There was a time when Japanese RPG’s were a pre-requisite for any gaming console library I had. Whether they were action role-playing games like The Legend of Zelda, turn-based ones like Final Fantasy, or pseudo-actioners like Grandia or the Tales series, I was all over them. But then, somewhere along the line, they went off the rail. Some changed too dramatically to keep their series fresh, some never changed at all, and some completely disappeared.
I was a huge turned-based RPG fan since Final Fantasy VI (at the time only known to us U.S. gamers as FFIII). The game reached our shores right as I was old enough to “get” them. I had never been much interested in them, but the ads in the GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly magazines really did make it look cool. So I mowed lawns, saved my allowance, and tucked away a buck or two from my lunch money until I had saved up enough, then went to my local K-Mart and plopped down the $70(!) plus tax for Final Fantasy III. And I did not regret it one bit.
The game opened a whole new door for me, and after that I was all about the RPG. I hit up every 16-bit RPG I could find. Chrono Trigger, Illusion of Gaia, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, and Earthbound all had a go in my SNES. Then, a few years later, the Playstation came around and it was a whole new world of RPG goodness. I can’t even list them all here, but stand-outs to me were the Grandia series, Final Fantasy, Chrono Cross, and Suikoden. It seemed like every generation that came out, RPG’s were getting better and better.
But somewhere during the PS3/Xbox 360 era, something happened. It seemed like Japanese developers were getting into a rut. The anime art style and simplistic tropes they used didn’t seem to lend themselves to much innovation. The only thing that could really be expanded upon was the battle system. And holy hell did they start making that shit complicated. We started seeing more stats, multiple layers of battle mechanics, crafting, “paradigm shifts,” equipment slots with item modifiers and pages on top of pages of tutorials at the beginning of a game. I might be in the minority on this, but if a game has to explain its mechanics by having me sift through 9 pages of menu descriptions and combo procedures before I’ve even played ten minutes into a game, it’s an instant turn-off. My old man brain isn’t going to retain all that information, and halfway through my eyes usually glaze over and I end up mashing buttons anyway.
At the same time as a lot of these games were getting deeper and deeper with their battle systems, their graphics were falling way behind in the times. Simplistic 2D sprites and generic anime characters running around in copy-and-paste environments seemed to be getting more abundant, while a true push into better graphics engines and nicer looking games seemed to be an afterthought. Excellent games like the Dark Souls series, Dragon’s Dogma, and even later Tales games, while fun with deep gameplay, still aren’t exactly what you would call graphically ground-breaking, especially when compared to games being made by western developers. By comparison, traditional Japanese RPG’s were just that, traditional.
The reason why I’ve gone into all that is because I’ve put a few hours into Dragon Quest XI and so far it’s seemed to do the exact opposite of the current eastern trend. Rather than focus on doing anything mechanically different, they chose to stick to a very old-school approach in terms of combat, and instead push the graphical style to a new standard. This game looks incredible, even on my base PS4. It’s amazing to think that Toriyama’s original designs can still continue to look better and better, and even though they were simplistic designs, they still hold so much character and nuance. Take one look at a Toriyama designed character and you know it’s his.
His character designs haven’t changed dramatically over the years, but it’s the way they’re colored and shaded that makes all the difference. Back on the Xbox 360, there was an RPG called Blue Dragon, developed by Mistwalker, and while it isn’t considered the best game ever, I enjoyed it. One of the things I really liked about it was the almost clay-modeled look that everything had. Instead of having a smooth, shaded and rounded look to an object or creature, they had dimples, bumps, and all sorts of subtle bump-mapped irregularities. It was a cool artistic style that oddly enough seems to be a spiritual predecessor to Dragon Quest XI.
The art style here is not quite as “doughy” as Blue Dragon, but the blending of subtle texture work along with a soft shading and cel-style outlines makes for a fantastic rendering aesthetic, whatever the official term for it may be. Likewise, the creatures and environments look fantastic as well. Finally, one of these games is actually taking advantage of the current console’s power. Additionally the music has been wonderful so far. The upbeat, cheerful tunes and frantic battle music is classic Dragon Quest.
While they added all the little bells and whistles to the visual aspects of the game, I mentioned they stayed pretty basic on the combat. Turn-based fighting with your basic attack and spell skills, along with getting “pepped up” is really all you need. There’s also a skill grid you can spend points on, but they’re nothing like the sprawling sphere grids or skill trees found in other recent games. It’s concise and manageable and doesn’t require a lot of planning to get through. It’s simple, and it gets the job done, so I can spend more of my time questing and exploring and less digging through menus.
I wish more JRPG’s would take a step back from the overly-complicated combat and instead put their efforts into making great looking games instead. Like I said, I am probably in the minority here, but I don’t want to have to think very much when I play a turn-based combat game. Simple strategies aside, I don’t want to have to worry about “paradigm shifts” or timing my attack to a QTE. If there’s a fire enemy, I want to hit him with my water spell. That’s the extent of it right there.
Thankfully, Dragon Quest XI so far hasn’t required much of me. I’m about six hours in and had my first true boss battle. It took some strategy between knowing when to go on the offensive/defensive, and I needed to be more vigilant than just spamming the attack button. I took my secondary characters out of “automatic” and chose their commands for them, so as to control exactly what and when they attacked. And it worked. I succeeded in defeating the boss, using old-school tactics and nothing more. That’s all I really need.
