Dragon Quest XI

[Lord of Riva]

I love Dragon Quest but Metal slimes are one of the most decline game mechanics ever invented.

 

[LJ40]

At that point you can just use those unites to turn enemies into King Metal Slime and level to 99 in ten minutes

Unites?

If MC, Sylvando, and Jade are pepped up there should be a pep power called Electro-Light that has a chance to turn enemies into metal slimes.

 

[OracleX]

any modders active to like merge the both versions of the game for the best of both worlds?

 

[Derringer]

It'd be easier just to turn on a 1-hit kill cheat with Cheat Engine to cheese a boss instead of grinding and making the whole game more boring to play. They added sprinting in the international and updated releases of XI and it makes avoiding encounters banal. You can even turn Draconian Quest on and off with Cheat Engine instead of just being stuck with it off.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

I started playing the game with dragonic mode (harder enemies and no exp from weak enemies) it's been a tough and fair challenge this far, you can't just auto battle map mobs and bosses either.I'm only a few hours in, just reached the temple of the

Spoiler

orb that the thief sold back to the king

and even if i like the combat, it's too slow, even more when coming back from SMT IV Apocalypse, where combat's end fairly fast because there's almost no combat animations.The game is really good but i don't know if i feel like playing a slow jrpg right now, might drop it to the backlog.

 

[AdamReith]

Finally had some holiday time so I gave this a shot. I'm 25 hours in and this game is so comfy and safe it's unreal. Love the monster design and all the little details that bring the world to life.

 

[TheImplodingVoice]

At that point you can just use those unites to turn enemies into King Metal Slime and level to 99 in ten minutes

I wish Jade would sit on my face

 

[Reinhardt]

I wish Jade would sit on my face

Sorry, Jade is busy. How about Sylvando?

 

[Ivan]

This game triggered my 'read every npc's single bark's ocd. It boggled my mind how many times the game gives its npcs new lines of dialogue

 

[Harry Easter]

Finally had some holiday time so I gave this a shot. I'm 25 hours in and this game is so comfy and safe it's unreal. Love the monster design and all the little details that bring the world to life.

It is, isn't it? Grind two levels and you feel good about yourself for the rest of the day.

 

[Sacibengala]

I got lured by a busted girl and got puffpuffed by a masked muscular dude without my consent in a dark house while my group awaited outside. We never spoke about it. I cry every night since. I missed dragon quest.

 

[Harry Easter]

I got lured by a busted girl and got puffpuffed by a masked muscular dude without my consent in a dark house while my group awaited outside. We never spoke about it. I cry every night since. I missed dragon quest.

Still seaching for that one in VIII...

 

[Duraframe300]

I love Dragon Quest but Metal slimes are one of the most decline game mechanics ever invented.

Nah.

If they're properly used and placed having a leveling trick in jrpgs is a welcome addition, because too often exp are ramped up massively while zero enemies in the game give decent exp at that point. Made worse when you have post-game content that requires a high level.

That said the logical solution for that would be to not have a Level 100+ level cap when the main story requires less than <40, but that's another story.

 

[Lord of Riva]

I love Dragon Quest but Metal slimes are one of the most decline game mechanics ever invented.

Nah.

If they're properly used and placed having a leveling trick in jrpgs is a welcome addition, because too often exp are ramped up massively while zero enemies in the game give decent exp at that point. Made worse when you have post-game content that requires a high level.

That said the logical solution for that would be to not have a Level 100+ level cap when the main story requires less than <40, but that's another story.

That does not sound like a fix to the actual issue though. Why not make "normal" enemies give decent XP in addition to not making the XP curve exponential. That is neither intrinsic to JRPGs nor is it necessary in well designed games. In DQ it is clearly a legacy issue, and it certainly does not break the game but nonetheless the "best" strategy for playing a DQ game is ignoring any encounter that is not a metal slime if possible, and ignoring vast amounts of interesting encounters is just not a good thing.

 

[Duraframe300]

I love Dragon Quest but Metal slimes are one of the most decline game mechanics ever invented.

Nah.

If they're properly used and placed having a leveling trick in jrpgs is a welcome addition, because too often exp are ramped up massively while zero enemies in the game give decent exp at that point. Made worse when you have post-game content that requires a high level.

That said the logical solution for that would be to not have a Level 100+ level cap when the main story requires less than <40, but that's another story.

That does not sound like a fix to the actual issue though. Why not make "normal" enemies give decent XP in addition to not making the XP curve exponential. That is neither intrinsic to JRPGs nor is it necessary in well designed games. In DQ it is clearly a legacy issue, and it certainly does not break the game but nonetheless the "best" strategy for playing a DQ game is ignoring any encounter that is not a metal slime if possible, and ignoring vast amounts of interesting encounters is just not a good thing.

(First off I'm not talking DQ specifically here, but rather jrpg's in general. Which is why my defense comes from. Nostalgia and memories.)

Because grind kicks in regardless in a million jrpgs, because you have long exhausted all possible encounters. There's no *interesting encounters* to be had at that point that aren't superbosses that require you to be highly leveled in the first place. Too often I've encountered that situation.

I'm not saying its good design in any way. In fact it masks bad design at best, but in my 27+ years of playing a million jrpgs (doing everything because jrpgs somehow bring out the *autist* in me.) I can recall countless times where I was glad as heck after finding out that there's an enemy somewhere that reduces a 15+ hour grind to *merely* a few hours.

That's all I'm saying and why I have a soft spot for them. We can debate their execution and worth and they ARE bad design, but as I said I'm still thankful they existed.

 

[Lord of Riva]

I love Dragon Quest but Metal slimes are one of the most decline game mechanics ever invented.

Nah.

If they're properly used and placed having a leveling trick in jrpgs is a welcome addition, because too often exp are ramped up massively while zero enemies in the game give decent exp at that point. Made worse when you have post-game content that requires a high level.

That said the logical solution for that would be to not have a Level 100+ level cap when the main story requires less than <40, but that's another story.

That does not sound like a fix to the actual issue though. Why not make "normal" enemies give decent XP in addition to not making the XP curve exponential. That is neither intrinsic to JRPGs nor is it necessary in well designed games. In DQ it is clearly a legacy issue, and it certainly does not break the game but nonetheless the "best" strategy for playing a DQ game is ignoring any encounter that is not a metal slime if possible, and ignoring vast amounts of interesting encounters is just not a good thing.

(First off I'm not talking DQ specifically here, but rather jrpg's in general. Which is why my defense comes from. Nostalgia and memories.)

Because grind kicks in regardless in a million jrpgs, because you have long exhausted all possible encounters. There's no *interesting encounters* to be had at that point that aren't superbosses that require you to be highly leveled in the first place. Too often I've encountered that situation.

I'm not saying its good design in any way. In fact it masks bad design at best, but in my 27+ years of playing a million jrpgs (doing everything because jrpgs somehow bring out the *autist* in me.) I can recall countless times where I was glad as heck after finding out that there's an enemy somewhere that reduces a 15+ hour grind to *merely* a few hours.

That's all I'm saying and why I have a soft spot for them. We can debate their execution and worth and they ARE bad design, but as I said I'm still thankful they existed.

If you want to grind I would assume you would want it to take ages since that is kinda what grind means. These mechanics seem to me to circumvent something you actually do not like and therefore try to avoid. I am not looking into the past though, for that they are an adequate solution but looking forward I do like interesting encounters and less grind more.

Unless I play something like Siralim but thats a thing you *do* for the grind.

 

[Roguey]

In my opinion, DQ 11 is best enjoyed without any of the Draconian settings; just don't fight everyone you see. The game was balanced around the assumption that the player would avoid most combats, since it is very easy to outrun enemies on the overworld. If you like grinding, then by all means play the 'Difficult Monsters' mode, but I think one of the better aspects of DQ 11 is that you don't need to grind.

This is how I played and it turned out mostly all right for me. The Tentacular was when I finally had to turn the AI off when fighting bosses and make my own decisions. Post-Credits was "The real Dragon Quest XI starts here" with the difficulty curve and I found it exhausting jumping from difficult boss to difficult boss, though I liked the resource management anxiety of the revisited Fear Fortress (I purposely held out on splurging on dews and elixirs until right before the final boss) . Took out Calasmos on my second attempt at level 58, whereas the internet consensus recommends fighting him at ~70 which was swell. Even avoiding as many battles as I could, it still took well over 100 hours. Like Kingmaker, I liked it well enough, but I never want to play it again.

 

[Derringer]

It's presentable, certainly, but it's not really a game I'd want to really replay either. Speedhacks made it more bearable, but a lot of the game feels like anime filler, and I know that's a bad argument for something that tries to stick to a standard that isn't completely tripe shit but I just wasn't feeling a connection to the characters past their character arcs and joining your party. It's not a bad game, really, I just stopped feeling it.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

DQ11 has one of the easier grinds with metal slime farming via the combo attacks. I didn't even do anything special, every time I had a full set of pep on the team I would zoom over to a bonfire and do a metal slime battle, then go back to the game. Hit 99 by the end without too much extra time.

 

[Perkel]

DQ11 has one of the easier grinds with metal slime farming via the combo attacks..

As someone who finished 3 DQ games including DQ11 i fucking hate metal slime concept. Instead of making fights fun and varied to get XP needed they give you metal slime so you can farm for hours like robot in one of the most boring ways possible.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

In all the prior games I'd agree, farming XP becomes too much of a chore to bother with after level 40 or so.

 

[Curratum]

Do you NEED to farm XP in 11? I'm absolutely willing to lower the difficulty to "baby mode" if that means I won't have to grind like a thrall.

 

[ghostdog]

You don't NEED to farm that much in any of the DQ games and certainly not in DQXI, even with harder monsters. The fact that you can change squads on the fly is a huge advantage.

Metal slimes can be just a surprise from time to time, where if you're lucky you can get some nice XP. Unfortunately for many they are the symbol of autistic grinding...

 

[Casual Hero]

Yeah, metal slimes are in no way required in any of the games.

 

[Jenkem]

Anyone who thinks you need to grind in Dragon Quest simply has no idea what they are doing. Same goes for SMT.