Anyone here played Dragon Quest: Echoes of an Ellusive Age?

Extremely good Dragon Quest game if you enjoyed other entries in the past. There is a fair amount of grinding if you're wanting to max/complete everything etc. But it's not a requirement to enjoy the game. Depending on which version you are playing, there is a battle speedup option, from normal, to fast, to ultra fast. This helps tremendously with grinding.

The original version on PS4/3DS versions only had normal battle speed.

The definitive editions for Switch, Xbox, Playstation all include fast (2x speed) and ultra fast (4x speed) battle speeds.

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Typically Dragon Quest games have special enemies like "Metal Slime" that give tons of xp, if you're concerned about progressing more quickly or completing everything. Once you encounter these, you can just farm these. You can see enemies on the overworld in 3D mode, which makes things easier.

Pro tip - if you do plan to play this game and want to spend less time grinding for rare items etc, near the start of the game, you will fight Bunicorns. These enemies drop an item called Bunny Tail. These increase item drop chances by 1% each. You can equip two per character, 4 in your party, so 8% increase in drops if you farm for these. I got all 8 in just a few hours, using increased battle speed.

I enjoy JRPGs, but I don't love grinding for insane amounts of time for rare item drops. The initial time investment to get bunny tails will make the rest of your playthrough much more enjoyable.

I started the demo, it’s legit

Dragon Quest games are the last of the great traditional JRPG series still going strong and that stayed true to it's roots. If you're wanting an old school JRPG type game it'll scratch that itch well.

DQ 11 is def. worth getting. If you loved DQ8 you'll def like DQ11. It was billed as love letter tot eh series, lots of nostalgia packed throughout, many of the vignettes your run across are call backs to prior DQ games and all the classic DQ gags and tropes are present.

The game probably has the least grinding of any DQ I've ever played. There are no more random encounters essentially, you can avoid all trash mobs if you want.But you do need to fight some still. Just fighting regular trash mobs in every dungeon keeps you high enough level to progress.

I think there was like twice I needed to "grind" to catch up in the entire playthrough and that was brief.

It's also pretty linear for an RPG, so you aren't gonna spend a lot of time lost or wandering around. It's still a pretty long game just due to the nature of its genre.

Within the last few years I replayed a lot of the old Dragon Quest games and I was a little surprised by how short they actually were (ignoring 7 which is ridiculously long). Other than RPG's, oldschool NES and SNES games were all pretty dang short so RPG's at the time felt really, really long even when they weren't compared to modern games.

I think the primary reason so many of those old JRPG's had grinding was simply to pad the length.

Modern DQ games, like DQ8 and DQ11 can fill the desired play time with actual legit content.

That was a fair criticism. All the best music in DQ11 were the old tracks, which are plentiful. The new tracks were lackluster for a DQ game.