The journey is started and you really feel like the game is running at an excellent pace. The biggest problems with RPGs that bog down the experience to me these days is that you’ll find yourself playing for a long time and feeling like you didn’t accomplish much, while in Dragon Quest XI, you can play for a short period of time and accomplish a whole lot while also propelling the story forward a significant amount. I rarely play DQXI and feel like I wasted any time, its the kind of game that is perfect for long play sessions and for picking up for a few minutes. Its essentially the culmination of what RPGs have been working towards for years, a near perfection of the genre.

01:57 - Now this game takes place in the world of Erdrea and you play as the Luminary, a young man from a ruined kingdom, born with a destiny to vanquish evil. You probably know all of this by now. The World of Erdrea is full of life and so are its inhabitants. The NPCs populating the world often add to the atmosphere of the gameworld with their witty dialogue that more often than not contains hints or foreshadowing throughout the story. Nothing feels randomly placed in the game, its like everything has a purpose throughout. This world is essentially your playground for exploring and grinding.

02:29 - The party characters you meet are also extremely likeable, they all have unique aspects to them that help them stand apart from each other, in the demo you meet Erik, Veronica and Serena. Erik is a thief who’s been around the block and acts as the Luminary’s guiding force. Since the Luminary is a silent protagonist to act as a sort of shell for the player, Erik talks for him in a way and is a major character for the first few hours of the game, he knows where everything is and explains things about the world to the player in a very non condescending manner. You know, games often have a problem with annoying sidekick characters that insult the player’s intelligence and repeat stuff you know over and over again, but Erik is not one of these characters, he feels like a wise traveling companion, there’s quite a bit of brotherhood between him and the silent protagonist as they journey on their travels, find new places and interact with each other. In fact, all of the heroes in this game who you meet play a similar role.

03:18 - Serena and Veronica are also in the demo, however for most of the game, Veronica is the only one with an interesting personality, Serena is just there, Veronica is this sassy woman trapped in a child’s body who speaks her mind very often and is one of the more memorable characters in the game while Serena is very softspoken, but kind and she serves as the healer to Veronica’s battle mage. The full game unlock features Sylvando who is a real interesting character, he’s something like a traveling jester, but with abilities of a warrior mixed in. The other two characters making up the band of heroes are Rab and Jade, these two mysterious figures who are on a journey of their own. Jade is badass and one of the most powerful fighters on the team, with some crazy moves and Rab is wise and a very funny character, he reminds me a lot of Master Roshi in Dragon Ball in many ways. The story of the game is character driven, its like I said early, its not your typical JRPG with a long confusing intro and loads of cutscenes.

04:16 - The story is super simple and easy for anyone to understand, but it leaves questions and little gaps in the lore for dedicated fans to speculate over, honestly this is the best way for games to tell stories nonintrusively. For a huge chunk of the game’s intro you don’t even know why you’re traveling with these people. I mean seriously, at first you’re just going from town to town looking for answers as to why the King of Heliodor is after you, there’s not a whole lot of exposition in the game or reasoning for what you’re doing, you don’t even know who the main villain of the game is for the first probably twenty hours of the game I’d say, the experience is oddly self aware as a video game. You’re just there for the adventure and for solving problems for characters in the different towns you find yourself in. The cutscenes that are here are always interesting and never bloated, getting right to the point and still delivering a very emotional story.

05:03 - The game never feels like its telling the whole story through its cutscenes. Instead its a guided experience by the characters and whats going on in the moment to guide you across the land of Erdrea, through deserts, jungles, large fields, snowy mountains and across the seas. You stop by at campsites to let everyone rest and you can talk to all of your companions to see how they are doing and get clues about your journey. This is exactly how an adventure game should feel. You know, an adventure where you don’t feel like you’re on rails but you kind of are to keep the story going? All while stopping in these many towns to help people, pick up a few side quests on the way and maybe even progress your characters by collecting items and crafting new materials.

05:40 - Its a surprisingly deep, organic experience and Dragon Quest certainly has more to it than your average reviewer lets on about this title. As you venture on your journey, the gameplay presents itself with Fast, strategic and fun turn based combat and a character building system that is simple on the surface, but requires a lot of planning and thinking for certain situations. The combat allows for characters to fight using different weapons, abilities, skills and spells and there’s even a Chrono Trigger esque “Pep Power” system that lets multiple characters perform special skills under the right circumstances and these can prove to turn around a losing fight by doing things such as healing the entire party, increasing everyone’s defense or hitting the enemy with a strong attack. Battles are won and characters level up at a moderate speed, gaining them skill points. You utilize these skill points on skill trees that unlock some very useful moves, abilities and situations.

06:31 - For example, Erik can dual wield swords if you put enough points into their skills into his knives tree and you can then use this skill to dual wield other weapons, like longswords. Its this kind of planning and mixing and matching of different skill trees that is where Dragon Quest XI shines in its simple complexity as you may find that many players won’t play the same way. And if you decide you don’t like the way your characters are built, no worries, you can always retract your skill points at a church and reallocate them for a fee, no need to start the game over like other RPGs. Its this kind of accessibility and flexibility of the systems where Dragon Quest XI excels beyond its competition, there’s not a whole lot of game breaking consequences, any player of any skill level can probably beat this game, some faster than others for sure, but its a game that prides itself on being for everyone essentially with all its options for traversal, right down to the game options, letting the game flow at the pace of the player. You can run past every enemy on the overworld if you want and avoid as many fights as you want only to face bosses underleveled, requiring an emphasis on strategy rather than powering through a boss and players are rewarded for this bravery with getting to the next point faster.

07:35 - Get knocked out by a boss and you have the new option of starting the dungeon over with your levels kept and half of your gold gone, no harm no foul. Or you could use the autosave feature and its like you were never there. Its these choices to make the game as hard as you want it to be based on how much work you put into Dragon Quest XI that highlights its extremely well balanced gameplay, world and progression system. Thats a lot to say that I like this game and I highly recommend it to any person who likes video games and even people who don’t, it was a perfect game back in 2018 and its somehow even more perfect now with the release of Dragon Quest XI S. Now I have a lot of experience with Dragon Quest XI.

08:08 - I played it two years ago on PC and I played it quite a bit last year on Switch with the Definitive version. I’ve done mostly everything you can do in both games and have a total of about 200 or so hours clocked in across all versions of the game with my characters nearly maxed out on their levels. The game itself is nothing short of an incredible experience every time and DQXIS is just more of a perfect thing. Almost every major issue I had with the original release was ironed out in the definitive edition, showing that the developers really do listen to the fans. However I’ve seen a common concern about this game and I figured I should address this because I know people will ask.

08:41 - I’ve seen it going around that some people seem to be confused or think this is the same game as the Switch version that released last year except for modern consoles and this… is partly true and partly false. This game utilizes assets from the Switch version and it includes every little bit of extra content the Switch version added. It has Orchestral music which was a big fan request, especially when the original PS4 version came out and had a MIDI soundtrack. The Definitive Soundtrack truly does this game the justice it deserves honestly and is on its own enough of a reason to justify getting this game if you ask me. There’s some really great tracks here, although a lot are used from previous games, this could be either a plus or a minus depending on what you’re expecting and your nostalgia levels.

09:22 - Among the Orchestral soundtrack there’s a 2D mode that looks like nSNES game and it runs in a very smooth 60fps. Its styled like Dragon Quest III on the Super Famicom and it is just a huge retro throwback. The combat even changes to become a little more difficult as you have to choose everyone’s moves all at once while in the 3D mode you have your party members move one at a time. Its a very authentic retro experience that very well could have released 25 years ago and you can play the entire game from beginning to end in this mode. Its a seriously crazy way to do a new game plus run and the devs must have put in a ton of work for this to happen.

10:00 - I mean, a retro styled demake of the entire game loaded in? Who does that? Its crazy the lengths they went through to deliver on this being a 30th anniversary game and the culmination of the series’ history. And they bring that concept home with Tickington, the new area in the game which lets you go back in time to revisit old Dragon Quest time periods using Pastwords you collect around the world. With these Pastwords you can travel to 16 bit versions of prior Dragon Quest worlds. There’s so many inside jokes that poke fun at different events long time Dragon Quest fans might recognize like the Prince of Cannock from Dragon Quest II leading you on a wild goose chase and the Masayuki Map being in Dragon Quest IX’s world. I think this is just so great for Dragon Quest fans, being able to talk to all these different characters from previous games and explore worlds we used to adventure in, no matter where you started in Dragon Quest, there’s something nostalgic for you here and it is just a great tribute to the series’ long history.

10:49 - Honestly just a great feature and it features challenging bosses with unique rewards. Among these other big changes in the Definitive version, there’s tons of new outfits and armors to wear, like there’s a ninja outfit for Erik and a boar costume for Veronica among many others, new story chapters which admittedly feel a bit tacked on, and my favorite feature, being able to switch the battle speed to be super fast so you can rip through battles twice as fast. After getting this feature, I just cannot go back to the original DQXI I’m sorry, but that version runs at a snail’s pace compared to this one, honestly one of the best new changes in this version and I can’t live without some of these outfits either. Now these additions are all great, but I’ve heard people concerned about the graphics since this is a port of the Switch version of the game which was rebuilt from the ground up to be able to work on Switch. Here’s the thing, when DQXIS came out on the Switch, I considered it to be the definitive version of the game because of all the additions.

11:41 - Sure the graphics weren’t nearly on the level of the PC version, but the content made it superior if you ask me. Now this new release is Dragon Quest XI S for PS4, Xbox One and PC, its a high definition master of the same Switch version, though there is a ton of misinformation regarding the graphics and I’d like to clear things up. So the game is nearly identical to the Switch version in terms of content. It has all the goodies that XI S added, and not much more. What makes it different is that the graphics and framerate are much higher than the Switch version.

12:10 - See XI on Switch cut a lot of corners to get such a good looking game to work on a tiny handheld and it did it remarkably, the game performed well on the Switch and was one of the best looking games on the handheld. It actually had to be rebuilt from the ground up on the Switch, so the developers conserved space by grouping together textures which made the game have a slightly different look, not quite as detailed, but not terrible either. Just different. And the new version is using these same type of assets so it will look similar to the Switch version in terms of color balance and lighting. Now, this game is not bad looking and it is not a straight up port of the Switch version like people are saying. First of all it runs at a very solid and consistent sixty frames per second.

12:48 - This video is demonstrating the framerate. The original XI had options for 60fps but it was rarely consistent and does not look nearly as smooth as this. Additionally the framerate can be unlocked to higher levels on PC, you can even have an unlimited framerate if your monitor can handle it. The original XI on PC can’t do that. While the original XI on PC supports up to 4k, unfortunately this release only goes up to 1080p but it still looks fantastic and you never know if an update might be able to bump it up. The textures aren’t just ripped from the Switch port either, they are clearly more detailed, they’re actually nearly the same size and level of detail as the original version aside from character models which are nearly the same.

13:25 - So this game actually deserves more credit. Whats also interesting to note is that even though outside environments take a bit of a hit graphically, XI S’s interiors actually look much better than the original. The lighting has far more contrast and looks better overall aesthetically. Look here at Heliodor castle. The floor is so shiny you can see the reflections of everything in it. XI S actually looks like an improvement over the original graphically especially in interior dungeons and buildings.

13:51 - Now if you haven’t been following along so far, the game looks very good and the framerate blows the original out of the water and makes this one look far better if you ask me. People who were worried about this game being a Switch port and not looking good, I don’t think you should be. Now I think I gave a good rundown on why I think this game is extremely good. Now the question, is Dragon Quest XI S worth it? Well if this is your first time playing Dragon Quest XI, yes it absolutely is. This is the version you want. I’ve heard people say they want to start with the vanilla version because of the graphics or the price being cheaper, but you are not getting the best experience unless you get this one.

14:25 - This game has a super speedy battle system that I honestly can’t live without and it has so many cool costumes for the characters that aren’t in the original among tons of accessibility features that streamline the experience like being able to summon a horse from anywhere, being able to craft on the road without having to go to a campsite, and being able to buy all of the crafting ingredients you want at once, its like they thought of everything they could do to improve the experience. For newcomers, definitely get this version. Now if you’ve played the original XI without all the XI S bonus stuff, I’d still say its worth playing. There’s enough extra content that makes it a different type of experience, you’ll find this to be your favorite version of the game, I guarantee it. The Tockle Quests alone make it worth it to me and there’s even extra bosses for an added challenge, so definitely go for it.

15:08 - Now if you’ve played this on Switch, you’re not really getting anything new. Its the same game. Except it looks better. If that is really important to you then absolutely get the game, but if it isn’t I’m not so sure if this is a definitive sale. Also keep in mind this is the third version of DQXI the West has gotten technically. We got XI in 2018, XI S for Switch in 2019 and now we’re getting XI S for HD consoles this year, making this the third release of DQXI in a row. I’m not sure if Nintendo had a timed exclusive deal or something for the game, but playing it a third time, I can see it being tiring especially among hardcord Dragon Quest fans.

15:43 - I’m just glad the game doesn’t cost 60 dollars, instead its 40. Still a lot, but not nearly as much as I expected. Now if you’re on the fence I’d like to mention the game has a free demo on all available consoles that is about ten hours long, maybe even more, its one of the longest and most extensive game demos I’ve ever seen and you can even save in it and transfer your progress to the final game. It covers a chunk of the final game and is worth trying. As far as I’m concerned, everyone with the hard drive space should download that at least. There’s no reason not to.

16:12 - If this game interests you, you can literally play the first ten hours for free and see if you like it, why not download it and see for yourself? It could be your favorite game one day. As for me, I’m happy with the game and will be playing it on PC to take advantage of the best visual quality possible. So I hope you all enjoyed this review of Dragon Quest XI S, its been a longtime request so I hope I delivered. I also wanted to thank everyone so much for getting me to 11,000 subscribers. It really means a lot to me that that many people enjoy the channel and I hope to keep bringing you all more content.

16:41 - We’ll be covering more on DQXI S soon so stay tuned. So once again, thank you for watching and I’ll see you all next time. .