Topic: Dragon Quest XI + I, II, III & Beyond

@Grumblevolcano From my understanding it's a 10 hour demo but the game itself is 80 to 100 hours depending on how much side stuff you do.

Fyi: Amazon US if offering the game for pre order at $49.99 rather than $59.99. With the games coming out in September i need all the breaks i can get.

@k8sMum Thanks I was just thinking to I wonder if Amazon has any deals for this game. Time for me to preorder it.

@Tasuki You are very welcome.

They are also selling Ni No Kuni for 41.86, a bit over $8 off.

Until now I've been saying that the Metro Kingdom in Mario Odyssey is the most graphically impressive thing running on the Switch. That's probably still true. But Heliodor in DQ11 comes a close in second. How on earth did they get that massively detailed town running on an undocked Switch at a good framerate? It's incredibly close to the PS4 version.

@Grumblevolcano

It's a tiny percentage. These games are huge. On the same scale as the Xenoblade games. So if the demo is like 10 hours if you do all the side stuff, the main game is like 100 hours if you do all the side stuff.

Can you still play on after you reach the end of the demo?

@toiletduck Yes, loading up your save after you've finished the story part of the game has you at the campsite nearest the end of the demo.

@Grumblevolcano thanks!

@Grumblevolcano I think Dragon Quest XI was intentionally unapologetic for their old school approach. But who can blame them when they have been pretty much that way for as long as they have been around, and continue to sell like wildfire in their home country. Outside of Japan has been a mixed bag due to a variety of issues.

I actually like the saving at the church thing. And like some other folks have said, it doesn't feel like as much of a burden since you can use sleep to end a session, and there's the auto save feature as well. I've been replaying DQVIII in preparation (best game in the series so far IMO) and the lack of suspend saving in some of the meatier dungeons is really punishing.

One annoying thing about this game is that it goes out of its way to try and mimic an open-world game, but then constantly cuts corners. Like after you've jumped down that waterfall and want to walk back up to the castle, it basically teleports you up those walkways.
Maybe it's just me and one of my pet peeves, but I really hate teleporting like that. I want to walk up the whole thing so I can admire the view.

@Dezzy
For me, that's actually a plus. I HATE open-world games. Honestly. Put me on rails any day. I'm being totally serious. For me, games are at their most fun when they focus on the action and "bursty" moments of interaction and input from the player. The longer a game has me trudging around and doing relatively nothing more than scanning a map or looking for my next stupid flower thing to harvest or whatever, the less I'm gonna like it.

I've been playing the demo for like 5 hours or so, and I like the smaller maps. I'm still hunting for all the treasure and stuff, but keeping things small but with more interactions is nice for me. So, I'm kinda thankful it's not going full into the open-world stuff. Plenty of RPGs out there if that's what you want. (Perfect contrast between this and Xenoblade 2... just can't bring myself to keep playing that game. It's so dang big.)

@rallydefault

Well there are plenty of linear games out there. But it's silly that they try so hard to make this like an open-world and then cut those corners. They should do one or the other. If you've put all this effort into making an awesome large open area where you can see for about a mile into the distance, why would you rob me of the opportunity of seeing it?

It's not like they were somehow saving time by avoiding having to make a long view into the distance either. At that point where you climb up to the castle, it does let you stop at the top to take in the view. So they actually did make the view work. They just for some reason removed your ability to walk up there yourself.

Serious question: I'm new to the franchise. I've played the demo for a few hours and so far there's pretty much zero input required from the gamer. It's cut scenes, linear map walking, fights which take care of themselves and treasure which sparkles so you don't have to look for it. I haven't had to actually think at all or use any skill or strategy. Am I missing something? It looks cool, but where's the gameplay? I'm sure it's there but I just don't know where...

Here are some of my own screens taken by myself (as a disclosure, the village shots were taken during the evening on Switch, and day on PS4).

Top: PS4
Bottom: Switch

Really impressed with how good it looks on Switch. It looks a bit rougher in motion, compared to PS4, but still a feat. I need to convince myself not to double dip, lol.

Finally reached the end of the demo. Personal challenge time! Gonna grind till I have 50k in the bank. I love how unapologetically traditional this game is especially after IX (and technically X) a great return to brass tacks. It is a nice contrast imo to the open world obsession that Japanese devs still aren’t into and I am grateful for that. Cuts out a lot of fluff.

The only annoyance I have is the forge requires recipes. The alchemy pot allowed you to make anything so long as you could figure out what ingredients to toss in there. But I like the mini game attached to it.

@RR529 Nice screens! I'd probably do the same if I owned the game on PS4.

I'm also super impressed with how well the Switch version holds up. Especially when you consider the difference in hardware capability. I think it's fair to say that Squeenix is probably really pushing the system with this drop-dead gorgeous version of the game. Even in handheld mode, with its lower resolution visuals, it still looks good.

@Dezzy
I don't know, man. I think gamers are just conditioned to want everything to be open-world these days. I mean, do you look at the backgrounds in games like Mario World and even Mario Odyssey (beyond the stage itself) and curse the devs that you can't go there? What kind of road do we follow here? Do we start to expect that EVERYTHING we can see in EVERY game should be accessible?

And in this case, you DO end up getting maps in a lot of those places you see in the distance. Like when you enter the first big city (Heliodor?) and look down into the streets below, you can't go there at the moment, but you do end up going there after a little bit.

I don't know. Like I said, it's just my personal taste, but count me out of the open-world fad. It nearly killed Zelda for me, my absolute favorite game franchise of all time (and it may yet with the BotW sequel if there aren't BIG dungeon and/or item changes); just let me have a couple old-school games every now and then and I won't bother anyone haha

I don't know. I just want my games to be games, not mimic the aimlessness of the real world. I know I'm on the losing end, though.

I've played a lot of open world games lately, and yes, I do feel like that contributes to this game just feeling so limited and not as fun. Although I think one thing that really gets me is how the game doesn't always let me jump over fences or ledges to areas that are still within bounds. I'm so used to just being able to make my own path.

I actually saw people mislabel this as an open-world game. When I bought it and began playing it, I was in for quite a disappointment.

@rallydefault I like your enthusiasm for non-open worlds. I agree. But with this game I couldn't find any gameplay. What am I missing? It feels like cut scenes, linear travelling, automatic fights and easy to find treasure. I didn't have to do anything or think at all. Am I missing something about this game?