Wow. What a summer! I have not posted on here for a full month due to the fact that I've been out of town for a few weeks, and insanely busy the rest of the time! I honestly haven't even been able to spend that much time playing games, let alone reviewing them, but I do have a few in the can that I'll be reviewing here in the next few days, assuming I don't catch any new assignments at work.
Xenoblade Chronicles is a JRPG, originally created for the Nintendo Wii, home of such memorable JRPGs as Xenoblade Chronicles. For the purposes of this review, I played the game on on the 3DS (I scored a killer deal on a cart on Offerup a year back or so). It is part of the Xeno series, which was a little confusing to me until I started to think about it compared to games like Final Fantasy, which are all a part of the same series, but don't always exist in the same world. I adore Xenogears, the game which founded this series, but had very little experience with the rest of the Xenoverse, save for a confusing weekend spent renting Xenosaga Episode 1: Der Wille zur Macht, an early contender for silliest JRPG title of all time (The frontrunner is Tactics Ogre 64: Person of Lordly Caliber. No, actually, it's Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue. Yes, these are all real video games published by real video game companies and translated into English for a broad American release.). This is an unusually relevant review (for me), given the news that this game is currently being remastered for the Switch.
Anyway, Xenoblade Chronicles is a game made by Monolith Soft, a company founded in part by Tetsuya Takahashi, a man who was involved with several of my favorite video games of all time, including Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, and Xenogears. This, capped off by Final Fantasy VII, is the best run for Squaresoft, and he had his fingers in a lot of my favorite stuff, so I was quite dismayed by Project X Zone, another Monolith Soft game, and found it to be a steaming pile of trash. I can't find Takahashi's name on anything having to do with Project X Zone, though, so maybe my original delay to tackle this game was ill-informed. I also discovered that Monolith Soft had participated heavily in one of my favorite games of all-time, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and that was enough to get me to pick this bad boy up in a fever, falling headlong into yet another JRPG and burning another 60-80 hours of my life in the process.
The story is clever at times, but not close to comparing to that of Xenogears. The story is set in a huge world that is actually a fossilized giant, located next to another giant. The tale is that the two giants battled to a standstill generations back, and that life has sprung up across these two enormous Gundam-like beings. Your story begins as life-forms from the other giant swarm onto your hero's world and attack your home at Colony 9. The story also revolves around a legendary energy sword called the Monado, that only you are capable of wielding to its fullest extent. I enjoyed the story, but it's not the greatest I've ever seen.
Combat is flat out excellent. The game uses an MMO-style of combat, quite similar to that of World of Warcraft. You can pin many abilities to a tool bar, and use commands to trigger them, all while your character will autoattack according to his/her stats. What makes the combat fun is that each character has his/her own playstyle, and that combat revolves around skillfully positioning yourself at the proper point of weakness demanded by your character's abilities. So, a given ability will say that it will do double damage by being executed behind an enemy, but you will benefit even more by first moving to their side, and executing another attack to lower their defense before dropping the bomb. Status buffs feel impactful and noticeable, and, more unusually for a JRPG, debuffs are essential and comprehensible in battle. The core mechanic of battle is that you must first "break" your opponents' defense, then "topple" them to make them incapable of defending themselves, and finally "dazing" them to extend the duration of their topple. What's more each opponent has their own vulnerabilities that makes each battle feel like you need to adapt your strategy to fit the opponent, making combat far more fresh and interesting than your typical JRPG. One small complaint I have with combat is that it could be difficult to tell sometimes where exactly you were positioned in relation to some of the non-humanoid enemies, which made it hard to know exactly which effects would occur on each effect. This was irritating, but on the whole I enjoyed the combat a lot.
*MINOR SPOILER ALERT*
Another great aspect of combat was the concept of time travel. Early on in the game, you figure out that Shulk has little visions of the future that he can use to anticipate enemy movements and thwart bad outcomes. This is a big theme throughout the game, but unlock other games, this theme is actually useful in combat! You'll get visions of your friends being knocked out or hit with crushing status ailments in combat, and have a timer to topple your foe to prevent this, kill them, shield/heal your friends, or draw their aggro to you to save them. This is a really fun mechanic and plot device, and is far more thoughtful than your typical JRPG approach to time travel, Chrono Trigger excepted.
*SPOILER ENDED*
The visuals for the game were insanely impressive for a 3DS game, and particularly impressive with regards to the environment. The closest comparison I can give is of Final Fantasy XII, which has a very similar look at feel to it. I think the character models have not aged terribly well, but the surroundings were still quite stunning to look at. They had some difficulty adapting the game to a handheld, particularly with environmental effects. Looking at Youtube videos of the game on the Wii, the weather, which plays a big role in the game, was significantly more difficult to see, and not just because of the small screen size. There was also substantial slowdown during some combat, especially in big battles towards the end of the game.
The game's quest mechanics were mostly user friendly, especially compared to the typical MMO approach, which I detest. Having to haul back your 7 beetle wings or report on the junk you investigated on the ground is realistic, but no fun, and Xenoblade Chronicles largely skips the reporting stage of questing, unless the report would forward an interesting character narrative. The frustrating thing about questing was finding the quests in the first place. Characters spawn at all hours of the day, walk around the map, and are really difficult to find, even with a handy guide given to you telling their active times. It doesn't even give you rough locations, and seeing as a lot of your time will be spent doing sidequests to try to level up your reputations in these areas to access more quests and level up, this is a big pain. What's more, your increasing reputation will unlock new quests, but you may never know they are available unless you happen to be in the same area as a character you've already spoken to, but may not have trusted you enough yet to give you the quest. The fan wiki is essential to enjoying this game, so don't feel guilty about using it. Without it, I wouldn't have had as much fun as I did.
The game's music is very good, but it's crippled by its single most annoying trait-combat screaming. There will be an absolute cacophony of screaming from all of your characters at every second throughout your battles, including enlightening cries of "THIS IS THE MONADO'S POWER!" and "GREAT JOB, RIKI!". These get so annoying, and you'll spend so much time in combat, that I quickly grew bored of the music.
The voice acting has some pretty saccharine British accents, and is generally fine. For a game as early and as complicated as this one, with so much text, I'll say it's actually pretty good.
The game's length is far, far, too long. Combat always stayed fresh, but I admittedly grew bored at about 60 hours, and still had 20 hours more game play to go.
All things considered, I'd definitely recommend this game. It has the feeling of Final Fantasy, but a different combat approach that really sparkles. There are some rough edges that need to be worn off, much like the early Final Fantasy games, but this game has a ton of charm and promise, and a lot of great ideas that are executed well. It's a Wii gem, and the 3DS version does it a lot of credit. I'll give it a 9.0/10.
Up next on What I'm Playing is a little game I picked up for cheap during a recent BOGO sale at my nearby video game shop. Here's a teaser...
-TRO
No comments:
Post a Comment