Full disclosure: this is going to be a pretty brief, pretty preliminary post, partly because Holidays, and partly because I need to dive a little deeper into actually playing Dragon Quest to flesh out a full recommendation. At this point, I’ve been more won over by the writing and the style than the gameplay.

Sidebar: if that style is at all familiar, it’s because the character design is done by Akira Toriyama, the guy behind Dragon Ball. In fact, the player character in Dragon Quest XI looks uncannily like Android 17,

Which is a plus, because he’s my favourite Dragon Ball character.

In brief, I got Dragon Quest XI for Christmas. This is not, in fact, my first experience with the series (which is older than I am). I’ve previously played the DS version of V, IX and the Warriors spin–off. At present, I’ve played about fifteen minutes of XI.

Like I said, I need to get deeper into it before I can get a full, proper recommendation done.

Until then, I think my major opinion on Dragon Quest is “Man, this reminds me of Realmgard!” Also, Slayers.

Basically, it’s not quite a comedy, but also never really takes itself to seriously. For one thing, all of the characters are voiced with badly-affected but endearing Bristish accents. I guess because “British equals Fantasy.”

The story seems pretty generic so far, but there’s always a certain level of whimsy and silliness — unless the game goes in a completely different direction later on…

I’m at least enthused enough to see where it’s going to go.

Stay tuned, I guess.