Xenoblade Chronicles X

[Fulle]

It's been some year for RPGs, hasn't it?! 2015 has already had really strong titles in Bloodborne, The Witcher 3, and Fallout 4, but another giant has landed on the Wii U last Friday: Xenoblade Chronicles X.

If you are unfamiliar with the first game, Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii, that is understandable. Xenoblade Chronicles is a Monolith Soft developed Wii game that released in 2010 in Japan, but didn't make it to the US until April 2012, with an exclusivity deal with Gamestop. Due to the game releasing so late in the Wii's life, and Gamestop's poor handling of the title, many people in the US didn't get a chance to play the game. Those that had the chance seemed to almost universally adore the game, however, and there are even some that felt that Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii, was the best JRPG of the last gen.

Xenoblade Chronicles X, is the second game in the Xenoblade Chronicles series, but like a Zelda title, is not a continuation of the first game's story, but it does borrow quite a bit from the previous title's battle system.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is a big game! It has a massive open world to explore, and tons of ways to progress your character. There's so much going on, in fact, that the main criticism from Western reviewers is that XCX doesn't hold your hand enough early on, and a player might be a bit intimidated by the scope of the game. I somewhat disagree with this opinion, however, since the game does put quite a bit of effort into showing the player where important things are in the main city in several fully voice acted scenes, strongly hints what you should be doing while exploring (planting probes), AND level gates several systems, like Classes, and Skells (XCX's Mechs), as to try to prevent information overload. Just hang in there and pay attention during the first few hours (trying not to skip cut scenes and such) and you'll probably figure things out just fine. There is also a big digital guide the comes with the game, which you can view on the Wii U, or you can alternatively checkout the PDF file at this link:
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Wii-U/Xenoblade-Chronicles-X-766921.html
- I'm sure a US link is around somewhere, but this was the first place I found the PDF available to download.

I just got about 10 hours into the game so far, and it's been surprisingly addictive. I can't wait to get home and go exploring some more in planet Mira! Anyone else having fun playing Xenoblade Chronicles X?

 

[darkewaffle]

I'm putting it on my Christmas list at least. A friend of mine has picked it up already and has enjoyed it so far, I hear there's a lot to keep track of/learn which I actually think sounds compelling.

 

[Fulle]

I'm putting it on my Christmas list at least. A friend of mine has picked it up already and has enjoyed it so far, I hear there's a lot to keep track of/learn which I actually think sounds compelling.

I think it is compelling... It seems like with recent RPGs there's been a lot of effort to "streamline" things, to such an extent that I feel like I'm playing nothing more than an action game, with the hollow fragments of the RPG system still there, as if the devs just forgot to fully remove them when they were converting their RPG into an action game.

XCX gives me the impression that it was made to be a game for the Japanese "core gamer" who still likes their ability to tinker with their character, and enjoys a battle system that rewards skilled preparation. This game is a glorious hold-out of the casualisation that has infected many other recent RPGs. It's modern, with convenience features like fast travel, but also "old school" in actually having a little bit of dept to it.

 

[crisium]

Xenoblade Chronicles is perhaps my favourite game of the decade so far. But XCX looks a lot less appealing. The characters look unappealing and dull from quick impressions, and reviews tend to agree. I loved the plot in XC, and many reviewers seem to view the plot in XCX as inferior. The fact you have a generic main character is disgusting. The music in XC is absolutely outstanding, and from what I have heard and read XCX is, again, outright inferior.

I loved exploring every nook and cranny of XC. Most of the areas in XCX look larger because they are designed for the Mech you eventually get. Because of this they seem duller. It looks open and desolate in XCX. Some of the landscapes are still beautiful, make no doubt, but where are the little nooks and crannies in XC that made it fun to explore? Finding old ruins of the giants, beautiful views from following a side path. XC seems to have areas tightly designed while still being open. XCX looks dull, massive and almost randomly generated to have nothing of interest.

The combat in XC is fantastic. I didn't play as Shulk the whole time and I loved switching characters who had different types. I watch combat in XCX and it dulls me to sleep even if it partly seems based on the first game. I'd love to be proven wrong in this if someone has a combat video that actually looks interesting.

It just looks bad. I see nothing that I loved from the first game here. It has generic painted all over it with a very thick stroke.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I plan to pick it up at some point, but pretty much like crisium stated, it seems more about exploration than plot and I tend to get bored with sandbox games. Most of the charm of the 'Xeno' universe is the deeper stories, which they admit has been tossed aside here. I wouldn't go so far as to call it generic, but it is definitely been tweaked for the MMO crowd - but kept it a single player game. Not so sure how that will pan out, but we'll see.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Xenoblade Chronicles is perhaps my favourite game of the decade so far. But XCX looks a lot less appealing. The characters look unappealing and dull from quick impressions, and reviews tend to agree. I loved the plot in XC, and many reviewers seem to view the plot in XCX as inferior. The fact you have a generic main character is disgusting. The music in XC is absolutely outstanding, and from what I have heard and read XCX is, again, outright inferior.

I loved exploring every nook and cranny of XC. Most of the areas in XCX look larger because they are designed for the Mech you eventually get. Because of this they seem duller. It looks open and desolate in XCX. Some of the landscapes are still beautiful, make no doubt, but where are the little nooks and crannies in XC that made it fun to explore? Finding old ruins of the giants, beautiful views from following a side path. XC seems to have areas tightly designed while still being open. XCX looks dull, massive and almost randomly generated to have nothing of interest.

The combat in XC is fantastic. I didn't play as Shulk the whole time and I loved switching characters who had different types. I watch combat in XCX and it dulls me to sleep even if it partly seems based on the first game. I'd love to be proven wrong in this if someone has a combat video that actually looks interesting.

It just looks bad. I see nothing that I loved from the first game here. It has generic painted all over it with a very thick stroke.

A friend of mine said the exact same things to me today. Poor characters, worse combat, less exploration and fewer areas, music not as well done. He just isn't happy with it, but given the hype surround Monolith Soft it's not surprising people would be disappointed. I mean look at how some of the Zelda titles are received. Similar thing happening with this game I think. I have to ignore all the metacritic user reviews as they are either giving the game a 10 because it's on the WiiU or continues the Xenoblade story. I don't think very many of them are viewing it objectively but that's expected I guess. It's probably not a terrible game, but it doesn't seem to be the great sequel we were looking for after reading some of the critic reviews. From what I've heard from my friend and what I've read in the reviews it really does seem like a game that is worthy of the 85 average it has on metacritic currently.

 

[Fulle]

I'm fairly early in the game so far, so I haven't had a huge amount of time with the characters or story quite yet, but my initial impression of the early game was that the devs emphasis was on saying "look at the cool world we made for you to explore" and less "this is the beginning of your epic story".

The world itself isn't as hand made as something like The Witcher 3, but it's not as empty as something like Oblivion. Compared to the first Xenoblade Chronicles game, there's much more enemy population density, and there's much more "treasure" to be found, due to the inclusion of what's similar to MMO gathering nodes scattered about. The enemy placements seem deliberate, and made to make you have to think about how to get around some of the world's predators. The terrain is interesting to explore, it has an alien feel to it, and everything you can see is an actual place you can go. You see a mountain in the far distance, you can climb to the top of that thing, it's not a painted backdrop.... and there's no loading screens when you're out there.

The combat has some similarities with the first game, but the new gimmick is with the Soul Voice system. Basically, you can set certain actions you or a party members do to cause "Soul Voice" to trigger, where the character will call out for a teammate chain action, if the chain is successful then the characters involved get a heal. As an example, a party member might say "give me some cover fire!", and I can react by using one of my ranged weapon skills. Before the player character's Soul Voice activates on one of your set triggers, you have to hit a QTE button prompt, and then your teammates act accordingly. It is very cusomizable in what each characters Soul Voice triggers are, making for a battle system that rewards players that put some thought into how their team will work together.

 

[Fulle]

Dropped in another night's worth of gameplay last night. Still liking the game...

This might sound weird, but I was getting a little bit of a Mass Effect vibe. I think a lot of it is the sci fi setting, but part of it was also the affinity quests I was doing last night. Between main story quests, you can chose to take on Affinity Quests that will help develop the stories of your squad members, and make them like you more. Its neat to see that Japanese devs have paid attention to what devs like Bioware have done, and are getting less afraid to borrow ideas.

From a technical standpoint, I appreciate what's going on. The game's a little rough around the edges, due to being on the Wii U's limiting hardware, but Monolith Soft has done a great job, IMHO, within the Wii U's constraints. View distance is excellent, with low amounts of any kind of fog cover up, so you can look out to the terrain in the distance in a way that's not commonly possible in open world games... It's somewhat impressive from area high points. Initial map loads are pretty fast, and there's no loading between areas. Moving from one of the enormous regions into another, there was absolutely no loading. Fast travel only results in a couple second load. Frame rate has been pretty smooth, and I haven't noticed a single technical "bug". On the negative side: sometimes assets near the camera, even a talking character, can be rendered at too-low res in cut scenes resulting in overly obvious jaggies, aliasing is bad on stairways, and the the Wii U can't stream in assets fast enough, resulting in quite a bit of pop in. Nintendo doesn't allow for disk based games to install to a HDD, but Monolith Soft has several download packs available, to help minimize the problems with asset streaming speed.
- Overall, I like the way the game performs quite a bit BETTER than the open world games I've recently played on PS4.

Random thought on Zelda:
Monolith Soft's overall good work here, on the technical stuff, gives me a little re-assurance that the new Zelda game for Wii U. It's been proven that the Wii U can, in fact, support a big open world, despite it's modest hardware, and I heard that a support team from Monolith Soft has been brought in to help with Zelda Wii U. It makes me feel optimistic that the vision already shown off from the next Zelda, probably won't have to be pulled back. It's doable, based on what I've seen with XCX.

 

[dighn]

I plan to pick it up at some point, but pretty much like crisium stated, it seems more about exploration than plot and I tend to get bored with sandbox games. Most of the charm of the 'Xeno' universe is the deeper stories, which they admit has been tossed aside here. I wouldn't go so far as to call it generic, but it is definitely been tweaked for the MMO crowd - but kept it a single player game. Not so sure how that will pan out, but we'll see.

I was really hyped for this game and almost bought a Wii U just for it, because I've always been a big fan of the Xeno series (more Xenogears than anything else really). But like you said with the shift away from a deep and compelling story it's not really a Xeno game to me anymore. I'm sure it's an awesome game in its own way, but it's no longer as compelling to me.

 

[Lil Frier]

I thought about it, but I never played the first (to hell with $50+ to get a Wii copy), and I'd want to play it co-op, but don't any anyone else with a Wii U to play with. The 2015 Wii U lineup has been a disaster, given how bad Mario Party 10 and Mario Tennis got reviewed. Woolly World's the only thing I ended up buying, and Pokken Tournament is the only thing on the horizon that interests me in any way.

 

[Fulle]

I thought about it, but I never played the first (to hell with $50+ to get a Wii copy), and I'd want to play it co-op, but don't any anyone else with a Wii U to play with. The 2015 Wii U lineup has been a disaster, given how bad Mario Party 10 and Mario Tennis got reviewed. Woolly World's the only thing I ended up buying, and Pokken Tournament is the only thing on the horizon that interests me in any way.

Have to agree with you that the Wii U lineup for 2015 was awful in comparison to PS4 and Xbox One, AND it's been handled horribly in marketing. The only game they really promoted successfully was Splatoon.

Mario Maker sold close to 2 million already, but I consider it a failure. The game could have been HUGE on Youtube, but instead of encouraging people to talk about the game, Nintendo sent out take-down notices. All that lost potential! *sigh*

NOA didn't even bother to advertise 'Xenoblade Chronicles X', at all, and caught some negative press in November due to censoring the boob slider. The HORROR you guys! I forgot to mention that in XCX's character creator, there's no BOOB slider! Almost took the game back in a furious RAGE! /sarcasm. It's still pretty stupid though, and lead to people having less positive conversations about the game right before release.

 

[Lil Frier]

Actually, the funny thing about the XCX backlash was that people were outraged they didn't let the 13-year-old female character stay nearly naked. I mean, creeps for days.

But honestly, I don't compare the Wii U to the other consoles. The 2015 release year was just objectively bad, be it put against the other consoles, or even against the Wii U's 2014, which saw Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. release as arguably the top-2 games on the platform so far. It also included Bayonetta 2 and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze.

2015 was just lost potential. MP10 was a pile of crap, and Tennis somehow ended up even worse. Animal Crossing looked to be a ghetto Mario Party rip-off more about selling amiibo than a game (which, honestly, 2015 felt like just an amiibo marketing craze that left the actual gaming side to be mostly crap). Splatoon, for me, was ruined by being not only an online-only experience (really, the offline stuff is pointless, from what I've read), but also not even being a great online experience (since Nintendo can't bother with a real online gaming network). That, and when I played during the free weekend, I just thought it to be a game I didn't like. Mario Maker was ruined by lacking co-op, or even a classic trade-off mode like older Mario platformers had.

And heck, they could have kept Mario Kart 8 going with more DLC like the 2 packs they already released. They keep pushing Smash content, but Kart has been totally neglected the past 6 months. They, of course, delayed Star Fox and Zelda too, but I didn't want them. So, I'll be waiting to see 2016 bring Pokken Tournament, possibly nothing else worth mentioning (for me), and then the NX will seal the coffin in the summer, when it's announced.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Actually, the funny thing about the XCX backlash was that people were outraged they didn't let the 13-year-old female character stay nearly naked. I mean, creeps for days.

To add to that they removed the chest size slider (yes that was really a thing) from the game for the worldwide release. In Japan you can make a character have a larger bust size in the character creator.

 

[Lil Frier]

I mean, I guess I wouldn't care about that. If you want your character to be well-endowed up there, go for it. I don't care what people want, in that respect. But to see people enraged they don't get half-naked kids in a game? That's weird.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I bought a Wii U recently and plan on picking this up as it sounds interesting and should hopefully scratch the exploration itch (didn't get get Fallout 4). Didn't play the previous game so I won't have any expectations with regards to that.

How does the co-op operate? I didn't even know there was co-op, so that definitely could be interesting (since co-op makes every game better in my experience). Unfortunately my one friend that would probably be very into this game doesn't have a Wii U and I highly doubt would get one either, so unless it can do local co-op I probably won't be able to play it that way.

 

[Lil Frier]

The co-op is online, 4-player. Nothing local, I don't think.

 

[sweenish]

It's been good for me so far. One thing a bit annoying is that tyrant quests aren't retro-active. Killed a low level tyrant, ended up back at NLA, picked up the quest, and I have to do it again.

They throw you into the grind pretty quick, as I'm only level 9 and in chapter 3, and I'm getting stopped from progressing by a level 12/13 pack. I could kill them one at a time, but not all at once. Combat's fun enough, though. Getting the hang of the teamwork mechanic.

 

[Fulle]

I mean, I guess I wouldn't care about that. If you want your character to be well-endowed up there, go for it. I don't care what people want, in that respect. But to see people enraged they don't get half-naked kids in a game? That's weird.

Japan has a weird cultural acceptance of showing barely pubescent girls in a sexual way. I like Anime, but that's one thing I wish I'd see a LOT less of, and it's cringe-worthy every time. The game goes out of its way to let you know that Lin is intended to be a young girl genius, so I think NOA did the right thing in de-creeperizing that situation. There are still plenty of trashy/sexy outfits that the slightly older female characters can wear.

The Boob slider thing was a little unnecessary, since boob sliders are in other character creators of games with the same age rating. There were some complaints I saw out there from female gamers who were disappointed that the take-away of this option took away their opportunity to reduce the bust size. I like to sometimes make a character that looks sort of like me in an RPG, and in a this way some female players couldn't get that particular physical characteristic quite right. Some male players just wanted to play as a cute girl character that's stacked, and while somewhat immature, I see no logical reason to take away that fun from them.

But what's done is done. I don't think the changes effect the game negatively (I actually liked the changes to Lin)... but it does show that Nintendo is still carefully protecting their image.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I might have to see if I can find Xenoblade Chronicles. I played quite a bit of the Xeno series games out there (mostly the Xenosaga games) and really liked them. I will see if I can get these (sounds like one of the few games I will use my Wii-U for).

 

[Lil Frier]

I might have to see if I can find Xenoblade Chronicles. I played quite a bit of the Xeno series games out there (mostly the Xenosaga games) and really liked them. I will see if I can get these (sounds like one of the few games I will use my Wii-U for).

The Wii version is rather costly ($50 used or so). They remade it for the New 3DS (the only game requiring the new hardware), so if you're in the market for one of those, that would be an alternative to get the game.

 

[Rhezuss]

Look really interesting but I now have a hard time getting into JRPGs. They were my favorite kind of games when I grew up (FF, Chrono Trigger, etc) but now I can't past the guys looking girly and the pre-teen half-naked girls...it's a complete turndown for me.

I'll keep a look on this one but from what I see it's not something appealing to me, especially for $70...

 

[crisium]

The Wii version is rather costly ($50 used or so). They remade it for the New 3DS (the only game requiring the new hardware), so if you're in the market for one of those, that would be an alternative to get the game.

You're best off playing it on Dolphin. N3DS is 240, Wii is 480. You'd think a Wii game isn't one to turn into a graphics whore over but this game really is beautiful and deserves HD. Buy the N3DS version New if you feel bad, but play the Wii version in the Dolphin emulator.

 

[Fulle]

Just throwing this out there again, but Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles X, have similarities in battle system and world building, but they're separate stories that take place on completely different planets with completely different people. It's not necessary to hunt down a rare $70 Wii game and play that first, before playing XCX on Wii U. Someone with a Wii U would have a better time just buying XCX and playing that. There's some cool new stuff in the new game, like Skells (the giant Mechs), and more overall content, to where XCX is the better buy between XC and XCX in my opinion.

I would still recommend playing Xenoblade Chronicles for Wii, and The Last Story, if you are a JRPG fan. There's some fairly decent texture packs for XC if you use the Dolphin emulator.

 

[Sulaco]

I should probably give the original Xenoblade Chronicles another go.

I got it for Christmas several years ago, right before it became ridiculously expensive (at least it has come back down some, it was up well over $100 for awhile).
I put probably 30 hours or more into it, and it just never quite kept my attention. A lot of it has to do with the downright GOOFY voice acting. I'm sorry, but I just can't take seriously the silly cockney English accents. It sounds petty, but every single time the game tried to impress upon me how serious a situation was, I couldn't get past the cartoon caliber voice acting. I know there's an option to switch to Japanese voices, and that's what I ended up doing, but I'm not a big fan of Japanese voice either. Does anyone remember if there's an option to turn voices off entirely?

Anyway, I did enjoy the truly vast open world and bright environments, but I seem to remember it also being VERY grindy; as in, reach a "boss", realize I haven't spent nearly enough time grinding, backtrack and slay mobs for the next 5-10 hours (no joke).
I don't mind having to go a little out of your way to get past those tough bosses, or get the optional stuff, but I ALWAYS felt like I was 2-3 levels down no matter who I was fighting and where.

I'll probably give it another try sometime, but I'm honestly having much more fun playing through Baldur's Gate II on STEAM for the first time.

 

[Harrod]

Is there a break mechanic in this game for some of the enemies?
I have the version for the 3ds, and really want to avoid a game that you have to do that in.