3.5/5 ★ – Spelix's review of Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition.

Play time: 88 h 20 min Platform: Nintendo Switch Completion: Main Credits, some post-game content, didn't beat true final boss and didn't get the true final ending. This game is such a complicated mess of thoughts for me. My first real modern big AAA JRPG and I was sooo excited to dive head first into this world and just be completely absorbed. And I was for the first 50-60 hours or so, it was a great experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a bit on the easy side and I didn't enjoy most of the side content, but it was a great ride. The story was pretty standard and the ending okay, but still good enough I thought. Then we jump into act 3 and the true final ending and here the difficulty just spikes and this easy game becomes incredibly difficult all of a sudden. I have nothing against difficult games, but in this game difficulty just means grinding, which I cannot stand. But act 3 still has enough interesting stuff to do (although most of it is recycled content), so I keep going with that for the next 25 hours or so and am mostly having a good time. But in the end I found myself having done everything that I wanted to do and am left with a few final bosses that I am underleveled for, as well as the true final boss, which I have no chance against. After spending a few more hours hitting my head against the wall with them, the option is only more grinding or dropping this without seeing the true ending, and for me this is, finally, an easy choice. Goodbye Dragon Quest 11, you've been part of my life for almost a year now and we had a lot of great moments together, but this almost hostage-like situation towards the end sadly soured the experience quite a bit for me. Happy to have tried it, looking forward to try more JRPGs, but I hope they will give me a better experience than this, especially when you look at the time investment. That's all, I am moving on with my life as a stronger and wiser person.