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First off, the game plays out like a modern JRPG. And thats awesome because it dumps all of those stupid conventions that make no sense. For example:

• At any time, you can warp anywhere you visited around the world without having to really backtrack. You can also change the time of day at anywhere and anytime. Same thing with saving. That way if you are looking for a certain character you can just change the time.
• Instead of characters leveling up individually, all characters level up at the same time even if you are not using them or they are gone because of story missions they are still leveling up.
• The world is huge and it beckons to be explored.
• Your armor changes when you equip new stuff

"Xenoblade Chronicles has a real-time action-based battle system, where party members will "auto-attack" when enemies enter their attack radius. However, manually activated special attacks, called "Arts", each have their own "cooldown" time after being used; "Talent Arts", on the other hand, only become available for use again after using enough auto-attacks. Arts for each character must be set on a "Battle Palette" at the bottom of the screen, which can be modified outside of battle. Movement of the character in play is also executed manually with the analog stick. Another feature of battle is the "aggro ring", which appears around party members who are targeted by enemies. The bigger the ring, the more focused an enemy's rage against that member will be. This gives Shulk and other members the chance to attack the enemy from the side or rear"

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All characters are really balanced and actually pretty different when compared to traditional RPGs. Sure you still have a healer and a mage and fighters but they are done in a more mainstream way. For example, the closest thing to a mage is a summoner and everytime you summon something it buffs your party and then when you release it, it does damage. The healer on the other hand is actually a gun person and is still capable of dishing damage. Not only that, you can instantly change characters and have a different playing experience and not have it become unbalanced. There are some other quirks and stuff thrown in there such as the ability to see an attack kill you ahead of time so that you can defend against it. It does enough to feel fresh.

One of my only gripes is that sidequests are basically kill a certain amount of monster or find this much type of loot. Its not terrible because you just go to the town and you can gather pretty much all of the quests and then you can go around the map killing monsters. They are more like an extra reward incentive over and actually quest. And for most quests you don't have to return to where you originally got it. Once you kill all of the monsters you get the reward right then and there. You don't have to do them they are just there and if you want to do them you can and if you don't want to you don't have to. Its cool how you can gain reputation with different cities depending on how many quests you do, its just that the quests are all fetch based.

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The setting is pretty fucking sweet. It takes place on two giant robots locked in time how cool is that. You can explore everything to. You pretty much can climb every mountain and swim in every ocean. Not only that everything is like high sci-fi its just overall neat. And the maps are super huge and you encounter different enemies in different places. And enemies can be like a super high level so you have to go back to certain places to beat certain optional things. There is also a night and day system so like different monsters appear at different times of the day. And there are special monsters that are scattered throughout the world that are stronger. Seriously its one of the best settings ive played in a game its pretty nifty. The faces of characters look kind of wonky and disproportionate. Idg why they stuck giant anime eyes on everything but its not unbearable.

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I haven't beaten the game but the story is actually fine. Its not like Mass Effect or anything, but its a lot more interesting than a lot of other games of the same genre. The characters are interesting enough to actually want to use characters. The plot isn't perfect and I don't feel like its super interesting enough to run through it but it isn't bad. Its actually gotten more interesting half way through and there has been some neat plot twists here and there. The game isn't afraid to kill people off. And when it does it doesn't drag it on into some corny cutscene either.

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The absolute best thing about the game though is the score. The music is superb especially the world tracks.





There is not much to say. Its just sweet and its something i noticed. Music isn't something you notice about a game usually so i think its pretty cool that time was taken to make the score really nice.

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Overall the game is pretty sweet I would recommend it. What do you think? Any questions? Any concerns? Any opinions? Go post them. Right now. At this very minute. You better. I just spent an hour on this.

I want this game... ... really the devolpers made a huge mistake by puting this on the wii. Should of been on ps3... would sell better and well it would be a hell of alot prettier :x my main problem with the wii is that if you dont got a SD tv all the games just look like crap! But eh i love me good rpgs i guess once its 20bucks il get it and play though it

yeah the game would look better on a different system. There is tons of ambitious just not enough hardware. Its definitely worth $50 though imo

also I just got to Prison Island and am doing that

Yeah, same as what Mega said, this game should have been on a more powerful console, since it just looks like a game that would benefit from some really amazing visuals, that's the only thing the Wii is letting it down on...

I'll more than likely pick this up eventually, along with The Last Story and Pandora's Tower, but not sure when it'll be, because first I want to find a converter or something that'll let me play my Wii on my computer monitor (Either through HDMI or DVI/VGA... I don't mind) since on my HDTV it looks awful using the scart, and we don't have any SDTV's anywhere in the house D: (If anyone knows of something like this that won't cost me my left testicle, feel free to say so!)

But yeah, back to this, it looks really great, there's something about the style that clicks, even if it doesn't look amazing, it has a really cool "thing" about it, y'know? Also I've got to agree with the soundtrack, it's pretty epic, I've actually listened to it all in its entirety already (Before you even made this thread, lol) and thought it was great!

The visuals are forgivable. I mean when it comes down to it i really think the art direction along with the music make every map explorable and fun and awe-inspiring. I mean its amazing to see some giant robot looming in the sky. From far away, everything looks amazing its just closer up things get a little fuzzy/jagged but its bearable. The only thing is the character's faces which are fuzzy and for some reason they are weirdly shaped.

I don't have my Wii, but I've never wished harder that I did. From all that I've seen, this looks like a fantastic RPG rather than just "a fantastic RPG... for something on the Wii". People arguing graphics are missing the point even harder than people usually do when arguing graphics.

The art direction more than makes up for the fact that the graphics are on par with those of a late PS2 title, in my opinion. I mean, with the exception of the fact that a lot of the weapons and outfits are bizarrely overdesigned for their purposes. The fact that they went to the pains of modelling the Bionis and Mechonis and making sure they always knew where every area was on/in them is a good example of the kind of love that went into this thing. I'm not the greatest fan of MMORPG-style quests, particularly when so many of them involve just killing a different style of monster, but thankfully these ones are graciously low-impact. You don't have to run back to a questgiver to get your rewards, and this is maybe one of the only JRPGs in existence with a decent fast travel system to keep you from running around through the same old tunnels too much.

There's also an insane amount of hidden things in the game. Just, things like little areas off to the side that are pretty to look at, and which you'd run by without even noticing 90% of the time. I'm a sucker for little details like these, and also secrets!

Onc complaint is that for how often people shout things in battle (to the point where listening to your teammates is a somewhat important part of strategy) there really isn't a lot of variety. I wish they'd even recorded the same lines a few times so that the inflection wasn't the exact same on every "now it's Reyn time!"

The dialogue is probably the lowest point for me. There are a lot of instances where characters just exposit without any real reason to, particularly about things that everyone present should know. It feels as if cleverer writing could have included the same details for the player without it sounding like such an unprompted information dump. There is literally a scene early on where two main characters encounter a couple of dead bodies and, upon the other suggesting they give them a proper burial, one of them belts out "OF COURSE! WHAT COMES FROM THE BIONIS RETURNS TO THE BIONIS! THAT IS THE WAY OF US HOMS!"

It sort of interfered with whatever atmosphere the scene was going for to have this huge beefy dude start explaining a religion both of them knew, but the corpses in question were nameless blokes so I don't think the impact was too much.

If you don't have a Wii / the game / a heart, there's a pretty good Let's Play of it going on over on Something Awful. The update schedule is a bit slow, though, and Xenoblade is open enough that it doesn't really mirror the experience of playing it yourself, so

play the damn game!

(also the voice acting is English as fuck but I feel like English people have the same kind of impression playing so many games with North American voice acting)

yeah there really isn't any quest variety. Either you have to kill a certain amount of monsters, collect a certain amount of materials, or kill a certain tough monster.

What is cool about tough monsters though is that once you beat them you get an affinity coin which you use for skills. Basically everyone has a skill tree and over time it grows but other characters can learn other people's skills based on how many affinity coins you have. I mean these skills are basically buffs but its a nice touch.

Whats also cool is that all of the stuff here is pretty optional. As a player you dont have to worry about skills or doing quests if you dont want to.


ahaha yeah this is something i noticed too x:


I noticed that too when i began the game but imo it doesn't do that as often later in the game

also I don't know what the hell everyone keeps talking about re: the graphics. I mean, look!



Reyn's arm is in HD!

Awesome game!

Had it since it came out, got some posters to :D

*Though its collecting dust atm due to Minecraft, Skyward Sword and my internship :C