Dragon Quest 11 thoughts so far

[Remij 4,717]

Yea, this game is awesome.  Plain and simple.  

 

First off, it's really well designed and polished.. which I guess is to be expected when you essentially stick to the same formula over decades of development.  But there's just tons of little things that really enhance the experience.  The game has a neat little way of introducing new options/features/mechanics right when you begin to think that it would be useful.  It's like they've taken all these considerations to help you do what you're wanting to do, or go where you want to go, as efficiently as possible.  Anyone who's ready to drop 80+h on an adventure will appreciate all this stuff.

 

Then there's just the aesthetic and UI design.  It's all nice and consistent, and very easy to access all parts of the menus from anywhere else.  Even just small things like asking if you want to equip something as you buy it, instead of having to buy it.. then exit the shop menu.. then open the menu.. then equip it finally.  Also, the Heal All, and Handy Heal All options are nice too so you can quickly heal your entire party in the most efficient way possible.

 

Another awesome thing about this game is the Fun-sized Forge.  It's basically how you ca craft weapons/armor/accessories that you learn from various books and people around the world.  It's actually really cool as you essentially have a certain amount of points to hammer away at the item.. you learn skills which allow you to perform different actions to get the item into shape and the closer you get to perfecting the item, the better stats it will have.  If you get it perfect, you get "perfection pearls" which allow you to re-work items.  It's a very cool system, and probably the best of it's kind imo.

 

I'm almost 10 hours in now and have the urge to jump right back in after just turning it off  

 

And I'll say it again.. the graphics in this game are stunning.  

[Twinblade★ 3,986]

The classic camera is the way to go for battles, definitely recommend switching to it.

 

While the fun size forge is neat its kind of confusing. When exactly is the best time to strike during the hammer's animation? I feel like im missing the sweet spot a lot.

 

But yeah the game is really good so far....definitely seems more promising than Ni No Kuni 2.

Edited September 8, 2018 by Twinblade

[Remij 4,717]

15 minutes ago, Twinblade said:

The classic camera is the way to go for battles, definitely recommend switching to it.

 

While the fun size forge is neat its kind of confusing. When exactly is the best time to strike during the hammer's animation? I feel like im missing the sweet spot a lot.

 

But yeah the game is really good so far....definitely seems more promising than Ni No Kuni 2.

It has nothing to do with pressing any button during the animation... whether you bash or whether you do a flourish it always raises the bar a set amount.  You basically have to guess the right combination of hits to get it in the sweet spot.  Initially I thought that getting it to the highest end of the green section was the best.. but nah.  You want to have the bar stop where the notch is along the top of the bar.  If you get it perfect, it will highlight and then you move onto the next section.  I managed to get that Gold ring quest perfect after 2 attempts.  It turned into a Gold Ring + 3.

 

It can affect the stats of things pretty drastically, so it's good to get them as perfect as possible.  What a neat mechanic :) 

[Twinblade★ 3,986]

55 minutes ago, Remij_ said:

It has nothing to do with pressing any button during the animation... whether you bash or whether you do a flourish it always raises the bar a set amount.  You basically have to guess the right combination of hits to get it in the sweet spot.  Initially I thought that getting it to the highest end of the green section was the best.. but nah.  You want to have the bar stop where the notch is along the top of the bar.  If you get it perfect, it will highlight and then you move onto the next section.  I managed to get that Gold ring quest perfect after 2 attempts.  It turned into a Gold Ring + 3.

 

It can affect the stats of things pretty drastically, so it's good to get them as perfect as possible.  What a neat mechanic :) 

oh, so its basically completely random? thats kind of lame if ill be honest.

[Remij 4,717]

1 minute ago, Twinblade said:

oh, so its basically completely random? thats kind of lame if ill be honest.

No... it's not random.  When you bash or flourish, the bar raises a specific amount.  You then look at how much it raises, and then figure out if you should do the same action again, or change it for one that will raise it more or less.  The idea is to fill the bar to the green for general success, or the specific notch in the bar for perfection.

 

I don't see how this is that confusing to you lmao...

[Ike★ 2,922]

Playing Spider-Man first and then this.

[Twinblade★ 3,986]

11 minutes ago, Remij_ said:

No... it's not random.  When you bash or flourish, the bar raises a specific amount.  You then look at how much it raises, and then figure out if you should do the same action again, or change it for one that will raise it more or less.  The idea is to fill the bar to the green for general success, or the specific notch in the bar for perfection.

 

I don't see how this is that confusing to you lmao...

I've had trouble getting the bar in the right spot, but i just unlocked the flourish ability so ill switch it up to that to see what happens.

[Remij 4,717]

8 minutes ago, Twinblade said:

I've had trouble getting the bar in the right spot, but i just unlocked the flourish ability so ill switch it up to that to see what happens.

Oh, I see what you mean now.  Before you're really shown that there's different ways to raise the bar, you're kinda left wondering why you can't get it perfect.  That makes sense.  I can see why you thought there was something you were doing wrong, now that I think about it.

 

But nah, you get different abilities which change how the bars raise.  It's basically just a puzzle where you kinda have to figure out the right number or patterns of hits to get them perfect.  But it's not something that's meant to happen all the time, or be easy to have happen.  More often than not you're going to have an imperfect craft.. at least as far as I can tell right now.  I'm extremely early as well and there's bound to be more abilities later on.

[Guest]

Sounds awesome. I'll prob pick it up when it hits $49.99 (rather then $79.99 ). This year ended up being a great one in gaming.

Edited September 8, 2018 by Guest

[Twinblade★ 3,986]

On 2018-09-08 at 1:20 PM, Remij_ said:

Oh, I see what you mean now.  Before you're really shown that there's different ways to raise the bar, you're kinda left wondering why you can't get it perfect.  That makes sense.  I can see why you thought there was something you were doing wrong, now that I think about it.

 

But nah, you get different abilities which change how the bars raise.  It's basically just a puzzle where you kinda have to figure out the right number or patterns of hits to get them perfect.  But it's not something that's meant to happen all the time, or be easy to have happen.  More often than not you're going to have an imperfect craft.. at least as far as I can tell right now.  I'm extremely early as well and there's bound to be more abilities later on.

Ok, it slowly makes more sense now. So does the number of units that the bar goes up change depending on the item? I wish the game went into more detail into how that works.

 

Also, am i missing something or is there no way to use the forge outside of campsites? So far, one annoying issue is that by the time you reach a vendor in a town or other settlement, theres a chance you can craft the same or better equipment, however theres no simple way to access the forge. You have to go back to a campsite, rest, and then use the forge, and then go back to the vendor and rinse and repeat until you're satisfied with where your characters are with their equipment.

 

The forge should definitely be available for use in NPC settlements  (maybe the inn). That would be a pretty big quality of life improvement.

[Remij 4,717]

14 minutes ago, Twinblade said:

Ok, it slowly makes more sense now. So does the number of units that the bar goes up change depending on the item? I wish the game went into more detail into how that works.

 

Also, am i missing something or is there no way to use the forge outside of campsites? So far, one annoying issue is that by the time you reach a vendor in a town or other settlement, theres a chance you can craft the same or better equipment, however theres no simple way to access the forge. You have to go back to a campsite, rest, and then use the forge, and then go back to the vendor and rinse and repeat until you're satisfied with where your characters are with their equipment.

 

The forge should definitely be available for use in NPC settlements  (maybe the inn). That would be a pretty big quality of life improvement.

Yea I think so.  Basically you hit the item, and it will go up a random incremental amount.. then you have to figure out how many hits it will take going up by that amount to get it as close as possible to the notch.  It is random based on the item, but goes up the same amount in subsequent hits.  It wouldn't make any sense if it was just completely random every time you hit it... you wouldn't be able to gauge very well how to get closest.  Either way... getting it perfect is more of a luck thing.. and I don't think it's really meant to be possible to do on every item you craft.

 

And nah, at least so far in my game.. you can only use the forge at campsites.  You're right about there being a good chance that you can craft an equal or better item by the time you reach a new settlement.  That's often the case in my experience.  But that plays into the risk reward of either spending your money on new equipment vs crafting new stuff.  There'll be some stuff that you can only really get after learning how to craft it.  Equipment also starts shooting up in price pretty quickly and if you're being more casual with the amount of enemies you're fighting, crafting can be a good way to keep some of your characters relatively powerful.  It's not really possible early game to buy everyone new stuff every time you hit a shop.  At least that's what I've found.  There's also the fact that some equipment have other stats that you may want to keep for your character while being able to improve the strength(attack) and durability (defense) of your character.

 

I think of it more as just another option at your disposal to upgrade your characters and don't really favor one over the other.  Sometimes one or the other, or both will make sense.

 

But yes, only being able to use it at camp is a bit of an oddity.. but it's literally nothing to zoom to a campsite and use it, imo.

[Twinblade★ 3,986]

The equipment management in general is pretty clunky overall. When you're buying something, it only shows you how it affects your defense, even though they usually affect multiple stats (like charm, magical might/mending, etc.). So I often find myself memorizing the rest of the stat differences, backing out of the vendor menu, going into my own equipment menu and comparing the differences. Theres no reason they couldn't have just thrown the rest of the stats onto the buy menu as well (same applies to the forge)...odd design designs especially coming from a veteran RPG developer like SE. Not a major thing but i just went back and forth between those menus at least 5-7 times so it becomes unnecessarily time consuming.

Edited September 10, 2018 by Twinblade

[Remij 4,717]

28 minutes ago, Twinblade said:

The equipment management in general is pretty clunky overall. When you're buying something, it only shows you how it affects your defense, even though they usually affect multiple stats (like charm, magical might/mending, etc.). So I often find myself memorizing the rest of the stat differences, backing out of the vendor menu, going into my own equipment menu and comparing the differences. Theres no reason they couldn't have just thrown the rest of the stats onto the buy menu as well (same applies to the forge)...odd design designs especially coming from a veteran RPG developer like SE. Not a major thing but i just went back and forth between those menus at least 5-7 times so it becomes unnecessarily time consuming.

Nah dude.. you press X or Square in the shop menu on the item you want and it shows all the details and all the stats if affects.  They wouldn't fuck up something so obvious as that.

 

I'll say again, this game is one of the most polished JRPGs I've ever seen/played.  It's also stunningly gorgeous... especially with TAA forced.  Cleans up all the jaggies, even the ones when you reach pep with the blue glow.  That normally shimmers a lot, but not with TAA.  

 

 

The animations and everything are just awesome as well.  The enemies are a highlight.  

[Twinblade★ 3,986]

3 minutes ago, Remij_ said:

Nah dude.. you press X or Square in the shop menu and it shows all the details of the item and the stats if affects.

 

 

But those details are pointless because it doesn't show you the stats of the character's current equipment in comparison....you have to back out and manually compare them.

Edited September 10, 2018 by Twinblade

[Remij 4,717]

4 minutes ago, Twinblade said:

But those details are pointless because it doesn't show you the stats of the character's current equipment in comparison....you have to back out and manually compare them.

Oh I see.  

[Remij 4,717]

I'm really surprised to see how well this is still selling at full price, especially here in Canada.  It's $80.. and it's back to #2 after falling to like 5-7 before.  It's #5 in the global top sellers.

 

That doesn't mean it's selling massively.. but with these games they usually sell high the first day then drop off hard afterwards... until there's a price drop.  I'm surprised to see this come back up.

[102020393023445948594 2,223]

 

square... you know what to do.  

 

Also on: SWITCH 

 

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Remij_ said:

I'm really surprised to see how well this is still selling at full price, especially here in Canada.  It's $80.. and it's back to #2 after falling to like 5-7 before.  It's #5 in the global top sellers.

 

That doesn't mean it's selling massively.. but with these games they usually sell high the first day then drop off hard afterwards... until there's a price drop.  I'm surprised to see this come back up.

Whether it's the success of the PS4 (compared to the PS3), the increase in japanese PC game releases, or just gamers getting more interested in japanese games due to western game fatigue.... For whatever reason, this seems like the gen where people are trying their first games in long established japanese series.

 

e.g.

 

Yakuza

Dragon Quest

Monster Hunter

Tekken

Edited September 10, 2018 by Guest

[Remij 4,717]

1 minute ago, モンキー said:

Whether it's the success of the PS4 (compared to the PS3), the increase in japanese PC game releases, or just gamers getting more interested in japanese games due to western game fatigue.... For whatever reason, this seems like the gen where people are trying their first games in long established japanese series.

 

e.g.

 

Yakuza

Dragon Quest

Monster Hunter

Tekken

You're definitely right about that.  I've heard quite a few people say "X will be my first time trying this series.." for many different Japanese games this gen.  It's good to see, and I definitely think that after an excruciatingly long gen like the PS3/360, where western games dominated... people are ready for Japanese games this gen and next.  It also helps that the higher end studios are catching up to the west graphically.

[Guest]

yeah it does help that the games are better now.

Also another one, Persona 5.