Xenoblade Chronicles Review

It may seem harsh to label the RPGs between now and Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic as mostly "uninspired, poorly-written and paced wastes of your time, full of geriatric-looking, depth-less gameplay and bad level design," but truth is: that's just how it is, which is a long way of saying: I'm (somehow) embarrassed by the hardcore gamer community who say the opposite, who fawn over the first two Mass Effect games and worship Bethesda's games. And especially those metacritic scores!

HOW CAN SO MANY SMART PEOPLE BE SO BORED YET SAY THEY'RE HAVING THE TIMES OF THEIR LIVES?!...Anyways, onwards! Xenoblade Chronicles!

First off, the game's setting! In Xenoblade Chronicles the world is two nation-sized titans, the Mechonis (which is mechanical) and the Bionis (which is bionical). These titans were trying to destroy each other when, once upon a time, the Mechonis smashed his sword into the side of the Bionis, and they both stopped moving. Then (a jillion years later) in a scratch on the Mechonis's sword, you begin playing.

Another remarkable, original thing this RPG does is characters who don't bombard you with mind-numbing boredom. I like to think that fun, emotionally-stirring, interesting dialogue is very much why we pay for RPGs with hundreds of hours of our lives. So why is it that Xenoblade Chronicles is the RPG in a decade whose dialogue is almost entirely good, while the dialogue of almost every other RPG is almost entirely boring?

I suspect the answer is: because Xenoblade Chronicle's characters aren't a bunch of generic, fantasy/sci-fi cliches. Let's run a list.

In Skyrim! Here we have another orc trying to be orcish. Or an elf trying to be elfish. Blah.

In the Mass Effects we have: another space marine, scientist, doctor, bounty hunter, Star Trek Wars whatever (and a few fun characters).

In Final Fantasy we have dull and annoying stereotypes who make you hate your fellow man.

And now, Xenoblade Chronicles, which at first appears to have a few cliches, like the killer robot army and the protagonist Shulk, who is a 17-year old chosen one, with the power to wield a magical sword. But then we find out these cliches end up being turned on their heads. Plus there's a character named Sharla who heals people by shooting them with her anti-tank rifle.

Speaking of combat, THE COMBAT! Xenoblade Chronicles's combat is like an MMORPG's but with teams of three and actual depth. In your typical MMO you have your tank people deal damage and get hit, and the healers heal them, and maybe they'll be some attacking spell-casters. A well-practiced group with high enough stats, doing that for a billion hours, is the meat of those games (along, of course, with exploring the cliche fantasy world and the auctioning of ultimately meaningless loot). Xenoblade Chronicles doesn't really stray from the exploring, tank/healer/spell caster model, but it DOES say to the player, "Attacking the sides and backs of enemies with certain attacks increases the damage," plus you can switch characters between battles. You always play as the character set as the leader (usually you can decide who's the leader), and the AI controls the two character's that aren't the leader. (So, if the team leader is Shulk, for example, you play as Shulk) Unlike, say, Final Fantasy Whatever, you don't micromanage the other characters, except for during chain attacks, or if you get a "magic sword glimpse" of the future, in which case you can  run up to a teammate and tell them to do something only they can do. And, of course, you can tell your team to attack a specific target, and run away, and not attack, and attack whatever they want. What you've just read is all the team-micromanagement in Xenoblade Chronicles's battles.

In short, the game has the best combat of all MMORPGs, is not an MMORPG, and doesn't waste your time with micromanagement or long cinematics-for-gameplay. It also doesn't force you to fight every enemy you see. The vast majority of battles you can skip; just run past the enemy; and if they do chase you, which happens when you get too close to them and they're not complete pushovers, you can just outrun them -- they'll soon give up the chase.

I'm not done trashing western RPGs. LEVEL VARIETY! Xenoblade Chronicle's levels not just look different from each other and have their own music (most areas even have daytime, nighttime music), but vary in degrees of linearity. Some areas are somewhat linear while others are almost not linear. And almost every level is massive! Imagine the Wii showing you an entire sea, with beaches and floating futuristic platforms in the sky. Imagine being able to swim in that entire sea (which is pretty damn sea-sized) at 60 frames per second with no load screens interrupting your exploring and fighting. And imagine that with brilliant art direction, although with Direct X 8 graphics, yes, BUT STILL brilliant art direction. Now compare that to the brown and grey of almost all the major RPGs.

But wait! There's more!

I could talk about how it has the best music of any RPG made since....ever. Here's a sample. A Xenoblade Chronicles's boss battle song.

I could talk about how, as long as you don't waste your time actually trying to do the sidequests, it might be the best-paced RPG ever made. But I won't because I already did.

I could talk about its bold, gripping, original story. But that would mean spoilers.

I could talk about how the relationships between characters actually affect gameplay and aren't merely about boring dialogue and un-erotic sex scenes (AHEM!!COUGH!!MASS EFFECT!!COUGH!!).

So now I should probably say something mean about it. But my criticisms are so petty that I really don't want to. But here it goes: one of the female characters is physically hyper-sexualized for teenage, male audience reasons. Some of the lines spoken during battle are terrible, particularly "Water! The source of all life!" and "We are one with the battlefield!" There are many Darth Vader "NOOOO!" moments, mostly in the form of "NAME OF PERSUUUUUUN!"

And the next complaint feels so petty that I almost decided not to mention it, but here it is: the final boss is, by far, not the strongest enemy in the game, and when you beat the final boss, the game is over and you cannot quickly brush up the tougher monsters and bosses. You have to either restart the game, or hold off on the final boss until you've beaten everything else. Restarting the game with your "cleared save" makes it so you start with some of the stuff from the end of your playthrough (if you chose to bring anything), and your ending character levels and the weapons and armor they wielded. And what's potentially annoying is that you have to progress through the story again (along with its easy enemies) to re-unlock the areas of the world. Personally I don't mind this because, by the end of the game, I felt like I played Xenoblade Chronicles and thus was done. But I also know that many players like to end games with the games' toughest battles, and that the idea of ending a game with final battles so easy that they end up as a thirty-minute cutscene, due to the shortness of said battles, might irk some.

Also, the equipment screen doesn't make it easy to compare the stats of equipment. It makes you memorize the numbers of weapons instead of showing you, side by side, what the numbers are. You'll end up flipping between weapons to see what's better. But, as long as you don't have your characters change gear much, this shouldn't bother you. Still, it does waste time.

There is a way to make yourself miserable with this game, though. And its through doing its sidequests. Most of them are of the typical MMORPG variety. "Kill/Find X number of Y." The other quest types are only slightly better and, for the most part, encourage you to explore parts of the world that you would probably investigate anyway for curiosity's sake. They do give you some extra XP and money, but money you can get lots of by selling weapons, and the XP you can get by killing challenging monsters. So my word on the sidequests is "talk to the non-playable characters with the exclamation marks over their heads, accept their boring quests, do not sell any "materials" and "collectables" which are used to complete many quests, and do not try to complete the sidequests on purpose. Read my XC sidequest guide for more details, and remember: The sidequests are just sidequests. If you're used to the painful sidequesting from the Mass Effects, then get this game and never sidequest again! Xenoblade Chronicles actually ends at the end of Xenoblade Chronicles, and the sidequests don't affect its ending (and the ending has 'closure').

And the last catch I can think of to the game is: if you don't have a Classic Controller, then you won't be spending fifty dollars on the game; you'll be spending something like seventy; i.e. get the classic controller Xenoblade Chronicles bundle. Granted, I didn't play any of the game with just the wii mote and nunchuck, but I'm glad I didn't.

Right now, I'm listening to some of the game's more beautiful songs on Youtube. Already I feel nostalgia. Although I suffered many sidequests (for youuu), I remember how wonderful the main game was. And I envy you who are about to play Xenoblade Chronicles, for the first and only time, armed with my avoid sidequesting advice.

9/10


Xenoblade Chronicles is available for the Wii and can be purchased from Nintendo.com and, if you're willing, Gamestop.