 Dragon Quest XI is a great RPG. In fact, it's one of my favorites. By now, you've probably heard about all the great things about the story and gameplay, but have you ever thought about some of the dumb things about the game? The things that don't really make any sense? We took a look at some of the baffling design decisions of Dragon Quest XI in the previous video, and everyone liked it a lot, so we're going for round 2 today. Here are 5 more dumb things about Dragon Quest XI. Let's begin. In Dragon Quest XI, you guide a group of unique party members, each with their own struggles and conflicts as they go through their own individual character arcs and eventually resolve their problems. Every character in the team has either some problem, mysterious backstory or issue that needs to be seen all the way through, which eventually results in some insane power up. They all go through this. Every character. Well, every character except for Veronica. So Veronica is Serena's twin sister, but she doesn't quite look Mostly because she's had her age sapped away from her by the Lord of Shadows minions and couldn't get it back, leading to her being like 2 feet tall the entire game. This is her only real struggle throughout the story and given this plot point, players would naturally expect that by the end of the game she would eventually get her original body back. Well, this doesn't happen. At least not in the way some people wanted. Veronica gets a necklace in the story that briefly turns her back into an adult and for some reason it's only temporary. First of all, they never explain what the necklace is or how it even works, but what's really dumb is that the damn thing doesn't even work. She can briefly turn back to an adult for the pet power, mighty magic burst with a full adult model and everything and then she turns back into a child immediately afterwards. This is dumb. Not only does this leave Veronica as the only character without some kind of resolution to their story, it also makes Dragon Quest XI seem a little more like Game of Thrones during a certain scene. This is absolutely one of the dumbest things about the entire game. Do you want to know what I think? I think the developers just didn't want to rig dozens of animations for her adult model with all the different costumes because it would be too much work so they scrapped the idea. It's really the only thing that makes sense considering how baffling and meaningless this entire sub-story is without any kind of resolution. I mean, what is the point of making her like this? How does this impact the story in any way? Might as well have just made her an adult and call it a day. This story wouldn't have been much different at all. Many people really did expect that she'd get her adult form added to the game when they announced Dragon Quest XI. But sadly, that was not one of the additions to the game. No, every other character got a brand new chapter with story content except for her. Obviously, it was much more important to see an amnesiac Eric stumbling around with a heel slime for 20 minutes rather than give Veronica a resolution. You know, the only character who actually sacrificed themselves in the story. Definitely one of DQ11's biggest blunders and an overall makes the game feel like something is missing. JRPGs and airships have a long history together. Oftentimes, in a JRPG, you'll eventually get to a point late in the game where you unlock some sort of way to quickly fly across the whole map and avoid enemy encounters entirely, which is beyond empowering when you've become so used to monsters assaulting you every few steps you take. Dragon Quest has had different kinds of airships in every single game since Dragon Quest III, ranging from magical birds, hot air balloons, flying carpets, and even haunted mattresses. Unlocking a flying machine in Dragon Quest is one of the best moments in any game because you can just hop on and quickly fly over mountain ranges and oceans and land anywhere you want with no random encounters. It's amazing how much freedom you feel when riding one of these things. You can go anywhere you want without annoying monsters attacking you. Flying in Dragon Quest is such an essential part of the series, which is why it is so weird and dumb to me that Dragon Quest XI introduced the worst flying machine the series has ever seen, Cetacea, the flying whale. You unlock Cetacea a little more than halfway through the game and she can be summoned anywhere on the map. Cetacea can quickly fly you across the entire map in seconds like her predecessors, but there's one key difference that just ruins the entire experience. Cetacea can't land anywhere you want. She can only drop you off at whale waystations, which are very specific points hiding some sort of special loot that you can't get normally. That's right, if there's some city or island you want to go to, Cetacea can't bring you there. You have this giant flying whale and it can't bring you where you want to go. The entire purpose of airships and jarepriges is to let players easily fly over obstacles and get around the map easier to cut back on the tedium of traveling over the game world. Cetacea doesn't do any of that. This fat whale is so goddamn useless as an airship, I'm amazed it let this happen. There have been moments in the game when I wish I could have had Cetacea flying me somewhere. There are several small islands located on the outskirts of Urdrea that are very hard to get to and require sailing around practically the entire map to get to them. You can't zoom to them either. You have to start off at some city's port and sail all the way there while getting attacked by giant octopuses every five seconds. You have to do this every time you want to visit one of them. It's annoying as hell. They could have easily circumvented this by giving us a proper airship in the game instead of whatever the hell Cetacea was supposed to be. I'm just amazed at Dragon Quest 8, a game that released over a decade before Dragon Quest XI pulled off this mechanic much much better. So in Dragon Quest XI's Act 3 you go back in time with all the knowledge of the past that you've obtained throughout your entire journey so that you can prevent all the calamity and destruction that the world would ensue. The Luminary was chosen to go back in time to use his knowledge to fix things, which is why it is so weird how dumb he can be. The Luminary goes back in time knowing that King Carnelian is actually being possessed by the main villain Mortigan and because the Luminary is a silent protagonist, he says absolutely nothing when Carnelian is putting on the nice guy act in front of his friends. In fact, he doesn't even seem to realize it himself, he just has this dim-witted expression on his face the whole time. When Carnelian asks to see the sword of light, he reaches for it and the Luminary doesn't do anything. He just stands there and practically lets it happen. If the Darkling didn't end up smacking his hand, I bet Mortigan would have had the sword again. I mean, you go back in time to defeat a bad guy who is posing as a good guy and you don't make any indication to everyone that, hey, this guy isn't who he seems. Like, what is wrong with this dude? It gets even more dumb. Carnelian invites everyone to the castle after work for a celebration and everyone just goes without any question at all. Even the Luminary, who should know that this dude is evil. Yeah, it's not like this dude is trying to hunt you down the entire game or anything. There's no way this could be a trap. Like seriously, how stupid is the Luminary to fall for this? And of course, later that night when the Luminary is sleeping in one of the guest rooms with his shoes still on, Carnelian sneaks in to steal the sword of light, which is left on a sword stand right out in the open just waiting to be stolen. How surprising. If only someone from the future knew he would do that. Oh wait, that's right. Someone from the future does know that, but he's too much of an idiot to do anything. And of course, the Darkling ends up preventing Carnelian from getting the sword again, but if it wasn't there, Mortigan absolutely would have had the sword again. And the entire reason for the Luminary going back in time would have been completely meaningless. The Luminary has to be one of the dumbest main characters I've ever seen just because of the sequence of events alone. So, rewinding back to the early part of the game, the Luminary and Eric perform their famous escape from the Heliodor dungeons where they go down a tunnel into the sewers and try to avoid the guards in one of the game's mediocre tacked-on stealth sections. At a certain point, the two of them find themselves in a dark room thinking they're alone, only to discover that a massive black dragon lurks under Heliodor Castle which gives chase. That's right, there's a dragon living under Heliodor Castle. Do I have to explain how absurd this is? How did nobody notice this for years? Could you imagine working at the castle and just hearing a dragon stomping and rumbling around underneath the floor or breathing fire? There being a dragon under the castle just doesn't make any sense. How do the guards who seem to regularly patrol the sewers not notice this? There's a dragon sleeping under the castle. Even if you want to use the argument that it works for Mordigan or something, it doesn't make sense that literally everyone was oblivious to the dragon. The servants and maids never noticed it, the guards never found anything in their many patrols. Castles usually deal with pest control problems swiftly, meanwhile Heliodor Castle just has a giant fire-breathing dragon casually sleeping in a cave under the foundation. Like what would happen if the dragon decided to come out one day? It could destroy the castle, it could destroy the entire city. They are putting literally everyone's lives in danger by allowing it to basically live in the city walls. But oh no, the luminary is a problem. He's practically wandered all over the city. Some dumb guy with a bad haircut is clearly a much greater threat to the kingdom of Heliodor rather than a literal dragon living in the city. The people in the city are idiots. For my final dumb thing of the day, we're going to look at Act 3. In Dragon Quest XI, the luminary goes back in time to prevent all the destruction of Act 2 from ever happening, but mostly it was to bring Veronica back to life who sacrificed herself to save the others. This is a very cool aspect of the gameplay in theory, however the sad reality is that a lot of important character progression in Act 2 ends up being basically a race when you go back in time. Which basically means that you've wasted dozens of hours of your life playing this game since everything that happens in Act 2 never actually happened now. Every boss, every quest, every character resolution, all gone like it never happened. Honestly, this leaves me with mixed feelings. I'm glad Veronica is back, but it's like they've reversed so many important things that happen. Hendrik's character is basically ruined, let's be real. His entire character arc where he joins forces with the luminary to atone for his actions, complete with all the battles and trials they went through together, plus that epic speech, gone. Never happened. Instead, in Act 3, he just kind of joins you without any of that character development. King Cornelian 2, he barely tries to make any sort of amends with you in Act 3, while in Act 2 he was much more apologetic and fleshed out. Silvando and Eric to Act 2 stories basically got a much more rushed version in Act 3, and Serena's character development, just forget about that. It's completely reversed, it's like the opposite of a character development, it's a character regression. She ends up becoming reliant on Veronica again and loses her super sage abilities as a further Basically, Act 3 of Dragon Quest XI is a mixed bag. It isn't terrible, but it's unfortunate that so much had to be sacrificed just to get a happy ending. It almost feels like it wasn't very well thought out at times. You'll even get some inconsistencies and plot holes in Act 3, such as Michelle being alive somehow, even though she shouldn't be by this point. Just loads of plot holes and inconsistencies arise as a result of this time jump and it is very unfortunate. It's a bittersweet feeling knowing that going back in time to fix some problems ended up resulting in even more problems being created, which really makes players wonder if they did the right thing by going back. So those were 5 dumb things by Dragon Quest XI. I can talk about all the dumb things about the series all day, so if you want to hear me talk about more things about Dragon Quest and other games, let me know in the comments. Thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.