Review: Dragon Quest XI looks new but feels old

Enlarge / Dragon Quest XI is a lot of things, but it's always nice to look at. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Even more than other long-running Japanese RPG series like Final Fantasyor Poki(C)mon, Square Enix's Dragon Questis married to its own conventions. Even as the series' visual presentation has evolved to take advantage of newer and more powerful game consoles, the series continues to use sound effects and visual cues and monster designs and gameplay mechanics that hearken back to the series' earliest entries on the NES more than three decades ago.

For longtime fans, this resistance to change is part of the charm. The problem for the series, though, is that it doesn't have a ton of fans in countries outside of Japan. Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age is aware of that problem, and in some ways it's a friendly entry point for new players. But the game's efforts to attract new players doesn't always mesh well with its efforts to please existing fans. For people with no nostalgic attachment to its well-worn mechanics, it's hard to explain why it plays so much like a game from the '80s.

There's a lot to like about Dragon Quest XI, especially if you're already in love with the franchise. But even as someone inclined to grade the game on a curve, I've got to admit that I wish it offered a little more variety, both within its own 70-ish hours quest (of which I've played about 50 as of this writing) and compared to other games in the series.

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