Dragon Quest XI Notes
/Misc
These games always have such great audio design. Instant nostalgia, while simultaneously stepping it up. Hearing the DQ overture again gives me instant tingles every time
I’ve always said DQ games scale their cartooney graphics up to HD better than anyone, and right off the bat, it’s immediately apparent. This game is gorgeous, and has only gained in charm since games like DQ8 and the DQ Heroes games
It’s kind of cute that churches still have the Divination option, even though that information is readily available already in the attributes menu. Divination is pointless, but it’s a callback
I will never understand games that let you go down ladders quickly, but not up ladders quickly
The crackshot crossbow doesn’t have the best implementation ever, it seems pretty easy to accidentally shoot something faraway when you think they are in sword range (same button, same marker over the enemy’s head)
I feel like this game is kind of lacking insofar as likeable characters. It feels like the cast is trying to replicate popular characters from previous games, but without much luck. I don’t feel connected to their personalities, their goals, or their challenges
I’m constantly mildly disappointed that you can’t search bags and such in this game. DQ8 is full of sacks you can search, and having those searchable elements on the walls adds a surprising amount to the feeling of having a 3D interactable space
I’m not sure how I feel about zoom not bonking on ceilings if you are indoors when you cast it in this game. It was always a really cute attention to detail thing, but also kind of annoying to have to go outside to use it
Game Structure
I really like how the environments feel a little more complex than most DQ games, but still are approachable (in part thanks to the minimap). The jump gives them more verticality, and the areas just feel denser
The new environment interactions are fairly basic, but I think they do a lot ot make the environments feel a bit more interesting, since you aren’t just running A to B
I like that the areas all exist in real space, like the houses are all just there, it’s not a separately loaded area, it’s exactly what you see in 3D space
I really like that items can have +1 - +3 now. Forging is kind of fun, but it makes items more interesting than just buying a ton of stuff when you get to a new town. It’s a more gradient progression, and your relying on more than your gold, you have to scrounge for recipes and materials
I really like that recipes can be found inside of books. It gives you a reason to look at the books, and exposes you to the world and it’s lore in a way you may not otherwise have
I really like having the crossbow targets and collectable resources scattered about the exterior locations, it really incentivizes you to look around the locales and not only explore, but to pay attention
I’m a fan of the way they handle mini medals in this game. Having a smaller “office” that you find early game, that you can also max out, makes it so that mini medals aren’t just something you collect and wait until endgame. It engages you early
I appreciate that the game tries to be lightly open-ended much like Dragon Quest VIII was, but it kind of feels like there ends up being a ton of content that feels lifeless and inconsequential to my overarching goals. It’s like a filler episode that happens to give you the item you need at the end
The game does a pretty decent job of mixing things up insofar as your party goes. It’s easy to get stuck on a party of 4 characters you like and know, but they force you to learn the worth of other characters
The ending of this game is extremely underwhelming. Kind of makes you wonder if they purposefully are trying to push you into doing the post-game
UI/UX
Right off the bat, I love their fonts and menu animations, it’s very clean and legible, but also playful
Being able to rotate the player’s facing position while the map is open is actually really spiffy, especially since you can still see the game world behind it
I really like them combining level ups into a single screen with all your stat ups, instead of the classic listing off of every individual stat gain, it’s actually possible to digest the information a bit. There’s still a TON of it, but at least it’s readable
Seeing status ailments beside target names, when targeting attacks and such, is nice so you can choose to not target the guy who is paralysed, for example
I like how enemy names are coloured when they have low health
The battle menu is arranged in a clever way - attack is the default option, spells are always 1 down, and abilities are always 1 right. Those 3 main options are all 0-1 inputs away
Items could use better icons in battle. Medical herbs and antidote herbs are hard to tell apart for example
I like how important people to talk to are distinguished by the purple marker. Lots of people are not going to want to talk to everyone, but this encourages you to still talk to people without feeling overwhelmed by the number of townsfolk
The townsfolk who just have a straight text bubble and no interact are nice too, they add flavour without taking your time
I wish the shop had a way to compare the detailed stat breakdown of its wares vs what your characters are using. You can see the primary stats but not the detailed ones, and for some characters you don’t even necessarily care about say, the atk stat
I feel like there isn’t a lot of rhyme or reason to which enemy you target by default in battle, which is kind of annoying. It would be nice if party members would at least all default to the same monster
I’m not really sure why there are 2 auto heal options (auto heal and efficient auto heal), I’m not sure why you would ever use the not efficient one
You can autoheal from the main menu by pressing Square, but there is no prompt, and no confirmation. It’s handy if you do it on purpose, but I’ve done it by accident several times, and it’s not indicated anywhere that it’s even possible
I’m not entirely sure why character inventories even exist any more, considering you can shove so many items in them, and you can swap to equipment in your equipment bag in battle. Seems like it just makes it harder to keep track of your items, and fumbly to manage since they don’t stack
I accidentally jump just about every time I close any menu ever
I wish that I could see stat comparisons when selling items
The normal equip flow from shops and such doesn’t work that great for dual wielding characters- the offhand slot is just never really displayed
It’s nice to have more options as to what you put in your hands (ie. dual wield, 2 handers), but it’s pretty fiddly if you want to, say, swap both your knives for both your boomerangs
It seems odd to limit purchasing of items to 9 when you have no stack limit of 9… ever?
I wish I could see how many of an item a character has in their inventory when I’m choosing how many of that item to put into their inventory
The game uses a blinking icon to indicate effects that will fade next turn, but I feel like this isn’t super useful. In particular, the blue pep aura on character portrait is sometimes impossible to tell if it’s pulsing, if for example, you are in the snow area
The game doesn’t do a great job of telling you what characters are required for pep powers. I would like to see something inside the actual pep power menu that indicates this. I’d also like to see grayed out abilities for powers your current party can use, but the correct characters aren’t currently pepped
I wish I was made more aware of which pep powers I am gaining and losing access to when I switch my battle lineup, as far as I can tell this is not actually listed anywhere in the battle menu, so you just have to know all the combinations by heart
I’m not sure why the secondary info box in the equipment menu tells you where the item is (ie what bag, who it’s equipped on), rather than indicating secondary effects, which is like, actually useful. There’s even an icon already, if it’s equipped on someone
The way game overs are handled is pretty unintuitive, I still don’t even understand it. You would think you can just go back to your last autosave, and it would be right before the boss, but it seems to not autosave before bosses, or even when you hard save. In these situations it SEEMS like the best option is actually none of the 3 presented to you, but rather to close the game and just reload your hard save
Sometimes the battle camera angle has your party members obscuring the name of enemies in the world, making it impossible to see what debuffs they have, which kiiiinda sucks
Battles
I kind of wish classic battle mode had a more classic camera, this dynamic camera jumping about is a bit of an adjustment
It’s annoying that you can’t tell if a character in your standby has pep without swapping them into your team, since it can be really handy to swap characters into standby so you can save their pep for when you need it
Inputting your commands as they come up instead of at round start is a weird adjustment. It’s nice to be able to react on the fly, but not having clear delineations between combat rounds is a bit jarring, especially if you’re trying to keep track of which enemies have and have not taken their turn yet. A turn indicator would be nice
Neither free camera or classic camera feel like they are quite what I want, they both feel like they are a bit sloppy, like they were shoehorned into a system that wasn’t meant to support them
“Stronger enemies” challenge mode feels like a really well balanced challenge, it feels like normal enemies are an actual concern when I get to an area, and by the time I leave. I always need to think, but I never really feel the need to grind
I have never understood why anyone thought that a revive spell with a 50% chance to just completely fail was ever a good idea, and it feels more true now than ever in this game
It feels like once you get decently far in the game, every single boss fight involves huge amounts of status ailments restricting you from controlling your characters, and unlucky attack strings that kill your characters from full because of RNG