2391: You Can Go to That Mountain

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My lukewarm feelings towards The Witcher 3’s open-world nature got me thinking a bit today as I progress through the Blood and Wine expansion pack, which, unlike Hearts of Stone, suffers from some of the same issues I had with the main game: most notably the numerous distractions that the game world offered having a detrimental effect on the overall pacing of the main story.

I got thinking: is this a fundamental problem I have with open-world games in general, or is it something that seems particularly glaring with The Witcher 3? After a little reflection, I have to conclude that, for me anyway, it’s the latter.

I thought back to my time with Xenoblade Chronicles X on Wii U and how much I enjoyed exploring the vast open world that game offered — and why I think much more fondly of that game’s open world than I do of The Witcher 3’s.

I think it’s to do with the emphasis the game places on its different elements. In Xenoblade Chronicles X, while the main story was interesting enough, it was, oddly enough, mostly a minor distraction from the real meat of the game: exploring the planet Mira fully. The game got a fair amount of criticism for this on its original release, but I found that it worked really well. Xenoblade Chronicles X’s emphasis was not on telling that single main storyline; its emphasis was firmly on making you believe that you were exploring an alien world, acting as part of a brave team of humans who were slowly finding out more about where they had ended up, and putting out the numerous fires that result when people of various backgrounds and cultures are all thrown into a rather desperate situation together with one another.

Xenoblade Chronicles X’s story, in other words, was nothing to do with those cutscenes and boss fights and whatnot; its story was your story of how you came to Mira, worked your way up through the ranks, got yourself a Skell and proceeded to become one of the leading authorities on the flora and fauna this strange and diverse planet had to offer. Along the way, you’d help out with various things that happened, and all the things you did had an impact on the world. Help someone with the preparations for building a water treatment plant, for example, and the next time you pass a big lake, said plant will be there.

The Witcher 3, meanwhile, is the opposite type of RPG to Xenoblade Chronicles X, which I’d either describe as being mechanics-centric or featuring a quasi-emergent narrative. The Witcher 3, by contrast, has a specific story to tell. Sure, there are a number of branching points and different endings you can get based on the choices you make along the way, but the main story beats between the beginning and the end are largely similar for the most part.

When you place this much emphasis on an ongoing story, it absolutely kills the pacing if the narrative suddenly comes to a grinding halt while the protagonist goes off and does something completely unrelated to the main plot. This was made all the more apparent to me with Hearts of Stone, which chose to focus pretty much entirely on its central plot with minimal distractions along the way, and was all the better for it. I’ve also been enjoying Blood and Wine a lot more by following its main plotline and minimising the number of times I get distracted by side content. I can always come back and do that side content later, anyway; after you finish the main story of The Witcher 3 and its expansions, it basically turns into the Xenoblade Chronicles X style of RPG: no clear “main” narrative to follow, just the things you choose to engage in, whatever they might be.

I also found myself thinking why this bugged me so much with The Witcher 3 when I’ll happily spend hundreds of hours grinding in a JRPG more conventional than Xenoblade Chronicles X, often putting the plot on hold in the process. And I think it’s largely because, despite their reputations for strong, linear narratives, many modern JRPGs are very much mechanics-centric rather than narrative-centric. In many cases, the most time I’ve spent with a JRPG comes after the end credits roll, when progressing through the story no longer matters and it becomes purely about the mechanics — Compile Heart games are always particularly good for this.

I don’t know. I don’t want to sound like I don’t like The Witcher 3, because I absolutely, definitely do. I think it’s more that The Witcher 3 received such gushing, unequivocal praise from press and public alike around its launch that I, coming to it rather late and thus free of most of the hype, am seeing the warts where a lot of people didn’t — or chose to look past them.

Or perhaps I’m just a grumpy old man who doesn’t like open-world games. Who knows? Either way, I’m going to see Blood and Wine through to the end, because I absolutely want to know what happens. I do not, however, feel the same draw with The Witcher 3 to see everything and do everything that I do with something like a Compile Heart RPG — and consequently will probably put it down for good once those end credits roll — and I think I’m fine with that.

2176: Life on Mira

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I finished the main story of Xenoblade Chronicles X today, but my time with the game is far from over, since there’s still a whole lot to do once you clear the story.

I wanted to reflect a little on my experience with the game so far — 100 hours’ worth — and reiterate that I think it was absolutely the best game released last year that I had the good fortune to play. There may be some spoilers ahead, but I’ll try and keep them to a minimum.

The most common criticism I’ve read of Xenoblade Chronicles X is that its story is “weak” or “not as good as Xenoblade Chronicles“. While I don’t disagree that its manner of storytelling is an acquired taste, I don’t agree at all that its story is weak or of poor quality — nor do I agree with the assertion that the characters aren’t particularly well-defined.

Let’s take the first point first. I’ve already commented on this in depth in this post, but it bears mentioning again: Xenoblade Chronicles X’s storytelling is about more than the main scenario quests and the cutscenes. It’s an immersive storytelling experience in which you are part of the world of Mira, and things unfold around you, both with and without your intervention. The world changes and evolves as you complete missions and develop your relationships with characters, though the impact of your actions may not necessarily be immediately apparent. As you spend time in New Los Angeles and interact with its populace — initially all human, but later integrating several different xenoform cultures — you start to get a very strong sense of time and place from the people of Mira. It’s ultimately one of the most well-realised worlds I’ve come across since the Final Fantasy MMOs — and, from me, that’s high praise indeed, since these have previously been some of my favourite game worlds to hang out in.

Xenoblade Chronicles X’s main story is a relatively straightforward affair, though its final act gets into some intriguing philosophical territory. But in many respects, the main story is the least important part of the overall narrative experience: the “true” Xenoblade Chronicles X, if you like, is in going about your day-to-day life as a BLADE, completing missions, interacting with others and developing your understanding of the world as a whole. Sidequests happen in the strangest of places at times, and you’ll encounter a huge cast of weird and wonderful characters, many of whom have “affinity” links with one another just waiting to be discovered. Each of these sidequests is crafted with care, attention and meaning, and many of them tell their own compelling little “short stories” in their own right; others still form part of a larger ongoing narrative proceeding in the background alongside the main scenario. As a complete package, it’s hard to think of an RPG with quite such a comprehensive narrative that you can explore in as much depth as you like.

Now, on to the second point: that of the characters. It’s true that the main scenario largely focuses on the characters of Elma, Lin and Tatsu, with even your avatar not getting a lot in the way of development — though it’s worth noting that in stark contrast to many JRPGs, you can play your character’s personality in a lot of different ways, and there are often consequences for the choices you make — but to say that the other characters don’t get explored is nonsense. For one, all the playable characters have their own chain of affinity missions and heart-to-heart events to explore as you develop your relationships with them, and some of these are even prerequisites for proceeding through the story. Plus, all of them have their own unique things to say during and after battle, with certain character pairings even having unique conversations with one another. Pleasingly, this even includes your avatar (who has a voice in combat despite being a silent protagonist for most of the game) — many of the things he/she says are responded to by other party members, which makes you feel like a more important part of the team than you might do otherwise.

Again, you’re free to explore this side of the narrative in as much or as little depth as you please, since most of the affinity missions are optional affairs. The content is there, though — like most things in Xenoblade Chronicles X, though, it simply isn’t handed to you on a plate. I like that, though; it gives a feeling of achievement when you discover something.

Final-ish thoughts for now, then? Xenoblade Chronicles X is a masterpiece of sci-fi, and the sci-fi game I’ve wanted to play since I was very young. It’s not perfect by any means — the Wii U hardware arguably holds it back a little at times, though not as much as the original Wii held back titles like the original Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story — but it really is an astoundingly good game, and a truly impressive achievement. It deserves to be celebrated a whole lot more than I’ve seen, and I shall continue to bang my drum about it for as long as anyone will listen.

2168: Xenoblade Chronicles X: My Game of the Year

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It being the 28th of December, I feel fairly confident in declaring my own personal Game of the Year, and it will probably not surprise any of you to hear that it is Monolithsoft’s spectacular Wii U role-playing game Xenoblade Chronicles X. In this post, I will attempt to explain exactly why this game has impressed me so much — and why I’m disappointed (though, I must admit, unsurprised) that the popular games press has given so little attention and/or Game of the Year consideration to it.

The first thing to note about Xenoblade Chronicles X is that it is not Wii classic Xenoblade Chronicles. Aside from a number of similarities in the combat system — including a bunch of abilities that have been brought over wholesale from the original game — Xenoblade Chronicles X is a completely different affair to its predecessor. Where Xenoblade Chronicles’ focus was on its strong, linear narrative punctuated by sidequests, Xenoblade Chronicles X’s main scenario is, in many ways, the least important part of the whole package, with the incredible sense of worldbuilding produced by the numerous sidequests and optional events instead being the main point of proceedings.

Let’s go back a step, though, for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with Xenoblade Chronicles X in general, and consider it on its own terms rather than getting too hung up on comparing it to its predecessor — which, as we’ve established, is a different (and not necessarily superior or inferior) experience.

Xenoblade Chronicles X’s setup is classic sci-fi. Earth gets caught in the crossfire between some powerful alien races, and looks set for certain destruction. Numerous people manage to escape on colony ships, which take to the stars in search of a new home. Our story concerns the White Whale, a ship which crash-landed on a planet called Mira when one of the alien forces responsible for Earth’s destruction caught up with it and destroyed it.

The White Whale broke up on its destruction, but its habitation section remained intact, and humanity quickly set about converting this part of the ship into Mira’s first human city. Being modelled on 21st century Los Angeles, the city is dubbed New Los Angeles, and it doesn’t take long for a suitable system of social structure to be put into place and help ensure everyone is doing their bit for humanity’s survival.

Key to these efforts is BLADE, an organisation concerned with Building a Legacy After the Destruction of Earth — do you see what they did there? BLADE is made up of several Divisions, each of which specialises in important tasks for humanity’s continued survival, be it scouting for raw materials, defending the city from dangerous indigenous creatures or maintaining the peace within the city walls.

Your character — for you can create your own avatar in this, rather than playing a pre-scripted character as in the original Xenoblade Chronicles — awakens in a crashed escape pod with the obligatory JRPG amnesia. Discovered by a young woman named Elma, who immediately shows herself to be a capable combatant and responsible individual, you’re brought back to New LA and you join BLADE. From there, you become part of humanity’s efforts to settle on Mira — and to defend your people from the threat of the Ganglion, a collective of aliens who want nothing more than to wipe humanity off the face of the universe for reasons known only to themselves.

As you progress through Xenoblade Chronicles X, more and more interesting things open up to you. The first couple of chapters are story-centric, but allow you to wander off and explore the game’s enormous open world on foot as you see fit if you so desire. Once these are out of the way and your character has joined BLADE, you can start taking on missions, which range from simple MMO-style “collect this” or “kill this” Basic Missions to scene-setting, context-providing Normal Missions and character-centric Affinity Missions.

You’re free to progress through the twelve chapters of the game’s main story at whatever pace you choose, and the narrative is actually designed in such a way that it doesn’t provide a sense of dissonance if you leave the main scenario hanging for a while. Instead, each chapter of the main scenario is effectively a self-contained mini-story in its own right, so there’s no sense of putting Important Shit on hold while you go and pick flowers or hunt dinosaurs or whatever. This means that Xenoblade Chronicles X’s story becomes as much about what happens in between those major story beats as it does during the more dramatic, cutscene-heavy nature of the main scenario.

In fact, in many ways, it’s the side missions of Xenoblade Chronicles X that are the best part of the game, because they render the strange world of Mira and humanity’s attempts to start over in far more detail than a linear story ever would. The side missions introduce numerous alien races, for example, many of whom choose to move in to New LA and coexist with humans after your successful first contact with them. Side missions also affect the world, and many of them are written in chains, where events that transpired earlier have an impact on what happens later, with some even having branching outcomes and questlines according to decisions you made earlier in the game.

Character development and customisation is pretty spectacular, being more akin to what you’d probably expect from a Western RPG than a Japanese affair. Your own character is completely customisable: you can switch between classes (and the associated weapons) at will, and mastering a particular branch of classes masters its weapons, allowing you to use them (and their associated abilities) in whatever combinations you see fit. You can also equip your character in armour that you feel suits your play style well, be this damage-absorbing heavy armour, evasion-heavy light armour or a mixture. Armour and weapons can be customised with augments, and upgraded with minerals mined via probes you place around the open world during your exploration. New armour, weapons and vanity clothing can be crafted. And your actions will cause various arms manufacturers to set up shop in the city, with the quality of their wares improving as you use their equipment and donate resources to their respective causes.

Once you hit the game’s halfway point, a whole other set of systems opens up as you gain access to “Skells”, the giant mechs that have been seen throughout much of the game’s promotional material. Skells are just as customisable as characters, perhaps even more so; they’re equipped with a vast array of weapons, each of which corresponds to a particular ability as well as affecting the Skell’s performance as a whole. You can swap out various pieces of armour and weapons, paint it a lurid shade of pink and name it “Murderbot” if you so desire. And then you can equip the rest of your squad with them once they reach level 30, too, building your party into an unstoppable force of Big Stompy Robots.

Pleasingly, gaining access to Skells doesn’t mean that you never participate in the excellent on-foot combat ever again. Rather, both in-Skell and on-foot fighting each have their own benefits according to what you’re doing. Skells are generally better for fighting larger opponents, while you get more experience for taking down opponents on foot. On-foot combat also features a mechanic called “secondary cooldowns”, where if you let a skill charge twice instead of just once before using it, it will have some form of added effect that could be anything from additional damage to being able to immediately reuse it. Skell combat, meanwhile, allows you to bind enemies so the rest of your team can wail on them uninterrupted, and also has an entertaining mechanic called Cockpit Time, where you get an awesome in-cockpit view of your character pulling levers and flipping switches to unleash the Skell’s weaponry on your opponent. You are invincible while this is going on, too, so you can enjoy it without having to worry.

Later still in the game, you gain the ability for your Skells to fly, which gives the game a whole different feel again. Flight allows you to access numerous locations that you wouldn’t have been able to get to before — plus Mira looks pretty beautiful from the air. It’s also incredibly impressive that Xenoblade Chronicles X’s world is genuinely seamless — you can take off from New LA’s residential district in your Skell, take to the skies and fly all the way north to the fiery region of Cauldros on the other side of the ocean without seeing a single loading screen.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is, for me, my Game of the Year because it makes me happy on so many levels. It’s a beautiful realisation of a classic sci-fi concept that has fascinated me for years. It features some of the best worldbuilding and sense of the setting being a real place that I’ve seen outside an MMO. It has incredible — and unconventional — music. And it tells great stories: the main scenario is interesting, compelling and dramatic, but just as entertaining are the more subtle stories told by the sidequests, the gossip you overhear in the streets and your own personal career as a BLADE.

Xenoblade Chronicles X deserves to be hailed as a classic. It’s the most ambitious, impressive console RPG I’ve seen for years — perhaps ever — and, while it has its flaws and perhaps may not gel with everyone who tries it due to the obtuseness of some of its systems, it succeeds far better in its attempts to provide a convincing simulation of surviving life on a new and hostile planet than any number of procedurally generated Early Access Minecraft knockoffs you’d care to mention.

Buy a Wii U. Buy Xenoblade Chronicles X. This game deserves to be a success, and it deserves to be celebrated much more than it has been to date.

2161: Story is About More Than Cutscenes

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One of the most common complaints I’ve read about Xenoblade Chronicles X recently is that “the story isn’t as good as Xenoblade Chronicles“. And, if you look at it in a somewhat superficial manner, that’s true to an extent; it suffers a little from the open-world RPG’s perennial problem that is putting Important Things on hold while you go and pick flowers or whatever.

You may feel this way until you get your head into the mindset of Xenoblade Chronicles X. It’s not a typical JRPG with a fast-paced, completely linear storyline that you can then break completely when the game opens up towards the end. With a few exceptions — most notably the giant mech “Skells” and, later, the ability to fly in them — much of the game is open to you from the very outset, and the whole game is designed around the concept of “what would happen if you (and the rest of humanity’s survivors) were stranded on an alien planet with no hope of getting away any time soon?”

In that sense, Xenoblade Chronicles X‘s narrative — and the way it is told — starts to make a whole lot more sense. The story isn’t just about the “story quests” and the cutscenes they incorporate; there’s only twelve chapters to the main story, after all. Instead, the complete Xenoblade Chronicles X narrative consists of a blend of all the game’s elements: your freeform career as a BLADE operative and the emergent narrative that comes from your adventures in the field; the simple, short stories that come from the Normal Missions and give context to many of the NPCs in the world — and, in many cases, have significant impacts on the world as a whole; the more in-depth, character-centric stories of the Affinity Missions — which also have cutscenes and are fully voiced, unlike the Normal Missions; the conversations you overhear from NPCs you meet in town and in the field; the implied, non-explicit narrative you can deduce from the scenery of the world; and, finally, the “main” story itself.

I mentioned at the beginning the open world RPG’s curse of the party putting saving the world (or equivalent activities) on hold while they went to pick flowers, but in fact Xenoblade Chronicles X has been designed with that very criticism in mind. It’s strongly implied that a fair amount of time passes between each of the story missions, since there are numerous references to time-consuming things happening “off-screen” throughout. Rather than simply asking you to accept that several days/weeks/months have passed, however, it’s more than likely that, unless you’re taking a “critical path” approach to racing through the storyline as fast as you can, a significant amount of time probably will have passed between each of the story missions. And it’s in those “in between” moments that Xenoblade Chronicles X has some of its most interesting moments.

The aforementioned Normal Missions, for example. While these may appear to have had less attention lavished on them than the cutscene-heavy Affinity and Story Missions, in actual fact they tend to have more noticeable impacts on the world as a whole. As a result of Normal Missions and your choices therein, characters move around and live or die; buildings are built or destroyed; relationships between characters change; and, in the most drastic example of things changing as a result of your actions, new alien races move into the human city of New Los Angeles, meaning that you can then see them wandering around the streets as random crowd NPCs, talking to named members of their species and even accepting missions from them. As you play through the game, your understanding of Mira — and the wider universe outside the planet — begins to grow, as you get a feel for who the Ma-non, Zaruboggan, Prone and numerous others are, and, more importantly, how they feel about both one another and humanity.

The complete picture you build up in your mind as you play is one of the most comprehensively detailed pieces of worldbuilding I’ve seen for a very long time. It brings to mind the whole idea of “extended universes” for things like Star Trek and Star Wars, only in this instance, the “extended” universe is right there in the game for you to discover if you see fit. There’s no obligation to do most of this stuff — though some story missions have prerequisite Affinity or other missions before you can proceed — but doing so makes the game several orders of magnitude more rewarding, as it starts to tell its story in all manner of different ways rather than simply through cutscenes.

As the year draws to a close, there’s no doubt in my mind that Xenoblade Chronicles X is absolutely my “game of the year”. It’s full of all the things that I love, and, while its way of doing things may not to be everyone’s taste — particularly the complexity of its systems and the subtleties in its storytelling — I feel pretty confident in saying that it’s a landmark game that deserves to be counted among the greats of not just the RPG style of game, nor just the sci-fi genre of narrative games, but of gaming as a whole.

2154: Another Xenoblade X Post

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In conversation with a friend the other day, I realised one of the things I really like about Xenoblade Chronicles X: it feels like a new perspective on a genre of game I liked but was never particularly good at: the strategy/management/”god-game” genre, particularly with a sci-fi focus. Stuff like Alien Legacy, Outpost and its ilk.

The “new perspective” I mention refers to the fact that rather than acting as an overseer to your colonisation efforts, taking a somewhat detached view of everything that is going on and rarely, if ever, getting up close and personal with your colonists, Xenoblade Chronicles X sees you right in the middle of things. You’re not running the colony as such, but everything you do has such a significant impact on the game world that you might as well be.

The feeling of “being inside” a strategy game is further compounded by the game’s FrontierNav system, which uses the Wii U’s GamePad to display a hex-based map of the planet Mira, the game’s setting. Through methodical exploration and completion of objectives, you gradually “conquer” Mira hex by hex, setting up an infrastructure in the process. Placing data probes not only allows you to generate passive income of both credits and the raw material Miranium, it also allows you to collect rare resources from specific hexes, store more Miranium, increase the output of connected probes and all manner of other things. There’s actually a rather deep metagame of chaining probes together to maximise your income between all your sites.

And it’s important, too; this isn’t an RPG where you can just grind out money until you can afford the best equipment in the game. Instead, this passive income is one of the only ways for you to be able to afford things, and Miranium is incredibly important for a wide variety of purposes: investing in arms manufacturers to unlock new gear, upgrading existing equipment, crafting new items and donating to various causes in exchange for credits and other rewards.

Early in the game, this metagame doesn’t seem all that important, since you quickly find yourself with far more money than you know what to do with, meaning you can spoil yourself rotten on gear purely for aesthetic value thanks to the game’s “fashion gear” system. Once you gain the ability for you and your party members to use the giant walking mechs called “Skells”, though, your expenses start to mount up. Miranium is used to refuel them, while credits are needed to purchase frames, armour and weapons for them. Multiply these expenses by all the party members you want to equip with Skells (which is probably all of them eventually) and you’ll be spending a lot of money in total — but these investments are ultimately for the good of the colony as a whole.

What’s really interesting about Xenoblade Chronicles X compared to many other open-world games — and particularly MMOs, which it’s most commonly compared to — is the fact that, as mentioned earlier, your actions have a clear and tangible effect on the game world as a whole over the course of the whole story. For example, one chain of sidequests sees you helping to gather resources to build a water purification plant out in the wilds of Primordia; later, you’re sent there to investigate an incident out there, and it’s actually there on the lake where there was once just a rocky beach. Characters that were once standing around in town are now there, and it has its own little plotline to follow.

You’re not alone on Mira, either; the main scenario introduces you to a few members of other alien races on the planet — both indigenous and extraterrestrial — but there are plenty more sidequests that bring you into contact with all manner of other weird and wonderful peoples, and completing their requests causes them to immigrate to your colony. Once they’re there, they set up shop in a particular area and you’ll see them wandering the streets. Many of them provide beneficial services to the colony as a whole, and so your experience grows.

It’s a really satisfying, organic sense of progression through more than just bars getting longer and numbers getting bigger. There’s a wonderful sense of New Los Angeles becoming a real, living place, with people going about their business and clashing cultures learning to understand one another. It is, by far, the heart and soul of Xenoblade Chronicles X, which doubtless won’t be entirely to everyone’s taste — particularly those who prefer more structured linearity in their RPGs — but, for me, it’s basically created the sci-fi game I always wanted to play: a game where I not only get to build a colony on a new world, but where I get to actually run around inside that colony, meet people, help them, go out into the world and make an impact on said new world as I help humanity spread its wings in its new home.

Did I mention Xenoblade Chronicles X is an amazing game? No? Go buy it now. I want more of this sort of thing, please.

2152: Skelleton Crew

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I’ve finally reached a point in Xenoblade Chronicles X where I can start using “Skells”, the game’s giant robot mech thingies that bring to mind Xeno series progenitor Xenogears. I’m not sure I’ve mastered them at all yet, but they certainly add some interesting things to the mix — and, like most things in Xenoblade Chronicles X, you’re left to experiment a bit rather than having every piece of information you need spoon-fed to you.

A Skell is separate from your character; it’s effectively a new party member that replaces one of the on-foot characters. To acquire one, you need to complete the main scenario up and including Chapter 6, then complete the Skell License quest in the BLADE Barracks, which tasks you with completing an appropriate objective for each of the Divisions. Once you’ve done this, you’ll be generously provided with your first Skell for free, which allows you to get a feel for things somewhat. You and your party members will have to reach level 30 before you’re able to make use of any more Skells, though — but when all characters are at the appropriate level you can have an entire party of Skells when necessary.

That “when necessary” part is important; while it can be most enjoyable to go stomping all over everything and overkilling them with a giant robot, Xenoblade Chronicles X‘s enemies and level scaling take size as well as level into account. In other words, let’s say you’re level 25: on foot, you can happily take down things around your own level — perhaps even slightly above — of a similar size to you. Tackle anything bigger, though, like the giant insects that you’ll see in Primordia, and you’ll almost certainly get flattened.

This is where Skells come in. Adding just one Skell to a party tips the balance in your favour, because a Skell is stronger than a person, and its simple presence increases the passive defense value of everyone on foot in the party. Adding more than one Skell to your party increases your overall total power level considerably. To give an idea of the difference it makes, earlier tonight I was reasonably comfortably taking on large enemies over 10 levels higher than me using two Skells: a Heavy-type one on my character, and the default (actually not very good) freebie you get on Elma. The two on-foot party members were usually KO’d by the time the fight was over, but since even KO’d members get experience for kills in Xenoblade Chronicles X — assuming the whole party doesn’t wipe — this wasn’t really a problem.

So Skells allow you to take on enemies that are both higher level and larger than you. They don’t make you invincible, though; you have to be a bit careful. Running out of HP in your Skell doesn’t kill you, but it does destroy the Skell, forcing you to continue the fight on foot. What happens then depends on if you pass the “Soul Challenge” reaction test as you eject from the Skell: get a Perfect rating and you’re fine, though you’ll still have to go back to base to pick up your repaired Skell; get a Good rating and, again, you’ll be fine, but you’ll lose one insurance “point” from your Skell when you retrieve it — once these are all gone, you either need Salvage Tickets or deep pockets to recover your wreck; miss the Soul Challenge completely and you’ll eject from your Skell with 1HP, which is seriously dangerous.

Skells have a few interesting mechanics in battle. Firstly, they can Bind enemies that are Staggered. Stagger is a status effect that is usually a cue to use an Art that has the Topple effect, knocking the enemy to the floor and giving you a few seconds of uninterrupted pummelling as they try to get back to their feet. Bind, meanwhile, temporarily puts the Skell out of action while it holds the enemy in place, but the enemy is completely disabled for longer than your typical Topple effect. Successfully Binding an enemy also restores some of your Skell’s fuel, which is necessary to use it in battle (and, later, fly).

The second interesting Skell mechanic is called “Cockpit Time”, and it’s awesome. Randomly throughout the battle, the camera will zoom inside your Skell’s cockpit to show your character sitting in the seat, working the controls and generally wrecking the enemy’s shit. When this happens, you are temporarily invincible and all your skill cooldowns reset, meaning you can immediately use them all again without having to wait. It happens at random, but it can make a huge difference, particularly in longer fights.

The third Skell mechanic worth playing with is Overdrive. On-foot characters can use Overdrive when they build up 3,000 TP and can then get various bonuses by stringing longer and longer combos together. Skells, meanwhile, build up GP rather than TP by fighting — and much quicker than on-foot characters — and, again, can trigger Overdrive when this reaches 3,000. Skell Overdrive doesn’t have a combo counter; instead, it just has a timer that randomly extends when it expires, possibly according to how much punishment you’ve been dishing out in the meantime. Combine Overdrive with Cockpit Time and you become an absolutely unstoppable killing machine for a few seconds. The feeling of power is simply marvellous.

I haven’t yet looked into optimising my Skells; the interesting thing about them is that the various weapons you equip to their hardpoints correspond to Arts you can use in battle, so optimising presumably means finding a good balance of stats, damage types, special effects, augments and Arts types. By tweaking your loadout, you can also effectively change the “role” of your Skell in a party situation; loading up on weapons with a Taunt ability turns you into an effective tank, for example, while other weapons come with Arts that can apply debuffs, affect enemy and party stats or boost damage from particular aspects of the enemy. It’s all very deep and customisable.

I’m yet to find quite the right balance between being on foot and being in my Skell — I’m sure there’s some sort of benefit to fighting on foot, perhaps against smaller enemies — but it’s been really interesting to explore so far. At 50 hours into this incredible game, I feel like I’m still learning things. And that’s pretty awesome.

2149: Helping your Squad in Xenoblade X

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Been dabbling with and investigating Xenoblade Chronicles X’s online functionality today, so I thought I’d share some findings, because the game itself doesn’t make things entirely clear if you don’t know where to look for information. Said online functionality is possibly the most interesting use of connectivity in an ostensibly single-player RPG since the Souls series, though, so it’s worth exploring.

Squads

A Squad is a group of up to 32 players who are effectively put together in a “lobby” of sorts. You don’t actually play together for the most part, but the 32 players in a Squad can communicate with each other through the BLADE Report system, and the avatars of Squad members will show up in each other’s games.

Whenever you start a new session of Xenoblade Chronicles X, you have three choices:

Lifehold Squad indicates that you want to focus on single-player activities, so you won’t be bothered too much by the online functionality.
Conquest Squad indicates that you’re open to cooperative online shenanigans.
Friend Squad allows you to join a Squad a friend is a member of.

Note that a Squad isn’t persistent, so you don’t need to take note of the Squad number you join. If you want to play with friends, just use the Friend Squad mode. Otherwise, use the Conquest Squad mode if you want to play with others, and Lifehold Squad if you want to focus on soloing.

Communicating

The BLADE Report system allows you to communicate with others in your Squad. It’s anonymous for the most part, so some players have taken to “signing” their messages. With only 48 characters to play with per message, though, space is at a premium.

Use BLADE reports to offer advice, ask questions or brag. If asking a question, be as specific as you can within the character limit, since it may not be obvious what you’re talking about if you’re vague.

You can also communicate with other players when you’re in a Squad Mission by using the Emotes palette on the GamePad. Some emotes are purely animations, but most of the first page of them have accompanying voice clips.

Scouting

“Scouting” refers to hiring other players’ characters into your party, and making yourself available for hiring in turn.

There are two means of Scouting: via the Scout console in NLA’s Administration District, and by running into an avatar randomly around NLA or in the field. Friends’ avatars seem to show up more frequently around the entrance to BLADE Barracks, assuming you’re in a Squad with them, so if you want to deepen your Affinity with a friend’s character, this is the easiest place to find them.

Scouting through the Scout console will cost you credits according to the level of the character you’re hiring, but you’ll be able to keep them in your party for longer — generally 120-240 minutes. Scouting via running into a character in the field or around NLA is free, but they only stick with you for half an hour.

While partying with Scouted characters, you’ll notice a small white gauge under their portrait. This is their Scout Level, which will increase the more you complete activities with them. Increasing Scout Level nets you various rewards and also allows you to do more things together — just raising it from 1 to 2, for example, allows for use of the Personal Greeting instead of the Public Greeting.

To make yourself available for Scouting — you’ll receive rewards if other players hire you — use the Scout console and the Manage Registered Avatar option. Also check the Settings menu; there’s an option in there to automatically update your Scout avatar when you save your game.

Squad Tasks

Periodically, a Squad Task HUD element will appear in the lower right of your screen. This details several tasks for the Squad as a whole to complete before a timer expires: they will either involve killing enemies (yellow, orange or red icons) or collecting Collectibles (blue icon).

In order to see what each task is, hold R and tap L to cycle through the tasks. Note that you won’t get any help on where to find the targets, so ask your comrades using a BLADE Report if you’re not sure.

Yellow Hunt targets ask you to kill any enemies of a broad group such as Piscinoids, Humanoids or Mechanoids. Orange Hunt targets ask you to kill any enemies of a subgroup, such as Duogills, a subgroup of Piscinoids. Red Hunt targets ask you to kill a specific enemy, usually a Tyrant. Generally speaking, yellow targets will require the Squad to down 20 enemies of the relevant type, orange needs 10 and red needs 5.

Contributing to and clearing Squad tasks will net you Reward Tickets, which can be traded in at the Network Console in your BLADE Barracks. The rewards are mostly crafting materials, but this can be an easy way to acquire quest items or materials you need to develop or upgrade equipment without having to hunt hundreds of monsters or pray for good luck when grabbing Collectibles.

It’s in everyone’s interest to complete the Squad Tasks, so be sure to use BLADE Reports to tell others where targets are and encourage cooperation.

Squad Missions

Squad Missions are cooperative multiplayer missions for between one and four players. A Squad Mission opens up whenever one of the Squad Tasks is cleared — you’ll know this has happened because the greyed-out “SQUAD MISSION” text on the Squad Task HUD will turn blue and start to pulse. The more Squad Tasks the Squad clears, the more Missions will open up — and the better rewards will be on offer.

To start a Squad Mission, go to your BLADE Barracks and use the Network Console, then choose Squad Missions to see what is available. Time Attack missions unlock after Chapter 4 when you fight the first major story boss, and Support Missions unlock after you clear the main story.

A Squad Mission has a minimum level and a sync level. You must meet the minimum level requirement to start the mission, and if you exceed the sync level you will be synced down to it for the duration of the mission.

When starting a Squad Mission you have the option of completing it with your current party (which could consist of NPCs and Scouted player avatars) or to actively recruit. If you choose the latter option, all players in your Squad will receive a notification that you are recruiting for a Squad Mission and have the opportunity to join you if they meet the requirements.

When you start a Squad Mission, you’ll be placed in a new instance of your BLADE Barracks Network Room. When other players show up, they’ll automatically appear in your party. You can start the mission by using the door near the Network Console, or if you’re not the party leader — i.e. you joined another player’s recruitment drive — you can indicate you are ready by attempting to use the door. Players who are ready will have a green checkmark on their portraits in the party list, and the icon over their heads will pulse. If you’re leader, it’s your call as to whether or not you start a mission without a full complement of four people or wait for reinforcements.

Once the mission is underway, you have a limited amount of time to complete the objectives in the lower right of the screen, and a limited number of retries — usually 3. A retry is used up when a player chooses to respawn rather than waiting for a comrade to resurrect them; when the last retry is used, the mission will automatically fail, so if you’re down to the last one, don’t attempt to respawn unless you’re sure everyone else is about to die.

On the subject of resurrecting other players, remember that you need 3,000 TP to get someone up. The quickest way to build up TP is to use your melee weapon, even if you’re a ranged class such as Enforcer, Psycorruptor or Mastermind. Resurrecting another character will usually trigger a Soul Challenge, too, so be ready to hit B at the right time to give them some free healing. If you have any direct healing Arts, too, now would be the time to throw them at the person you just got up.

Divisions

At midnight every real world day, Division Spoils are dished out. Rewards on offer include consumable or saleable items and can be very useful in your adventures. The exact rewards available are determined by the Division rankings for the previous day, and ranking is determined by how many BLADE Points each Division earned collectively. You earn BLADE Points for pretty much any activity you do in the game, but you earn significantly more for the two “specialist” tasks each Division is known for.

BLADE Points are also used to rank up within BLADE, so it’s in your interest to pick a Division that fits with what you enjoy doing most. You can change at any time, though, so don’t sweat the initial decision too much.

Divisions also have support effects. You can take advantage of these by talking to your Squad’s characters in the field or in NLA, or they will activate automatically under certain circumstances — check the icons under the minimap to see which are currently active for you.

Conquest and Nemesis

Completing Squad activities will fill the Conquest gauge, which you’ll see on the Squad selection screen. When this is full, a Global Nemesis will appear as a Squad Mission and be available for a limited time — generally several real world days.

Fighting a Global Nemesis is a case of dealing as much damage to it as possible before your pretty much inevitable defeat. The more HP gauges you deplete, the better your rewards will be when the Nemesis period is over, or in the unlikely event that it is completely defeated.

You can’t just spam the Global Nemesis mission and chip away at its overall total HP, though (known as RP, for some reason) — you need BLADE Medals to jump in to a Nemesis encounter. These are acquired through completing Squad Tasks and Squad Missions, so if you want to take on these powerful enemies, jump into the online stuff and help out other players whenever you can!

2148: Xenoblade X Tips and Tricks

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I’ve been playing Xenoblade Chronicles X for about 25 hours so far, and I’ve picked up a few tips and tricks along the way. I will now share them with you, in case you’re a newcomer to the game somewhat daunted by the sheer scope of what’s on offer.

Your character

Don’t sweat early decisions like which Division to join too much; you can change most things later. About the only thing you can’t change is your character’s basic appearance.
Progression is measured in three main ways:
- Your character level (sometimes referred to as your “inner level”) which increases with experience points gained, and affects your base capabilities.
- Your class rank, which increases with class experience, and which unlocks new Arts and Skills as you rank up. When you reach rank 10, you unlock one or more new classes in that particular tree.
- Your BLADE level, which increases with BLADE points, acquired through pretty much everything you do in the game, and which unlocks new facilities in the Barracks as well as allowing you to level up your Field Skills. The rate at which you acquire BLADE points for various activities is determined by your Division, so pick a Division that encourages you to do the things you enjoy the most for fastest progress.
Speaking of Field Skills, level up Mechanical first, since you’ll always need this to install probes.
You can change class at any time. Note that each class has its own signature pair of weapons, so ensure you have appropriate gear before changing.

Equipment

Determine whether your class’s strengths are in ranged or melee combat — this is partly determined by the weapons you use, and partly by the Arts you have equipped. Focus on acquiring equipment that plays to your strengths; for example, the Enforcer class tree particularly specialises in ranged combat, so pick equipment that emphasises your Ranged Attack and Ranged Accuracy stats.
A higher Attack value on a weapon isn’t necessarily better; check the attribute of the weapon, too. Sometimes a weapon with a non-physical attribute and a lower Attack score can be more effective than a physical weapon with a higher Attack attribute; insectoid enemies, for example, are weak against Thermal damage and strong against standard physical damage.
The colour of a piece of equipment indicates its rarity and quality. White equipment is basic, green is Unique, blue is Rare, yellow is rarer (I’ve forgotten the official term offhand) and orange is Intergalactic.
Augments are important. Two weapons that look the same but have different augments can have a very different impact on your character. Using the ranged Enforcer class as an example again, there’s not a huge amount of point equipping a gun that boosts your Melee Attack stats; better to play to the class’s strengths and try to boost range.
Don’t forget Augments can be upgraded at the AM console in NLA. You’ll need Miranium and crafting materials to do this. By upgrading Augments, you can make a piece of equipment several orders of magnitude better than it was when you first acquired it, but note that there’s a maximum total number of times each weapon can be upgraded.
New equipment will become usable every 5-10 levels or so, but you should also make sure you level up the AMs by using their equipment and donating Miranium to unlock additional options within each “tier” of equipment.

Combat

The most important thing in combat is positioning. Try and put yourself to the side or rear of the enemy whenever possible, as this boosts accuracy and damage. Use the Sprint function liberally in battle to change position quickly, and take note of the position indicator at the bottom right (the thing that says something like “FRONT / MIDDLE”) — this indicates your relative horizontal and vertical positions to the enemy. Ideally, you want to be at “BACK / ABOVE” and least ideal would be “FRONT / BELOW”.
When using Arts, there’s really no reason not to go for positional bonuses when available. Familiarise yourself with your equipped Arts outside of battle and be prepared to shift your position to unleash them from the appropriate location.
For Arts that offer bonuses for things like Aura use, keep an eye on your TP meter, because you may need that TP for something other than an Aura at some point.
Pay attention to Soul Voice; it’s the main way of keeping your party standing. When a character calls out to you, match the colour of their speech bubble to the colour of an Art for a bonus effect and a small heal to both you and the person calling out. (Appropriate arts will also pulse on your action palette to allow you to pick a suitable one to use.)
Set up your own character’s Soul Voice to play to your party’s strengths. If you’re rolling with a group of melee specialists, you’re not going to be much help yelling for them to use ranged Arts. Also take the time to customise the four Custom Voice options to suit your play style; there’s some really nice effects in there, such as temporarily invincibility if you Sprint for three seconds.
Hit every Soul Challenge you can. Not only does this trigger a Soul Voice from your character, it also does a significant heal on the whole party. In longer fights against tougher foes, it is essential you hit these, so practice that timing!
Watch your enemies closely. There are no telegraph markers for most attacks, so you’ll need to learn the visual cues to avoid taking too much damage. A helpful indicator is whether the position indicator is flashing red or not; if it is, you’re in melee range, and will be hit by melee Arts. You’ll hear a buzzer sound when you enter melee range, too, so take a step or two back if you’re wielding your ranged weapon at the time.
Breaking enemy appendages is useful for several reasons. Firstly, the more appendages you break, the more damage the enemy takes. Secondly, certain special attacks are tied to particular appendages. Thirdly, breaking an appendage usually triggers a Soul Voice. Fourthly, breaking specific appendages allows you to acquire specific drops from the enemy related to that appendage.

Exploration

You’re actually fairly mobile even on foot. Sprint when you can, because not only do you move faster, but you also jump significantly higher. This is useful for hopping over obstacles or “mountain goating” up cliff faces.
Install every probe you can. Every successfully installed probe nets you Miranium and credits income, but also acts as a fast travel location.
Probe sites shoot a beam of light into the sky to help you find them. If you know you’re in the right hex but can’t see the beam of light, look up to see if it’s on top of a mountain or cliff, and if you still can’t see it, it’s probably underground in a cave somewhere.nearby.
When you install a probe, the hexes around it on the Segment View map reveal their main feature. To complete a hex’s Sector Recon, you need to complete the objective indicated by the icon. A page icon indicates a mission takes place there (but doesn’t necessarily start there); a sparkle icon indicates a specific treasure to be found; a monster icon indicates the Tyrant in that hex must be defeated.
NPCs with recon info will have a gold smiley face speech bubble icon over their heads. Walk near them to eavesdrop on their conversation and automatically update your map. The hex they referred to will be marked with “New” on the GamePad; tap it once to reveal the details, and it will be marked with a checkmark to show you’ve read the information but not yet acted on it.
The world layout isn’t like an MMO, with “levelled” zones; instead, each hex on the map has an overall danger level in relation to your character’s inner level. Don’t be afraid to go into areas with higher level enemies, because sometimes you need to pass through these to get to where you’re going. Do take care around enemies with red eye or lightning bolt icons, however; steer clear of them to avoid detection.
If you see something that looks interesting, go and check it out. It might be a landmark, scenic viewpoint or unexplored area, and these are all worth experience.
Grab every Collectible you see lying around on your way to a destination. Some are used as quest items; some are crafting materials; some are simply things to put into your Collectopedia. Curators in particular also gain a decent amount of BLADE points per Collectible acquired.

Online

It’s worth playing online if you can, since there are helpful rewards available, including:
- Division Spoils, which unlock at midnight each day according to the total number of BLADE points each division acquired
- Squad Tasks, which are shared objectives (usually killing specific enemies or types of enemy) that reward everyone in a Squad with Reward Tickets for completing them
Reward Tickets can be traded in for a huge variety of material items. If a quest or upgrade is calling for a specific item and you don’t feel like killing hundreds of enemies in the hope of a rare drop, see if you can afford it with your Reward Tickets; just use the terminal in the BLADE Barracks to check.
If you’re stuck on something, try sending a Free Report asking for help; someone might have an idea. Free Reports have a very tight character limit, but be as specific as you can, since it may not be obvious where you are or what you’re talking about.
Don’t forget to register your character as scoutable at the console in the Administration District. You can also hire other players’ characters here, and you can also team up with other players’ characters if you come across them in the field. Note that they’ll only stick with you for half an hour if you do this, whereas hiring them from the console will keep them with you for 2-4 hours depending on their Scout Level. The former is free, however; the latter can get expensive!
To encourage other players to scout your character, be sure to customise your Public and Personal greetings as well as your Fashion Gear. Having a distinctive character means people are more likely to pay attention and hopefully hire you.

Think that’ll do for now. More tips once I get a bit further and unlock Skells!

2146: More Xenoblade

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Pretty much all I’ve done today is finish off a bit of work I had to do and play Xenoblade Chronicles X, so I’m going to talk a bit more about my experiences with the latter.

If yesterday’s entry didn’t already make it clear, I love it. It’s actually not the kind of RPG I traditionally used to love, so this surprises me; it’s open world, it’s non-linear, it’s nowhere near as story-centric as many other RPGs out there… but it’s compelling, addictive and beautiful.

I think one of the things I like most about it is that it feels something like the realisation of a longstanding fantasy. Let me explain.

Way back in secondary school, I was renowned among the teaching staff as someone who put way too much effort into creative writing assignments, usually delivering pages and pages of epic prose where my classmates would put in maybe one or two at most. I can still remember most of these stories I wrote, from early example Timeslip (a riff on Back to the Future, which my friend Daniel was obsessed with, that featured a time-travelling lorry rather than a DeLorean, and what was essentially Rainbow Road from Super Mario Kart to represent the pathways between times) to later pieces such as my A-Level English Language assignment, where I delivered a surprisingly confident but harrowing first-person stream-of-consciousness narrative from the perspective of a girl who was raped.

Anyway. One of the stories I wrote — I forget exactly when, but I do remember writing it — was called Colony. Having somewhat grand plans for what I had written, I had tagged it Chronicles of the Scorpio, Book 1, despite having not even finished the entire story of Colony. That is beside the point; what is important is what Colony was about.

Colony was loosely inspired by a PC CD-ROM game I’d been playing called Alien Legacy. This concerned an interstellar colonisation ship waking up its crew a long way from where they were supposed to be, and the crew and colonists having to make the best of the situation in which they found themselves. Colony featured a similar kind of situation, with the UNS Scorpio finding itself pulled through a wormhole into (if I remember correctly) the Beta Caeli star system, which conveniently had an M-class planet for humanity to plant itself on. The remainder of the story — which I finished — described the colonists’ struggle for survival as they discovered they were not entirely alone on this planet, and so on and so on.

To the point, then: the thing I like about Xenoblade Chronicles X is that it feels like I’m exploring that story: one that’s been stuck in my head since I was a teenager. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game with such a brilliant sense of exploration, discovery and having to fend for yourself on a very alien world, and Xenoblade Chronicles X‘s handcrafted setting puts the randomly-generated locales of Minecraft and its ilk to shame by being absolutely fascinating to explore. The experience of surveying planet Mira is exactly how I pictured the characters in Colony spreading out from their initial base camp to discover exactly where they had landed.

There’s so much to do, with an excellent sense of constant progression. You can follow the story missions — something that I haven’t done much yet so far — or you can make an effort to survey as much of the planet as possible. It’s extremely satisfying to take a look at the Segment Map on the GamePad screen and see a number of little checkmarks indicating that you’ve completed that particular area… but it’s also somewhat daunting to see how many other areas don’t have little checkmarks in them and realise quite how much there is left to do.

I am fine with this, though. The sheer amount of stuff to do in Xenoblade Chronicles X distinguishes it significantly from MMORPGs, which is what it’s getting most frequently compared to: rather than grinding out the same content over and over again in an effort to get an incrementally small reward and creep up in power week by week, you can pretty much always be doing something different and be making progress somehow: you can be levelling up your character, or increasing the rank of your current class, or increasing your rank in the BLADE organisation, or earning money, or gathering resources, or researching weapons for the arms manufacturers, or… you get the idea.

The online seems like fun, too, though I’ve only dipped my toes into it so far. Taking the form of short, instanced missions for up to four players at once, the Squad Missions feature allows you to play with others and cooperate to take down some tough challenges together. The game is set up in such a way that direct communication isn’t necessary, with characters instead using the “Soul Voice” system to automatically shout out things to each other and boosts to your abilities being appropriately applied if you respond correctly to these shouts. It’s also possible to communicate through emotes and, if you so desire, the slightly clunky “Free Report” system, which is not quite real-time text chat, but it’s testament to the game’s solid systems that four strangers can come together and take on some significant challenges without any need for voice or text chat to coordinate things. I wonder if this will still be the case at higher levels? We shall see, but being only level 15 so far, I have a way to go yet!

Anyway. If you’ve been dithering over whether or not Xenoblade Chronicles X is worth a purchase, stop; it absolutely is. (And, to answer a question from the comments yesterday, no you don’t need to play Xenoblade Chronicles first, because they’re two completely independent games.) It’s one of the most ambitious, impressive RPGs — no, games, full stop — that I’ve ever played, and it deserves a big, appreciative audience. I’m telling you now, games industry; if this game gets passed over in Game of the Year talk, we are going to have some serious words…

2145: Xenoblade Chronicles X First Impressions

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So, Xenoblade Chronicles X came out today, and I picked up a copy.

Is it any good? Well, after eight hours of play in one day, I think it’s fairly safe to say that yes… yes it is.

38 words is not quite enough to articulate why this game is worth your time and attention, however; so I shall attempt to elaborate somewhat. I wrote a little the other day about how much I enjoyed the previous Xenoblade Chronicles game on the Wii, and much of that still applies, though as I suspected from what I’d heard prior to release, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a bit of a different beast to its predecessor.

Let’s start from the beginning, then. Xenoblade Chronicles X casts you in the role of a survivor of a spaceship crash on the planet Mira. The game begins with you being rescued from your stasis escape pod and emerging into this strange new world with no recollection of who you are/were. You’re surprised to discover that the remnants of humanity have been somewhat busy in the intervening two months between the ship crashing and your rescue, but you quickly adjust to life in New Los Angeles, a city constructed from the wreckage of your former ship’s habitation module.

In those two months, it seems said remnants of humanity have organised themselves in what appears to be a fairly efficient manner. Of chief importance to the building of humanity’s new life on Mira is the organisation known as BLADE, which stands for Building a Legacy After the Destruction of Earth, but which everyone just calls Blade, because that’s cooler.

BLADE is responsible for most of the day-to-day running of life on Mira for humanity. Its employees go out and explore the world, gather materials, keep the more feisty members of the local fauna in check, deploy probes and set up resource infrastructures. It doesn’t take long for you to be inducted into the ranks of this group, and before long you’re swearing allegiance to one of the “Divisions”, which determines the most efficient means you have of ranking up within the BLADE organisation, though regardless of your allegiance you’re free to pursue any activities you see fit.

Once you step outside New LA onto Mira proper, there’s plenty to do. Like the previous Xenoblade game, the world is strewn with collectables that can be put into the Collectapedia; there are plenty of enemies to fight of all shapes and sizes — with the biggest being some of the biggest… things I’ve seen in any video game ever, including Shadow of the Colossus — and there’s a ton of exploration to be done. By wandering around, you’ll discover landmarks, sightseeing spots, unexplored areas such as caves and ruins, places to install mining equipment and all manner of other things.

When you get into combat, you’re presented with a system somewhat like the previous game’s, but with a number of refinements. Of chief importance is the “Soul Voice” system, whereby party members can chain attacks together by shouting things out during battle based on various trigger conditions. By using the appropriate Arts when your companions yell out the relevant things (which are colour-coded to make things easier for you) you can achieve various helpful bonuses and special effects. Likewise, when you perform a particular ability and then hit the B button at just the right time, you can encourage your allies to trigger a Soul Voice in the same way. Combat feels fluid and interesting, and the fact you can switch between ranged and melee weapons at will means you can tweak your playstyle how you see fit — a fact that is further compounded by the array of different character classes on offer, which you’re free to switch between whenever you like.

There’s also some online functionality that is pretty interesting. After clearing the third chapter of the main story, you sign up for a “Squad”, which is an online group of up to 32 players. Once you’re in a Squad, you receive notifications about their achievements and gain the ability to make “reports” about things that go on around the world, things you’ve done or simply to chat. You can trade things with other players, too, and there are communal Squad objectives to complete collectively as a group.

For those who want to take things a step further, there’s a full multiplayer mode where you can take on Squad Missions together in parties of up to four people. These tend to be short, timed missions where you have to achieve specific objectives such as defeating enemies, but playing alongside other people and chaining your Soul Voice effects into each other has a markedly different feel from playing with the AI characters. It’s also a good opportunity to admire other players’ custom avatars, since the game features a vanity system whereby you can wear one set of gear for its stats, then apply the appearance of a different set for your own custom outfit.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is a game that appears to be incredibly daunting in its scope, with numerous intertwining game systems that, after the initial few story chapters, it leaves for you to explore for yourself rather than guiding you through by the hand. The electronic manual is essential reading, since not everything in the game is explained in tutorials, and there are a few bits and pieces that will doubtless prove bewildering without explanation.

So far I’ve had an absolute blast, though. The environments are spectacular, the creatures are weird, wonderful and gigantic, the combat is fun, the story is enjoyable, the characters are pleasant to hang around with, and the setting is well-crafted with a pleasing sense of coherence to the whole thing.

In short, it’s pretty gobsmacking, not only as a game in its own right, but in how much of an improvement over its predecessor it is, too. And it’s doubly impressive for being quite this spectacular on the Wii U, by far the least powerful of the current generation of consoles. Frankly, if this game doesn’t shift a few Wii U systems, nothing will, because I find it hard to believe anything more impressive will be squeezed out of Nintendo’s hardware.