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So so so the internet convinced Nintendo America to release Xenoblade on the Wii here in the States. Physical copies are available through GameStop and I pre-ordered mine as soon as I heard about it. The game arrived at my door yesterday and I was able to spend about three hours or so with it. At first, I couldn't remember what had excited me about this game: graphics from 2002, visual design sensibilities straight out of Kingdom Hearts, a very Japanese (as far as I can tell) script, and ... thanks to localization ... everyone delivering their bizarre, overwrought lines in cockney accents. Had this been a plan to self-toll?, I wondered.
After playing it a bit more, I remembered: oh right, this is supposed to breathe fresh air into JRPGs and re-ignite the magic of first encountering them on the SNES but especially on the PS1. In this regard, the game is very successful. Almost all of the time I spend playing yesterday was grinding -- and I barely noticed. Large environments, great music, and deceptively simple mechanics made it really fun to play. If you're the type of person who had a good time with FF7 and Grandia (but especially Xenogears) then consider buying a Wii to play this. (And if you don't like Xenoblade, you can still get your money's worth out of the Wii by playing Skyward Sword.) On the downside, it's hard to imagine getting emotionally invested in the story.
Anybody else playing this?
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2012/04/10 18:18:37
That woman reinforces all the negative stereotypes I hold regarding female gamers.
In other news, I spent some more time with Xenoblade last night. I did some more grinding, which was just as entertaining as yesterday. This game reminds me how fun leveling can be in and of itself, an overlooked cornerstone of JRPGs. It's nice to know that combat gameplay holds up over time (appox. 8 hours now) and now that I have the Monado -- the red sword you see in all the promotional material -- another tier of interesting options has opened up.
I also spent some time doing in-town side quests. There's a lot of fetch this and find that and "kill X of those" type stuff but some of it is a little more involed, like dealing with double-crossing con artists or finding friends for lonely kids. If you don't like this sort of thing, you'll be even more frustrated that certain quest givers and targets are only available at certain times. Xenoblade has a day/night cycle and a list of when NPCs are active. Missing, however, is a list of where they are active and (as near as I can tell) an in-game clock. You know that the old man who needs his medicine gets out and about between 6AM and 3PM but how do you know if it's 2:30 in the afternoon or quarter past three?
Still, I plowed about two hours into just these sorts of shenanigans. I'm not a particular fan of unvoiced NPC interaction or fetch quests but it did keep involved and entertained. Why? Well, another unsung cornerstone of the JRPG genre is collecting/completionism. This game rewards that trope by using side quests as a way to not only level up (along three separate tracks with numerous sub-options, by the way) but also to build a relationship with the town that in turn allows you to buy rarer items in that town. Also, all that crap you're collecting can be gifted to other characters in your party to raise their affinity levels and make you a more effective team in combat (there are many other ways to do this as well, including some in-combat methods).
This game has layers and layers of stuff going on. If you ever loved a JRPG, this is definitely a game you will want to play.
