Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

 PC
User Score
8.6

Generally favorable reviews- based on 350 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 292 out of 350
  2. Mixed: 28 out of 350
  3. Negative: 30 out of 350

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
view
per page
  1. DinoBeam
    Mar 27, 2022
    5
    WARNING! This game is too easy, and the only other option is Very Hard mode, and you can't change difficulty after starting. This is a huge core flaw that really sucks, and is hard to understand the existence of. I don't know why this isn't talked about more, though it is talked about. I'm over half way through the game and I have to stop. While at first the characters were charming andWARNING! This game is too easy, and the only other option is Very Hard mode, and you can't change difficulty after starting. This is a huge core flaw that really sucks, and is hard to understand the existence of. I don't know why this isn't talked about more, though it is talked about. I'm over half way through the game and I have to stop. While at first the characters were charming and the quest fairly interesting, the story is just meandering from reason for it to keep going to reason for it to keep going using anime power up tricks and such. In addition, Akira Toriyama's art design of monsters is extremely hit or miss here, with half or more of the monsters looking like off-brand toys for very young children.

    The game also feels very cheap in a number of other ways, for instance you get to a cool new area only to hear the same exact music for every other area, then you go in a cave and hear the exact same music for every other cave and dungeon. This game is doing as little as it can to make a profit, making sure to extend the playtime so people don't complain. This game is very disappointing, and I am appalled at the praise it has received by players and critics alike.

    If you are looking for a good JRPG experience, I recommend these;

    Dragon Quest IV for the Nintendo DS
    Pokemon Blue or the updated Leaf Green version
    Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest 1
    Radiata Stories    … Expand
  2. JonsGone
    Jul 10, 2020
    7
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Great game.
    Soundtrack is horrible, just turn it off.
    Voice acting ranges from great (Rab) to atrocious (Gemma).
    Lacks critical information on monsters.
    Great story, picks up after act 1.
    Most of the character development is undone by the transition to act 3.
    Meh character design.
    What even is the point of having a timeskip if you're not gonna change up the designs a little.
    Serena's hair does not count.
    Fantastic monster design.
    They actually look like old school 2d sprites.
    Game looks beautiful even if the landscapes tend to be a little bland.
    Does not let you figure things out for yourself which can get a little annoying.
    40+ duration for main story (acts 1/2)
    Large amounts of postgame content.    … Expand
  3. timeslider
    Jan 3, 2019
    7
    This is the first Dragon Quest game I've played so I'm not looking at this game with nostalgic eyes. I am a big fan JRPGs in general and this game was decent but not the best and it suffers from some horrible design decisions.

    Pros. * Graphics are top notch for a JRPG. The style is very beautiful. I found myself stopping and looking around in first person view a lot. Cons. There's    This is the first Dragon Quest game I've played so I'm not looking at this game with nostalgic eyes. I am a big fan JRPGs in general and this game was decent but not the best and it suffers from some horrible design decisions.

    Pros.
    * Graphics are top notch for a JRPG. The style is very beautiful. I found myself stopping and looking around in first person view a lot.

    Cons.
    There's a lot listed here but they are minor inconveniences. Overall the game is very good.

    * The world map is not labeled. I found the world map to be completely useless. I spent more time than necessary running around because the map wasn't labeled and since this game is fairly new the information wasn't on google either.
    * Very slow menus. Some of the menus take more than 5 seconds to activate. I'm running an i7-4790K and gtx-970. I've never had a game menu take that long. It's insane. It usually happens in the same menu every time. When I first open the fun-size forge and when I activate a skill from the skill tree. This problem is compounded by the fact that the game has so many repetitive menus. Does it really need to ask me if I want to keep playing? Whenever a music jingle is playing during a menu, it won't let you advance until the music stops. Every single level gained has to be tapped through and in some less frequent places like after a quest.
    * You can only sell 9 items at a time. I don't know who thought that was a good idea but that made me slam my head on the table. On top of that, it takes about 5 button presses to sell something and with the menus being so slow, it becomes a major annoyance.
    * Giving seeds/items, in general, is so slow. I have a ton of seeds I wanted to give to a player but when I give them one it takes me all the way back to the item menu. It takes 6 button presses to give one seed. It takes about 1 minute 18 seconds to give 50 seeds. Why they don't ask how many to give? I don't know.
    * Default music is too loud. It default sound settings has everything set to 6. I had to turn the music down to 2.
    * Tabbing out of the game doesn't stop the music. A lot of times, I'll tab out of the game to watch a YouTube video but the game music keeps playing. It very annoying. There's no way to pause the music so each time I would have to go into the system settings to turn off the music.
    * Cutscenes are annoying. I wish the cutscenes would advance automatically. Instead, after a character has finished talking, I have to press a button to continue. The voice overs will sometimes have a long pause after a sentence so you think it's time to press continue but they weren't done talking and I've just missed some dialogue. Or the opposite will happen. They'll be finished talking and I won't know it. The only way to be certain is to read along with the text at the bottom but then I miss the visuals. It would have been much better if the cutscene advanced automatically and if the subtitles were optional.
    * Autorun is worthless. I used it about 5 times in 110 hours and only to see if it could be useful. Some of the maps are big but not that big.
    * Music. One of the big things I love about JRPGs is the music. Sadly, I just wasn't feeling it in this game. The overture (played during the intro) was the only song I enjoyed. I'm not even going to talk about MIDI vs orchestration. I'm talking about the melodies and repetitions. The soundtrack is very short. None of the characters had their own theme. Every theme was completely different and unrelated. Nothing tied itself together. The same music is used over and over again. It's almost comical in some areas. This music? Again? lol I can forgive bad quaily if the song is catchy but none of the songs were very catchy. In Final Fantasy and Ni No Kuni, I wouldn't leave some areas until the best part of the song was over because the songs were that good. That never happened in this game.
    * Textures. They're good but the resolutions are all over the place. Some really small objects have overly sharp textures while other really big noticeable objects have low-resolution textures.
    * Lack of graphics settings. I have a gtx-970 which is not good enough to run this game at max-settings in some areas. In those areas, my frame-rate would drop to less than 30 but those areas were rare. Even after turning down all the settings I was still dipping into the 40s.    … Expand
  4. robomartion
    Oct 22, 2019
    5
    So kid friendly it might just leave you puking. The obvious and lazy use of Unreal Engine make this a soulless experience not worthy of the title Dragon Quest.
  5. Armitas
    Nov 2, 2022
    6
    A beautiful game that starts strong and then becomes about as shallow as Dragon Quest 1.

    If you like Pride Parades you will like this game. Later on in the game you will have to spend about 30minutes on a nearly world wide pride parade. The game is absolutely gorgeous, great crafting, and has a compelling story, but fails to deliver any sense of danger or gravity. Enemies come off like    A beautiful game that starts strong and then becomes about as shallow as Dragon Quest 1.

    If you like Pride Parades you will like this game. Later on in the game you will have to spend about 30minutes on a nearly world wide pride parade. The game is absolutely gorgeous, great crafting, and has a compelling story, but fails to deliver any sense of danger or gravity. Enemies come off like Hanna-Barbera cartoon villains both in appearance as well as dialogue. All combat, even bosses can be easily completed on full auto, and there is no way to change difficulty once your game has started. The main character does not speak at all except awkward grunts. The companions have no personality or anything interesting to say outside a few important cut scene, the NPCs say nothing important. It's just really really boring. It feels soulless. Nothing about it feels like a JRPG. I quit after about 45 hours because I just could not find a way to care about any of it and I have never quit a JRPG before. It just felt like I was playing a childs game.

    Oh, here is one of the worst parts. They don't have cutscenes, what they have is cut scene dialogue that pauses mid sentence waiting for you to press a button to move to the next sentence of dialogue. You can put this on auto but IT STILL PAUSES. So all the important developments in the story take place in a painfully slow manner, that just kills any sense tone to what happens. No voice actor can survive these kinds of pauses. It kills all immersion.    … Expand
  6. Crimson9
    Dec 13, 2022
    5
    This is an interesting JRPG experience. It is definitely a below average game, but its reveals a lot about game design to understand why.

    For instance, the removal of random encounters. You'd think that would be a good thing. However, it completely removes the danger of the overworld and dungeons. Now you only run into enemies if you want to. So an entire element of the game (stacking    This is an interesting JRPG experience. It is definitely a below average game, but its reveals a lot about game design to understand why.

    For instance, the removal of random encounters. You'd think that would be a good thing. However, it completely removes the danger of the overworld and dungeons. Now you only run into enemies if you want to. So an entire element of the game (stacking up on potions to survive a trek through overworld or dungeons) is removed for the sake of accessibility.

    There are many other problems, like overworld design, level design, characters, plot, lack of originality, and terrible audio. It reveals a lot about the decline of JRPGs.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
80

Generally favorable reviews - based on 4 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 4
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 4
  3. Negative: 0 out of 4
  1. Riot Pixels
    Nov 5, 2018
    83
    Dragon Quest XI may delight even the staunchest opponents of JRPGs.
    Read full review
  2. GameStar
    Sep 23, 2018
    88
    Dragon Quest 11 successfully counts on traditional JRPG virtues in a contemporary look, becoming the best current title of the genre.
    Read full review
  3. PC Gamer
    Sep 11, 2018
    68
    A JRPG for people who haven’t played one in a while, basically. Well-made, but disappointingly safe.
    Read full review
See all critic reviews »