Dragon Quest XI S

A demo was just released on PS4. I heard it contains around 10 hours of gameplay. Your progress will carry over to the full game.

The physical release was cancelled in my country so I'll have to order it from Playasia. It comes out early December but I might just wait until the Christmas rush is over.

Can't say too much about the gameplay right now. It's turn based, and you have skill trees. Looks like they're based on weapons or magic. Like there's a tree for swords and great swords. Don't know if everyone can use anything yet. Haven't met any other characters. The one I have now can learn sword stuff and magic. I assume other characters will have different weapons and trees.

First thing I always do is look for ailment stuff.

One spell of interest I want is Poof, which claims to make enemies disappear. I'm assuming it just wipes them out similar to instant death. Maybe removes them and you don't get rewards?

When you start the game you have the option to turn on Draconian options. You can select as many as you want to make the game harder. No shops, exp caps, stronger monsters, NPCs are liars, etc. I'll play through normally first though and if I like the game enough I'll come back to these.

I got Poof but it doesn't affect anything I've come across yet.

Got the second character, Erik, and he has some stuff of interest. In his knives skill tree he has a move that poisons and another that inflicts sleep. I got the poison one.

After those there are two more attacks that increase damage by 6 times when inflicted with certain ailments. Each attack covers 2 ailments. I forgot which was with poison but the other covers sleep and confusion. Erik doesn't seem to have confusion abilities though some aren't available to view until you've unlocked adjacent abilities. Maybe another character has it and I can pair them up.

Poof removes the enemy and you don't get any exp/items/gold. So far it has worked on a few types, though misses half the time. At least the game clearly tells you that an enemy can't be affected.

Due to losing rewards, I can't see an immediate use for it. Maybe in a challenge run somehow but even then I don't see it seeing as you'll lose out on rewards and if you wanted to avoid the enemy that much you probably wouldn't have engaged.

Sleep is standard but I'm not sure on how they wake up. I had an enemy sleep through a physical attack, then in another fight with the same enemy it woke up upon being hit.

Poison is damage per turn. The usual.

Paralysis is the usual. I got a knife for Erik that inflicts it.

Erik has a spell that puts a magic sign on the ground below an enemy and they take earth damage when they try to act.

Weapons have unique properties. The one handed sword let's you hold a shield which gives you a chance to block. Great swords can deflect or parry but I haven't seen that yet. Boomerangs, going by the skill tree, seem to hit all enemies with their specials.

Got two more characters: Veronica and Serena.

Veronica has a lot of offensive magic and ailment stuff and Serena is focused on healing and support.

So each character comes with 3 skill trees: two for weapons and one for something like magic or other skills.

Veronica has whip, heavy wand, and magic. I'm going with the whip because its tree has attacks that inflict confusion, sleep and paralysis. The descriptions say they hit enemy groups  but that's kind of misleading. It seems it means enemies of the same type. For example, I fought a boss that had 3 allies. These were the same monster type and my fire spell only hit all of them. If I targeted the boss, only he was hit.

Serena has a spell called Dazzle but I'm not sure what it does yet. When it works, it says that the monster has begun to hallucinate, but so far they keep attacking as normal.

Confusion makes them attack allies or themselves.

Got to the end of the demo but can still run around fighting and stuff.

Got my physical version yesterday. It let's you continue from the demo.

>Sleep is standard but I'm not sure on how they wake up
Nothing forces them to wake up. Tried magic and physicals. Some wake up earlier so it must be a resistance.

You can also stack other debuffs. I used Dazzle on a sleeping enemy. Useless, because I found Dazzle is blind, and they can't attack while sleeping obviously.

>The descriptions say they hit enemy groups but that's kind of misleading. It seems it means enemies of the same type.
Looks like this is true. The ultimate proof came when I fought a team of 4 enemies of different types, close together, and could only affect one with 'all' hitting stuff.

>Erik has a spell that puts a magic sign on the ground below an enemy and they take earth damage when they try to act.
I should've said they still attack, not try. They just get punished for it.

I was wrong about a few things.

Just checked the in-game encyclopedia. Not something I'm used to doing. DQ is the first game where the explanations are so vague.

Seems sleep can be ended by physical attacks. It says they 'may be enough to bring them round'. So it wasn't a resistance thing, just based on it's own counter I guess.

Magic doesn't wake them though, because you're less likely to wake up from searing flames than getting stabbed in the DQ universe.

Spells aren't affected by blindness. Seen that in other games. Chocobo Mystery Dungeon was like this.

Confusion ends when physically attacked. Though it says 'sometimes all it takes is a short, sharp shock of an attack from an ally to snap them out of it'.

Makes it sound like it's not guaranteed. Or maybe this all only applies to yourself, not enemies. The way they word shit in this game is bizarre.

Not going to continue updating this.

It's all notes on status effects anyway. Not the type of stuff anyone would find interesting unless they were actually playing it.

I did eventually get to the postgame. Got all the strongest gear and was raising stats to attempt get the lowest amount of turns in the Wheel of Harma fights, but when looking at how people have already done it, I didn't see anything I could add.

Still haven't tried the Draconian options.