As some of you may know, my stance on Dragon Quest series is, to put it lightly, not quite popular. Time and time again I showed dissatisfaction with just how little the series has evolved, the lack of general effort and quality, so I was bit wary, even skeptical regarding the latest game even though it quite frankly looked gorgeous and appealing. To my absolute surprise Dragon Quest XI is everything I ever wanted out of a Dragon Quest game and more. Perhaps my standards and enthusiasm was at an all time low after dreadful Final Fantasy XV and Bravely Default, but Dragon Quest XI was an absolute delight to play, so much so that I clocked in 112 hours on my first playthrough.

*Good*

First of all, the game looks drop dead gorgeous. Cell shading, anime style at its very best. Akira Toriyama's art style is always a huge plus. But most importantly it runs so smooth at 60FPS. Most characters are pretty good, fleshed out, all have their moments, it's always interesting to hear what they have to say and there's so much dialogue to go through. They finally added much needed depth to battle and character growth, all through smaller aspects of the game that combined works rather well. Pep Powers for instance, the insane amount of them, while rarely useful (in my opinion) they are still delight to use because the way they are played out is super fun. Forging your own equipment via Fun-Sized-Forge is, well, fun. In fact you'll mostly forge your own stuff, money has never been less important in Dragon Quest as it is in this game. Surprisingly fantastic post game content that easily adds 40 hours more to the game, at the very least. Slightly bit repetitive as you go through same areas and fight same bosses but the different outcome more than makes up for it. It also answers some glaring questions one might have during the "main story", it also servers as a fantastic connection to the first game in the series and, hard to believe, but elevates both games immensely. I could write quite a bit on the post game alone.

*Mixed*

Story wise Dragon Quest XI follows the same beats previous games made, sometimes to a fault. It's all more meaty this time around though, the adventure itself is super fun so where's the problem? Sloppy narrative choices. There are few genuine twists that the game itself kinda ruins. I'll use one lesser twist to make my point, you arrive in Snifleheim to find out everyone is frozen by an evil Ice Witch, save for the princess. You agree to help her and as you walk away from her she does this evil laugh immediately revealing to the player that she's actually the Ice Witch. Why? There's genuinely good story in this game, unfortunately buried under questionable story choices. One thing I absolutely hate about JRPG's are the color swap monsters. DQ11 has fantastic monster design thanks to legendary Akira Toriyama, but it feels really cheap when you fight a well designed boss and see the exact same boss in the very next dungeon as a random monster, but with a different color. This game goes even further by introducing all monsters once again but labeling them as "malicious", sadly it didn't stop there, DQ11 does that once again and labels its monsters as "vicious", lazy ain't the word.

*Bad*

Hero himself. Just another silent, goody two-shoes, extremely cliched protagonist. There's literally nothing memorable or exceptional about him. I would trade all those CGI cut scenes for a custom built character in a heartbeat. Villain/Villains. Yet again Dragon Quest has failed to provide a compelling villain. You've seen one you've seen them all, as far as Dragon Quest goes anyways. Post game has a twist that adds more depth to him but they kinda back away from it almost immediately as if they were afraid to pull that trigger. Sylvado was kinda fun at first, but as the game progressed he was became a straight up parody, he was at times unbearable.

If this is direction they are going in I honestly can't wait for Dragon Quest XII. Anyone played Dragon Quest XI?