Dragon Quest XI: Echoes Of An Exclusive Age

Before joining Square and Enix in one company, the series Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest were angry enemies on the territory of Japanese RPGs. The Final Fantasy series has always been dominated by Western countries, and the Dragon Questa base was Japan. Certainly behind this there are several reasons, but the most important of them is access to the sequels.

Final Fantasy has introduced a new combat formula and visual identity to each of the following parts, where they sometimes know how to hit them, as well as make a bigger mistake. Yes, Final Fantasy XIII, I look at you. At the diametrically opposite end, there was the Dragon Quest series that is quite traditional, keeping its struggles on the move and having an easily recognizable visual style.

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age holds these old, traditional values with minor changes to the formula. The story is typical "only you can save the world from evil," where we take on the role of the chosen warrior whom we name ourselves. He represents the reincarnation of Luminary, an ancient warrior whose services are needed again in destroying the great evil. Of course, we come across a group of colorful characters of different ideals that join us for this or that reason.The backbone of the action is not as much of a story as some entertaining characters, funny NPCs, and some side-effects that give a certain drama known from the series. When you link this with the dumb opponents, their strange names of those movements during the fight, you can not stay so angry at the neglected story because charm is here the main actor of the act. This is greatly aided by a well-made voice act that perfectly balances the epic narrative of these moments of light fun with the complete cities whose inhabitants talk about stereotypical Italian or each sentence sounds like haiku.



It is a bit frustrating in all that a good part of the action has only text blocks instead of speech. Such a situation is particularly pronounced when part of a scene is listening to the characters as they are talking about, so they will immediately begin to read the conversation. However, much more frustration is caused by the fact that you will never hear a voice from the protagonist itself, which breaks the immersion and looks purely lazy of Square Enix.Perhaps the biggest mute I can point to is related to the music played in some MIDI mode where obvious stubbornness is seen in the use of traditional elements. This is particularly sad when we hear a beautiful introductory bar with the help of the orchestra and later be transferred to all generic music. I've already seen that the team has modified the PC version with orchestral parts and sounds incomparably better.

The story will guide us from hand to site. The whole sensation of adventure falls into the water because you can never go astray in some difficult part of the map. Just do the main task, get the new one in the next town and the guards / obstacles suddenly magically disappear. The older I am more and more concerned about closing the segments of the world in such inexpensive ways. It used to go with sprints on a 2D folder where the character occupies a single cube of passages, but in the 3D world it seems absurd.



There are other similar illogicalities, like the crossing of the tree that plays the bridge across an abyss. Look closely at how the character balances carefully so that it does not fall below, and you hold the key counter to the desired motion. It is clear to me that they had no plan what should happen if the character falls into the abyss, but why then put an obstacle at all and slow the movement of the character if it does not have any consequences.The world of Erdre, as well as the overall visual style of the game, looks pretty nice and thoughtfully designed. Each city has its own clear visual identity as well as the paths leading to it. For this reason, getting around in the space will not be too difficult. You'll always have a quick look around the map to know where you are. There is a great detail that you will always get a little reminder of the story every time you run the 11th, thanks to which you can easily put it back after a few days of unwinding. It is a disadvantage that these cities are mostly associated with a couple of tasks, but if you want to spend time there are various mini-games, such as casinos, horse racing, or rocking your own weapon.

The world of Erdre, as well as the overall visual style of the game, looks pretty nice and thoughtfully designed. Each city has its own clear visual identity as well as the paths leading to it. For this reason, getting around in the space will not be too difficult. You'll always have a quick look around the map to know where you are. There is a great detail that you will always get a little reminder of the story every time you run the 11th, thanks to which you can easily put it back after a few days of unwinding. It is a disadvantage that these cities are mostly associated with a couple of tasks, but if you want to spend time there are various mini-games, such as casinos, horse racing, or rocking your own weapon.

And so we come to the back of the gameplay, which is the fight itself. And do not expect anything revolutionary here, as it is a standard fight for moves where speed of the guy decides who first attacks. There are some typical extensions such as the points we get when we raise the level and spend them for new opportunities or special attacks that we unlock during the fight, but this does not come out of the bounds of sight and many times overwhelmed. Fortunately, we can assign behavioral commands to the main characters and do not bother too much with the struggle itself until the next bossa comes, which is enough to talk about the fun character of this section.

Dragon Quest XI is not a game that risks a lot. A targeted hit on nostalgia and known without any introduction of spices in the recipe. Fighting on the moves, the heroic story, the cunning enemies and the beautiful locations are the backbone of a series that has not changed here either. And it does not have to be a bad thing if you come up with such an expectation as the new Dragon Quest will offer you from 60 to a whopping hundred hours of fun. However, I personally felt a sense of vanity as I ran through the streets of the tenth city, which is a copy of the previous nine with a new visual appearance or watching animation of the fight, whereby my characters destroy my enemies.