2143: Anticipating Xenoblade

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I’m picking up a brand new game release on Friday. It’s not often I buy a new game the moment it’s released, but in the case of Xenoblade Chronicles X, I feel almost obliged to, given that it’s not only a game that’s been a long time coming, but also a game that’s likely to be one of the most impressive titles for Nintendo’s underappreciated Wii U console — much like its predecessor was for the original Wii.

I don’t know a lot about Xenoblade Chronicles X as yet save for the fact it’s a bit of a departure from the style of the previous game; I’ve been deliberately avoiding too much coverage of it because it’s one of those titles for which I’m keen to go in almost completely blind, much as I did with Xenoblade Chronicles. I can, however, talk a little bit about my memories of Xenoblade Chronicles, and why they lead me to anticipate Xenoblade Chronicles X quite so much.

I’m not massively familiar with the overall Xeno metaseries. I played Xenogears back when it was originally released on PS1 and enjoyed it a lot, despite its rushed second disc. To date, I know nothing at all about the Xenosaga series, and my next contact with the overall Xeno quasi-franchise was Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii. Again, I came to this knowing almost nothing about it save for the fact it was one of three games for the Wii that a pressure group known as “Operation Rainfall” had been encouraging Nintendo to bring to the West, the others being The Last Story from original Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, and the unconventional, wonderful Pandora’s Tower from Ganbarion.

In other words, I picked up Xenoblade Chronicles based entirely on hearsay — people whose opinion I respected said that it was an important release, and that as someone who enjoyed JRPGs, I would do well to check it out. It was also noteworthy in that it actually made it to Europe before North America, which is not something that tends to happen all that often with localisations, and its dub featured English, rather than American, voiceovers — a fact which gave it a considerable degree of charm as well as inadvertently creating a number of memes that persist to this day, including “I’m Really Feeling It” and “Now it’s Reyn Time”, the former of which was helped enormously by protagonist Shulk’s inclusion in the Wii U version of Super Smash Bros.

Anyway. Booting up Xenoblade Chronicles for the first time, I was confronted by a JRPG experience quite unlike any other JRPG I’d played to date. Well, that’s not quite true; it was a bit like Final Fantasy XII in many ways, but it definitely had its own unique identity that combined influences from traditional, story-heavy Japanese role-playing games; open-world, mechanics-centric Western role-playing games; and the sheer, daunting amount of content found in your typical massively multiplayer online RPG.

Of particular note was its combat system, which is the main aspect that Xenoblade Chronicles X carries across from its predecessor. Allowing you to take direct control of any of your current three party members, gameplay changed significantly according to how you chose to play each character. Each party member had a fairly obvious “role” in the party that they were supposed to play, but there was a decent amount of customisation between learning new Arts and Skills for them, as well as the limited number of Arts the characters could have equipped (and, thus, usable) at any given moment.

Combat was much more than simple hack-and-slash; in fact, simply running up to an enemy and hoping to whittle down its health was an invitation to disaster, even early in the game. Instead, you needed to know your characters’ abilities, including positional bonuses, and make appropriate use of them at the right times. This is where MMO influences showed themselves once again; since you were only controlling a single character, you had to trust that your AI-controlled companions were up to the task of doing their job — which, to their credit, they usually were — while you concentrated on doing yours.

I typically played as Shulk for most of the game; Shulk, in party-based MMO terms, would have been a melee DPS class somewhat akin to a rogue, dragoon or monk in Final Fantasy XIV. In other words, his abilities were largely focused on both dealing damage and inflicting debuffs on enemies, and many of them were conditional on him being in a particular position in relation to the enemy. One of his Arts required him to hit an enemy from behind, for example, while another had bonus effects when used from the side. Mechanics such as this kept combat dynamic and interesting rather than simply having two groups hacking away at each other until one or the other’s HP ran out.

Then there was the world. Oh, goodness, the world. Xenoblade Chronicles was running on one of the weakest consoles of that particular generation, but it managed to be one of the most impressive games there was in terms of scope and visual design. Unfolding on the overgrown, long-dormant bodies of two mysterious giant mech-type things known as the Bionis and the Mechonis, Xenoblade Chronicles’ world combined the realistically natural with the fantastic to create an absolutely beautiful, memorable world with some genuine landmarks that were worth seeking out just to admire the visual majesty of. I still remember vividly the first time I came across Makna Falls and had to stop and just admire this beautifully crafted environment for a few moments; it was somewhere I’d want to actually go in reality, such was its beauty.

To reiterate an earlier point, I know very little about Xenoblade Chronicles X, and that includes details about its world. If it’s half as interesting and thrilling to explore as its predecessor, though, I’m excited to jump in and start running around… and later, to start stomping around it in the big mech-like Skells.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is out on Friday. There are online and multiplayer features in the game, so if you’re planning on playing it and would like to do stuff with me, let me know and we can exchange Wii U friend details.

#oneaday Day 828: It’s Time to Get Over the Graphics Thing

I read this piece on Game Informer tonight. It made me cross. If you can’t be bothered to read it yourself, the gist of the piece is that Xenoblade Chronicles, one of the best games of the generation (in my humble opinion, anyway) “deserved better than what [Nintendo] forced [it] to be.”

To be fair to the author Chris “Warcraft” Kluwe, he does commend the game’s strengths: its excellent world, its inventive, creative ideas; even going so far as to say that the game had the potential to be “this generation’s Final Fantasy VII“. But to say that the Wii “laughs at [developer MonolithSoft’s] dreams… and flushes them down the toilet of GameCube-era hardware Nintendo likes to call cutting edge” is a spectacularly blinkered viewpoint.

The fact is, it’s unlikely that Xenoblade Chronicles (and its spiritual successors The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower) would ever have been released had it not been for the Wii. The Wii’s lower demands in terms of asset production means that a sprawling, ambitious game such as Xenoblade Chronicles can be produced on a fraction of the budget of an HD title. Even then, though, MonolithSoft had to cut corners; the “gasping fish mouths bobbing up and down through beautifully crafted dialogue” that Kluwe refers to are a symptom of this.

The sad fact is that Japanese role-playing games are not the unstoppable juggernaut they once were. Where once they were a system seller, now they are a niche interest at best. The “mainstream” has shifted well and truly to the West; even Square Enix’s venerable Final Fantasy series is seen as little more than a particularly well-polished curio these days. Big-budget role-playing titles for HD consoles such as Lost Odyssey and, to a lesser extent, titles like Nier (aside: which I’m currently playing and is awesome) struggle to find a substantial audience (compared to “triple-A” titles, anyway) and, by extension, the ability to recoup the enormous spend necessary to craft a beautiful world in high definition and 5.1 surround sound. So developers and publishers simply aren’t taking the risk because it’s, well, too risky.

But the Wii gives them a platform to make these titles without having to spend as much money and time on the creation of assets. It’s not a case of Nintendo “shackling an obviously talented team like MonolithSoft to the ball and chain of the Wii because [they] want to sell waggle” (for just one of many things wrong with that statement, Xenoblade Chronicles features no waggle whatsoever). It’s a case of Nintendo giving talented teams the opportunity to do what they do best and then release them to a market of enthusiasts who are still clamouring for these titles. Yes, the Wii has a lot of waggle-based crap. But it also has an impressive library of Great Games That Absolutely Fucking No-One Has Ever Heard Of Ever Because They’re A Bit Weird Or Nichey And Have 480p Visuals.

Just because JRPGs don’t sell well compared to titles like Call of Duty and Mass Effect doesn’t mean that no-one wants to play them any more. In fact, the audience for the genre is probably actually the same size that it’s ever been; the difference is that the Call of Duty players have sprung up around them and outnumber them considerably. Given the simple choice between making something that will make fans happy and something that will make a metric fuck-ton of money, the vast majority of publishers will take the latter option. That’s simply “good business”, and there’s nothing wrong with that at all — developers gotta eat, after all. But to deride Nintendo for providing a platform eminently suited to developers who actively want to create niche titles for console — games which often provoke intense passion among their fans (as you can probably tell from this post) — is simply ridiculous.

It’s an age-old adage in the games industry that graphics do not maketh the game. Never has it been more true than in this strange period where we have two HD consoles and one SD system. Would Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower have been better games had they been released on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3? Absolutely not. (Pandora’s Tower, in fact, would have been considerably inferior due to the fact it actually makes good use of the Wii’s unique control scheme.) They would have been better-presented games, sure, but the core gameplay in all three cases is brilliant — and, to add insult to injury, the graphics for all three aren’t even what you could possibly describe as “bad” — just low-resolution. There’s a difference — sadly, one seemingly lost on many reviewers who describe their visuals as “muddy” or “poor” and, in many cases, knock a point off the final score in punishment. I defy anyone who has stood on the Makna Falls overlook in Xenoblade Chronicles, seen the beautiful afternoon sunlight and shadows in the castle courtyard in The Last Story or stood atop the Observatory gazing towards the Thirteen Towers at sunset in Pandora’s Tower to say that these games have “poor” visuals.

As such, I implore those of you who are gamers to stop caring so much about titles having pin-sharp graphics, fully orchestrated soundtracks and a voice cast of Major Hollywood Talent. Yes, these things make games more impressive and exciting to watch and play, but given the choice between a world made up of nothing but HD first-person shooters starring Morgan Freeman (with the world’s population of racist teenagers on backing vocals via Xbox Live) and a world where I can play 100+ hours of Xenoblade Chronicles in 480p with a selection of unknown (but excellent) British voice actors, I know which I’d rather spend my time in.

That’s just me, though. I illustrate my blog with stickmen, so take my word with a pinch of salt if you wish.

(Edit: Here’s an unedited picture of Pandora’s Tower running in 480p taken with my iPhone camera. Looks pretty lovely to me.)

#oneaday Day 816: Half-Past One, AM

It’s 1:30 in the morning, because I’ve spent the last little while putting together my first article for ages on Bitmob/GamesBeat. It’s about the three “Operation Rainfall” RPGs — Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story and Pandora’s Tower. You can find it here. Please give it some love. I was tempted to recreate the whole thing here and call that today’s post, but I thought I’d at least make an effort to do something different. For some reason. I don’t know why. I’m kind of tapped out on creativity, but I have no doubt that just typing and typing in my usual stream of consciousness manner will cause at least something to flow out.

Whether or not it’ll be interesting does, of course, at the time of writing this sentence, remain to be seen.

This week has been one of those ones that has simultaneously zipped by at a breakneck pace and also appeared to be exhaustingly busy. I don’t think I’ve been doing anything particularly out of the ordinary — though we have been to the gym a few times after a few weeks of poor motivation — but things have felt more chaotic than usual. I’ve been working as usual (this week’s iOS app recommendations: Skylanders Cloud Patrol and Saturday Morning RPG with an honourable mention for Burnout Crash even though I have a suspicion it might be a bit rubbish) and hanging out on Twitter. I also sat in our back garden for the first time ever. I read a bit of a book on my Kindle. It was nice, and I’ve apparently got over my fear of deckchairs.

I also ordered an Android tablet. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a total Apple fanboy (I’m typing this on one of two iMacs that adorn my desk, and my iPhone and iPad are within easy reach) but 1) I’m curious about what Android has to offer and 2) it will be useful for my work. Also, 3) Android tabs — particularly the Motorola Xoom, which is the one I’ve ordered — are great for emulation and retro gaming. A Twitter friend regularly evangelises about how great it is to have a portable device which merrily plays the entire back catalogue from systems such as the SNES, Mega Drive, NES, Master System and numerous other platforms, and I won’t lie, that possibility is immensely appealing. Imagine how cool it would be to roll up to a friend’s house with a single device and be able to play things like Street Fighter II and Mario Kart without having to faff around behind their TV? Awesome. (Hopefully. I’m yet to see it in action. But I’m confident.)

In a few moments I will be going to bed, and then it will be the weekend. Technically it is already the weekend, I suppose, but it’s not really the weekend until you wake up on Saturday morning after sleeping and then eat bacon and sausages and eggs and smother them in brown sauce. (Yes, brown sauce is the correct sauce to put on a full English.)

Oh, I give up. My brain is dry and so I cut my losses and say goodbye. (Hey, that rhymes.) Good night!

#oneaday Day 811: Some Handy Tips for Those of You who Wisely Picked Up Xenoblade Chronicles This Weekend

Bought a copy of Xenoblade Chronicles? Firstly, well done. Secondly, it’s rather good, isn’t it? Thirdly, you’ve probably noticed that it’s a massive, sprawling, deep game with lots of things to think about.

Being a grizzled old veteran who has played the game to death already, I thought I’d share a few tips to help you along the way. I’ll try and remain spoiler-free in the process, and I won’t be giving plot walkthroughs or anything like that — just general tips. Bulleted tips, even. Here we go.

(Note: If you’re not playing Xenoblade Chronicles, this will all mean nothing to you. I’ll be back in the normal world tomorrow.)

Pick a good, complementary party, but don’t be afraid to experiment. You can make most combos work — and in fact to max out Party Affinity you’ll probably have to — but a safe option is to have a tank (Reyn or Riki), damage dealer (Shulk, Dunban or Melia) and healer (Sharla or, to a lesser extent, Melia). Note that you don’t need to have Shulk in the party, but it’s easier to deal with visions if he is.
Don’t forget to level up your Arts. You gain AP with every successful combat and these can be used to power up each character’s Arts — the special abilities that they are able to use in combat. Don’t forget to drop into the menu regularly to spend these AP — which each character has their own individual bank of — on improving their abilities, because the game sure won’t remind you. On that subject…
Pick Arts that complement each other. Depending on your party lineup, ensure that you have Arts picked that work well together. Don’t worry about changing around Shulk’s Arts, since he has a fixed arsenal. But depending on who else is there and what they’re capable of, pick ones that work well together. A good combo is to ensure that between all three members, you have the ability to Break, Topple and Daze an opponent. By doing this to an enemy that isn’t immune, you buy yourself a good few seconds of uninterrupted beatdown time, which is very helpful on baddies with high HP. Note that most — but not all — bosses and Unique Monsters tend to be immune to Break and Topple.
In Chain Attacks, colour is everything. The other thing you should consider when preparing your party’s Arts is to make sure that you have appropriate colours covered to unleash a decent Chain. The colours typically correspond to what the Art does — red ones tend to deal direct damage, pink ones tend to inflict Break, green ones tend to Topple and blue ones tend to be restorative or supportive — so a good thing to do is to ensure your whole party has at least one red Art equipped in order to do a damaging Chain Attack. When you start the Chain, choose a red Art to kick off, then when it switches to the next character, choose one of their red Arts and so on. Bear in mind that according to both random chance and Party Affinity, you may have the opportunity to continue the chain after everyone has had one go, so it’s worth having more than one of the same colour if you can spare the slots.
Skills aren’t as complicated as they look. The tutorial for the Skill system makes it sound bewildering, but think of Skills as passive bonuses and you’ll be fine. Picking a character trait to focus on provides a bonus to a particular stat, then all SP earned (also after combat) will be applied to that particular skill branch. When sufficient SP have been earned, that bonus or passive ability starts to take effect automatically. Note that each character starts with three Skill paths, but has the opportunity to unlock up to two more through quests.
Skill Links let characters use each others’ Skills. This is the complicated bit. You’ve probably seen that killing bosses nets you Affinity Coins. These are used to let characters “borrow” each others’ Skills, thereby enabling them to get passive abilities they wouldn’t normally have access to. For example, if Reyn has learned the skill to equip heavy armour, another character who is normally limited to light armour can Skill Link with Reyn in order to also be able to equip heavy armour. The number of skills characters can borrow from each other is determined by the number of Affinity Coins you have and the Affinity between the characters attempting the Link. Speaking of which…
Build up Party Affinity as much as you can. Your characters fight better alongside each other if they actually like each other. They also say different things in battle or when they jump in to conversations. There are lots of ways to improve this. Firstly, put the characters you’re trying to develop the relationship between in your active party. Make the character you want to see the most gains the leader, since when party members jump into conversations, it improves Affinity with this person. Hit as many Burst Affinity button prompts in battle as you can. Encourage characters who are suffering from low Tension in battle (they’ll have a purple cloud behind their face in the interface — run up to them and press “b” to whisper some sweet nothings at them). Don’t forget to go and do Heart to Hearts when you have sufficient Affinity between two characters — these provide massive Affinity boosts even if you balls them up. And don’t forget that you can gift Collectibles to characters via the Inventory menu — the game forgets to mention how to do this. Select an item, choose a character to gift it to and you’ll see the affinity gain (or loss) it generates. For hints on what might be good items to give different characters, check the Achievements menu or think about the characters’ personalities.
When hunting, use the reload trick. Saving your game then immediately loading it causes the monsters in a zone to refresh, so if you’ve run out of mobs you need to bash over the head for a quest, save and reload to respawn them. If you’re hunting a Unique Monster and there’s no sign of it in the place where it’s supposed to be, do the same thing for a chance of respawning it.
If looking for specific weather, use the clock. Advance time from day to night (or vice versa) until you get the weather conditions you’re after. Note that “thunderstorm” is a different weather condition to “raining”.
Talk to everyone with a name. Speaking to a named NPC adds them to your Affinity Chart and sometimes improves your Area Affinity. When your Area Affinity levels up (it doesn’t tell you when this happens, so check the Affinity Chart regularly), new quests become available, and named NPCs also get new items to trade with you. It’s possible for every single person on the entire Affinity Chart to be joined to at least one other person by the end of the game, so consider that a challenge if you’re a completionist.
Collect collect collect! Collect every sparkly blue blob you see. Not only will it help you fill the Collectopaedia, there’s usually a questgiver somewhere nearby who will pay you good money for them. Or you can always gift them to characters.
Trading is usually a quicker way to fill the Collectopaedia. If you’re struggling to find a specific collectible item in the field — and some are considerably rarer than others — then try trading with named NPCs instead of talking to them. When trading, offer them goodies that are considerably higher in value than the thing you’re looking to grab — double is usually a safe bet — and they’ll often throw in an extra free gift, too. Note that NPCs’ inventories expand as Area Affinity improves. Their tradable items always come from the zone in which they are found.
Don’t forget about Gems! Equipping gems in slotted items can make the difference between triumphant victory and crushing defeat. Note that bonuses to stats have a cap — if the bonus turns green in the menu, equipping further gems won’t have any effect. Pick gems that help strengthen a character’s particular specialisms rather than compensate for weaknesses — e.g. apply Muscle Up gems to Reyn to increase his physical defense to make him a better tank, add Strength Up gems to Shulk to make him deal more damage. Remember that Unique items (the ones with “U” on their icon instead of “S”) have preset gems that cannot be removed.
Explore everywhere. Discovering new Locations, Landmarks and Secret Areas is a good non-combat way to gain experience points, plus it has the positive side-effect of filling in your map and providing you with places to fast-travel to. You might also be surprised where questgivers are hiding.
Do every quest you can. It may be time-consuming, but questing builds up Area Affinity and provides you with some good rewards that often negate the need to go equipment shopping. The stock “Monster”, “Collection”, “Search”, “Material” and “Challenge” quests you get in every zone also provide a good way to get to know an area. Be sure to talk to the questgiver for these questlines several times as you can normally pick them all up at once — and you don’t have to return to them to complete them. Never sell quest items — they’ll be marked in the menu — or items you’ve seen in visions. You can get them back, but it’ll be a waste of time, particularly if they end up being rare items. For quests with multiple outcomes, there are no “bad” consequences, just differing rewards.
Backtrack! When the story advances, that’s usually a good cue to wander around the areas you’ve already visited and see if any new quests have popped up — some appear based on story progress rather than Area Affinity. Fortunately, the skip travel feature makes this a painless process. If you’re not sure who to talk to, try looking for people on the Affinity Chart who don’t have any links yet. There are some quests you can miss — these are marked with a stopwatch in the quest log. There’s generally a pretty obvious mini “point of no return” before these expire, however, so be sure you’ve cleaned up your quest log before you answer “yes” to any important-sounding questions.
Don’t rush. Xenoblade Chronicles is a big-ass game and there’s a lot to see and do. Playing as a moderate completionist, it took me 101 hours to beat on my first playthrough, and I could have easily spent a lot longer. While it may be tempting to rush forward into the next plot beat, bear in mind that the quests, exploration and incidental combat is all there to provide a painless means to ensure you’re strong enough to tackle the challenges the story quests provide you with. You’ll be around the level 80 mark by the time you’re on the home straight if you’re doing it right — you’ll hit a wall and be forced to grind (or backtrack and do all the stuff you missed!) for a little while if you haven’t. That said…
Don’t feel you have to get everything. Beat the game and you can do a New Game+ with all your levels, equipment and Party Affinity intact, but quests, Area Affinity and everything else reset to normal. Now you can rampage through the world with impunity and concentrate on picking up as many quests and entries on the Affinity Chart as you can rather than running away from red monsters.

Above all, enjoy. This is one of the best RPGs of all time, and it’s wonderful to see so many people on my Twitter feed are playing and loving this at the moment. Stick it out to the end — it’s a long road, but it’s very much worth it.

#oneaday Day 808: Xenoblade Chronicles is Out Tomorrow, and Here’s Why You Should Play It

As a European, I was lucky enough to be able to play the Nintendo-published, MonolithSoft-developed Wii role-playing game Xenoblade Chronicles last year. It ended up being my favourite game of 2011, and many North American gamer friends were suitably jealous that I had been able to play it through while they hadn’t. I didn’t feel too guilty, though, because North America has its own branch of Atlus and doesn’t have to depend on other publishers to bring titles like the Persona series over.

But I digress. Xenoblade Chronicles is out tomorrow — April 6 — in North America, and here is why you should play it if you’re an American. Or even if you’re not.

The Japanese role-playing game genre is often accused of stagnation and a lack of innovation. This is, in fact, not particularly true — even the much-maligned Final Fantasy XIII was trying things which other role-playing titles hadn’t attempted before. Okay, they weren’t always successful, but it was at least attempting to innovate.

The real issue is actually that for whatever reason, Japanese role-playing games (and, to a certain extent, Japanese-developed games in general) have lost the resonance they once had with the core gamer audience in the West. Players are quick to judge them as clichéd and derivative before moving on to whichever game starring men in armour with guns is the flavour of the week. Specific attempts by Japanese developers to create games that appeal to Westerners end up having limited niche appeal despite their quality (see: Platinum Games’ Vanquish, which isn’t an RPG but demonstrates the point effectively) or end up being laughable attempts to pander to the Japanese image of what a Westerner supposedly wants (see: The Last Remnant).

Xenoblade Chronicles is a remarkable game because it nails that balance between Western and Japanese sensibilities, making a game that combines the positive aspects of WRPGs (freedom, exploration, a degree of sort-of-non-linearity) with those of JRPGs (stronger storytelling, more memorable, well-defined cast members, a firm sense of being unafraid to continually up the ante). The result is quite brilliant, and a significant step forward for the genre in one possible direction it way wish to take in the future.

The game casts players in the role of Shulk. Initially, he seems like every other teenaged JRPG hero, but a number of aspects make him stand out. He doesn’t whine. He’s not moody or angsty. He’s just a guy, but he has a personality. He has friends, too, who form your early party in the game, and these, too, don’t fall into the trap of clichéd character archetypes. This pattern continues throughout the course of the whole game. Even the “small furry thing” character introduced later in the story isn’t typically irritating — he’s quirky and silly, sure, but his character is defined well, and he proves to be more than just a means through which to provide silly slapstick gags.

The diverse, likeable cast you find yourself travelling with over the course of Xenoblade Chronicles’ lengthy adventure provides several highlights to the game experience. Firstly, and most simply, they’re a good ensemble cast who help drive the story forward. That’s not their only function, however. As you might expect from an RPG, they each have their own role to play (natch) in combat, and finding the best combinations of three characters to take into battle is a key part of the experience. This affects not only your battle effectiveness, but also one of many stats that the game tracks in the background — Affinity.

Affinity is, quite simply, how much characters like each other. Characters with high Affinity with one another fight better alongside each other, but as their relationship develops, they also have the opportunity to participate in numerous “Heart to Heart” events that are scattered around Xenoblade Chronicles‘ vast world. These short sequences provide the opportunity for two party members — not necessarily including protagonist Shulk — to spend a little alone time with one another and get to know each other a little better. These typically involve multiple-choice conversations, providing the “correct” answers to which will give a big boost to the pair’s Affinity with one another. (Giving “incorrect” answers often provides very amusing exchanges and still gives a smaller Affinity boost, however, so you shouldn’t feel like you have to reach for the walkthroughs immediately.)

Affinity doesn’t just affect combat and unlock Heart to Hearts, however; there’s a host of little touches in the game that it affects, most notably during and after combat. Rather than simply yelling individual stock “battle victory” phrases, characters will often have short conversations with one another. This banter between characters is a real highlight of the experience, and while you will have heard everything they have to say a good few times by the end of the game, they remain entertaining and endearing.

Speaking of combat, Xenoblade Chronicles’ battle system is a refreshing change from the turn-based systems that Japanese role-playing titles usually adopt. You control a single character out of the three in your active party, and are able to freely move around during combat. You and your party lock on to a single enemy at a time and automatically attack it, though many battles involve multiple assailants. In order to gain the upper hand in battle, it becomes necessary to make use of the unique skills the character under your control has.

Most characters have more skills than it’s possible to hold in the “quickbar” at the bottom of the screen, so it becomes possible to customize the way they play to your own personal style. Some skills manage aggro, some attack areas, some provide more damage or inflict status effects when unleashed from beside or behind an enemy. Some skills are dependent on other characters doing things like knocking the enemy down or stunning them, and the AI which controls the other two party members does an absolutely astounding job of keeping up with what you’re doing and understanding the strategy you’re going for. It’s very rare that you will be cursing the game for causing you to fail — more often than not it’s a result of you either adopting a poor strategy, or simply needing to go and do something else for a while until you’re a little stronger. This doesn’t mean you have to resort to grinding, either — inevitably there will be some quests you have missed that you can go back and do, and returning to earlier-visited locations often throws up even more things to do.

Another great thing about the combat is that you can elect to control any of the game’s cast in battle, not just Shulk. Each character plays in a significantly different manner to all of the others, so if you find yourself getting bored of the same old skills over and over, simply switch to another character for a brand new experience. Fed up of tanking? Spend some time with Sharla, a ranged character with healing abilities. Or Melia, a magic-user who can summon elementals that either provide ongoing buffs or can be “unleashed” to deal direct damage. Or the aforementioned small furry creature, whose skill names are genuinely hilarious.

Perhaps the strangest but coolest innovation in the combat, however, is the fact that you’re occasionally presented with “visions” of the immediate future, usually when a character is either about to die or be afflicted with a debilitating status effect. A countdown timer starts, and you’re given the opportunity to either do something to take attention off the enemy’s target or warn another party member. If you do the latter, you’re able to pick one of the warned character’s skills to unleash — usually either a healing or aggro-management skill — and hope for the best. If you do the former, you have until the countdown timer depletes to do something very special, or your party member will suffer their grisly fate. It’s a neat system that isn’t overused.

Outside of combat, there’s plenty to do, too. Exploring each of the game’s massive zones rewards you with experience points and uncovers part of the map as you discover each sub-area. There are collectible items scattered around each area at random, with rewards on offer for collecting whole sets. Those who find item-hunting frustrating, however, may instead complete these quests by trading with other non-player characters. There are rare monsters to take down, loot to find, secret locations to discover. Xenoblade Chronicles‘ world is more than just a pretty backdrop for combat — it’s a rich, beautifully-rendered environment in which to spend time, and it looks gorgeous. This may be a Wii title, and it may have been even more lovely to see it in HD, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that the hugely-varied vistas you find yourself running and fighting over throughout the course of the game look simply magnificent. There’s a waterfall you’ll come across partway through the game which is genuinely breathtaking to look at, for example — you’ll know it when you see it.

If the game’s combat, quests and exploration aren’t enough for you, there’s also a deep Achievement system to delve into. Since these Achievements aren’t online-connected, they’re simply there as challenges for you to undertake, and all provide you with experience point rewards. In essence, they’re mini-quests (although some will take you the majority of the game to complete) and rarely feel as “gratuitous” as some examples seen on Xbox Live and PSN. Rather, they provide yet another means of getting an enormous amount of entertainment out of an already vast, sprawling title.

This isn’t even getting started on the deep crafting system, which allows characters to team up to create enhancements for their weapons and armour, with the results of their collaborative efforts dependent on their Affinity and compatibility with one another. Or the fact that the game allows you to change the time and fast-travel at will, eliminating a lot of the inconvenience and backtracking endemic to the genre. Or the colony-building minigame. Or the fact the voice acting is all British rather than American, giving the game a unique aural aesthetic in a genre typically dominated by whiny teenagers and squeaky-voiced females. Or the fact that when you’re all done, you can New Game+ it and do the whole thing again with your levels, Affinity and a suitably broad spread of awesome equipment intact — something I will be doing when North America gets its hands on the game tomorrow.

Xenoblade Chronicles is, in short, a magnificent evolution of the Japanese role-playing game genre. While it’s easy to dismiss it as “an offline MMO” or “a Final Fantasy XII wannabe”, the reality is something quite different. This is truly a game that is greater than the sum of its already-fantastic parts, and one which will have you bellowing “Now it’s Reyn time!” at your friends for months to come.

(Grab yourself a copy soon, though, as this is the kind of game that will get pretty tough to find pretty quick.)

#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 601: Whatcha Been Playin’?

I have been playing precisely two games recently, one of which I only returned to today and the other of which you can likely deduce from recent blog posts.

Yes, Xenoblade Chronicles is still going strong and is still magnificent in its excellence. So solid is the gameplay that very quickly you cease to notice the little presentational defects such as the blurry faces, the Final Fantasy X-style nonexistent lip-syncing in certain scenes (but perfect in others) and, of course, the fact it’s on the Wii.

Final Fantasy XII was often compared by its players to MMOs. Structure-wise, it was quite similar, with large, sprawling, expansive zones making up a large interlinked open world which could be freely explored assuming you didn’t aggro some beast 30 levels higher than you. Combat was quasi-real time, with auto-attacks and triggered abilities. And the Gambit system worked in the same way as being a party leader in an MMO — you were explaining what you wanted your teammates to do and when. The only thing really missing from the MMO structure was a wealth of quests to undertake in place of grinding simply by killing enemies. Sure, there were the Hunts, and those were cool, but ultimately they were all quite similar, albeit with increasingly ridiculous challenge factors as the game progressed.

Xenoblade Chronicles doesn’t deviate too far from this formula, though the changes it makes are quite welcome. The Gambit system has been ditched in favour of some excellent party AI who genuinely seem to know what the right thing to do in a given situation is, so long as you’ve made sure their equipment and skills are levelled appropriately. Unlike FFXII, you can’t switch characters at will during battle to trigger specific abilities, though when protagonist Shulk gets a premonition of a particularly devastating attack, it is possible to warn your teammates, which then allows you to pick one of their abilities to use.

The Tension system is an interesting addition, too. Characters’ morale is tracked during combat and reflected in their portraits by their health bars. Should a battle go badly, teammates will get demotivated and start missing or generally being crap. Cheering them on and praising them for cries or dodges helps get their morale back up, and the background music and battle cries all reflect how the fight is going. It’s a nice touch.

Quests are present, too, by the hundreds. Unlike FFXII’s relatively limited number of Hunts available at once, entering a new zone in Xenoblade generally means you’re about to be bombarded with quests. Some are simple and formulaic for each area — kill x beasts, find x collectibles, kill x boss — but then there’s a range of mini-stories to follow too, most of which allow you to build up your Affinity Chart, a worryingly comprehensive “family tree” of every named character in the game and their relationship to one another. I’m yet to see if this information becomes super useful, but even if not it’s neat to see it all mapped out.

So; 34 hours in so far and I now have a nice selection of characters to play with. Between battles you can switch your lineup whenever you like, so you can spend the whole game controlling a character who fits your preferred playstyle if you like, whether that’s tank, healer or damage dealer. Of course, changing things up not only adds variety but also allows you to build up Affinities between different combinations of party members, so you’re indirectly encouraged to do so. And mercifully, inactive characters receive XP at the same rate as active ones so there’s never any need to switch up characters just because someone’s 10 levels behind, unlike FFXII.

But enough enthusing about that. It’s certainly on track to be my Game of the Year so far. Which is nice.

The other game I went back to playing today was Minecraft, thanks to the “leaked” version 1.8 patch. This “Adventure” update gives Minecraft a good kick up the bottom and while it still doesn’t structure the game as such, it gives much more incentive to wander off in hope of discovering cool things. The new landscape generation makes for some spectacularly diverse worlds with deserts, canyons, plains, forests, dungeons, caves and all sorts to discover. I have taken to a strategy I should have used a long time ago — when going off exploring, I build a path as I go, making it significantly easier to find my way back to my buildings and storage when I need to. This hasn’t stopped me being murdered horribly by monsters down one of the horribly inviting deep holes dotted across the landscape which lead to the many random dungeons. But I don’t mind — adventuring is risky business. Sure, you could stay above ground and chop down trees and whatnot, but don’t you really want to see what’s down there…?

While 1.8 clearly still needs work — it’s occasionally buggy and experience points do literally nothing right now — it’s very exciting to see the game getting closer and closer to the state it will be in when it’s eventually declared “finished”. We all know that won’t be the case, though, as the team at Mojang is more than likely to keep adding stuff even after release. And even if they don’t, the mod community is likely to step up and show their stuff, too. It’s going to be a big deal.

Another working week beckons from tomorrow so it’s time to bid you good night.

So… Good night.