Dragon Quest XI has a perfect J-RPG trophy list.

[Karnacharya]

 

I earned Dragon Quest XI's Platinum trophy today. It took be about 115 hours, and about a quarter of those hours were spent doing non-trophy related thing, i.e., doing every side quest, earning horse racing prizes, hunting down hidden character events, collecting extra mini-medals, and generally exploring the world.

 

My journey through the game was magical, and it reminded me all over again of why I fell in love with JRPGs in the first place. The world was vibrant and beautiful, the voice-acting was perfect, and the story, while not particularly revolutionary, kept me invested in the characters and the world around them for the duration of my journey through the game. The developers also did an excellent job with the trophy list, and used it to encourage players to explore the game as much as possible. The horrendous grinds and annoying mini-game trophies present in many modern JRPG trophy-lists were nowhere to be seen - indeed, getting from Level ~70 to Level 99 took me a little over an hour, and the game only required one fairly east first-place finish in the Gallopolis horse races. Additionally, miss-able trophies were nowhere to be seen, so the game did not penalize you for playing through it without a guide, making my first playthrough even more enjoyable.

 

The absence of trophies related to speedrunning and Draconian Quest modifiers also kept the game stress-free, which was great. I play games the Dragon Quest games to explore and relax, and can pick up Dragon Ball FighterZ or Persona 4: Arena again if I really feel like challenging myself. As a side note, I also loved the fact that super-rare materials to craft outfits and weapons rarely required players to rely on probability alone - most could be purchased or easily stolen in the post-game, making the normally annoying task of material-gathering a relative breeze.

 

All in all, I find myself sad that I seem to have run out of Dragon Quest XI for now - I know that 115 hours sounds like a lot, but really this game was so wonderfully crafted that I still found myself saying "Wait...that it? There's nothing left to do? Seriously?". If you're a JRPG fan who doesn't own this game already, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy as soon as you can. You won't regret it.  

[GizmoCat79]

I agree going through it still act one at the moment with 60 hours done. Still at act one and it’s amazing.

Edited September 28, 2018 by Gizmo_Monkey

[mecharobot]

Would you say it is harder than say, completing the Dragovian Trials in DQ VIII? Or killing the secret boss, last Sukorogu board + Museum in DQ V (let's exclude all endings, though)? Disappointed if there's no grind, though. That's basically a staple of the series and it should not be easy to get to lv99 even with MKS.

[Karnacharya]

8 minutes ago, mecharobot said:

Would you say it is harder than say, completing the Dragovian Trials in DQ VIII? Or killing the secret boss, last Sukorogu board + Museum in DQ V (let's exclude all endings, though)? Disappointed if there's no grind, though. That's basically a staple of the series and it should not be easy to get to lv99 even with MKS.

 

If you're just playing vanilla Dragon Quest XI, this is probably one of the easiest Dragon Quest games in recent memory - I haven't played using any of the Draconian settings yet, but having all of them enabled drastically multiplies difficulty. As far as in game challenges though, the toughest things in the game (Wheel of Harma, Trials, etc.) are markedly easier than DQ VIII's Dragovian Trials (for me) and easier than perfecting Dragon Quest V as well.

[Dark Layla]

Since DQ8 i expected a game to his height and finally I hit it right because this game has a fantastic quality. I want to teleport to the world of erdrea. 

[Vivis_apprentice]

Easily for me the best JRPG Square Enix has released since PS2 days

[thefourfoldroot]

I agree that any jrpg that requires you to keep an eyes on a trophy guide is lessened somewhat. I'm currently playing through Ni No Kuni 2 and love that there is nothing missable. Will just play it as I want, doing things in whatever order I want. Looking forward to doing the same with DQXI.