#oneaday Day 648: Xenoblade Chronicled

Finished Xenoblade Chronicles and can say with some confidence that it’s my Game of the Year so far. With only a few months left and only a few things on the horizon which could be contenders, it’s looking good for Monolithsoft’s epic RPG extravaganza.

Of course, my Game of the Year vote is of interest only to my friends. Gamer culture at large will undoubtedly vote Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 or Uncharted 3 (hang on a minute… there’s a pattern there somewhere) as GotY. But that doesn’t matter.

Xenoblade Chronicles toes the line perfectly between JRPG and WRPG. On the J front, you have your floppy-haired protagonists who wield physically improbable weapons; you have your large-breasted female companions (one of whom spends most of the game clad in “armour” that really wouldn’t protect anything besides her modesty — and even then only just); you have your small, annoying creature; you have your ultimately quite predictable JRPG finale (I still love ’em, I don’t care how cliched they are). On the W front, you have a huge open world with minimal loading breaks — individual zones are huge in area and packed with things to do: monsters to kill, quests to complete, people to find. Straddling the line between both, we have an excellent combat system somewhat reminiscent of MMOs like World of Warcraft or, probably more accurately, Guild Wars.

Why the Guild Wars comparison? Well, like that game, you only have a finite number of skills which can be “equipped” at once, from a larger potential bank. The number of skills you acquire in Xenoblade Chronicles isn’t as ridiculous as NCSoft’s title, but then you do have several characters to manage all at once. Mercifully, you only have to control one of them at once, with the AI doing an excellent job of performing whatever role each character is ideally suited to in the party.

Gameplay-wise, it’s top notch. Simply proceeding through the areas, completing quests and following the story when I’d “cleared” an area was enough to get me almost to the very end — there was only a few levels’ worth of grinding required to safely get through the home straight, and by that point you’ve learned plenty of EXP-boosting skills so it’s not as painful as it could be.

This is all very clinical and mechanical — and that’s fine, as an RPG can live or die on its mechanics. But the real star of the show in Xenoblade Chronicles is its cast. Brilliantly voiced by an English cast, the characters are all memorable and, despite my “floppy haired protagonist” comment earlier, manage to not fall into the usual stereotypes. Each of them is an interesting individual whom you get to know throughout the course of the game, both through story sequences and through optional “heart to heart” conversations, where two characters have a chat and come away from it either liking each other a little more or a little less.

Characterisation isn’t just limited to story sequences, however — different combinations of characters in a battle party elicit different battle cries and responses to one another. And, as characters develop their Affinity for one another, they start to talk to each other during battle differently, often engaging in some light-hearted banter that makes them seem a lot more human. Okay, you’ll hear “what a bunch of jokers!” and “my rifle’s getting hotter!” an awful lot throughout the course of the game, but on the rare occasions where they start teasing each other after a successful battle, it’ll definitely raise a smile.

For me, the sign of a good RPG is whether you have a kind of “empty” feeling after it’s all over — you won’t be spending any more time with these characters, and that’s sad. I felt it particularly strongly with Persona 4, whose ending sequence made me tear up, and I’m not ashamed at all to admit it. Xenoblade Chronicles gives me that feeling, too. It’s a different sort of ending to Persona, but once it’s over you have very much left those characters behind to get on with their lives in their post-adventure world. It’s a bittersweet moment.

By far the saddest thing about Xenoblade Chronicles, however, is how few people will get to play it. While it got a release in this country, it’s likely to become harder and harder to find as the months go on — and there’s sure to be plenty of people who will dismiss it out of hand purely because it’s on the Wii. This isn’t even getting into the whole fiasco of Nintendo of America stubbornly refusing to bring the game to the States, despite there clearly being an audience for it. The game is already translated and ready to go — we Europeans have to deal with American spellings in most games, so would it really kill you to put up with the words “armour” and “learnt”? No — but Nintendo of America apparently doesn’t see it that way, presumably believing that sales will be poor.

The thing is, though, Nintendo is in a difficult position right now. The 3DS is ailing, the Wii is fading and the core of the gamer community has all but left the company behind. For Nintendo of America to bring Xenoblade Chronicles to the States would be a gesture of goodwill to all the loyal fans who still defend the company, even amid its gradual move away from the core audience. It would give people more faith in Nintendo’s current and future products, and, in the long term, it would help attract people to the Wii U as people see it as a system that will cater to the core.

Sadly, it doesn’t appear it’s going to happen — so if you’re an American and you would very much like to play Xenoblade Chronicles, I would say don’t hesitate — import it, mod your Wii and enjoy. There’s over a hundred hours of absolutely top-tier entertainment there, and you will not regret the time you spend in its highly distinctive world.

Now I better go to bed. Off to Legoland tomorrow!

#oneaday Day 589: Further Enthusing Regarding Xenoblade Chronicles

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.

#oneaday Day 582: Xenophile

I picked up Xenoblade Chronicles earlier. I have the feeling that despite its surprisingly strong showing in the charts this week that it will become very difficult to find in a few weeks, so I didn’t want to miss out on the game that everyone’s been raving about.

I’ll confess I knew absolutely nothing about it save for the fact that it was the first Wii game in a very long time that people had been excited about, and that it was a JRPG fashioned somewhat after the Final Fantasy XII vein. I enjoyed Final Fantasy XII very much, so more of the same (including low-rez graphics) would be very welcome.

I’ve spent the last couple of hours playing it and dear lord it’s good. Like really, really good. Rather than taking the usual JRPG approach of being completely linear for 40 hours then opening up in the last 10 or so, Xenoblade Chronicles begins as it (presumably) means to go on: by providing you with a ridiculous number of non-linear tasks to go off and complete at your own pace. Story quests and locations are clearly marked, so you know where to go when you’re ready to advance the plot, and any quests which might “expire” as a result of story events are clearly marked, too — a very nice touch.

The combat system is similar to Final Fantasy XII in that it all takes place in the field via an auto-attack system with triggered abilities, here called “arts”. Unlike FFXII, though, they don’t use MP, instead operating on a cooldown system. This means you can use them a lot more, rather than the habitual RPG problem of “saving” your MP for boss fights. I haven’t got far enough to know if there’s an equivalent to the Gambit system as yet, but I assume there’ll be some way of fiddling about with your other party members. We’ll see.

The most striking thing so far is the astonishingly brilliant music, featuring all but seamless transitions when moving between areas, and subtly different mixes of the same theme for day and night time. While a lot of it is synthesised, the sounds used are considerably better than some of the dodgy sounds used in some of the earlier Final Fantasy games — and indeed, the soundtrack is considerably better than FFXII‘s unmemorable score. It has battle music, too — something which FFXII was (arguably) sorely lacking. I’m a big fan of over the top JRPG battle music and Xenoblade Chronicles delivers in spades, even going a bit crazy with the cock-rock guitar when fighting the game’s equivalent of “elite” monsters.

The dub is pretty good, too — though I’m fairly tolerant of poor voice acting — and all the more striking for being English. Not American; English. These people have English accents and talk like English people. This is a refreshing surprise. Purists would probably sniff at me and say that I should be playing the game with the original Japanese dub, but what can I say? I like English voices. Perhaps if I ever replay the game in the future I’ll play it with Japanese voices.

There’s tons of cool little game mechanics hidden away too, most of which I get the impression are optional. Meeting named characters in regions, for example, adds them to your “affinity chart”, which displays relationships, links and little facts about each character. And there are a lot of characters. Alongside this, an Achievement system pops up little challenges on a regular basis, meaning there’s always something to do or discover.

I’ve established all this in the last 2 hours. I shudder to think 1) how long this game is and 2) what other things it’s going to throw at me along the way. One thing is already clear, though; this is an excellent game and one that I’m going to very much enjoy working my way through. If you’re a North American gamer and considering importing a copy to play on a modified Wii, don’t hesitate; do it. It builds on the things Final Fantasy XII learned to produce a game which, even at this early stage in the story, looks like being something very special indeed. And if you’re planning on giving the game a miss because “ugh, 480p”, then know that you’ll be missing out. So there.