Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii] [NowAlsoSwitch]

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Hipolito
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Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii] [NowAlsoSwitch]

Post by Hipolito »

JRPGs have been touch and go for me, but this is the one I want to marry.

I am painfully hooked to this game, and this is just after coming down from my Demon's Souls addiction. As it took 10 hours for me to get accustomed to Demon's Souls's difficulty, it took 10 hours for me to get comfortable with this game's zany complexity. I'm now 20 hours in and it's just pure joy now.

I'm not far into the plot (just made it to Colony 6), so who knows, it could end up being not so good. That's what happened with Final Fantasy X; the first half was great, the second half was an insult. But I have faith that this game will be great to the end.

I'm not going to talk about features right now. I'll just describe how it feels to play it. Imagine running across the green, rolling fields with two of your friends (one of whom is really hot), jumping from cliffs into lakes and swimming through waterfalls. Animals roam in packs here and there; you fight some of them, but others are huge and you leave those guys alone. The sky is blue in the day, starry in the night, and sometimes it rains. And someone's playing rousing music to it all. There may be a world to save, but you could stay in this place forever.

If you have a Wii and you like JRPGs, I think you should get this game if you haven't already. The publisher was planning not to release it in North America, but then there was some petition and now they sell it exclusively through GameStop. The preorders sold quickly but you may still be able to buy a copy from GameStop's website or stores. I'm so glad I took a chance on this one. Sometimes fanboys are right.

Edited to fix music link.
Last edited by Hipolito on Fri Nov 17, 2017 10:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Skinypupy »

I'm about 20 hours in and have been loving it so far. I've got some minor gripes (mainly with the vague way they handle collection quests), but it's otherwise been a fantastic JRPG. The closest thing I would compare it to is Final Fantasy XII, and it feels very much like a single player MMO.

Unless something significantly changes, this will be my personal favorite JRPG from this generation.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Dramatist »

I've been playing this too but I'm not as far along. It's been very enjoyable to this point. JRPGs are not really my thing so I'll see how long I will stick at it.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Dramatist »

Well my son played this last weekend and erased my 11 hour save game.... But I started over and I'm now back to a little over where I was in about 8 hours this time (I'm much more fluid in combat). Very fun game and I'm really enjoying playing.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

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Been traveling a bunch so I haven't had much playtime. Just hit 28 hours last night, and am starting to feel a little burned out. The combat is still fun, but many of the quest/collection aspects end up just being frustrating. Case in point, out of the 6 areas I've visited, I only have 100% collection in one. For the other 5 areas, I'm missing one single item. :evil: I also haven't been able to really wrap my head around gem crafting, so I just end up throwing a bunch of stuff in the forge and hoping for the best. Probably not the most efficient way of doing things. I'm also realizing how difficult it is for me to tackle these massive RPG's at this point in my life. Between a crazy work/travel schedule, a 3 year old, and the desire to actually spent time with my family on occasion, I find I have very little time to devote to huge game undertakings.

It's still more fun than any other JRPG I've played in a few years. I'm just hoping the story kicks in again soon, as I feel like I'm doing a ton of wandering without really advancing anything.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Hipolito »

I've visited 9 areas and have been able to complete four pages in the Collectopaedia without going too far out of my way to collect things. Open the trade menu with every named person you meet and if he or she offers something you don't have, get it. (Actually, get two of it since putting one in the Collectopaedia uses it up and you might need the other someday.)

I've not been able to craft any gems worth equipping. I assume gemcrafting will become viable late in the game.

I'm still having a great time with the game. The environments are dazzling and sometimes brain-meltingly big. The music sometimes offers the memorable tune. The bestiary is varied and no matter how powerful you get, you have to be wary of the animals that can one-shot you. But the story is weak. It's just a lot of "we must go here, we must go there." There has been no character development despite some important things happening.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Hipolito »

I am finally done. With about 312 hours of play, this may be my longest-played game of all. If it's not, it's only second to Morrowind. Even after all that time, I felt sad when I started running out of sidequests and achievements to complete and there was little left to do but kill foozle and see the final cutscene.

What is it about the game that could keep my attention for so long? First and foremost, it's the feeling of being in a living world. Walking across enormous natural landscapes, watching small herds of animals wander by. Discovering that a cave is much bigger and more dangerous than it seemed during previous visits. Finding little places that were added here and there just to serve as settings for a few sidequests. Walking around a town that is bustling in the day and tranquil at night, looking for people to provide sidequests and learning about their problems with family, career, and love. The game is more similar to open-world western RPGs like Morrowind than to other JRPGs.

There's even a guild system of sorts. The game's menu includes an affinity map showing the personal connections between the NPCs you've met. As you talk to NPCs and complete quests, the relationships between NPCs grow and develop and the map is updated to show their increasing connnectedness. The map eventually becomes a maze of love triangles, social circles, and family trees. It can help you find leads for more sidequests, and doing those sidequests expands and strengthens the affinity links, leading to more sidequests. I'm proud that every NPC in my affinity map was a member of one giant global network by the time I finished the game.

Not everyone will have the patience or desire to forge all these connections or complete the nearly 500 sidequests. Lots of the sidequests are the generic delivery or hunting type. In most cases, you don't have to return to the quest-giver to report completion and get your reward, but you might spend a lot of time hunting for quest objectives. The affinity map provides only general information on where and when each NPC can be found; I spent many of those 312 hours hunting for elusive NPCs, going in circles throughout towns and adjusting the game clock forward and backward to get them to appear. And a few sidequests have misleading and ambiguous objectives. For example, to complete one segment of a major series of sidequests, I had to find an "Ocean Elixir of Life." The NPC assigning this quest said that it could be looted from a beast called a Kyel Lexos which only appeared during bad weather. So I spent tons of time searching the world for this Kyel Lexos, adjusting the game clock repeatedly to trigger bad weather events. My white whale refused to show up. I finally took mercy on myself and looked up hints online. It turns out that the Kyel Lexos will not appear until a particular story event has taken place, and I was nowhere near that point in the game. That sucked.

Everyone will have a different opinion and approach for the sidequests, and no one should feel obligated to do them all. But how is the main quest? For the most part, it's not good. While traveling from one place to another is fun, the story provides little motive and explanation for why you must do so. You just do. The characters are decently voice-acted but are given flat, JRPG-typical dialogue and most of the cutscenes are very poorly directed. It's not until the last act that I found the story interesting. Then, instead of appearing in vague, brief "Meanwhile ..." vignettes, the main antagonists get enough screen time to display their cackling, sneering glory. The story ends up raising some profound questions about fate and free will and even got me to reconsider my position on abortion. (Relax, the game is not at all political, and I may be the only one in the world who was reminded of that issue.) The final cutscene is controversial and some have said it's as bad as the Mass Effect 3 finale. I haven't played ME3, but I don't understand why Xenoblade's finale causes much consternation. It's not super-mindblowing but it completes the story in a cool and clever way without leaving me feel cheated. There are complaints that the final string of boss battles is too tough and doesn't allow the opportunity to save in between. My complaint is the opposite: because I completed nearly every sidequest, my party was overleveled and I could have beaten the bosses without pressing a single button.

Like any RPG, this game has mucho combat. Combat is not one of my favorite aspects of JRPGs, but Xenoblade is the rare case in which I never resented having to fight. The battles are fast, flashy, and merge seamlessly with the exploration mode. Banter flies as frequently as blades; your party members constantly yell about how the fight is going, the spells they're casting, and acknowledgments of each other's assistance. You can alter your strategy by changing your three-person battle party and spell loadout. Each character fits into a certain archetype such as tank, mage, or rogue, but you can change the spell loadout so that your healer can do better ranged attacks at the expense of some healing power, or your mage can cast fewer offensive spells but participate in more combo attacks, etc. Fights can be easily avoided and most monsters will not start a fight if you are stronger than them. That sometimes has the odd and funny result of a heavily guarded stronghold allowing you to waltz right in.

In battle, you only control one member of your three-person battle party; the other two are computer-controlled. I'd say the computer does the job 80% as well as a human. If someone needs healing, one of the computer-controlled characters usually provides it in time; in fact, quite often the computer and I both cast healing spells on the injured person simultaneously, which was wasteful. If you start a combo attack, the computer-controlled characters will most likely continue and complete the attack or have a good reason for not doing so. There are a couple of characters who require some finesse, and I found the computer to be more effective than me at controlling them.

For obsessed lootmongers, there are hundreds of items to add to your Collectopaedia, various gems to forge and place in your socketed weapons, 200 achievements to earn, dozens of optional "Heart to Heart" conversations to have, and enough weapons and armor to play dress-up for hours. The weapons and armor not only look different from each other, but take different appearances from character to character. The same suit of armor might make a male character look buff and tough and a female character grossly sexualized. The biggest problem with loot is that there is not enough inventory space for it all. As early as halfway into the game, I had to start dumping weapons, material items, and crystals on a regular basis.

There is so much more to the game that I won't get into. It seems the designers took the "kitchen sink" approach, and it's stunning how well it all fits together. The learning curve can be pretty steep, especially for people like me who have never played a massively multiplayer online game. (Xenoblade is no MMO but uses a lot of MMO concepts like "aggro" and "cooldown.") In fact, the first 10-15 hours of the game will turn some people off, with the game frequently throwing tutorial screens at you and not letting you fight with a full 3-person team. Then suddenly, all at once, you find yourself in a green, rolling landscape surrounded by cliffs, lakes, and waterfalls, and you get to configure your battle party however you want to, and you get to pick fights with various wandering monsters, and the music is incredible. You haven't grasped everything yet, but you're finally having so much fun that this doesn't bother you. That's when the game is at its best, and for me, it was like that for most of those 312 hours.

Addendum: I haven't tried it, but word is that the game looks better on the Dolphin emulator. It's apparently not too difficult to set up, runs fairly smoothly and lets you play at a higher screen resolution and with better controls.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Canuck »

Wow, great review.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Hipolito »

Thank you!
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Zaxxon »

Thread necro! With Xenoblade Chronicles 2 only weeks from its Switch release, I've been looking into it. I missed the first one (had largely dropped the Wii by the point it hit).

The early previews of 2 have me pretty stoked, and the impressions of the first one from you folks are raising the stoke level.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Hipolito »

I still have fond memories of my romp through Xenoblade Chronicles. That was an epic experience.

The trailers for XC2 actually aren't selling me, so I'll wait for reviews and OOpinions before buying that game. (And a Switch on which to play it.)
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Zaxxon »

Wow, really was not expecting that from you. Out of curiosity, is there something that seems missing compared to the first game? My understanding is that this one should carry the same affinity map feature, living world feel, and epic amount of content.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Hipolito »

As much as I loved XC1, it had problems like not having very good characters or story. Also, while the environments in XC2 look beautiful, they seem largely a retread of those in XC1. Before investing hundreds of hours (and dollars) into XC2, I want to be assured it's a genuinely new and improved experience.

Seeing that the XC1 music composers are scoring XC2, though, is a big plus.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Zaxxon »

Thanks for elucidating. That makes sense. As I missed the first one entirely, I am salivating for this one.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by YellowKing »

This one's high on my list as well. I came sooo close to pulling the trigger on it on Wii U, but never did.

Of course, it's going to be hard to justify the time investment considering I'll have Zelda and Mario to play as well!
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Zaxxon »

Man, I've found the Switch to be a massive time investment conundrum maker in the 4+ months I've had it.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii]

Post by Zaxxon »

Zaxxon wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 12:06 am Thread necro! With Xenoblade Chronicles 2 only weeks from its Switch release, I've been looking into it. I missed the first one (had largely dropped the Wii by the point it hit).

The early previews of 2 have me pretty stoked, and the impressions of the first one from you folks are raising the stoke level.
I get to necro the same thread twice? Sweet!

I picked up Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition last week as part of the summer sale, and wow--it has its tentacles into me. It's like they took hipolito's issue list with the game, fixed some of those (eg vague directions), then took my issue list with XC2 and fixed those (eg terrible menu system), and finally put a shiny new coat of paint on it all (upscaled graphics and newly-orchestrated soundtrack).

It's still got its flaws (the story so far ain't great, and it's still a lot to take in and get the hang of), but 9 hours in I'm thoroughly hooked. Looking forward to several dozen more hours.
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii] [NowAlsoSwitch]

Post by Skinypupy »

I played about 50 hours of the Definitive Edition. They did lots to improve the game, but the overwhelming grind combined with a mostly lame story finally did me in.

There's a spot in the mid-game when you grind the exact same 4-5 enemies through the exact same boring brown environments for literally 3-4 hours.
There's a couple of story beats that break up the monotony, but it's mostly just soul crushing boredom. They also sprinkled in some high level mobs that are very easy to accidentally pull, which can one or two-shot the entire party at that level. So not only is it dreadfully boring, but you also run the risk of insta-death if you're not careful. Funsies!

I finally just threw in the towel at that point, although I've heard that it does get better if you do manage to grind past it. It's when you get to
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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles [Wii] [NowAlsoSwitch]

Post by Zaxxon »

That's a bummer. I'll have to see how I feel when I get to that point. Played another couple of hours last night and am still hooked.
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