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Nuvendil on 22 August 2019
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Sunstrider said:
Vodacixi said:

Maybe it's because I'm very hyped for this game. But everything I see and hear about it is like... almost always so good.

- It's probably the only AAA port for the Switch where the visual downgrade is not even that big of a deal. Yes, PS4 and PC look better. But after playing the Switch version I can say it looks beautiful there too. Even in handheld mode, the game is leagues above a first party open world game like Xenoblade Chronicles 2. While a not on the same level, it's more in the line of Breath of the Wild on portable. Also, it runs at a very stable 30fps (there are some videos on youtube that show some framerate tests and it's almost locked 30fps).

- It has a ton of very juicy exclusive content that the other versions don't have. Orchestrated music, 2D Mode (which is basically a new game altogether), new mountable monsters, speed up battles, new story quests... you name it. Normally it's the opposite: PS4/One/PC have things that are omitted on Switch. Here you're basically getting the definitive version on Switch by a long shot.

- Square Enix just released a demo that if Gamexplain is right... can be about 10 hours long. So basically they are allowing us to play the first part of the game for free. That's absolutely nuts.

I don't know... as a Switch owner and future buyer of DQXIS... I feel so spoiled. Is like they are giving us so much. I can't think of any other third party multiplatform game with so much good going on.

What do you think?

@ the bolded part, this, I was quite impressed as to how DQXI was able to keep a clean look compared to XC2 since that game was 1st party, granted I played only the first area of the demo, maybe there lot's more going on in XC2? I don't know, but I gotta say, DQXI is really looking good in handheld mode, haven't tried TV mode yet.

I don't believe it's that XC2 has more going on necessarily on a scene to scene basis, though it does have a comparatively large amount going on.  It's more the image quality solutions.  XC2's Temporal Anti-aliasing implementation wasn't done very well and the sharpening filter is used too aggressively.  In dock the image quality issues aren't the end of the world and in certain regions they really fade into the background (Leftheria, for example, looks pretty excellent).  However, when the resolution starts dropping in handheld mode these issues multiply by a LOT.  That's what gives the stress areas in XC2 - the big cities especially - that weird look of being both blurry and crunchy. The camera is also traditionally pulled back a lot and camera movement tends to be faster as a result, which exacerbates the issue compared to DQXI.  I will add that XC2 tends to have larger open fields, but there's plenty of compact areas too so it's not all on that.  But the roughest region *is* the biggest one with the largest volume of foliage density (Gormott), a region that no region to my knowledge in DQXI matches.  

Torna the Golden Country actually did a lot to improve this.  The AA solution is much better and the sharpening filter used far more judiciously.  That plus further engine optimizations result in a much better overall image in handheld mode for Torna vs base XC2.  Dragon Quest XI S from what I have played sits somewhere around the level of Torna, imo.  It has some fancy rendering bells and whistles that XC2 Torna doesn't, but then Torna has some tricks of its own like the volumetric cloud simulation and has higher resolution textures in general (though DQXI has a wide variance in texture resolution depending on what the object in question is).  It's not quite BotW tier in terms of handheld performance due to it very clearly running in a lower resolution. 

Last edited by Nuvendil - on 22 August 2019