Final thoughts on DQ11.
In a year of bitterly disappointing JRPGs, sadly DQ11 is one more on the pile. If it weren't for NNK2 and XBC2 this would probably be my candidate for most disappointing game of the year, but sadly it's merely one in a string of depressing titles, along with FF12:ZA, and to some degree Ys:LoD. Only Octopath Traveller has presented a more fresh and interesting take on the genre so far.
Little new or interesting happens in DQ11 that has not happened in a previous entry in the series, outside of the modest improvements in the renderer and character build system. Numerous times my eldest daughter would point out how a musical theme or entire story motif had been lifted from a previous entry in the series.
The combat has not significantly improved: battles are largely mechanical with a small degree of freedom for innovative play around when to heal, and when to buff/debuff. The only interesting mechanics offered in the boss fights are largley around how frequently you lose control of a character or have all buffs eliminated so you can re-run your rotation. Pep powers run the gamut from boring to overpowering but the randomness of their presence neuters much of the sense of strategy one could get around planning for them. The most compelling part of levelling is min/max strategy around unlocking character builds, however the opacity of the hidden items and pep power combinations, and labor of respeccing, mean that there isn't much incentive to play around with these; it's easy to just push into stat boosts and fill out your primary weapon. Even the nods towards automation with tactics are poorly done--set on Fight Wisely the hero will frequently just spam Quadraslash and burn his MP on trash mobs. Although it was nice to see the AI selecting downlevel variants of spells when it was clear it could defeat a mob with those--a bit of strategic play available to the AI but not the player!
Character design is fine if boring in its fan service. Although the main character is left such a completely blank slate that they have no character development or emotive qualities whatsoever. Sylvando is alternatingly amusing and shameful in his representation, and similarly Veronica which veers between comic and slightly 'tsundere'. Serena, Erik and Jade are mostly forgettable. I like older PCs in games (Ana main natch) so Rab is nice to see, until they run the ridiculous smut scene. Hendricks often comes off as the only semi-reasonable character. The writing is generally atrocious, save-the-world-with-friends anime tropes, with no sensible internal logic.
The side quests are almost entirely forgettable fetch quests, or worse the pep power ones which are ridiculous in their setup. Such lazy design, which is really the core impression from this game: so much of it seems lazy.
The music issue has been rehashed a dozen of times, not much more to say there beyond how embarassing it is to see a major developer release a full priced product in this state.
The renderer is much lauded by the public but as someone who works on them for a living it's an extremely basic and simple setup. You can see objects LOD in/out of shadow cascades at very near distances, poor lighting occlusion due to lack of shadowmaps in many situations, poor tessellation of surfaces. Load times everywhere for trivially small scenes. Environmental complexity is astonishingly low; the layout of areas like Fortress of Fear are just laughable--so blocky and repeated, like it's 1991 and I'm playing Eye of the Beholder again.
I liked the campfire system and the sense of adventuring it tried to create. Also the forge, which offered one of the few additional systems to interact with that had some actual "game" to it in terms of planning your flourish order. That said the fact that they couldn't even be bothered to highlight "new" recipes shows again how lazy everything about this title turned out. It was also unfortunate that there is this large costume system but no upgrade mechanics (beyond marginal +1 to +3) so it was very rare that a crafted costume set that changed appearances was an upgrade for any character.
Glad to get this out of the PS4, time to go back to finish the fourth chapter setups in OT and grind out the second half of Ys:LoD and see if either can redeem the genre for 2018.