Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

I enjoyed playing this for around 200 hours purely because decent turn-based combat and a range of genuinely different skills to unlock is rare these days. There were also a few interesting 'secrets' to unlock, islands to explore, etc. And some areas involving riding enemies with abilities that let you get to otherwise inaccessible areas.

Sadly, that's about all that was enjoyable, and even some of those were really limited.

The story is as bland as possible. To be fair, there seems to be a really clever story, with a neat plot twist, but it comes only in a second play through, by which time I was well and truly sick of the game and couldn't bring myself to find out more. It could have been so amazing if they'd just blended the two stories together, to add a bit of intrigue and some plot twists. Such a waste to save the best part for 'post game' gameplay.

The characters are childlike in design, which could work for some games, except that this is quite an adult story with highly dramatised scenes that really need believable characters to have any of the emotional impact the dialogue is clearly aiming for. And the dialogue itself does feel a bit forced at times, in top of that. (And don't go thinking it's a game for your 8-10 year old kids: you don't want them seeing so much death, including of children, or going behind a spa or down a dark alley to meet a woman for a bit of 'puff puff').

There are far too much quests and unique unlocks built around the casino, requiring hours and hours and hours of firstly clicking auto-play (which runs for only about 7min before you have to click it again), and then clicking 36 times to place bets on a roulette table, which you have to repeat about 200 times to hit a jackpot.

The scenery is decent, and cultural elements, and unique areas impressive. But music lacking.

And sadly, a couple of key parts of the game that really do show promise, fall entirely short for no obvious reason. Two big ones are:

* A whole bunch of the abilities you can unlock are based around 'status effects': sleep, silence, paralysis, lower defense, lower attack, instant death, etc. But they all fail about 80-90% of the time, making them completely useless. Instead, you quickly learn to choose between just two abilities for each character: the one that does the most damage to a single target, and the one that does the most damage to a group.

* Certain enemies become ridable after defeat, potentially offering access to secret areas. It borders on Castelvania or Wonderboy in Monsterland style unlocking of new and intriguing areas... except that it's so rarely used an so restricted when it is, that it ends up nothing more than the occasional side game.

Ultimately, tonnes of promise, and really cool concepts already built into both the gameplay and the plot, but which all fizzle out in favour of the generic, bland stuff.