Niahak's Place

It’s been awhile!
I completed Dragon Quest XI S to my satisfaction over two months ago, after a break of nearly three years. While I enjoyed parts of it, I was really disappointed with others.

First – the good. The fun-sized forge is an excellent little minigame, with just enough randomness (and just the right level of reward). While it does feel like its level scaling is a little funky, that does incentivize revisiting items after progressing a little in the core game. Combat is a bit of a mixed bag – at no point did any of my characters feel particularly strong, which is good (things are somewhat balanced) and bad (did I make a wrong decision in a skill tree somewhere?). The latter feeling got worse as I progressed. For example, a late-joining character had some skills with a one-handed weapon that were especially powerful leaving me to believe I had missed some nuance in unlocking spear skills for Jade. The core story is more twist-driven than most Dragon Quests, which is exciting in places but disappointing in others.