I really like JRPGs, so it's no surprise that Xenoblade Chronicles was the only game I played this past week. At the cost of decent sleep I managed to put in around 50 hours of gameplay. Thinking back I have no idea how I put that much time into the game, but I've come to the conclusion that I really like it.
Since I only played Xenoblade this past week I decided to make this a special edition of Game Time to share my impressions. I'm trying to do everything I can, so it's going to take me around 70 more hours to get what I want out of it. You read that right. There's an estimated 120 hours of gameplay in Xenoblade. If I play the way I've been playing it's going to be a while before I get around to a review, so this will be a placeholder in the meantime.
Welcome to the special Xenoblade edition of Game Time.
What's This All About?
Xenoblade Chronicles was originally just known as Xenoblade in Japan. It was released to critical acclaim in 2010. As time passed people wondered if it was going to be localized for other territories. Since it was published by Nintendo they themselves would have to approve of the game's release. To everyone's surprise Nintendo of America said they weren't going to release it. They even held their ground after a European release happened the August of 2011.
Wii and RPG fans cried out in agony. They wanted a US release to happen as well. A letter writing campaign called Project Rainfall was started. People wrote letters to Nintendo of America asking for them to release Xenoblade, The Last Story, and Pandora's Tower. Nintendo didn't comment on whether or not the campaign had any success, but we finally got the Xenoblade we asked for.
I can't exactly tell you why Xenoblade is so well liked, but I have a few ideas. Taking it down to its most base level you could call it a single player MMO, but that's not doing the game any justice. The battle system is fun, the story is fairly good, and to top it off it's on the Wii. It looks incredible for a Wii game. While there are spots there are places it doesn't look so great, but it's all due to the technical limitations of the system. Monolith wasn't afraid to push the console to it's limits and it certainly pays off.
They Live On Mechs!
JRPGs always have the most ridiculous stories and that's one of the things I love about them. They may have a boatload of cliches, but when they do new things they're absolutely nuts. Xenoblade takes place on a giant mech called Bionis. In the times of old it was locked in constant battle with another mech known as the Mechonis. Now they're both defunct, but the continuous battle begins. Bionis is brimming with sentient life, while Mechonis is home to evil robots called the mechons. It's an interesting concept, but when you think about it too much it begins to fall apart. The places you travel on Bionis seem like they'd be impossible to traverse, but it's a video game so whatever...
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| Bionis is the one on the right with the giant laser sword. |
The main character's name is Shulk. As is the standard with all JRPG main characters he's a little emo, but it's okay since he's special. He is one of the few humans who can wield the laser sword known as the Monado. I'm going to take a shot in the dark and assume that it's the Xenoblade, but that hasn't been established yet. I don't want to talk too much about the plot, because it's chock full of twists. I couldn't believe a few of the twists that were thrown my way, which isn't normally the case with these types of games.
Something that makes the game feel even more unique is the British voice acting. Since I live in the U.S. it's interesting to hear all of the acting with a different accent. The problem is that the voice acting isn't exactly the greatest. Sometimes it's totally fine, but there are other times where it feels flat. There are points where the voices are completely emotionless when they should at the very least be screaming. It's not enough to make me dislike it, but it certainly draws attention.
Also, Yasunori Mitsuda did the music and it's amazing. I'm contemplating buying the soundtrack.
Single Player MMO
I feel bad every time I compare Xenoblade to a MMO, but it's an apt comparison. To start with you get quests from NPCs who have exclamation points over their heads. They're never inside, because you can't ever go inside. Instead you'll be traversing huge environments. They're varied and very large. Sometimes they're so large they become annoying to traverse.
The way it's most like an MMO is in the battle system. You control a single character. A skill bar is shown on the bottom of the screen and you can pop off skills while auto attacking. Once you use a skill it's put on cooldown for a set amount of time depending on the skills level. The amount of damage a skill does depends on your characters position. Certain skills will do bonus damage from behind and some have certain effects from the side. Positioning becomes very important early on.
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| Yup, that looks like an MMO. |
If that doesn't sound enough like an MMO for you wait a second because I've got more. In battle players draw aggro. Yes, it's actually called aggro. You can have up to 3 party members at a time. The one who's attacking the enemy the most will draw the most aggro, so they'll be targeted. This leads to very MMO like strategy. The roles are very clearly similar to a DPS, tank, and medic. The tank will draw aggro, while the DPS attacks, and the medic heals. Not every character fits these exact archetypes, but they're all fairly similar.
A Completionist's Nightmare
For the first ten or so hours of Xenoblade I didn't have very much fun and it was entirely my fault. There are a ridiculous number of quests available. They give a lot of experience points, but the items and rewards you get are rarely worth it. To top it off they almost never have a worthwhile plot. It's almost always kill so many monsters, or collect to many of a certain item. In the beginning of the game they're easy to complete, but later on when you need to get rare drops it becomes incredibly frustrating.
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| Take this amount of quests and multiply it by a hundred or two. That's how many there are. |
I freaking tried to do every single quest I could. At certain points in the game there are time limited quests. For some reason I'm always scared of missing content in games, so I try to do all the quests I can as soon as possible. This led to me becoming extremely overpowered. It was so bad that I hardly ever took damage and didn't die until I was about 30 hours into the game. I didn't need to use any type of strategy, because I could literally annihilate enemies while auto-attacking. The difficulty of the game has completely turned around now. Even with my extreme leveling the enemies are posing a threat now. It's actually fun to plan out what I'm going to do and co-ordinate with my other party members.
Since the quests aren't exciting or anything it's easy to burn out on the entire game. I've burned myself out twice already and come back around. If anyone is planning on playing this game, I recommend you only do a quests before advancing in the story. I've read countless forum threads about people getting burned out on the game and I can totally understand why. I recognize that it's completely my fault, but they could have at least made the plots worth the time.
Xenoblade is chock full of content. With 120 hours of gameplay time to do everything there is no shortage on stuff to do. It's all about finding the right balance. I think this is why I like Xenoblade so much. I love playing MMO's, but I can never play them for very long. I need a story to sustain me and Xenoblade delivers that with all the trappings of an MMO.
How do I feel?
I really like Xenoblade, but I still haven't managed to gather all of my thoughts on it. This past week has been a complicated jumble of work, Xenoblade, and sleep. In that order. It's all been a blur. All I know is that it's been an enjoyable blur. Every spare moment I've been playing Xenoblade.
Every time I think the Wii is done an awesome new game gets released. It's a shame that all of these games are coming at the end of the systems life cycle, because it means that a whole lot of people are going to miss out on it. I'm here to say that you shouldn't miss out on this game. Unless you don't like JRPGs or MMOs and in that case you'll want to steer clear of this game like it's the plague.
I'll be back next week and I'll hopefully have more concise thoughts on the game. On top of that I'll actually try to play some other games, or else next week's game time is going to be pretty lame.
See you next time.
-Manny
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