Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age Definitive Edition S (Demo)

Sweet Dragon Quest

So after experiencing the origins of the Dragon Quest-series I got this itch to play the latest game, which I unfortunately didn't pick-up before going on vacation for a week so I thought I would get it on the Saturday before going back to work... but it rained the whole day so I stayed at home. But then on Sunday I recalled there is a demo for the game that can keep me satisfied until Monday when I can get the game after work. So I started playing and I gotta say, love the graphics. Looks fantastic and music is as expected (well, it's a Dragon Quest-game). 

Starts with a cutscene of a small spirit creature (?) walking through a city. Clouds goes dark and we see a council of old men talking about a newborn child. We see the mother and child... and then the city is attacked, mother flees with the baby and some other girl. The mother leaves the baby with the girl as she distracts the headless horsemen's that haunts them, but the girl is found and... killed? The baby turns up in the river like Moses and is found by a fisherman. 16 years later you, the main hero is supposed to do the coming of age ritual with your best friend Gemma who has the same birthday as you. Monsters attack at the top of a pillar and as Gemma almost falls to her death you save her with the zap-spell, which you don't know but a special mark on your hand seemed to react to the distress.

Returning to the village your mother tells you that your grandad told her that you are the reincarnation of the Luminary, the hero of old that defeated the dark one and now resides as the red star in the sky. Gemma tells you this at the tree in town where her scarf got caught in as a kid and you helped her get back. As you intend to go to the capital and meet the king Gemma almost tell the hero that she loves him and instead run of crying. I assume that she would like to say. Next morning you set out and I gotta say, the improvements to the quality of life, superb. You can run, jump and you can get a horse that can trample down weaker enemies (not gaining any gold though, and 1 EXP per chrushed monster under my hooves). Love it. At the city of Heliador you get audience to the king Corelian and as you enter the royal chamber and show the sign as the luminary, you get arrested and thrown into the darkest dungeon labeled as the darkspawn and the harbringer of Doom and a squadron of knights are sent to your hometown to investigate. In the dungeon you meet the thief Eric that helps you escape although you get spotted by guards, outrun a dragon and in the end stands above a waterfall all Fugitive like and do the only rational thing, jumps  out and then title screen.

GERONIMO!

I thought the game would end here, perfect ending really since I'm already hooked. You wake up and team up with Eric to go back to the city to look for a red orb that he... acquired from the royal family. Since I know orbs are important for the Dragon Quest-games I'm all game. Turns out that Eric's old partner took the orb, gave it back and used the reward money to get a shop to acquire more money to bribe the guards to look the other way so that Eric could escape. It set is up as the thief being betrayed by his old friend, but Dragon Quest is the optimist series. I feel happy playing this. The orb now is in a pyramid near Cobblestone (the hero's hometown) so back you go. Through the Mangrove Forest where you discover that the Hero is the chosen of Yggdrasil and can see events from the past near a root of Yggdrasil. Back in Cobblestone and... somethings off. Eric disappeared and the townspeople talk about the Hero as if he is a child. Your mother don't recognise you and the you see Gemma as a 6-year old child, standing below the tree crying... with her scarf at the top. Have I time-travelled? Have they put up some temporal distortion as protection? You help her and she shows you the way to your grandfather and your young self. Your grandfather see you as the adult version (although he was long dead at the start of the game) and happily talks with you and listen to your story. He hints you toward a triangle rock near some waterfall and as you return to the village and speak with your younger self the world is once more distorted and you look upon the crumbled ruins of the town as you look at the tree with the Yggdrasil root formed around it. And it feels  bad looking at the town. Gemma's gone and so is your mother (or adoptive mother). I hope to good that as this feels a lot like Dragon Quest IV that it ends the same with Gemma coming back to life... and the dog to since it's not fair. 

You will pay for this, king Cornelian!

Eric and you travels to the rock and finds your real mothers letter that proclaims you a prince of Drundrasil (the city attacked in the beginning and I think your mother is really Cornelians daughter and one of the reasons why he is so hellbent in destroying the darkspawn, or maybe the girl that helped you escape was his daughter) and then a letter from your "granddad" giving you a keystone to use at a door that will teleport you somewhere. You continue to the pyramid to get the red orb gets to the door at the last minute while hunted by the knights from Heliador. You end up in some Eastasian Japanese city of Hotto where you find a girl in red looking for her sister and another girl looking for her father. You follow the red girl to a crypt where you find the sister and it's revealed that they are twins but the red dressed girl was captured by monster and lost all her magic to them and at the same time becoming a young girl. The other sister is a cleric/priest and the red one is a mage, so basically the sisters from Dragon Quest IV. You defeat the monsters that are working for the the shadow king or something like that and restore Veronica (the red hooded... is she a red-riding hood reference?) although not her age. The sisters swear loyalty to you, you get the dad that is an information broker for thieves called Noah and he tells you about the Yggdrasil branch in the sand kingdom and you head of there... and this is where the demo ends.

I love this part of the game. I just feel happy playing it. It gives enough story for intriguing me and make me emotionally attached to the hero and the other characters I've meet. I like the call-backs to the earlier games like Dragon Quest IV and the orbs I think is Dragon Quest III, and Eric looks like he is inspired both by the main guy from Dragon Quest VI in hair and art style, but dressed like the main guy from Dragon Quest VII. I now need to get this game so I went after work and... the game was sold out. Meaning I have to wait at least a week for a copy from the internet (since my Switch doesn't have enough storage capacity to hold all games I want for it). Damn my luck. Well, at least I can fill out the blog post count with the demo and make it easier when I get the main game. You basically can start from where the demo ended and it then also gives you access to the nifty 3D to 2D conversion so you can see it as a pre-Dragon Quest VIII look (or VII since they remade that in 3D as well). Can't wait for what's next in the game.