Best PS4 Game: Dragon Quest XI
Runners-Up: Subnautica, Ni No Kuni II, Marvel's Spider-Man, Detroit: Become Human

Best RPG: Dragon Quest XI (PS4, PC)
Runners-Up: The Alliance Alive (3DS), Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk (PS4, Switch, PC), Ni No Kuni (PS4, PC), Octopath Traveler (Switch)

Oh, it's good. I'm not sure it's VIII good but it's close.

I'm loving this game so far, and i'm very happy about that! I've been excited for this game for years :D

It's like VIII but bigger and better. The combat system is slightly more nuanced and it's much faster. The visuals are absolutely incredible, exploring the overworld and looking around feels fantastic although the world itself is worse. The story is keeping me interested right now, really like the characters and the voice acting is surprisingly good. I'm one of the few that hated the acting in VIII, but they nailed it with this one.

I'm still very early in the game, but I can't wait to sink more hours into what could be my favorite JRPG since VIII!

I'm home.

Oh my god give me this game now!

I'd quite like to get into the series and play through every game, but does this game's PS4 artstyle look off-putting to anyone else?
tbh when I play through the series, I'll probably play this game three times--once on PS4, once on 3DS in 3D, and once on 3DS in 2D.

Gahhh, I wish I had more time to play this game! I've had the PS4 version for 5 days now but I'm only 30 hours in, and it seems I'm only halfway through.

They made a real DQ game here. A worthy successor to DQ8. Not that DQ9 wasn't any good, it just wasn't what I'd hoped for. DQ11 so far has met my expectations on almost all accounts. There's two aspects where it does fall short, though...

First off, the music. There doesn't seem to be as much original music in this as previous games. They've recycled a bunch, especially from DQ8. While there are some areas and scenes where this makes sense, just randomly throwing in a town theme from DQ8 because there's only 1 original town theme is kind of a bummer.

Secondly, DQ8 was the perfect game at the time. The only thing it was still missing was a seamless world, which might not have been possible with the technology they had. My vision for a DQ8 successor is that it'd finally have this seamless world.

Unfortunately, the game is still heavily zoned, perhaps even moreso than DQ8. In DQ8, I feel you could follow a path, and you'd either hit a loading screen for a town, a dungeon, or the sea. It was extremely smart and elegant in its zoning. In DQ11, you can reach the end of a path and will need to load the next zone. Granted, they can be massive, but I suppose having the horse available from the get-go can make them feel a lot smaller. At least you don't need to load a house's interior anymore.

I just hope the game wasn't held back by the 3DS version... It's been said that the 3DS version didn't start development until the PS4 version was halfway done, but that it was "always the plan" (sure....). It's also been said that the 3DS world had to be scaled down, because the 2D version got too big for a 2D sprite-based RPG.

It's fine, though. This is, by all accounts, the game I've been waiting for. I went into it thinking I'd probably like it more than Breath of the Wild, but didn't think it'd top Nier Automata. Now I'm not so sure anymore. It's so good!

I'll be starting a new playthrough of the 3DS version on my Liquid Metal Slime 2DS XL today on the train. The game doesn't have a job system, but the skill system is basically the same as DQ8 (just with a hexagonal license board presentation), meaning there's quite a bit of replayability as using a new weapon can make you feel like using a new class.

I've also tried out the password system to import my PS4 save into the 3DS version, and yes, it totally works! Your party's levels will be set to that of the hero, and your equipment will be the best purchasable at that point. You might lose a little story progress though, as I think you need to hit a completion flag for each town. So while not a substitute for a true cross-save cloud service, it's perfectly fine if you want to switch versions halfway in case you're going on vacation or whatever.

All in all, the game definitely feels like a sendoff for the series and a big thank you to the fans. Yuji Horii himself said there might not be another one directed by him (guy's in his sixties, y'know?), so he really had to make this the best game it can be, and use all his ideas he'd built up over the years. I'm extremely excited to see how this story ends, moreso than any DQ before it.

So the Japanese release date has been set for July 29, 2017. Can you believe it hasn't even been 2 years since the game was announced? And they only missed their intended release window (the series' 30th anniversary year, which ends May 27th) by two months.

How did Square Enix manage to pull that off? For two simultaneously-developed games, at that. How the fuck is Kingdom Hearts III not out yet with no release date in sight?

Anyway, So-Frickin-Pumped! I just got my double pre-order in at Amazon Japan, which is probably a bad idea, because why'd I wanna play the 3DS version right after finishing the PS4 version?

That said, they did manage to implement a password system as a throwback to the the Japanese release of the first game, and the passwords are interchangeable between the different versions, adding cross-save functionality. I'm sure there will be limitations (lest they end up with those absurdly-long passwords from Golden Sun), but being able to quickly jump ahead in the other game should be fun.

Still no information on the Switch release except that "it's coming... someday". If it turns out to be a port of the 3DS release (which I'm worried about more and more...), I'll cancel that version and wait for Switch.

For me this is looking to be the best year in Japanese gaming since 2010.

I randomly received a text from a friend yesterday. Apparently he had just watched someone streaming this game on PS4.

"What is this Dragon Quest? And why is it not in my life?" :P