Dragon Quest XI Struggles to Let Go of the Past

In an effort to make the game friendlier and more approachable to both newcomers and the west in general, Dragon Quest XI has taken a slightly different approach to how combat is presented. After bumping into an enemy out in the field, the party is taken into a small arena. From here the usual turn-based combat happens, with each character being able to pull from their own list of attacks, magical spells and abilities. While there’s an original fixed-camera mode available through the menus, the default free-camera combat mode allows you to move around the battlefield with the currently active character. This is largely for aesthetic, though, and doesn’t have any bearing on how combat actually plays out, which is a shame as this could have added an extra layer of depth to each encounter. What is surprising is that, despite not actually providing anything to the gameplay itself, the ability to freely move around the playing field does offer a different perspective to battles. Manually angling and aiming your view as your team unleashes its devastating volley of attacks is a little more interesting that simply being strapped to a floating camera overseeing the action, and the illusion of freedom it gives you does make combat feel a little more exciting at times.

Unfortunately most of the fights in the game rarely pose a significant challenge. Even the boss monsters fail to offer up anything particularly difficult aside from the occasional debilitating condition thrown out here and there. While each companion comes equipped with their own unique skill set, the game rarely asks that you make use of their individual strengths, which means most fights are generally solved with liberal use of each character’s most powerful skill until the monster is dead. It’s not until you approach the final leg of the game that enemies actually start to become a threat, forcing you actively counter and work around their mechanics. Dragon Quest XI does offer a few options under its new Draconian Mode to help make things a little more difficult, allowing you to impose a number of handicaps onto your game like restricting armor and weapon shop purchases from stores. This option has to be enabled when you first start your save file, however, and if disabled during the game, the handicaps cannot be turned back on without starting a new save file. It’s an oddly restrictive approach that doesn’t really seem to make much sense, and it’s a shame that it only works one way as this could have been the perfect compromise to allow players more control over how difficult they want their experience to be.

It’s clear that Dragon Quest XI made a considerable effort to shake off the bad habits of past entries and, to a certain extent, the game succeeds in updating itself for the current generation. This entry feels a lot more accessible and welcoming compared to other games in the series, and the English voice overs help to breath a lot of character into the extremely long plotline. With that said, it feels as though the efforts made to appeal to a western audience for this localization have in turn caused it to become much tamer, especially when it comes to the game’s combat difficulty. Despite its minor flaws, Dragon Quest XI’s sprawling story easily outshines everything else and makes for an exciting adventure for you to lose yourself in.

Andy Moore is a gaming freelancer based in the UK. When he’s not writing, he can be found staring blankly out of the nearest window, or spending way too much time on Twitter.