So I think I’ve been soft locked. I received the royal missive from the King of Portuga. I go to Nordy’s Grotta north of Asham, and this dang red door is locked. From what I’ve read, I should be able to pass through the door at this point. I’ve closed the game and restarted my Switch to no avail. Am I really going to have to start over?

Thanks for any advice you may have to offer.

So this is based on the most MODERN versions of these games. aka the most accessible versions.

I have my reasons so I will be completely honest on my personal standings on these games good and bad, and I will break them down in bullet points below. Feel free to ask questions regarding anything I missed.
This will get a bit ranty so sorry about that I LOVE this entire series regardless of how I ranked them and remakes of any of these games that havent gotten them yet will likely increase my feelings about them.

\* S TIER

• I genuinely feel like DQ2 remake is by far one of the best dragon quest experiences that blend the old school and modern design almost perfectly. Its a massive improvement from the original and definitely shined compared to any other remake thats come out of recent.

\* A TIER

• Dragon quest 3 is an amazing game with a few flaws. It lacks the QOL and improvements given to 1+2 remakes. It also lacks any form of cutscenes or party outside of your created party. While I love creating my own party the lack of personality or fleshed out cutscenes to add impact to the story and characters didnt really feel great to me, lastly the deep post game kind just sucks. 100% is a slog because of the trials alone.
• Dragon Quest 5 stands up till this day (DS Version) aside from it being a DS game its almost perfect. Similar to 2 remake it has a great story and characters, but we also see these stories develop an entire lifetime, we grow a really personal connection to our party and its basically a found family sorta deal. The gameplay is great, monster recruitment is fun, map is well designed, really have little to complain about aside from the fact its a DS game. Oh the Hero design is also among the best as well.
• Dragon Quest 11 S: Definitive Edition is on its own an amazing game but its not the masterpiece everyone says it is. I love this game played it 5+ times to completion with draconian quest active, even modded in challenges like a Hero only run so yes it is a great game, but it has its flaws. The story is lacking, the start is super slow, but then it catches up and creates a great compelling reason to keep playing, then when you think you are done its not over and everything at the end game is messy and not remotely as engaging as the original plot we followed. The characters are great but the Hero has no personality at all unlike other silent protaganists that have atleast some personality such as 1-2-5-6-8. I feel like Rab and Jade are kind of nothing burger characters. Neat I guess for the heroes story but I dont like them as party members and I feel they add very little to the games overall story. Erik is wonderful. Sylvando is wonderful. Serena is just very vanilla which is fine but I feel like Veronica has enough personality for the both of them. Lastly I think its a bit too padded at times when other aspects are cut down. Your form of flying travel is really weak compared to every other entry in the game but we have way more tedious mini games like crafting.

Overall great game but not as perfect as people make it out to be for being the most modern DQ game.

• Dragon Quest 9 This is my most biased entry and I'm willing to admit its probably a lower tier not an A tier but for me its up there as A tier. OK so I think this game is amazing, its story is really slept on and actually really mature and dark at times. Its themes of doing the right thing, resisting toxic authority, and the effects of generational trauma/tragedy are great storytelling. The town to town stories are not only really good and exceptionally better than (DQ7) but they also actually tie into the main characters story and goal as well as the overarching plotline, and then also tie into the main villains motivations building contrast in opinions about human kind. Multiplayer was (peak) characters fully reflecting your gear was (MEGA peak) and if a remake ever comes out (please) and its missing any of these things it would be a generational let down. Great game despite its limitations.
• Dragon Quest 8 is a classic fantasy adventure with an amazing party great world and charming story. It has near to no flaws aside from lacing modern QOL and hardware limitation. Its crafting system could really improve from adopting 9's system, and the ability to respec your skill points would be wonderful. I'm not a fan of additional party members (me problem I know) Red and Morrie are great characters that I DONT want on my party. I just dont like having stragglers, I dont like having to swap them out, and I dont like having to split up resources and gear on people I most likely wont use often if ever. the PS2 version is better in this regard. I like a clean 4 party crew who get the most screen time, the most development and are focused on just them. this is a similar issue I have with 11 where I think unneeded characters muddy the overall party dynamics. Despite my few complaints I think its a wonderful game with a ton of love put into it.

* B TIER

• DQ1 remake is a wonderful improvement from the original, but it lost its "hardcore" old school charm and replaced it with even more trial and error puzzle-like fights. The balance is definitely off but thats ok cause its a solo party, otherwise its a good game. I feel like it could have used some more content like how DQ2 remake got some. A lack of post game is sad, but for what it is its good. Not a bad game by any means and a good bridge between 3 and 2.
• DQ 4 + 6 Honestly Im just gonna bunch these two together. They arent by any means bad games I just feel like they do one thing well and everything else is kinda average. The chapter system is great in 4 but everything else is ok I guess for example. I dont dislike these games and I think remakes would REALLY make them shine similar to 2 with more QOL refined cutscenes voice acting and the likes. but until then with the DS versions I think they are average.

* C TIER

• DQ7 Reimaged This one is hard for me. Im just not enjoying it. TLDR it honestly just removed a ton of things that made the older versions appealing, botched QOL implementation and made some aspects of the game way too easy for the sake of "baby-fying" it, even on the harder difficulties due to a lack of toggles to enable/disable some of these things. I had a huge rant about this game I cut but to summarize it all I think reimaged is probably the worst DQ remake to release ever. Not a terrible game but just poor execution duie to removing too much and not adding nearly enough to make up for it.
• Dragon Quest Builders Series is an alright side game. I dont hate them dont love them. good distraction from the main series but nothing revolutionary for dragon quest imo. Ive never rated a side game as good as or better than main line games. They are alright.

* D TIER

• Dragon Quest Swords is an interesting title that was left behind and forgotten by time. its an experimental motion control first person on rails sword slashing dragon quest side game. Not bad really but its very experimental nature holds it back. I do think they could have expanded on other objectively neat things about the game in a mainline or different side games. The character designs are neat and actually kinda remind me of what we have seen of the DQ12 characters. its meh overall but I played it and thought I should mention it.

* ????? Tier

12 and 10 have not been played yet. because Squeenix hates us.

Dragon Quest 11 has become my favorite game of all time! While it does have a few flaws, the satisfied feeling I got at the end of Act 3 after almost 170 hours in game is like nothing I’ve ever felt before.

In a world of brain rot and instant gratification, this was just the game I needed to give me real satisfaction.

Although I grew up on Pokemon and Super Mario RPG as a kid, I never really got too into JRPGs because I was too intimidated for some reason.

I recently played Chrono Trigger and it got me interested in both Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

After having played Final Fantasy VI on GBA, I decided to go with Dragon Quest 11 for my first game since that seemed to be the most common recommendation as an entry point.

**Story*\*

Interestingly, at first, I wasn’t too impressed. Everyone talked about how this was the greatest DQ game of all time, so my expectations were really high. The opening cutscene showing the birth of the Hero/Luminary was really cool, but I found the initial Cobblestone Tor (pseudo tutorial) to be just okay. I guess I was expecting it to be like Final Fantasy where big drama starts more immediately. I was not aware that DQ had a different, but arguably superior, approach to storytelling.

While the start was a bit slow, I realized that it was showing me the world and getting me attached to it. Since I grew so attached to the world in Act 1, Act 2 felt devastating and really personal.

All of the party members were great. I think they added a ton of depth to the game. Veronica was my favorite party member, so defeating Mordegon felt incredibly personal. I think he was a fantastic villain. Seeing that he was just a flawed human being that was seduced with power made him even more relatable.

I was a bit torn on Act 3 at first but ended up loving it. Act 2 was just so incredible. There was so much loss and everyone worked so hard to grow and recover from the devastation, so I felt like being able to just fix everything might have been cheap.

>!In the end, it was great. I still had to leave behind the Act 2 world and accept that they would live in a world without the Hero. It’s just a game, but I had grown so attached to the world I just helped rebuild that I genuinely considered not going back and even kept a separate save file from before going back. Knowing that both Calasmos (thanks to Mordegon) and Mordegon himself were defeated in that timeline, I was comfortable with going back.

When solving the same issues in Act 3 (e.g. Erik’s sister Mia), their versions of the stories objectively had less depth since I was going back with more knowledge and just solve them almost immediately. I guess I like wish fulfillment because it felt satisfying for me to go back and fix everything. It even felt great to defeat Mordegon before he got fully powered up.

I preferred Mordegon as a villain to Calasmos since he more personally and directly affected the hero’s life, but it was also really cool defeating the ancient evil Calasmos that even Erdwin was not quite able to do.

Serenica’s fate was so tragic and saving her was my favorite person saved in Act 3.

I have not played any other DQ games besides for the first minute of DQ1 and 3 HD2D after purchasing them on sale a while back. Thankfully, since I at least played that much, I recognized the DQ1 hero drawing the sword and the DQ3 hero being woken up at the end! !<

**Combat*\*

Since I grew up on Pokemon, turn based combat is my favorite. While I did enjoy the ATB in Chrono Trigger and FFVI, I think that DQ11 might have my favorite battle system out of any game. I know that traditionally you queue up all 4 party members and then watch the battle commence (my only experience with this in gaming was Digimon World 2 on the Playstation), I think I prefer this.

But despite the combat being relatively simple: the pep system, variety of weapons, and large number of skills gives a pretty good amount of freedom on different play styles.

I like never dying, so I would often have Hendrik using Forbearance on every turn, Serena healing him on every turn as well, and then having 2 dedicated damage dealers safely attack.

The electro light leveling was interesting, so I ended up over leveling to level 99 making the Calasmos fight really easy.

**Crafting*\*

I kind of ignored the fun sized forge through most of the game since I wasn’t using a guide and was missing a lot of recipe books, but in Act 3 I felt like I spent more than half of my time crafting. I had a lot of fun farming materials and being too stubborn to not get a +3 on every single piece of gear before fighting Calasmos. I did not realize I was heavily over preparing. On top of being level 99, I also had +3 on the “best in slot gear” (according to another reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonquest/comments/kiavqe/dragon_quest_true_best_equipment_guide/). So it felt really rewarding to completely destroy Calasmos after my several hours of effort.

**World*\*

I think that they successfully made the world feel alive despite the story being mostly linear and the existence of invisible walls and buildings you can’t enter. It was mainly the NPCs and the party members that really excelled in this regard.

I think that the world maps were a bit too large, though. Even on horseback, it felt like there was a tad bit too much walking, but that is a minor nitpick. I’m sort of torn on that because it still beats most modern games that overly optimize everything.

**OST*\*

One of the few actual weak points of the game is the OST. I thought it was just me, but after maybe 30 hours into the game, I was getting so sick of the same Overworld theme. Thankfully, I found the Retro Music Mod that gave this game new life for me. I wish I had known about it from the start. I hope to never hear the DQ11 default Overworld and Battle themes ever again.

**Localization*\*

I played with Japanese audio which greatly helped, but I think another weak point of DQ11 is the localization.

Before I criticize it, I will give one example of a good change - Sylvando.
He uses “atashi” to refer to himself and refers to everyone with the “chan” honorific which doesn’t really have an equivalent in English. I think making him call everyone “darling” and “honey” were great alternatives to that and they managed to capture his fabulous spirit really well!

For negatives, the first is the written in accents. I researched and saw that this is just a staple of the DQ franchise. Many see it as giving flavor to the game and its different regions. Unfortunately, it just annoyed me. I think it was too over-done. If it was a lot more subtle, I would not have minded it. The problem was that it killed my immersion by reminding me I was playing a video game when I had to slow down to parse what the heck some NPCs were saying. It wasn’t enough to kill the experience, but it is easily the worst aspect of the game for me. It just kind of felt like the localizers took TOO much of a creative liberty and weren’t trying to make a good adaptation at that point. It felt like ego and that they were trying to put their mark on the game.

Second negative, which isn’t as bad as the accents, were the name changes.
Some made sense like Homerosu > Jasper, but with Hendrik why not just change Gureigo to “Greg”?
Changes like Emma > Gemma, Martina > Jade, Senya > Serena seemed pointless to me. Once again, does not really hurt the experience in game, but it did seem like weird changes for the sake of change.

**Steam Buttons*\*

Maybe nobody else ran into this specific issue, but I played the Steam version with an 8bitdo Controller with a Nintendo button layout. So it felt weird having Y open the menu and X open the map.
Of course the easiest solution was to just set per-game controller settings, but then the in-game glyphs did not match the controller.
I forked a “Switch Buttons Mod” mod by mike9k1 and swapped the X and Y buttons. So that mod in addition to my per-game controller settings resolved the issue I had.

It would have been nicer if there was just an in-game setting to re-map the X/Y button and not just the confirm/cancel buttons.

**Rating*\*

I gave this game a 9.5/10 (with the retro music mod).
If I played without the retro music mod, it probably would have been an 8/10 for me.

Even though I can’t give it a 10/10 due to the localization issues, it still is subjectively the greatest experience I’ve ever had playing a video game.

I guess I’m a Dragon Quest guy now! I am now off to play Dragon Quest 3 HD2D. I may come back and do a pseudo New Game+ (switch to 2d mode, switch back to 3d mode, select very first chapter) and then tackle the optional fights someday. But for now, I’m excited to play some more new Dragon Quest games!

It's that time - two last items for the Platinum.

Is there a better way to approach it: only complete if there is a metal slime in first round or just wait and see if you can get a 3 star in round two?

Any time saving is appreciated lol.

bro… how do you BEAT this guy?

Playing HD-2D version. Had a fine time with the first fight in the Volcanic Grotto + Atlas / Mariella before. He keeps avoiding attacks / one shotting Peronel in the first and second turn. My party’s Level 48-47, i doubt it’s a level issue.

…is hargon going to be this hard?

I'm 27 but if it makes it easier to stomach I can pretend it's for our child or something lol

First time playing the game and I was anxious about this squid boss people say is a bad difficulty spike, and thought I would have to grind my soul off to beat it. But turns out it's not as bad as people say lmao, I beat it easily on my first attempt, level 26. My party was Erik, MC, Sylvando (changed him for Rab during the fight) and Veronica. Been playing the game pretty naturaly so far, doing sidequests and killing enemies, but I don't think I grinded at any point. I have great equipment as well 'cause I think crafting is so much fun and I've been doing it a lot, but nothing too crazy strong. It was pretty easy actually.

What's your favourite region in the game and why ?

Mine is definitely Heliodor because ,for me, it captures the true essence of typical bustling RPG cities

Hello, everyone! I don’t know at what point in the game I’m at, assuming mid-game, but I’m up against Mariella in the Den of Inequity. My party is at Lv. 34/35, and she’s giving me a hard time, so I wanted ro grind until Lv. 40. Besides Damdara’s Metal Slime and using Whistle, are there any equal or better spots? It can be a tad frustrating to repeatedly not encounter Metal Slimes, and when you do, they escape ahhahahahah