Rate top gamesDRAGON QUEST XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition
About
OVERVIEWDRAGON QUEST XI S is the last entry in the legendary RPG series from creator Yuji Horii, character designer Akira Toriyama and composer Koichi Sugiyama. This eleventh main entry is a completely standalone experience that features new characters, a beautifully detailed world, finely tuned turn-based combat, and an immersive story that will appeal to longtime fans and franchise newcomers alike. After its release in Japan, DRAGON QUEST XI won multiple gaming awards and received critical praise, including PlayStation’s Platinum Prize and a perfect 40/40 score from Famitsu (an influential video game publication in Japan).
STORY
A young man, about to participate in his village’s coming of age ceremony, travels to a sacred stone alongside his childhood friend. After a series of unexpected events, this intrepid adventurer learns he is the reincarnation of a legendary hero from a forgotten age.
The young hero sets forth into an unknown world on a journey to unravel the mystery of his past… but the welcome he receives is far from warm. Upon revealing his identity to the King, the hero is branded as “The Darkspawn” and hunted by a relentless army.
Fleeing from his pursuers, the hero assembles a band of endearing adventurers who believe he is actually The Luminary reborn. The Luminary and his newfound companions embark on a quest that will take them across continents and over vast oceans as they learn of an ominous threat facing the world.KEY FEATURES
Unravel an Epic Mystery in a Riveting Tale – You are the Luminary, the reincarnation of a hero from a forgotten age. Denigrated as a demon and pursued by a malicious monarch, you must embark on a quest to uncover the mystery of your fate and save a doomed world. Be prepared for an immersive story with twists and turns that pull you in and keep you craving more.
Assemble a Colorful Cast of Loyal Companions – Accompanying you is an endearing band of adventurers with their own rich backstories and personalities. Famed manga artist Akira Toriyama brings the characters of DRAGON QUEST to life with his one-of-a-kind style.
Explore a Massive, Beautiful, Living World – Excitement lurks around every corner, observe NPC’s attend to their daily schedules, monsters change behaviors to fit their environments, and access new areas, by foot, on horseback or with the use of monstrous vehicles.
Engage in Classic Turn-based Battles with a Modern Twist – DRAGON QUEST XI features mechanics simple enough for beginners, but with enough depth to satisfy hardcore fans. As your adventure continues, learn incredible new abilities to take down even the most fearsome foe with your powerful allies.
Have Some Fun & Save the World – Tons of side-quests and addicting mini-games awaits you for enough content to keep you playing for well over 100 hours. You will face insurmountable odds and an evil force of unimaginable power… but while the stakes are high, there are many fun distractions to find if you know where to look.
Challenge Yourself with the Draconian Quest - Available when you start a new game, these options allow you to craft you own customized difficulty with different settings and provide a greater challenge.
STORY
A young man, about to participate in his village’s coming of age ceremony, travels to a sacred stone alongside his childhood friend. After a series of unexpected events, this intrepid adventurer learns he is the reincarnation of a legendary hero from a forgotten age.
The young hero sets forth into an unknown world on a journey to unravel the mystery of his past… but the welcome he receives is far from warm. Upon revealing his identity to the King, the hero is branded as “The Darkspawn” and hunted by a relentless army.
Fleeing from his pursuers, the hero assembles a band of endearing adventurers who believe he is actually The Luminary reborn. The Luminary and his newfound companions embark on a quest that will take them across continents and over vast oceans as they learn of an ominous threat facing the world.KEY FEATURES
Unravel an Epic Mystery in a Riveting Tale – You are the Luminary, the reincarnation of a hero from a forgotten age. Denigrated as a demon and pursued by a malicious monarch, you must embark on a quest to uncover the mystery of your fate and save a doomed world. Be prepared for an immersive story with twists and turns that pull you in and keep you craving more.
Assemble a Colorful Cast of Loyal Companions – Accompanying you is an endearing band of adventurers with their own rich backstories and personalities. Famed manga artist Akira Toriyama brings the characters of DRAGON QUEST to life with his one-of-a-kind style.
Explore a Massive, Beautiful, Living World – Excitement lurks around every corner, observe NPC’s attend to their daily schedules, monsters change behaviors to fit their environments, and access new areas, by foot, on horseback or with the use of monstrous vehicles.
Engage in Classic Turn-based Battles with a Modern Twist – DRAGON QUEST XI features mechanics simple enough for beginners, but with enough depth to satisfy hardcore fans. As your adventure continues, learn incredible new abilities to take down even the most fearsome foe with your powerful allies.
Have Some Fun & Save the World – Tons of side-quests and addicting mini-games awaits you for enough content to keep you playing for well over 100 hours. You will face insurmountable odds and an evil force of unimaginable power… but while the stakes are high, there are many fun distractions to find if you know where to look.
Challenge Yourself with the Draconian Quest - Available when you start a new game, these options allow you to craft you own customized difficulty with different settings and provide a greater challenge.
System requirements for Nintendo Switch
System requirements for Xbox One
System requirements for PC
Minimum:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: TBC
Recommended:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: TBC
System requirements for PlayStation 4
Last Modified: Jan 19, 2025
Where to buy
Nintendo Store
PlayStation Store
Xbox Store
Steam
DRAGON QUEST XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition reviews and comments
Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition is a hell of a mouthful, isn’t it? Is there a longer title in gaming history, or indeed in all contemporary media? I’m not sure there is, you know. And honestly, I don’t even know what the S stands for, and I’m not sure I even need to know. Anyway, I digress. Dragon Quest XI S (which is what I’ll shrink its ridiculously long title down to going forwards) is my first real foray into the Dragon Quest universe. I mean, I have some knowledge of the series – literally everyone seems to know the famous blue slime for some reason – and I’ve even seen episodes of The Hero Yoshihiko, a Dragon Quest spoof TV show, when I visited Japan, but I’ve somehow never played a mainline Dragon Quest game before.
I’m not entirely sure why either. I have played many a Square-Enix game in my lifetime, so you’d figure Dragon Quest would naturally make its way into my hands at some point. But here we are, with Dragon Quest XI S being my starting point in the long-running 30-plus-year-old series.
On the surface, Dragon Quest XI S is your staple JRPG fare really. You play as the paper-thin, characterless, mute everyman, living in a tiny village along with his mum, going about his boring life on the cusp of becoming a man, but what’s this? It turns out you’re the fabled hero of something-or-other and you’re fated to save the world from the big bad evil! Who could have seen this coming? But there’s a lot of love given to this, on paper at least, incredibly generic tropey story, and whilst the playable hero is generally devoid of all life, the supporting cast of colourful characters really brings the world of Erdrea alive.
Erdrea itself is strangely a world made up of real-world stereotypes, but played out more in a way that celebrates the culture rather than making fun of it. Some of the place names are eye-rollingly pun-tastic though, for example, the very stereotypical-Italian, very Venice-like city of Gondolia *groan*. There are a whole host of terrible puns and dad-jokes, brought to life with full gusto by the voice-over team, who have done a tremendous job, with each city and region having its own accents and quirks.
The cast of side characters is a great mix to counteract the dullness of the main hero. Erik is your rogue with a heart of gold and a deeper backstory about his struggles to get himself and his sister out of poverty. Veronica is a strong-headed mage who has been turned into a child via a magic vase. Serena is one of the weaker characters who I can only describe as a healer who just happens to be the sister of the much more interesting Veronica, and Sylvando is an extremely flamboyant and mysterious circus performer who has a whole quest where you go around collecting young men. I’m not going to lie, it gets pretty damn weird. There are a few more characters who you add to your team over the course of the game, but I’d rather not spoil them here.
The hero and his friends battle the fiends of the world in your typical turn-based JRPG style, but it doesn’t really do anything special; I’d describe it as quite an outdated system more than anything. I found myself playing out the fights on the fastest speed possible, often just to get them out of the way. The one positive to this is that fights are not random and are generally invoked by attacking the enemies themselves whilst running around the world. Levelling is often quite slow, but the game is easy enough that grinding wasn’t required, though it would have been nice to unlock more of the skills on each character’s skill board which makes up the levelling system.
The game runs fantastically well on Steam Deck, with only some slowdown in large open areas, and gets itself a Platinum score on ProtonDB and a Steam Deck compatibility rating of “Playable” on Steam itself, with the advisory that “Entering some text requires manually invoking the on-screen keyboard” – which I personally cannot remember ever having to do, maybe at most for entering your chosen name for the hero himself.
Dragon Quest XI S is, as you’d imagine, a long game, and one I felt overstayed its welcome due to the samey feeling of every battle. There’s a midpoint of the game where you play as each character individually which I found quite a slog, especially after you feel like you’re finally getting somewhere as a team. Once you have completed the game as well, there is a post-credits third act which can take another 10-30 hours to complete; however, I’d had quite enough of the game by then and took the credits as the end for me. I’m sure some people will appreciate getting more game after completing it, however.
Dragon Quest XI S is therefore a solid if unremarkable game, with its gameplay systems and story exactly what you’d expect if you were asked to describe a generic JRPG. What Dragon Quest XI S has going for it, however, is its wonderful cast of characters and original and quirky world, and with that, it becomes something any JRPG fans should experience.
https://questtozero.com/game-review/dragon-quest-xi-s-echoes-of-an-elusive-age-review/
I’m not entirely sure why either. I have played many a Square-Enix game in my lifetime, so you’d figure Dragon Quest would naturally make its way into my hands at some point. But here we are, with Dragon Quest XI S being my starting point in the long-running 30-plus-year-old series.
On the surface, Dragon Quest XI S is your staple JRPG fare really. You play as the paper-thin, characterless, mute everyman, living in a tiny village along with his mum, going about his boring life on the cusp of becoming a man, but what’s this? It turns out you’re the fabled hero of something-or-other and you’re fated to save the world from the big bad evil! Who could have seen this coming? But there’s a lot of love given to this, on paper at least, incredibly generic tropey story, and whilst the playable hero is generally devoid of all life, the supporting cast of colourful characters really brings the world of Erdrea alive.
Erdrea itself is strangely a world made up of real-world stereotypes, but played out more in a way that celebrates the culture rather than making fun of it. Some of the place names are eye-rollingly pun-tastic though, for example, the very stereotypical-Italian, very Venice-like city of Gondolia *groan*. There are a whole host of terrible puns and dad-jokes, brought to life with full gusto by the voice-over team, who have done a tremendous job, with each city and region having its own accents and quirks.
The cast of side characters is a great mix to counteract the dullness of the main hero. Erik is your rogue with a heart of gold and a deeper backstory about his struggles to get himself and his sister out of poverty. Veronica is a strong-headed mage who has been turned into a child via a magic vase. Serena is one of the weaker characters who I can only describe as a healer who just happens to be the sister of the much more interesting Veronica, and Sylvando is an extremely flamboyant and mysterious circus performer who has a whole quest where you go around collecting young men. I’m not going to lie, it gets pretty damn weird. There are a few more characters who you add to your team over the course of the game, but I’d rather not spoil them here.
The hero and his friends battle the fiends of the world in your typical turn-based JRPG style, but it doesn’t really do anything special; I’d describe it as quite an outdated system more than anything. I found myself playing out the fights on the fastest speed possible, often just to get them out of the way. The one positive to this is that fights are not random and are generally invoked by attacking the enemies themselves whilst running around the world. Levelling is often quite slow, but the game is easy enough that grinding wasn’t required, though it would have been nice to unlock more of the skills on each character’s skill board which makes up the levelling system.
The game runs fantastically well on Steam Deck, with only some slowdown in large open areas, and gets itself a Platinum score on ProtonDB and a Steam Deck compatibility rating of “Playable” on Steam itself, with the advisory that “Entering some text requires manually invoking the on-screen keyboard” – which I personally cannot remember ever having to do, maybe at most for entering your chosen name for the hero himself.
Dragon Quest XI S is, as you’d imagine, a long game, and one I felt overstayed its welcome due to the samey feeling of every battle. There’s a midpoint of the game where you play as each character individually which I found quite a slog, especially after you feel like you’re finally getting somewhere as a team. Once you have completed the game as well, there is a post-credits third act which can take another 10-30 hours to complete; however, I’d had quite enough of the game by then and took the credits as the end for me. I’m sure some people will appreciate getting more game after completing it, however.
Dragon Quest XI S is therefore a solid if unremarkable game, with its gameplay systems and story exactly what you’d expect if you were asked to describe a generic JRPG. What Dragon Quest XI S has going for it, however, is its wonderful cast of characters and original and quirky world, and with that, it becomes something any JRPG fans should experience.
https://questtozero.com/game-review/dragon-quest-xi-s-echoes-of-an-elusive-age-review/