DRAGON QUEST® XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age™ - Definitive Edition

I recently finished both of the HD2D remakes, which i liked a lot, so I was excited to see all of the developments in the series in this game. I can see where a lot of the quality of life additions for the HD2D games came from and like them here too (mostly handy heal all). I also like the graphics, some of the characters, and the battle system, which I hope will be developed in the next game to include more motion in the arena and fluidity. But that's about all I like. The problem is that this game does not grow where necessary in comparison to the older games. This is evident in the plot and graphics presentation especially. Both of these are much more sophisticated in some ways in DQ11, but are also stunted in decisive respects. The plot is boring and predictable, despite amusing characters showing up from time to time. I liked the coward prince, Veronica, and Sylvando (mostly), yet many of the problems or discussions the characters have are boring and slow and repetitive. The personalities are good, but I wish they were given some room to breathe. I have zero interest in the situations I am put in because everything works out in the most boring, low effort, and predictable way possible. A lot of this is because characters lack interesting lives, detailed backstories, or genuinely interesting motivations. And nothing very interesting seems to happen to them. The old games aren't all that different (though I'd say DQ2 has a much more interesting plot than this game), but because the old games are often so bare-bones, they ask the player to fill things in mentally. Dq11 has tons of dialogue and makes as if it would fill in the blanks and develop things on its own, but nothing interesting ever happens. It leaves us with one dimensional characters and plot points even as it throws much more dialogue and text at the player than the early games. Graphically, it sort of seems like this game decided to just model the world on the earlier titles with this new graphics style, but without adding the kind of scale the new style was capable of illustrating. So instead of a less detailed open world map that asked users to abstract away from the world they could imagine as in the old games, we get barren looking open zones that mimic the older world map with none its benefits or any suggestion that something more exists underneath this representative layer. The towns follow a similar logic. These towns could be in the older games, but while they would work in an old DQ title, they feel small, dead, and artificial here. What I mean is that DQ 11's towns are more similar to Tantegel than Novigrad in scale, which doesnt work with this graphical presentation. The gameplay outside of battles is also terrible: Here's an example: one of my allies is captured at one point and the game decides it wants to do a stealth mini game to rescue him, but the easiest solution is to ignore stealth, alert the guards, and kite them until you reach your destination. Even if you wanted to play it straight, zero thinking is required to win, so you'd just be wasting your time. After you evade the guards, you are required to walk across tight ropes between buildings to another destination "sneakily.." This isn't cinematic as in "Sony" games--the play area for the stealth and tight ropes segments is so obviously, in your face small as to make the entire exercise ridiculous. You should be seen at every single point of movement! Final fantasy 9 managed to communicate scale, while still having a small play area, in traversing rooftops many years ago in its opening section. What would have been better than the stealth segment?--just show a cutscene of my characters sneaking about and starting the boss battle to rescue my friend. Nothing would be lost except inane busy work and a visually absurd gameplay segment. Instead, it not only looks and feels bad, but also wastes the player's time. Gameplay doesn't get better elsewhere either. You might hope with the open zones that there would be something interesting to explore and find. I didn't find anything interesting, except occasional ambushes by enemies, which is not all that interesting because: combat is so easy that you could fall asleep playing the game (and probably still win much of the time)! Toward the end of my play things got slightly more engaging, but I am not wagering more time to find out how much more. Some will say this is a "cozy" game. Okay, sure, but that isn't what I like so i am going to call it. If you like cozy, maybe you will feel differently.