Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age

Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age is a stable performance from the DQ series, and while overly traditional, it remains an excellent JRPG work. As a legitimate sequel in the DQ series, this work continues the series' consistent traditional style. The DQ series is traditional as always, but performs too stably. Compared to new FF releases, I'm now more concerned about why DQ12 is taking so long - hope the development team progresses smoothly. In terms of gameplay, this is a standardized traditional JRPG with little depth to speak of, same for innovation. Except for the highlight of New Game Plus elements, there's not much innovation to mention. The crafting system is somewhat revolutionary compared to previous entries, but it's not a rare system in itself. Instead, some things left for nostalgia seem quite useless, like the bank being almost useless in this work. Technical performance is generally stable with no obvious issues. In visual design, the map design is quite good. Although also very traditional, corresponding to different regions of the real world, I really enjoy this approach - it gave me the same feeling as when I played Golden Sun back in the day. However, character modeling is rather archaic and lacks distinctiveness. Early DQ's art style was established by Akira Toriyama - characters look like Dragon Ball if you don't look closely, but now it indeed lacks that uniqueness. Musically, it's rather monotonous and repetitive. Music has always been a strength of DQ and even SE as a whole, but it's rather lackluster in this work. Voice acting performance still suffers from being too traditional - in the most traditional JRPG where players embody the protagonist, the main character has no name or voice acting, which should indeed count as a deduction today. Story-wise, all characters have easily predictable traditional traits, with no particular development except for Sylvando. Romance is insufficient, having to rely on magical cohabitation - what kind of setting is that? And except for the village girl being the official pairing, other characters are strictly speaking just cohabiting. However, if you view New Game Plus as the second chapter of the main story, it's actually a stroke of genius. The New Game Plus elements are brilliantly designed - guess why this work's subtitle is called "Echoes of an Elusive Age"? So interesting. There's no helping this aspect - DQ is too traditional, you can guess every plot step. When leaving the village after the prologue, the protagonist's mother specifically tells him to carefully remember every detail of the village, greatly reducing suspense. Overall, this is a very replayable work, especially when you think it's over but it's far from finished. The 91.5-point rating reflects its excellent quality as a traditional JRPG.