Xenoblade Chronicles

Now I'm not the biggest fan of RPGs. There are some things I find fascinating about it and some things I absolutely hate about them like their timelength. As such, while my tastes in the genre are somewhat narrow I do like to give everything at least one try once. I have to admit that I really do feel sorry for those who will not get to experience this masterpiece, as the game did a great job at exceeding all my expectations.

It was an incredibly unique setting and did a great job of transporting the player to a world that back then we never really seen before. An example the world that is considered a land mass is made of 2 frozen titans. Thankfully most of the characters do not fit into annoying Japanese stereotypes that place a curse on many modern RPGs which made me happy to see this take a changing shift from RPGs that look the same. The game really isn’t all that colourful, the design of the world is fantastic. The game itself seems to be able to handle wide and vast open areas which was rare for consoles such as the Wii. There are hardly any games that give the player a sense of scale like Xenoblade does.

It can feel scary at first to explore through these vast environments, but their design makes them actually fun to explore, which time and time again RPGs flop on it.
The character models themselves are also quite detailed, however up close there are some very noticeable ass edges which can cause a distraction. The facial expressions and features of the characters sometimes seem a little bit …off. It’s hard to properly explain why they look so weird; sometimes they just look really “flat,” like the faces are painted onto the character rather than actually being modelled.

Side quests come in fairly standard form, often asking you to defeat a certain amount of monsters in a certain region, or procure a certain kind of crafting ingredient. While it does sometimes feel a bit like filler, generally speaking the game does a good job at distracting you and giving you opportuninties to earn more resources but it can also be a little time consuming. You can upgrade character arts as you choose, essentially creating your own character with their own strengths and weaknesses. Another thing I love is every single piece of equipment the you find and equip will actually appear on the character model, even during cutscenes. This shows the dedication and attention to detail the devs put on this game.

Lastly the sound track is perfection and Voice acting is quite good, although some of the British accents do sometimes sound like parody rather than the real deal.

Oh man I didn’t know what to expect from this game but I ended up falling in love. This was the first jrpg I ever played and it was awesome man, like wow! This game has had such a lasting impression on me, especially the scope of the world and the music. I’m getting excited just thinking about it, I want to replay it soon!

Xenoblade Chronicles will definitely be remembered as a classic or all time great. To me, it is more of a flawed masterpiece. An amazing story, world, characters, battle system, and music - but dragged down by some of the most dragged out pacing I've experienced.

While the combat gets really amazing and satisfying, it kind of starts off dull and boring until you reach the 50% mark where battles become interesting and challenging.

The biggest flaw here is the side questing system. Every side quest is a tedious fetch quest that has no substance and there are literally hundreds of them, which you pretty much need to do if you want to stay decently levelled for the main game - unless you grind out monsters which is even worse. There can sometimes be stretches of up to 10 hours of side questing before you continue the main story. Unfortunately this is no small flaw and without this, Xenoblade would be an easy 10. The amount of grind here drags it down so much.

On the flip-side literally everything else is 10/10. I cannot praise enough how much I enjoy the main story aspects of this game.

There goes my ABSOLUTELY BIAS opinion about this game:

Xenoblade Chronicles is the best JRPG game ever made, that's it. The story, the gameplay, the characters, the plot twists, EVERYTHING about this game is great. I hope my opinion encourages someone to play this masterpiece!!!

Easily one of the best JRPGs I have every played! Monolith Soft made a statement with this game as an all new series that is bound for greatness from the likes of the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series.

fiora my beloved