Been playing DQ11 since the start of the year. It's an absolutely fantastic game, even on Switch! The story has 7-10 moments where you're just blown away. The english voice acting is perfect, even down to side characters. Non-random battles + the ability to speed up battles, + good AI that can auto-fight makes fighting a breeze. Bosses are usually tough enough that you have to manually take control of all four party members though (this is a good thing). The game is just teeming with secrets, like hidden recipies, mini medals, and costumes. The animations in this game are top notch too! I technically beat the game three weeks ago, but the post-game is gigantic! And the post-game story content is just so damned good!

Anyway, I absolutely loved DQ8, and have been pining for a true sequel for over a decade. DQ11 just takes everything that 8 did right and expands on it.

Wish they port the 3DS version over, never did complete VIII.

There should be a good emulator for PS2 on PC by now. Just enjoy VIII any way you can. That game is 14+ years old now. Squeenix got all their money from it and then some. 

I still have yet to play it. It looks a lot like Dragon Quest 8, and I'm one of the few people who don't really like that one. Dragon Quest 1-5, to me, is one of my favourite bunches of RPGs ever, but the following stretch of Dragon Quest 6-8 wasn't my thing. I loved Dragon Quest 9, but I think that's an outlier, as I enjoyed it mostly because of the local multiplayer. I don't know how much I'd like it without that (kind of like Secret of Mana, a game I love, but don't really like without the multiplayer). I have Dragon Quest 11, though.

It's not like DQ8. I did not like DQ8 at all aside from music and DQXIS is now my fave entry in the series.

I meant to say "Dragon Quest 5 is one of my favourite RPGs ever" then made a stupid edit and added 1-5. What I meant is I loved 1-5, wasn't so fond of 6-8.

Anyway, I appreciate the response. It's encouraging to hear this from someone who also didn't like DQ8. I'll be playing DQ11 soon.

DQ11 is basically DQ8, but with huge improvements. Depending on what you hated about 8, you might still love 11. So what did you hate about 8? 

Mostly the the lack of fun factor or satisfaction compared to early Dragon Quest games; I found the game boring. I can’t really say specifically what elements made it feel that way, since I haven’t picked up the game since the PS2 generation and I kind of forget it.

Some things I specifically recall was we kept chasing around this clown enemy I didn’t care about (Dull Magus, a fitting name) for like 40 hours. The world was overly spread out and slow to move around. The mechanics took too long to use. The encounter rate was brutal in that game, worse than any other DQ game. It was like Phantasy Star bad.

The dungeons were obnoxiously long and excruciatingly bland - worse than the worst from Witcher 3 and Xenoblade games; and I’ll note that these games still don’t have nearly as much dungeon stuff. Only Xenoblade 1 had a significant amount of it; Witcher 3 and Xenoblade Chronicles X have hardly any, only that the little that’s there is the worst part of those games...

Not that I hate dungeons absolutely, I like the dungeons in some games like Chronological Trigger (I’m just going to leave that English auto-correct spelling), Dragon Quest 5, Breath of the Wild, and Link to the Past. But I had no love for DQ6-8 dungeons.

In short - The things I remember most from DQ 8 were its slowness (everything from battles, to moving around, menus, etc...), obnoxious dungeons, and obnoxious encounter rates. I don’t recall the story at all, other than Dull Magus. I don’t even remember why he was evil, only that he was an angry clown with an irritating laugh that the main characters were annoyed by.

Well thankfully DQXI doesn't have random encounters. Like IX, enemies are on the map easy to sea. Traversal is not slow even on foot. It's a well-paced game. Dungeons don't feel too long with the exception of a couple. Tho you do revisit a couple of them late game. DQXI might feel a tad overwhelming at first as the areas seem huge but they are not as big as you think first time through. It has a wonderful cast. The one downside and it is optional but the 3rd act is kind of tedious. I did do it for the "real" ending plus I didn't want to explore a ruined world but if you wish just YT it after playing the game. It's really cool. Battles/menus were fairly fast in regular battles. Boss battles are typical DQ boss battles.  Pull up a chair. Thankfully this is maybe the least grindy game in the series. I only did grinding when I felt like it. I never felt forced. If I lost a battle I did something wrong...with the exception of the act 3 boss having a trick they don't do a good job of telling you. Making him from impossible to very managable. I don't know if plus or minus for you. This game is not very difficult.

Plus this game has a photo mode you can dance in and you can pet all the dogs in the game.

I think you might like 11 then. The menu system is modern unlike 8's. Battles aren't random, and go by super fast, due to AI settings. The dungeons are pretty much the same as 8, but without random battles I don't think they would annoy you as much. 

On the other hand, DQ11's story is a slow burn. You spend the first half of the game hunting down a bunch of MacGuffins. There's this awful intermediary part, in which you have separate story content for each of your party members. While doing this separate content you only get to use a single character. The rest of your party is locked away. Getting through that part is a slog and takes 4 hours, even if you don't talk to everybody. But like I said earlier in this thread, the story pays off in spades. You have seven characters in your party, and I'd say six of them have really damned good character arcs, that leave you speechless at one point or another.