Xenoblade Chronicles is the reason you kept your Wii and didn’t play with it for months. Xenoblade Chronicles is the game Final Fantasy XII fans wished Final Fantasy XIII was. And Xenoblade Chronicles is, I feel, shaping up to be a strong contender for Game of the Year.
Why is it so good, though? Perhaps it’s the fact that you’re straight into open world adventuring from the very beginning. Perhaps it’s the fact that exploration is rewarded with fast travel landmarks, collectibles and unique named monsters to defeat. Perhaps it’s the fact that the combat system is an excellent evolution of that seen in Final Fantasy XII, offering an excellent balance between having to quickly respond to incoming threats, manage aggro like in an MMO and trigger positional abilities for maximum effect. Perhaps it’s the fact that the in-game Achievement system, which rewards specific accomplishments with XP and other quest-like rewards carries some sort of in-game worth to it rather than simply online bragging rights. Or perhaps it’s all of the above.
I’m aware I’m gushing somewhat but, you know, it really is that good. So far (10 hours in) there’s been a healthy mix of tooling around killing shit in the open world; hunting down collectibles; hunting specific named monsters; solving interpersonal dilemmas in town — often with several solutions; and, of course, appropriately JRPGish melodrama. What would a JRPG be without it?
Fortunately, though, the plot so far has been interesting and well paced, though it suffers from that perennial RPG problem of “characters say ‘hey! Let’s move on!’, player hangs around for 5 hours collecting bugs and lettuces” though when there’s as much to do as there is here, it’s worth exploring every nook and cranny. All the sidequests are optional, of course, and if I’d ignored them I’d have probably progressed a lot further through the story by now. But part of the attraction of Xenoblade is its world and its characters, and by allowing you a brief snapshot into the lives of these people going about their business you develop the sense that this is a well-realised game world that is worth exploring and far more than just a pretty backdrop to kill rabbits in.
So if you have a Wii and the means to play Xenoblade, I’d encourage you to do so right now. Deus Ex may be the high profile hotness right now, but Xenoblade will offer you an altogether different — and far less orange — experience.
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You had me at “it’s what Final Fantasy XII fans wished Final Fantasy XIII was.”
Hah. Right. It really is, though. The whole aesthetic is very Final Fantasy-ish with the whole magic-tech fusion thing, the character designs wouldn’t look out of place in a Squeenix title and the music is appropriately awesome, too. Win all round. Even the graphics don’t bug me as much as I thought they might.