I bought this game when it first came out, day of. I was really excited for it. I had an absolute blast with it as well, and continued playing for awhile. I stopped after awhile, though, somewhere near the end of act 1. I picked it up later during the summer, though. I was really depressed and dealing with mental illness. I played this game at a job that had me doing nothing except restocking boxes. It was dull, and I had nothing but time to think. Any time that was not spent playing Dragon Quest XI was spent thinking about it. Finishing it was one of the best moment I've ever experiences. I really like this game.

É o RPG mais genérico de todos e por bom motivo, já que Dragon Quest basicamente inventou o gênero de RPG como conhecemos. O que mais me surpreendeu no jogo - e na saga toda, i guess - é a honestidade. Ele não tenta ser nada além do que é: um RPG longo e gerérico, mas é por isso que consegue refinar tão bem uma fórmula anciã. Tudo é extremamente bem feito e carinhosamente trabalhado, a única exceção sendo a música que está presa em forma MIDI graças ao compositor do jogo, ironicamente também antiquado, para dizer o mínimo. Apesar disso, dá pra ver que os devs tem muito amor e respeito pela série, e é difícil não apreciar e, se estiver disposto, também se apaixonar por esse RPG genérico.

Dragon quest XI is interesting and get some good mechanics like forge, high power, hidden treasures and something else that a RPG is common to use. The story was not cool for me because this is a simple "A hero comes up to save the day" at all. I was expecting a big and interesting story (maybe a bit adult idk) to spent my 50+ hours in. Other thing make me sad was sometimes party separation, so you fight together with someone you can't control or just two of your party can fight to make sense about story. One more bad thing is the random turn battle, I can't plan which turn my characters will die because sometimes the enemy attacks first than you even you attacking him first on last turn.
I think everyone can enjoy this game if don't care about bad things I said above.

Not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but, man, this series used to challenge the boundaries of the medium with multi-perspective, multi-generational stories with innovative systems that changed the landscape of the industry. And now it just sort of...wallows in itself, rolling around in the muck of its past glories and sniffing its own farts.

Again, it isn't bad. It looks wonderful, it's very charming, and the dialogue is witty. It's a nice time. And if this was 20 or 30 hours, that'd be just fine. But it isn't. It's 80, 90, even 100 hours long. For a game that demands that much time investment, I want it to do something, to say something, and Dragon Quest XI just...doesn't.

Not only is the battle system too simplistic and shallow for a tale of this length, but the story itself takes a massive nosedive in the final act, chickening out of almost every theme it touches on, reversing character arcs and plot points, all for the sake of more Fanservice. Because Dragon Quest doesn't care about anything anymore, except itself.

Oh, and the soundtrack fucking sucks. Sugiyama isn't even good at his job, Square, why are you keeping this decrepit fascist around?

This is a really good game, it's polished as fuck, it's comfy to play, the characters and dialogues are charming as hell and it has that feel that makes me think the developers really put their best on this project. However I just can't like it for what it's worth.

The combat is just boring, I don't care that it's turn based but selecting things from a menu can only be so much fun so the rest of the encounter must be bringing the fun. But then you have RNG in every single way possible, you can't land buffs/debuffs if the dices have something to say about it, you can't land some other spells for the same reason, the turns of your characters and enemies are also randomized and you can't do shit about it,. If a boss has 2 moves on it's turn and in the next round it goes first you are gonna get your ass clapped. This also prevents you from strategizing in any way, like maybe you to heal with this character, buff with this one and then attack with this one? Well, fuck you now they all get randomized. Just unfair.
Then for some reason scrolling through the skills menus is also tedious as fuck because weaker versions of the same spell stay there even if you get the upgraded version so you end up with 4 healing spells of which you only use the most powerfull one.

The story has nothing interesting to it, there's only one plot twist and it is foreshadowed in the first 30 minutes of gameplay and that's it. The rest of the plot can be sumarized as there is a bad dark lord doing bad things so we need to stop them.

Lastly, I just can't stand this traditional medieval fantasy setting, it's completely uninspired and boring, the fate chosen hero that must destroy the ugly dark lord, it's basically light vs darkness once again. There's also dragons and trolls and slimes and I'm falling asleep just as I'm typing. This is personal preference so please don't cry.

Also I can't fucking stand mute protagonists because I find it really annoying that they don't talk but this game is THE WORSE at. It always feels that he wants to say something but just can't because they had to make him the self insert so the player could project their bland personality onto them.

Overall it's a good game but I can't stand it for all these things. Yes, i've finished it, yes, I've sunken around 70h in it and yet I hated the last 20 even tho I loved the first 30.
But by any means if you think you can overlook most of these things give it a shot, most likely you'll love it.