Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

Good RPGs need not be elusive.

Dragon Quest XI not only manages to be the best game in Square-Enix's iconic series, but is one of the best JRPGs to be released in recent years.

Dragon Quest XI is the perfect game to kick off the annual Fall glut of games, simply based on the merits of it being a massive sprawling JRPG that could easily carry you into the Winter months if you want it to. There's so much to do and it's so easily to get lost for hours just exploring the world trying to find the right materials to craft some better gear, or to finish up that side-quest that you picked up in Puerto Valor, or maybe the casino is more your style? Dragon Quest XI is easily one of the best JRPGs this generation, and it would be a shame if you missed it.

Some magic never fades.

Dragon Quest XI is a stellar game that displays a great command of the ins and outs of its genre the way few other games do. What it lacks in originality, it more than makes up for with its confident execution of ideas, showing that a game doesn't need to be revolutionary or the freshest thing on the block to be an incredible experience. With a memorable cast of characters, a well-told, briskly paced story, stunning and vibrant visuals, and a beautiful and extremely varied world as its setting, Dragon Quest XI serves as yet another excellent instalment in this amazingly consistent franchise.

After all, the gap between the original and its imitation is measured in feet, not inches. For many, the difference between the two is so obvious that you can tell from a distance which is which. Like a Mario game playing opposite your average mascot platformer, there’s plenty of nuance and subtlety lost in the translation from one to the other. The same is true for Dragon Quest, perhaps even more so because of its irregularity. Because, at the end of the day, nothing is ever going to match up against the original that inspired it. In an age where countless games are trying to imitate the past...

Already a colossal adventure clocking in at over 100 hours, Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age just got even bigger, and, crucially, even better. Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition adds to and reshapes the game with new character-driven stories, substantial gameplay features, and more. It's a bit like Persona 5 Royal, in the sense that this expanded re-release makes the original game pretty much redundant.

Dragon Quest XI proves that a traditional turn-based RPG in 2018 can not only work, but also thrive. Longtime fans and newcomers alike should not hesitate to take the trip to the Elusive Age.

Still, if you’re a fan of the JRPG genre, especially classics Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, or any of the original Dragon Quests I would heavily encourage you to check out Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age. I spent some time with Ni No Kuni II earlier this year and I found it to be leap and bounds more engaging, enthralling, and yes, despite NNK2 having studio Ghibli animators working on it, more visually stunning. If you were only going to pick up one JRPG this year, this is the one to pick. I have not been this drawn into a game like this since I played Final Fantasy X and that sa...

Dragon Warrior, as the Dragon Quest series was once known in the States, was my very first introduction to the JRPG genre. This simple tale of a single hero venturing out into a quest to save the world from the Dragonlord was something that forever shaped my impressionable taste in NES games for years to come. As I grew up, so too did the adventures. These quests quickly expanded to feature a full party of like-minded adventurers and so too did my small circle of friends as I grew of age. When I was at the peak of my junior high days, Dragon Quest VII was there to keep me company when I fell s...

Dragon Quest XI excels when it emphasizes fighting bad guys, exploring dungeons, and finding treasure. It’s a visual feast populated by a cast of colorful monsters more engrossing than its main characters. Uneven story beats and some icky bits sometimes slow Dragon Quest down, but superb mechanics remain the focus, making Echoes of an Elusive Age a top-tier JRPG for the modern age.

Enix, and by proxy Square, have found myriad ways to repackage the journey of Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age proves that they haven’t run out of ideas yet. It’s one of the easier modern Dragon Quests to get into precisely because it gets back to basics. If you’ve been pining for an older-school character-focused RPG instead of the player-created party focus of IX and the MMO aspect of X, the wait has ended.