Dragon Quest XI - Echos of an Elusive Age

Some gameplay courtesy of IGN from Gamescom, not sure if this is PS4 or PC (or if it matters, really, in terms of graphical fidelity and performance), but it looks to be from the beginning of the game and then a bit later an early (ish?) area of the game. I skipped past all the talking/city exploration and watched them explore the game world from horseback and get into some fights.

One thing I don’t recall being discussed much, is there are two cameras. The game is fully turn based, but one change from previous DQ games is instead of everyone selecting an action, and then watching the round play out, each character has an initiative score in the round, and goes (takes an action, which is then immediately played out) until one side is dead (hopefully the enemies). I prefer this way of handling turn-based combat, so I appreciate the change, personally.

Classic Battle Camera

Free-Form Battle Camera

What this also means is the free-form camera simply means you can walk the character you have control of around the battle field… really just for fun. The AI will control your team mates based on the tactics you set up, or you can still control them one at a time (I’m nearly positive of this - I’ve seen other videos where the party members were having their abilities chosen manually), with control shifting over to a party member when their turn comes up. I think this is really just to give you the illusion of doing something while you watch the combat unfold, which is pretty cool.

I will likely just stick with classic combat though, myself, and will likely turn Tactics off. At least unless I’m grinding I guess, while I watch Netflix or something.

In any case, later we get a look at crafting, which seems neat (about 13min in). Listening to a JP video some one was explaining crafting a little, and it seems cool. I guess most of your party equipment will really come from crafting and upgrading at the crafting station, and it’s a pretty interesting looking mini-game of trying to keep the forge temperature at specific ranges while also spending “points” on different types of strikes to try and get higher bonuses on the equipment you are crafting.

Thankfully, this video is in English so it’s a little less like guesswork with the video I watched a few weeks back. :) You will unlock more ways to strike the forge than simple “bash” though, like softer blows to try and get into the sweet spot easier, or a strike that let’s you increase two bars at once.

There is quite a bit more but I stopped watching there, at least for now. It comes out in just over two weeks (annoyingly, the day after the US has a 3 day weekend…)!

Really looking forward to this.

Preorder 25% off at Greenman today.

Oh, hey, Dragon Quest XI review embargo must have lifted this morning, reviews are dropping all over the place. I guess I wasn’t thinking about reviews much because I’ve seen enough to know it’s just like a prettier and larger version of past DQ games I played on the 3DS (much prettier) while still being a turn-based tactical combat game with lots of exploration and fun characters/story beats. Plus it came out over a year ago in Japan, and it got great reviews there from what I could make out.

Still, it’s getting an average score of 90 and that’s what I would expect, with the only ding so far I can see as I skim the reviews is “not taking any chances” or “not being new and evolved” which I get is appealing, but I’m getting more and more frustrated when game critics knock points of a score for being “too similar to the previous games people love” because it reminds me of all the times a sequel wasn’t at all what I wanted, like Final Fantasy XIII or Dragon Quest II. So if that’s the big complaint, I’m cool.

LOL, Kotaku’s review wins so far.

That review is amazing. AMAZING, I say.

Argh, I’m gonna end up buying this. Can’t say no to Dragon Quest.

Ugh, gameplay affecting preorder bonuses.

I liked Dragon Quest XIII almost in spite of itself. I actively dislike the Dragon Ball Z artist’s work and country line dance is the worst combat system but it managed to transcend those issues and suck me in. I figure this will do the same but I will wait to hear the crowd way in.

It’s also 25% cheaper to pre-order, which is the real bonus.

EDIT - Actually, I don’t know what you are actually talking about @Mysterial - the pre-order bonuses are Lanyards (physical PS4), PS4 Theme (PS4 digital), and a Wallpaper (PC)? What am I missing?

Where? Amazon is showing me $60 and so is Steam.

On Amazon: Amazon.com

On Steam: DRAGON QUEST® XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age™ - Digital Edition of Light on Steam

Didn’t check anybody else to see if there are others.

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$45! I love it when GMG has 20-25% off a game I was going to buy anyway. The sale will probably end before the game drops though, I suspect.

I assume you’d get the Steam pre-order bonuses, which are new to me (my initial Googling didn’t indicate anything like that but I have to admit, the Wings of Serendipity sound awesome, and Seeds of Skill (15?!) seems like an easy way to make the game a little too easy in the early game, especially if you get into crafting, but you could always save them in your inventory for the end-game or post-game content, if one had the willpower.

And still no official PC system requirements anywhere I can see. For someone with a somewhat old PC and no means to replace/upgrade it, that is kind of critical information I’d really like to have.

That is pretty frustrating, for sure. How does your PC compare to something like Final Fantasy XV requirements? I imagine this would be around there, or just a little under that?

I could play FF XV on the lowest settings, but it didn’t look good, and the load times were kind of atrocious. I ended up uninstalling the game because of a combination of not playing it much (or not “feeling like it”) and needing HD space (FF XV takes a LOT of HD space), but it was playable. Barely, true, but it was.

I think if you can play FFXV, even on low settings, you’ll probably be okay here just simply because the game’s art direction looks a lot simpler and less complex and also it’s turn-based, so you don’t have to deal with frame rate issues. In theory. I am guessing we’ll see actual PC specs yet this week, but you could also just buy it on Steam and then return it if the game doesn’t run well, if it’s something you are interested in checking out.

I hope so. Also, HD space is at a premium, and that’s perhaps the databit I’m the most interested in. If it’s 100+ GB, I’m out for the moment, I suppose. ;)

Yeah, it could be really big - the release information for the JP version last year said it was a 30GB download on PS4, and that was before voice acting was added (for the English version), so … potentially an issue, there.

If it’s in the 50 GB range, I think I can manage. More than that… ugh, might be complicated. I’ll see.

Also, about refunding - I’d rather not. If I can, I’ll buy the game from Nuuvem because I get better payment options (and usually better prices) there… but the game is not available right now there, though it might be again before the release date. Maybe by then we’ll have some additional info on PC port quality and requirements.

Nothing about requirements, but the quality has been reported on a few times so I have high expectations there.

Well, none of those reports is based on direct, first-hand experience, so I’ll take them with a sack of salt or two. That said, SE does have a history of good PC ports (and even the much maligned NieR: Automata port gave me no mentionable issues), so I’m actually not too worried about that.