The Mechonis can be seen in the distance of many of Xenoblade Chronicles areas, an intimidating, omnipresent reminder that your race is being hunted.
My favorite moment in Xenoblade Chronicles came very early on. After the requisite destruction of the protagonists' village and traversal of the cave that keeps it so isolated, the party comes across a cliffside overlooking a vast ocean, on the other side of which is a great metal titan. I saved my game and leaped off the cliff. Instead of forcing me to reload my save, the game spawned my party at a checkpoint less than a minute back and gave me an achievement and some experience. Xenoblade wants you to enjoy it. It rewards everything from finding new areas to obsessively talking to every NPC. It does not punish you, and gleefully allows you to challenge monsters dozens of times your level and to actively avoid the beaten path. Every one of the 80 hours worth of moments I spent in Xenoblade's world felt like it led to a new piece of equipment, an exciting battle or an interesting piece of world building.
It's easy to attribute Xenoblade's hype to the odd circumstances surrounding its release. Despite a
sizeable movement calling for a US release, Nintendo of America has been bizarrely adamant not releasing the game in the States, even though Nintendo of Europe stepped up to bring the game to English-speaking countries. It took three months of strong sales and glowing critical reviews for NoA to finally announce a US release, and even then Gamestop (who will hold exclusive retail rights for the game in the country) ultimately seems more responsible.
But just as key to the praise its been getting, and the reason any RPG fan with a Wii should pick up this game is that it really IS that good. It's the rare game that decides it doesn't need any of its genre's conventions getting in the way of its uncompromising vision, and it's odd combat system and wide open areas make it feel refreshing throughout. Aside from Chrono Trigger and a few of the better Dragon Quest games, I can confidently say that this is on the short list of jRPGs I effortlessly enjoyed all the way through.
Xenoblade Chronicles takes place entirely on the petrified corpses of the Bionis and the Mechonis, two titans seemingly locked in an endless battle. The protagonist, Shulk, is a Bionis-born researcher currently studying the Monado, the weapon legendarily used by the Bionis in its battle against the Mechonis, and a weapon notorious both for its effectiveness against the Mechon, the hostile inhabitants of the Mechonis, and for its tendency to sap the life energy from or even control any Bionis-born lifeform that tries to use it. Only one man, a general named Dunban, seems to be able to control it, and even he came out of his last fight with a paralyzed sword arm. When his peaceful colony is attacked by Mechon, Shulk takes up the Monado (which he inexplicably has full control over) to fight off the assault, and embarks for far off lands in search of revenge.
The Bionis (left) and the Mechonis (right). The game starts on that sword.
Despite its rather generic initial premise, the story and characters eventually coalesce into something interesting, but in a departure for director Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenogears, Xenosaga), Xenoblade focuses primarily on gameplay. I counted four traditional dungeons in the game: the rest are massive areas that reward exploration (both with interesting content and rote experience points for discovering new areas), each filled with side quests to complete, optional bosses to track down and defeat and secret ideas hidden in the margins. Enemies that overpower the party by 60-70 levels is commonplace, and returning to earlier areas in the late game/new game+ in order to find extra areas too heavily guarded to visit the first time around goes a long way towards making the world feel like more than a level created for the party. I don't think I ever enjoyed simply exploring a game world as much as I did Xenoblade's, as I felt like every bit of effort I put into the game was paid back.
The affinity chart, which tracks the relationships of every named NPC in the game as influenced by your efforts, is just one of the many massive and compelling side activities that can be fully appreciated by the hardcore perfectionist or pushed aside by the player who wants to get on with the story for no penalty.
A big part of why the wide-open level design works so well is that the combat is fast paced, enjoyable and easily avoidable for anyone who doesn't feel like fighting at the moment. With an enemy locked on to, your character will automatically preform a basic attack (similar to Square-Enix's Final Fantasy XII, or an MMORPG), while more specific abilities (called arts) can be controlled from a menu that pops over the screen whenever combat starts. There is no MP, and there is no penalty for using arts save for a cooldown before that art can be used again. Effective use of arts is often largely dependent on who the enemy is currently attacking. Shulk, for example, is largely useless when fighting an enemy that is attacking him because his moves only take on special properties (like dealing extra damage or inflicting debuffs) when preformed to an enemy's back or side. Therefore it is incredibly important to manage enemy aggro (who the enemy is most interested in attacking) throughout the battle, and this can be done by carefully balancing arts and auto attacks or by certain arts that affect aggro directly. You only control one character at a time, but combat is still a more involved, proactive affair than in virtually any other game in the genre, and each and every character genuinely plays differently from each other. It seems complicated, but soon becomes second nature.
The game is filled with things worth talking about, such as Shulk's ability to see the future and how this factors into the battle system, or how every piece of equipment shows up on the character models, but they are largely better discovered in context. Don't just play Xenoblade Chronicles to support Operation Rainfall, play it because it's the best RPG on the Wii, and is already shaping up to be one of the best games of the year.
Xenoblade Chronicles has already been released in Japan and Europe, and will recieve a US release this April.
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Director of the Department of Orderly Disruptions
[Last edited by Snacko at 01-17-2014 02:37 AM]
