Hey everyone! Hope you all are staying safe and gaming a bunch! So for anyone that watches my stream, you will know that I’ve been playing this gem of an JRPG for well over a month and a half now and have finally finished the game (well somewhat…)

Since there are too many games coming out currently I had to finish it rather quickly but this game has soooo much to give and I do plan on going back and finishing it.

With that being said, let’s review Dragon Quest XI on the Nintendo Switch!

Story/Lore Background

Dragon Quest has been a long standing RPG series made famous in Japan. Spanning several titles as well as spin-off games (DQ Builders, Warriors, etc). Traditionally, Dragon Quest games have been the classic turn based rpg with a party of characters as they travel across the land in search of power to defeat the big evil villain bent on corrupting the world they live in.

Dragon Quest XI is not so different in this sense, but it still is able to deliver on amazing characters that tie the story together like a giant adventure novel that has many twists and turns as your party becomes stronger and stronger to eventually defeat the main villain Mordegon.

This game is also not directly tied to the previous 10 games and can be enjoyed from a standalone perspective. While there are clever references to older games. The originality of XI makes it stand on its own tier of awesome.

Don’t worry though, this review will be relatively spoiler free as enjoying this game on a first time experience will be a huge treat for anyone looking for that epic feeling of questing and monster slaying nostalgia.

Your main character is known affectionately as the Hero, while you can name them to be anything you want, who is born as the descendant of the Luminary, a legendary being that was once present to slay the impending darkness that threatened to rule the world.

Your childhood and the unfolding events of the game however, are already filled with challenge and unfortunate events as you fight the evil forces that are always at your back.

Your party members consist of characters you’d expect from a typical RPG game with a rogue, a mage, cleric, fighter and so on. The switch version also has an extra character that is only available in that version… but I’ll leave that for you to discover 😉

Each character has their own backstory and will definitely leave an impression on you! There is even special costumes for each character and a marriage ending depending on your… ‘preference’

Now this is also one of those famous JRPGs that boast an extremely long gameplay time spanning about 80-85 hours for the main game and another 20-30 hours postgame content…. even if you were to play an average of 5 hours a day on this game it would still take you around a month to finish everything!

This game thankfully has nice features such as recaps whenever you start the game and game information added in your menu to help keep you up to date on everything, and yes you should pay attention to the small details in this game… this is an RPG after all.

Gameplay

As I mentioned earlier, Dragon Quest is a turn based rpg game with each of your party characters taking an action and then allowing the enemy to move in combat.

Once again though, the switch version offers some extra features that make combat an engaging experience. You have the option of changing the camera to be either fixed or freely changeable. While you can also move your characters around in battle, it doesn’t really affect the combat itself.

You can also change the speed of battle if waiting turns is a bit slow for you.

There are moments in combat when your character will flash blue (See the picture above) This indicates that your character is in a ‘pepped’ state where they are able to perform special abilities and do extra damage. You can even have multiple characters pepped up and perform combo abilities together!

There are some fights that can be pretty challenging and if you aren’t high enough of a level you can be dispatched pretty quickly. While I’m not a fan of grinding for the sake of story progression in games, the combat in this game isn’t boring by any means and experimenting with different party compositions can be pretty fun.

You can even swap your party members out DURING combat, giving a more in-depth approach to combat and allowing for some pretty amazing saves if you’re getting destroyed in a boss fight.

The Switch version also features a special final boss (that I couldn’t even beat on a casual playthrough) that does suggest you will need to complete a lot of the extra quests in the game or do an insane amount of grinding, but for all the content you get it’s hard to complain about it.

Another thing that actually captivated me was the crafting system. It is very simple but boy is it addicting. As you progress in the game and complete quests you will unlock more recipes for additional weapons, gear and even special costumes for your characters!

Simply put, you just create items by carefully hitting certain areas of the item to meet at close as possible to the indicated green zone (or yellow for a perfect) and as you find more rare items the difficulty increases as well as your techniques and strategy for creating the most perfect weapons and armor you could imagine!

Music

Now when I first was reading up on this game, I was seeing a lot of negative comments about the music. Thankfully this was not the case in the Switch version as they added two types of soundtracks for the game.

In any other version, (PC/PS4) there was the synthesized soundtrack where all the songs were pure synthesized tracks and apparently caused headaches with many players. The switch version introduced symphonic soundtracks that added full instruments and truly breathed life into the game. Towns have their own themes, the over world has different themes and even when you’re flying there is a flight of the bumble bee like experience going on that just feels amazing. (Here’s the song… ignore the title if you dont want a potential spoiler)

The entire soundtrack of the game has this very polished orchestrated sound that provides mind blowing immersion. I can’t say much about the synthetic soundtrack as I just kept preferring the symphonic sound every-time.

For anyone that is playing this game on anything other than Switch, there are work arounds to add the symphonic version in the game.

I would also like to say that after playing this game, my love for videogame OSTs have reached an all time high thanks to this series. There are even older Dragon Quest games with remastered themes that are incredible works of art!

Switch Features

I’ve already mentioned a few of these earlier, but I did want to touch on the aspect that this version of the game is the complete version and the only complete version available at this time.

Certain features in the switch version such as being able to craft items anywhere versus only at save points is a nice touch and being able to see your current party follow you in the overworld and additional gear/weapons make the game that much more exciting to dive into and gives you the most value for your time to make things convenient.

I would recommend this version of the game to anyone that has not played it already and maybe new to the series in general.

One big addition to the switch version is the inclusion of 2D mode. This allows players to play the ENTIRE game in 2D mode with new maps and even an extra story that features the 2D mode exclusively and more information on a certain race of time creatures (Speaking of, this game kind of looks like Chrono Trigger doesn’t it?)

The amount of endgame content and extra features, plus the portability of the game make it a wonderful addition to any switch library!

Speaking of endgame, what happens once you do finish everything? Is it a one and done kind of game? PULEEEEEEASE. The switch version also added a Draconian Quest mode. This allows you to replay the game with some exciting modifiers to spice up the game and allow for some pretty funny occurrences

Want your party members to randomly laugh or skip their turn for no reason? Or maybe you want extra strong enemies. Regardless this game has tons of content and replay-ability to boot!

The biggest glaring issue I have with the game though are the graphics. Compared to the PS4 that can show this game in 900p and the PC version can run 4k textures while the switch version can only run up to 720p in docked form and 540p in handheld.

Not to mention that the game has issues with loading large towns at times and suffers from minor audio glitches at times. However, these things don’t really take away from the overall experience and I still found the game to look gorgeous on the switch and still have a very enjoyable time playing the game.

Summary

Overall, Dragon Quest XI has become one of my new favorite RPG series and has provided me countless hours of amazing story, lovable and challenging gameplay as well as plenty of extra features on the switch to make this truly the best version of the game to experience it on!

I’ve put in 100 hours already in my file and have yet to fully complete the endgame content as well as all the side quests and even going back and playing a Draconian Quest run (Sure I’ll gladly give another 100 hours of my life for this amazing game!)

I would like to also suggest the switch version as the go to version as there are so many great quality of life changes and additional content that make the graphics not so much a concern. I promise you will be no doubt immersed for many many days in this masterpiece of an adventure!

As always,

Brother Ghesh out~