Dragon Quest XI comments

Back in November, I wrote about having to replace my 3DS because the thumb controller circuitry seemed to be failing. I got a 2DS LL, and a copy of Dragon Quest VII for 2,600 yen, at the time. But, the 2DS LL batteries wouldn't hold a charge, and 1 month later I exchanged it for a used 3DS that also seemed to have problems. Fortunately, with use, the problems have, as far as I can tell, worked themselves out. When I got the second machine, I had just finished DQ VII, and was looking for another game to play. The Book Off I was at had DQ VIII for 2,500 yen and DQ XI for 900 yen. I debated over which of the two games to get, then settled on the cheaper one. The thing is, I'd never seen DQ VIII used before, and had no idea when I'd see it again, but I was hoping the price would go down over time if I waited and was lucky enough.

DQ XI is a huge game. It plays slower than DQ VII, which I initially didn't like, but I got resigned to that after a few days. As I write this, I've put 160 hours into it, and I think, at DQ VII speeds, the older game would have completed the same amount of story and battles in 100 hours. So, that's one strike against XI. But, there's a LOT to do and places to go on the maps, so that's a plus. On the other hand, I've never really liked the game style for Dragon Quest, preferring Chrono Cross and the Final Fantasy series, and that leaves me kind of neutral on DQ XI overall.

The game originally came out for the 3DS and PS4 in Japan in 2017, with a "Definitive edition" for the Switch, PS4, Windows and Xbox One in 2020. My 3DS version seems to share certain features with the PS4 Definitive edition, which makes a difference when you're trying to decide which walkthrough to follow. The Neoseeker walkthrough was the better English guide, but the more complete one is the Japanese gamers-high guide.

Story-wise, you are the Hero, or Luminary (you get to pick your own name), the son of one of the more powerful knights of this continent. Shortly after your birth, a monster army invades the castle that your father, the King of Dundrasil (Heliodor in the English version), and a few other leaders, are at for a high-level conference. Hero is rushed to safety by Martina (Jade in the English version), daughter of the Dundrasil King, but Hero's father disappears and the Dundrasil King starts spreading rumors that Hero is a demon spawn. The game starts 16 years later with Hero's foster mother preparing to send you out into the world. Unfortunately, you quickly run afoul of the King, and then go on the run for your life. Along the way, you are joined by a thief named Kamyu (Erik), Martina and her guardian Lowe, the witch sisters Sienna and Veronica, the cross-dressing circus performer Sylvia and Sylvia's older brother, Heliodor's chief knight, Greg (Hendrik). During the story lots of bad things happen because of the lead monster who's on a quest to take the Sword of Light before Hero can get to it. The lead monster succeeds and becomes the Demon Lord, but is eventually defeated by Hero and the team. Unfortunately, Veronica dies after the battle ends in a great explosion.

The team is scattered around the world and Hero has to "get the band back together again." At some point, you learn that Veronica had sacrificed herself to save everyone else. Not only that, this wasn't the only time a band of wanderers had fought the Demon Lord to keep the Sword of Light safe. The healer from the first group has turned into a faceless sage, now living in the Forgotten Tower, and is the Master of Time. She sends Hero back in the past to fix the timeline, meaning that the rest of the current party is going to cease to exist. Knowing what to expect now, Hero and the reset party stop the demon lord from getting the sword. And, crises averted, right?

Not quite. A little creature called a "yochi" gets its hands on a humongous object called Erdwin's Lantern, and turns into a different "Demon Lord." Hero and the party now set out to fix the situations that the first demon had created as part of its plans and are now running on automatic (such as King Dundrasil being possessed, and Greg being Hero's chief enemy). You still have to gather the ingredients for forging your own Sword of Light, which can be super-charged to help defeat the evil yochi, instructions for which are not covered by the IGN guide. After you do defeat the evil yochi, the game picks up again just before the final final battle, letting you finish off any quests you have left, and to refight the yochi as you like.

The 3DS version of the game has two operating modes: 3D and 2D. They have different maps and slightly different locations for treasure chests and item respawn points. The 2D version is 8-bit, side-scrolling and extremely retro in feel. After trying the 2D mode for a few minutes, I quickly returned to 3D and never went back.

The 3DS version I have seems to have a lot in common with the PS4 Definitive Edition, which added the Yochi Village, and another 25 or so quests. To keep things easier to understand, I might as well go through the game mechanics in order.

Effectively, the world is made up of one continent (or very big island) and 4-5 small islands (plus a couple underwater locations). In town areas, you have buildings you can enter and leave, people you can talk to, wells you can climb down, and breakables you can break. Buildings can have breakables, bookshelves, and clothing cabinets to inspect. Generally, the books in bookshelves are either "nothing to read here," or backstory for the town or a hero of that town. Occasionally, there will be recipes for forgeable items. Shops in the towns can sell weapons, armor, accessories, recovery items, and some items used only during forging. Cabinets can be empty, or have mini medals, armor or money. Breakables (pots, barrels, etc.) can have money, recovery items (MP or HP), mini medals (rarely), or forging items. Wells can be empty, contain chests, or locked gated storage. Locked storage can contain rarer items, weapons or armor not available until you find the correct keys later in the game.

Many of the towns within specific regions of the continent are connected by roads on the field maps. Travel along the roads can be sped up if you find a horse standing around (normal), or defeating certain rideable monsters. The field maps can have "camps," where you can rest, save your game, occasionally buy stuff from traveling vendors, and forge items. Towns don't have forges, except for Yochi village. Travel between isolated regions becomes possible later in the game when you get a ship for ocean voyaging, or a skywhale. At least with the skywhale you don't get attacked by sea monsters, and you can reach otherwise unaccessable fields with rare item drops, chests, locked storage or monsters.

The camp forges (referred to in English as the "portable fun forge") can be used for making anything you have the recipes and items for, or "improving." You get forge points based on your character levels at that point in the game, and these points can be used for changing the furnace temperature, hitting different parts of the item simultaneously, or hitting 2x's, or 3x's harder. The thing you're forging (a weapon, armor or accessory) can be made up of 2 to 8 squares (up to a 2x4 pattern), and each square requires a certain amount of pounding. Every time you pound, the temperature drops a little. Obviously, the better the item, the harder it will be to make correctly. There's a "golden" point for each square; not enough pounding, or too much will result in a bad product. If you get all of the squares showing in the green region of their pounding scales, you can get a product with better stats. That is, if you're making a sword, you can get Sword, Sword +1, Sword +2 or Sword +3. Each plus boosts the product's stats by a few percent, such that a sword with a 50 ATK base could come out as 60 ATK at +3 (max level). Everything you forge will give you "reforge points," and anything you buy or make can be reforged at fixed costs, up to +3 maximum. You can reforge any weapon, armor or accessory you like as many times as you need to, as long as it's not at +3 already, and you still have reforge points. You can buy more reforge points later in the game if you need them. And, the higher your party levels are, the easier it is to make good equipment (if you've got enough of the necessary ingredients) (but, the idea of using a furnace at 1200 degrees C to make leather armor or a silk dress is silly...)

Along with towns and camps, field maps can have cabins (just like a regular building in a town), caves and towers. The caves and towers work as dungeons. Fields, caves and dungeons are generally populated with attackable monsters. The battle menu gives you the options: Use Special, Attack, Change tactics, change party members and Escape. The action menu gives you: Attack, Block, Cast magic, Use Skills, Use Items and Switch weapons. Switching party members and weapons are instantaneous and do not cost the characters any turns.

As the characters go up in rank they get Skill Points, which you can spend to unlock tiles on the Skill Panels. Each character has a different skill panel layout, which can be divided up into different skill types. Hero has the "hero," single-handed weapon, double-handed weapon and "weapon-master" skills, while someone like Veronica can have magic, two-handed staff and whip-type skills. The more skill tiles you unlock, the better the character gets overall, or just at that weapon type. Some of the skill tiles are related across characters. That is, if Hero unlocks one particular tile and Greg unlocks a different one on his panel, then the party can get a "grand cross," "fire wall," or buffed defense special. During battles, the characters can get "zoned" (Japanese version) or "pepped" (English name for it). When pepped, you can choose to cast any special attack that meets various requirements (Hero pepped, holding a single-handed weapon, and Greg in the party front line, pepped or unpepped, using an axe, etc.) I've found that the special attacks aren't really all that great, and have generally just relied on churning a lot to bring the party levels up higher if I have trouble with any specific monster or boss. However, being pepped does improve your attack and defense stats a little bit, too.

There are 62 regular quests, and 26 yochi requests. These can be "defeat a monster using a specific special attack," "defeat a rare monster," "find a rare item" or "talk to an NPC in some other location." Quest rewards can be mini medals, skill seeds, forging items, money, recipes or equipment. For the yochi quests, one or two rewards open up new explorable yochi maps (more on that later). Some of the quests are nearly impossible to complete, such as with the "roulette jackpot" task. There are two casinos in the game, and one has an NPC that tasks you with getting a jackpot on a table in that casino. For those of you not familiar with roulette, there are 28 slots on the wheel (numbered 1-27 plus a treasure chest slot) that are either red or black. Bets can be made on specific numbers, combinations of numbers, even-odd or red-black. The smaller the chances of winning, the better the payoff.

Betting on a single number has a x27 payout. Hitting the treasure chest gives you a random payout, which only happened to me twice, and the results were worse than x27. There's a pointer on the wheel, and if the pocket the ball lands in stops under the pointer, that's "Jackpot." You get the jackpot if you put your money on that number under the pointer. In all of the times I've played the game, I've never SEEN a jackpot occur, much less have one happen when mine is the winning number. Unfortunately, the prize for this quest does not justify the time required to complete it, and it's only worth playing for if you really like gambling games anyway. Rewards for winning (or buying) enough coins in the casinos include recipe books, some forging or recovery items, and some equipment. The costs in terms of coins for the really good equipment are so high as to make them not worth the time to win them. You're better off churning a bit and just leveling up the party some more. (My strategy with roulette is to buy 20,000 coins, play the 100 coin table, and bet the maximum 1,000 coins on the same number each time. If I lose 14,000 coins for that play, turn off the game and try again. If I win at any time before giving up, I get 27,000 coins back and I save the game and come back and keep playing. I never bothered playing poker, and I gave up on the slots pretty quickly. I think I had around 200,000 coins when I cashed them out for prizes, but the best stuff is up around 20 million coins apiece. Again, I consider the casino games a waste of time.

Yochis. Yochis are small, blob-like creatures with big eyes, a diamond-shaped nose, no mouth, and long floppy arms that drag on the ground behind them when they walk. Their main purpose in the story is to provide one evil boss monster, and a countering group of goodies that only show up after the bad yochi loses to you. But, in the PS4 Definitive Edition, and the 3DS versions, as you're leaving the Heliodor castle the first time, you're accosted by a small white yochi that gives you a quest - help it find its way back home. Yochi village can only be reached by a teleport portal (initially; later you can zoom to it), which you can find by tramping around the field map a bit. After this, you'll find various colored yochis all around the field maps throughout the game. Initially, they're ranked F and E, but at the end of the game, you start finding more B, A and S ranked yochis. When you talk to them, they'll ask to be added to your inventory. You can hold up to 50 yochis at a time.

Yochi village has an inn where you can recover HP and MP for free, a shop that sells hats (never did find out how to use them or what they're for), a church (save point), a fun forge (only town that has one), a cave and a trophy room. You use the yochis in your inventory to explore the cave. This is a retro 2D side scrolling map where you go up and down ladders to go through the map. There are 10 levels total. Each level has a small number of monsters, some treasure chests (and mimics), and monsters behind barriers. Your party is made up of 8 yochis, and it's best to have them all the same color. When facing normal monsters, your only options are attack and escape. Selecting attack causes the yochis to hit the monster en mass with whatever weapons they had when you found them. If you're lucky, you'll kill the monster in one shot, and your skill gauge will edge up a little. If not, you'll get hit and the gauge will go up a little more. I don't know of any way to heal yochis, so the more they get hit, the more likely they'll start dying off (then the skill gauge goes up faster). Monsters behind barriers are immune to physical attacks, and can only be hit by skills, which can only happen when you've maxed out the skill gauge. Initially, you can only max out once. As you get to the deeper levels, you unlock parts of the skill gauge, letting you carry over up to 3 max-outs at a time. When you attack with a skill, you have to select which color to attack with. Having a party with more than one color in it means that fewer yochis will be making that skill attack as a unit and you'll be doing less damage. You get max damage by having 8 yochis of the same color doing the attack together.

If the yochi party gets killed off, you have the option of continuing with another party of 8 (hopefully, all of the same color again). The barrier monsters can block the path to the exit, or protect chests with the good treasures. Some of these treasures can be scrolls, and are required for opening the door at the end of the level leading to the next level. There are also a couple of markers in each level that let you exit back to Yochi village with the items the party found. You can then choose to re-enter the level at the last marker point you activated. Note, you still get to keep all of your treasures if the last of your yochis are killed off.

The Yochi village trophy room contains 10 stone altars of sorts (each representing one of the previous Dragon Quest games, I through X), and each altar has 2 to 3 mini games accessible to you. The mini games get unlocked when you find the scroll for that game (generally from the Yochi cave dungeons, but sometimes as a quest reward). The mini games are actually dungeon maps with various goals. One goal might be to go to the far end of a cave and defeat an evil wizard; another might be to obtain an item from a different altar or from a town in the main game; and yet another might be to fight a monster that's preventing someone from getting married. If you clear all of the tasks or quests for a particular altar, a statue will appear at the top of it for the hero of that specific game. As I write this, I've only gotten 2 statues.

As you might gather from what I've written, there's a lot to do in this game, but... As I've found with all of the DQ games, 90+% of everything is unnecessary. My main party just consists of Hero, Greg, Veronica and Martina, who almost always attack with the same technique or spell ALL THE TIME. If I need healing, I'll use Lowe between battles. I've forged at least 100 items (weapons, armor and accessories), but never needed the majority of them. I was planning on selling the surplus for cash, but even that has turned out to be unnecessary because I've gotten enough cash from all of the churning I've done. Most of the quest rewards, and the rewards for mini medals, are junk. And I've beaten the final final boss (the evil yochi) once already. Hero, Greg and Sylvia are maxed out at level 99, and everyone else is above 92. You don't get enough skill points from leveling up to unlock every tile on the skill panels for any of the characters. The only way to unlock all of them for a given character is to find skill seeds. These are good for one skill point to a character, each. A few skill seeds can be found in chests, and one quest has 10 skill seeds as a reward. Otherwise, they can sometimes be dropped by defeated canniboxes and mimics. The problem being that there aren't that many mimics in the game, and the ones I know of (which respawn when you leave the dungeon and re-enter) either stop respawning at some point, or have stopped giving skill seeds for some reason. I'll need 30+ skill seeds to unlock all of the skill tiles for all of the party members after they have all hit level 99. And, as I say, I've already beaten the final final boss once. Wasting much more time on the game just to be a completist doesn't appeal to me that much.

I don't really like most mini games in Japanese RPGs, and outside of the casino games, the two other mini games in DQ XI are the Shaolin temple competitions, and the horse racing. With the Shaolin temple (for the lack of a better name), you have to divide your party up into teams of 1 or 2 members each, which then have to face fixed parties of enemy monsters that have to be defeated within a fixed number of actions. For example, in the easiest match-up, one character fights one strong monster. If they succeed, then two other characters have to fight a party of 4 monsters that can do status attacks. Every time one of your characters does something (swing, cast a spell or is idled by being put to sleep) the action counter increments by 1. The first 3 levels of this game are doable, but the best weapons of each type for whips and boomerangs and such are only available at level 5, within painfully short numbers of actions. The weapons I've already forged are better than the ones I can forge based on the rewards from the Shaolin tournament, so why bother?

As for the horse racing, one of the desert-based towns has a horse track. You can enter the silver level, which gives silver ore for participating (used for forging), and a required story item for winning first place once. That opens up gold level, then platinum, and finally "black." There are different rewards for competing at "easy" and "hard" settings for each level. At the end of the story, you need a special hammer for forging the super version of the Sword of Light, which is the first place easy reward for platinum level. I gave up on easy black level because I kept losing no matter what I tried. The only reason to even want to waste time on this level is that you get a mini medal just for entering the race, which can be refunded at the mini medal girl's school for recovery items, or items that let you automatically get zoned (or pepped up) on command (if you want to use a special attack of some kind for a quest requirement).

I'm pretty much burned out on the game right now. There are two things I'll still try some time. One is to find any source of mimics for skill seeds, to at least max out Greg's and Kamyu's skill panels (2 and 3 skill points respectively). The other is to see if there's some purpose to the yochi hats in the yochi village item shop. It took me several days to amass 50 rank S yochis, which I burned through just to go from the level 7 dungeon to halfway through level 8. I can't imagine how anyone could make it all the way through to the end of the level 10 dungeon under these conditions, with no way to heal after a battle. I suspect that the hats add properties to the yochi party, but I haven't figured out if the hats do anything at all. There are still about 10 scrolls I haven't found yet, and those are available at the end of level 8, and all of levels 9 and 10. To get them, I have to rebuild my supply of 50 S-rank yochis, and find out how to keep them alive longer. Unless the hats do something like add to attack, max out the skill gauge faster, or heal after battles, I give up.

DQ XI has definitely paid me back in play hours for the price. But, as with most DQ games, the point of diminishing returns is a very steep and sudden one. Recommended, if you can find it for under $20.