The perfect Steam Deck game!
DQ games have always kind of bored me a bit, but I had just finished a few action games and wanted a slower turn based RPG. To be fair it's not the mechanics, I love a good turn based RPG, but as I've gotten old it takes more to hook me in for the long haul. There has to be some magic, some charm, some decent writing, and strong gameplay. DQ XI has it, it's got the rizz, it slaps, it's fire, it's 6-7, it's got it all and it does it all extremely well.
For background in the past couple years I've finished Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default, Tales of Arise (not quite turn based I know), Persona 5, Fire Emblem: Engage, and Yakuza: Like a Dragon to name a few. I dig RPGS and if I thought everyone had an interest in my back catalog I'd list the western RPGs too.
Sometimes though, games will come along and look like everything I want, only to have that feeling where it never "clicks." I don't want things to get better 40 hours in, I don't want to waste 40 hours before I can settle for something being an experience I might enjoy. Probably sacrilegious to say, but that's how I feel about the entire Xenoblade series. On paper it looks great, I like mechs, post apocalyptic world, mech swords, some magic thrown in, touchstones on cultural revolutions and a corrupt ruling class. You'd think I'd like everything about it, but I just.... don't. I don't like the battles that feel one note, button mashing away as if nothing really matters. Are my actions doing anything? Do I really need to be here for this story? Oh look over there it's a quest... to go find some rocks. Oh look over there it's the same quest but now it's fetch this.
DQ 11 looks like it shares the bones of standard RPGs when in fact it's standing on the mountain of dead bodies that paved the way for this beautiful ode to JRPGs. It's a love letter to gamers and within all it's nostalgia is a quiet evolution that never boasts, but pulls you in to every charming pixel and polygon.
It isn't any one thing that makes DQ11 a masterpiece, but it's somehow greater than the sum of it's parts. The combat is excellent but starts out very basic, the overworld map is easy to understand, fast travel works well from the minute you unlock it, there's a horse too and that works perfectly fine (looking at you Roach!), everything is just fine. Then it builds... everything just keeps steamrolling forward. The story gets... interesting, it's not what you think and there's always another layer. The music from the start has it's own role to play as Square replaced all the MIDI tracks with the Tokyo Symphony. It's such a joy that you can just stop any time and listen to the music. The battles start to whip up, skill trees open, strategy becomes important, you'll have to determine who's in your party. Subtle choices of what path to take, which skills to upgrade, which gear to buy or craft, it all makes an impact on your progress. Finally, each locale is extraordinarily done and each becomes part of the tapestry of the story. Towns have always been important in an RPG but they managed to make them stand out as much as the characters in DQ11. I can't put it into words without spoiling much, but it is not simply bigger is better on display here. It's not larger towns you have to walking simulator your way through, but right from the first town they're part of the story.
It's this gameplay loop of explore, battle, travel, story beat, repeat. You start seeing incredible writing unfold, it's serious, it's whimsy, it's heartfelt, it's funny, and you rock that gameplay loop because it's good. In no time at all, DQ11 starts hitting it's stride, in just a couple hours the story starts to slap and it does not let up. It's just beat after beat, like a rock concert where you can't believe the artist isn't going to take a break. There can't be this many songs in the set and there's zero filler, you don't even think about time passing because you're in it, you're enjoying it. That's DQXI.
It's a steamroller that moves toward this crescendo and in the build up it crafts a world that begs you to stay just a little longer. One more quest, one more boss fight, one more piece of equipment and dear lord what the hell is going to happen next?
Only one way to find out!
----- hardware notes -----
I played a TON of this game on Steam Deck, more than anywhere else. I played it docked (it runs great) and I played it in handheld mode, where it feels tailor made for the system. You can clock down to 10 TDP and bring the GPU down to 1200-1400MHZ and squeeze about 3 hours of battery life. More if you're willing to sacrifice settings, but I am not. It never dips below 45 FPS and I've got graphics maxed out except for shadows. I also turned anti-aliasing down because it just looks better imo.
I also played a fair bit on my PC, an RTX 4070 rig with an i7. It really didn't make a difference, DQXI S is actually the Switch version of the game and they used all those assets when they re-launched it everywhere else. The advantage is the game is so well optimized it runs extremely well on just about any hardware that can handle it.
I wasn't satisfied with that though, there's some easy mods called "project rebuild." It's a collection of community work trying to restore DQ11 to it's former glory when it first launched on PC. I think if you're going to invest time sitting down in front of a monitor it's totally worth it. I bumped up grass, player models, and textures and it does look glorious. Much more like a moving story book or a 3D Dragonball Z comic. That said, I didn't miss it when I'd switch back to the Steam Deck and that's not something I usually say. Like going between Cyberpunk 2077 PC vs Deck is a HUGE sacrifice. This is not, it's truly one of the best modern games you can play on the Steam Deck, if you're not too picky about frame rate you could probably just max out settings and you're good to go.
