Played: January - March, September 2022
Last holiday, after my disappointment in Tales of Arise, I insisted to myself that I still deserved a worthwhile grand adventure JRPG, and that led me to Dragon Quest 11S on my PC Game Pass. The "holiday" stretched into months because this game is a whole ass pilgrimage, but when you're stepping through a world as living and breathing and united as Erdrea, it's also a breezy delight.
They aren't at the forefront of my mind, but the combat and exploration are quite good, if basic. The fighting is turn-based via menus. You can freely move around the battlefield for added flavor despite having zero gameplay impact. Most of the time, I only controlled the protagonist and left everyone at the mercy of a "Fight Wisely" AI setting with little worry. If anything, allowing my companions to behave with a mind of their own enhanced their personhood, which is already a strong suit of the game.
Your silent protagonist starts off in the small village of Cobblestone on the first day of his adulthood. You learn of your true noble origin and set off towards the nearby metropolitan kingdom of Heliodor. The plot twists and suddenly you're on the run. You encounter enemies, allies, and span the globe via land, ocean, and sky many times over to uncover the true nature of evil and attempt to defeat it. You can read the rest in the spoiler section down below. The narrative is largely old hat, but I can't deny that every major story beat was pretty good at making me feel what I was supposed to. It's just an engaging world-saving adventure!
Between this and Xenoblade, I've found lately that individual characters in an RPG don't have to charm my pants off as long as they work well together to highlight the plight of their world as a whole. Now, DQ11S does have a pretty memorable cast, but it's smart to pull away from the solipsism that's inherent to a chosen hero plot and instead show you why this is a place worth fighting for. Each major character is representative of a different kind of plight in Erdrea. Some are royalty. Some are commoners. Some are religious. Most of them hail from different places, and in some ways, different times. A lot of RPGs believe that they're doing this kind of effective world building, but very few have been quite as elegant in putting the pieces together.
The key is that DQ11S isn't so much about its cast as it is about its people. Other than the extra helping of twists, none of the actual narrative beats are terribly original. It's the context. The nations and cities and the roads between them feel like one interconnected world. The role that the village of Cobblestone takes on later in the game, as your hometown comes together to face off against forces it can't hope to defeat, was genuinely touching. The dark nature of why the mountain city of Phnom Nonh is such a tourist trap is effective not because the revelation itself is particularly shocking, but because of the collective personalities of the tourists themselves. Running around the arid Gallopolis as a life threatening meteor hangs over the kingdom and listening to each townsfolk's reaction filled me with a melancholy and even a mild panic that very few games have instilled before. None of these beats are trying to blow your mind as astounding story choices, but their potency lies in how much time the game encourages you to spend with its people.
The NPCs are the MVPs. Many of them are anonymous, but they don't feel less real than your heroes. Some take you on fully voiced lengthy side quests that link an entire hemisphere together, like the fisherman from Lonolulu, an island village, whose grandfather had a tragic affair with a mermaid in his youth. Some are just regular townspeople with no quests attached whose stories evolve over time, like the tumultuous relationship between a haughty painter and his put-upon maid in Gondolia, the game's rendition of Venice. Speaking of Venice, each place is as varied as it is beautifully painted and rendered. They play out like the greatest hits of RPG locations -- grassy village, hot springs town, sprawling kingdom, snow fields, volcanoes, swamps, etc. -- but just about each one is one of the best of its kind that I've seen. I don't enjoy talking about tropes, but credit where it's due, DQ11S figured out a way to lean more into them for the better.
I'll leave this off with one more example. In the warrior city of Octagonia, there's this couple that always made me laugh because when the city is initially all about a martial arts tournament, the wife laments that her husband is too busy with betting on fights to come home. Then later when the city becomes a casino, it's the husband who laments all the time his wife spends gambling. You can encounter them separately in each part of the story but never together, yet the connection is undeniably there. That's how Erdrea is tethered. Whether it's through a main story beat that has you play one of the elderly main character's tragic past or whether it's a side quest that has you bring a soldier and a baker back together with their estranged father, everybody has something to lose here. The fact that that was more than just one example says all you need to know about what a meaningful impression this cute and colorful place made on me. Major props to the lively Toriyama character design, the art direction of the environment, and the lovely (if frequently repeated) soundtrack for making all of this possible. However, enjoying anything by composer Koichi Sugiyama, now dead, is a fraught experience given his bigotry (I'll let you Google the rest).
About the only thing I disliked from beginning to end is the protagonist's haircut. It's so hideous I helmeted him at every opportunity. Apologies to anyone who looks like him in real life.
Back to the positive, there are two things I want to shout out. The first is the crafting mechanic, which passes the vibe check that all button-timing mini-games have to pass: be soothing and satisfying. The second is the European accents, which I am convinced always make for better English video game voice acting. They just do.
One more NPC story because I can't help myself. From time to time I catch myself thinking about my return to Lonolulu after a catastrophic world event only to find that a previously doting couple have been reduced to just one after the other perished. They were a pair of unnamed NPCs, but I had gotten so used to them just being around, I had to put down my controller to breathe a sigh of sadness. That's the real deal, man.
SPOILER ZONE:
A full JRPG later you defeat evil and save the world. The credits roll. Then you find out there is an entire third half, making what you thought was the end actually just the two-thirds mark. After the victory celebration, our heroes learn that they can turn back time to just before things really went to shit and bring the people they lost along the way back to life. It'll reset things for everybody except the hero, but they deem it's worth it. Once you go back and diverge the timeline, things careen towards a different villain, and you fight the true final battle, this time with no casualties.
I'm not sure how I feel about the time reset. A more impactful story would be one that causes a different set of casualties altogether, making the case that there's no clean ending. On the other hand, this is a bright and colorful children's fantasy that believes in the existence of singularly brave heroes who stand above all, so I never really expected that. And I did appreciate the gravity and gloom that came with the choice to leave your friends behind as you go back to times where people wouldn't remember you the same way.
Still, when it's all said and done, the final arc felt like a way to redo everything with a nice bow on it. Every time I've read a story where time travel works just so neatly, I've wondered if that victory wasn't somehow hollow and tragic in its own way? Seeing that Lonolulu couple back together, while nice, put an asterisk on the sadness I originally felt. Oh, well. At least a cheap win didn't make Erdrea any less worth saving.
Last holiday, after my disappointment in Tales of Arise, I insisted to myself that I still deserved a worthwhile grand adventure JRPG, and that led me to Dragon Quest 11S on my PC Game Pass. The "holiday" stretched into months because this game is a whole ass pilgrimage, but when you're stepping through a world as living and breathing and united as Erdrea, it's also a breezy delight.
They aren't at the forefront of my mind, but the combat and exploration are quite good, if basic. The fighting is turn-based via menus. You can freely move around the battlefield for added flavor despite having zero gameplay impact. Most of the time, I only controlled the protagonist and left everyone at the mercy of a "Fight Wisely" AI setting with little worry. If anything, allowing my companions to behave with a mind of their own enhanced their personhood, which is already a strong suit of the game.
Your silent protagonist starts off in the small village of Cobblestone on the first day of his adulthood. You learn of your true noble origin and set off towards the nearby metropolitan kingdom of Heliodor. The plot twists and suddenly you're on the run. You encounter enemies, allies, and span the globe via land, ocean, and sky many times over to uncover the true nature of evil and attempt to defeat it. You can read the rest in the spoiler section down below. The narrative is largely old hat, but I can't deny that every major story beat was pretty good at making me feel what I was supposed to. It's just an engaging world-saving adventure!
Between this and Xenoblade, I've found lately that individual characters in an RPG don't have to charm my pants off as long as they work well together to highlight the plight of their world as a whole. Now, DQ11S does have a pretty memorable cast, but it's smart to pull away from the solipsism that's inherent to a chosen hero plot and instead show you why this is a place worth fighting for. Each major character is representative of a different kind of plight in Erdrea. Some are royalty. Some are commoners. Some are religious. Most of them hail from different places, and in some ways, different times. A lot of RPGs believe that they're doing this kind of effective world building, but very few have been quite as elegant in putting the pieces together.
The key is that DQ11S isn't so much about its cast as it is about its people. Other than the extra helping of twists, none of the actual narrative beats are terribly original. It's the context. The nations and cities and the roads between them feel like one interconnected world. The role that the village of Cobblestone takes on later in the game, as your hometown comes together to face off against forces it can't hope to defeat, was genuinely touching. The dark nature of why the mountain city of Phnom Nonh is such a tourist trap is effective not because the revelation itself is particularly shocking, but because of the collective personalities of the tourists themselves. Running around the arid Gallopolis as a life threatening meteor hangs over the kingdom and listening to each townsfolk's reaction filled me with a melancholy and even a mild panic that very few games have instilled before. None of these beats are trying to blow your mind as astounding story choices, but their potency lies in how much time the game encourages you to spend with its people.
The NPCs are the MVPs. Many of them are anonymous, but they don't feel less real than your heroes. Some take you on fully voiced lengthy side quests that link an entire hemisphere together, like the fisherman from Lonolulu, an island village, whose grandfather had a tragic affair with a mermaid in his youth. Some are just regular townspeople with no quests attached whose stories evolve over time, like the tumultuous relationship between a haughty painter and his put-upon maid in Gondolia, the game's rendition of Venice. Speaking of Venice, each place is as varied as it is beautifully painted and rendered. They play out like the greatest hits of RPG locations -- grassy village, hot springs town, sprawling kingdom, snow fields, volcanoes, swamps, etc. -- but just about each one is one of the best of its kind that I've seen. I don't enjoy talking about tropes, but credit where it's due, DQ11S figured out a way to lean more into them for the better.
I'll leave this off with one more example. In the warrior city of Octagonia, there's this couple that always made me laugh because when the city is initially all about a martial arts tournament, the wife laments that her husband is too busy with betting on fights to come home. Then later when the city becomes a casino, it's the husband who laments all the time his wife spends gambling. You can encounter them separately in each part of the story but never together, yet the connection is undeniably there. That's how Erdrea is tethered. Whether it's through a main story beat that has you play one of the elderly main character's tragic past or whether it's a side quest that has you bring a soldier and a baker back together with their estranged father, everybody has something to lose here. The fact that that was more than just one example says all you need to know about what a meaningful impression this cute and colorful place made on me. Major props to the lively Toriyama character design, the art direction of the environment, and the lovely (if frequently repeated) soundtrack for making all of this possible. However, enjoying anything by composer Koichi Sugiyama, now dead, is a fraught experience given his bigotry (I'll let you Google the rest).
About the only thing I disliked from beginning to end is the protagonist's haircut. It's so hideous I helmeted him at every opportunity. Apologies to anyone who looks like him in real life.
Back to the positive, there are two things I want to shout out. The first is the crafting mechanic, which passes the vibe check that all button-timing mini-games have to pass: be soothing and satisfying. The second is the European accents, which I am convinced always make for better English video game voice acting. They just do.
One more NPC story because I can't help myself. From time to time I catch myself thinking about my return to Lonolulu after a catastrophic world event only to find that a previously doting couple have been reduced to just one after the other perished. They were a pair of unnamed NPCs, but I had gotten so used to them just being around, I had to put down my controller to breathe a sigh of sadness. That's the real deal, man.
SPOILER ZONE:
A full JRPG later you defeat evil and save the world. The credits roll. Then you find out there is an entire third half, making what you thought was the end actually just the two-thirds mark. After the victory celebration, our heroes learn that they can turn back time to just before things really went to shit and bring the people they lost along the way back to life. It'll reset things for everybody except the hero, but they deem it's worth it. Once you go back and diverge the timeline, things careen towards a different villain, and you fight the true final battle, this time with no casualties.
I'm not sure how I feel about the time reset. A more impactful story would be one that causes a different set of casualties altogether, making the case that there's no clean ending. On the other hand, this is a bright and colorful children's fantasy that believes in the existence of singularly brave heroes who stand above all, so I never really expected that. And I did appreciate the gravity and gloom that came with the choice to leave your friends behind as you go back to times where people wouldn't remember you the same way.
Still, when it's all said and done, the final arc felt like a way to redo everything with a nice bow on it. Every time I've read a story where time travel works just so neatly, I've wondered if that victory wasn't somehow hollow and tragic in its own way? Seeing that Lonolulu couple back together, while nice, put an asterisk on the sadness I originally felt. Oh, well. At least a cheap win didn't make Erdrea any less worth saving.