Eurogamer seems to love Xenoblade and they can be quite curmudgeonly with rpgs. I have not tv/screen (thus no Wii for the moment), but I’m curious if anyone played it or heard anything about it.
I just got the game, but only played for about an hour or so and I’ve done nothing but dick around. Right off the bat, you get a lot of freedom of movement so it’s a bit overwhelming. I just hope it doesn’t end up being like FFXII where you had massive stretches of land with not a goddman thing to do in them. The clock function alone already makes the maps even more massive, since everyone hangs out at different places depending on what time it is.
It’s no graphical powerhouse obviously, being on the wii, but it’s pretty enough. Your character’s appearances changes with whatever you have equipped, which you’ll appreciate a hundred times more once you see the embarrassing pink-purple shit Shulk is wearing at the start.
It’s quite obvious that the game was dubbed in Europe, as I’ve yet to hear any familiar voice and everyone’s got a thick British accent. Voice acting’s good though, no complaints there.
I have yet to see ANYTHING resembling a story, but like I said, I haven’t even started the game yet.
I’ve never felt right modding my system. Then I found a set of directions on how to do it and where to order the game. It will be done soon.
Okay, so I’m several hours in.
I’m liking it. Honestly, it’s the most fun I’ve had with a traditional epic JRPG in years. Takahashi’s still got it apparently, it’s a great game.
You are Shulk, a mechanic working in Colony 9, one of the last Homs (human) settlements in Bionis to survive the Mechon (the bad guys’) invasion from one year prior, mostly thanks to an awesome dude called Dunban and his semi-uncontrollable techno-magic sword-thingie, the Monado. The first remarkable thing about the whole thing is the setting: The world is split between two… “areas” called Bionis and Mechonis. Except they are not continents, they’re corpses. The corpses of two retardedly big ancient titans standing over an endless ocean of nothing, to be precise. Most of the game so far has taken place on Bionis’ left leg, for instance.
I like Shulk. He’s a nice dude. I like those. I like when you can be the lead character in a JRPG without being an embarrassingly perky dumbass or a brooding asshole smouldering with nonspecific angst. I like when characters only get depressed when there is actual shit to get depressed about instead of doing it out of contractual obligation to appear deep and tortured. He’s a good kid, he’s level headed and he gets the job done. He’s also got vague ties to even more vague pieces of pseudo-magical technology, but that’s to be expected.
The story kicks into gear as a… okay, look, there’s a scene where Shulk and Fiora (mandatory not-his-girlfriend) sit on a bench overlooking their hometown and chat about how much they love peace, not having their hometown attacked by hordes of steampunk enemies and how awesome it is to spend their daily lives not traveling the world on a vaguely defined quest spurred by the death of a loved one who kicked it during one of those attacks that they were grateful never happened around those parts. This is a JRPG. It’s even got “Xeno-” in the title. I really don’t think I need to explain what happens before the day is over. What DID surprise me was that, of all the predictable people to bite the bullet… well, I won’t spoil it, but it was not who I expected. Although some of the game mechanics make me pretty damn sure that it was not final.
Anyhow, “shockingly”, Shulk turns out to be capable of controlling the Monado and you set out to quest for great justice, sweet, sweet revenge and, if I know Tetsuya Takahashi, some ungodly complicated plot.
Combat is somewhat reminiscent of FFXII only without the suck and dullness. Auto-attack is important, but you spend most of your time performing your abilities and switching positioning to make them more effective (For instance, Back Slash causes more damage if you are attacking from the back). You only control your lead character, but the AI seems clever enough. For example, during some battles, it was important to Inflict “Topple” on enemies to hurt them. In order to do that, you first need to inflict “Break” and THEN “Topple”. Shulk only has the ability to inflict Break, but every time I did it, the AI got the hint and used the necessary skill to inflict Topple right away.
There are a few fun mechanics to discuss, but my favourite is the relationship grid. Every named character from wherever you go gets placed ina grid that maps out their relationship to other characters, and as you complete quests for them and do miscellaneous crap, these relationships change and you end up seeing a ton of tiny subplots. It’s a nice way of making the world seem much more alive.
Anyhow, I’ll keep going and see if anything more comes up.
Heh, thanks for the information. Nintendo consoles haven’t been that hot for rpgs for ages, so I was curious how Xenoblade would turn out.
The Achievement unlocked by filling all of one character’s gem slots is called “Truly Outrageous”.
I’ll admit it, I laughed. Though I should probably feel embarrassed just for getting the joke… and now I can’t get the fucking song off my head.
On another note: Holy shit the maps are huge. The Bionis’s Leg is fucking endless.