It’s been two years since Dragon Quest XI: Echoes Of An Elusive Age first came to PC, and today its shiny new Definitive Edition arrives. This version of the game allows you to turn on a “retro” mode to play the 3D JRPG as a 16-bit 2D game instead. I feel like downgrading the graphics is the opposite to what a “Definitive Edition” should do, but it sounds fun throwback nonetheless.

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Last year brought RPG gems like Disco Elysium. Was there an RPG as good released in 2020? We’ve updated our list of the best RPGs of all time to reflect the best of the past year – and there’s still dozens of older classics, too.

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Ahead of its release on PC next month, the horrifically long-named Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes Of An Elusive Age – Definitive Edition has a free demo you can play right now. It lets you explore the first 10 hours of the turn-based RPG, and all your progress will carry over into the full game if you end up buying it after.

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Two years after Dragon Quest XI: Echoes Of An Elusive Age hit PC, a new edition is coming round with additions including new quests and the option to play this 3D JRPG as a retro-styled 16-bit 2D game. Pleasingly daft, that. Bearing the triple-barrelled name Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes Of An Elusive Age – Definitive Edition, this new version debuted on Nintendo Switch in September 2019, and will be coming to PC on December 4th.

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The best RPGs have always found their home on PC, but it’s a big genre and it can be difficult to know what you should play next. That’s why we’ve put together this list.

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I bet you thought that what with all the spooky stuff we ve had on the site over the past while, we were leading up to a big horror extravaganza of Halloween-themed stuff today. Someone is going to use the word spoopy , you thought. Well you re wrong!>

All our special Halloween features are about nice things today. We are wall-to-wall niceness. Dare I say suffocatingly cute. Guaranteed no fun jump scares built into the code of the website as you scroll down. The only thing you have to fear is being so relaxed that you fall asleep and nap for too long and then you wake up with a fuzzy brain and aren t able to do anything except nap again. Oh no! You were going to make dinner but now you ll just have to eat a can of pringles and a bag of Bitsa Wispa! Let RPS be the light you turn on when your living room is a bit dark and you think the bag on the sofa is actually a monster about to kill you. And you turn on the light and you’re like, phew, it’s okay, it’s just the replacement Bitsa Wispa I bought from Tesco. Everything is okay.

To start, here is a big post rounding up lots of sweet, cute, or otherwise lovely things we ve written or made or talked about on the site for the last few months. (more…)

Some might tell you that the latest Dragon Quest XI patch sounds great, lifting the cap on framerate and adding more key binding options to the game our Noa called “a beauty of a JRPG”. These people are incorrect. The patch has introduced a grave injustice by allowing people to leave their horses behind. Just think of the sort of monster that would leave a digital horse alone in a land of slimes. The game previously punished such monsters by sometimes making the game crash but now Squeenix say that was a “bug” and they have “fixed” it? So people can abandon their horse without consequence? Terrible. Terrible patch. Terrible news. A terrible precedent.

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Dragon Quest is one of the prevent-the-apocalypse adventures that paved the way for the JRPG, and its huge success in Japan spawned many clones and competitors we love today. While some may consider Final Fantasy the breakout star of the genre, many look at Dragon Quest as the game that made RPGs possible back in the 1980s. Even with that level of impact and fame, Dragon Quest (initially known as Dragon Warrior in the US) never gained the same amount of traction in the United States or Europe as it did in the Japan. It s often been overshadowed by other games in the same genre. But now, with Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age currently keeping slime lovers happy after a nine-year drought, the developers are hoping to change that.

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After spending much of this decade catching up with the rest of the world, the Japanese games industry is truly back, and PC gamers have been reaping the rewards of this renaissance. It s taken time for Japanese developers and publishers to get on board, especially with consoles and smartphones remaining the dominant gaming platforms in their native country. But as classic console franchises finally make their Steam debuts, with better-late-than-never ports coming with full-fat optimisation options to give you the definitive experience, there really has been never a better time to be a Japanese-loving PC player.

As the Tokyo Game Show takes place this week, here s 10 of the best and most significant Japanese games you need installed, whether it s to immerse yourself in world-class game design, get a taste of classic console gaming history or Japanese culture, or, yes, if you just like the look of anime. (more…)

Have you been checking in on the Rock Paper Shotgun Video Department? It has its very own video corner on the site where everything is collected. But in case you missed it, I’m going to round up our moving picture delights from the last week. From life-consuming RPGs to fish prisons, we covered a lot of bases.

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