The Dragon Quest XI Demo Is Bonkers

15 Sep 2019

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age came out on the PS4 and Steam on September 18th, 2018. While I’m a big fan of the Dragon Quest series, Square Enix said the game would be coming to the Nintendo Switch in the future so I held off on picking it up. Fast forward to this weekend when I downloaded the Dragon Quest XI demo on my Switch to give it a go before committing to purchasing it on its release date: September 27th, 2019.

The demo is amazing. It’s long… Four hours in, I actually looked it up because it felt too long. The demo covers about 10 hours of the game and any progress you make in the demo can be carried straight into the full version of the game. You’ll get introduced to the story, game mechanics, and even recruit extra party members.

The demo gave me enough time with the game to get a great feel for what I like and don’t like about it. It might’ve been because I just finished Grandia HD which didn’t have amazing graphics but this game looks amazing. The character design, by Akira Torayama, is top-notch as expected. The world and towns are wonderfully designed. It would’ve been nice to have a bit more variety in the music tracks - different dungeons and overworld areas share the same exact tracks. The battle theme is also very divisive. And I’m bummed that we’ve got yet another silent protagonist in this game. They have got to go; it’s such a bummer to assemble a great cast of characters where one stays silent and communicates via gesticulation.

All things said, I’m very excited to jump into the world of Erdrea again on the 27th!