A WARM HUG
Shulk in smash bros. I’m like, “ok cool. a man who can see the future and tells his attacks in an extremely British voice, that’s nice.” Pyra and Mythra get added to smash. I’m like, “ok cool. Two anime wifus as one person, that’s cool. I want to learn more about them.” I start watching a walkthrough of the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 because I didn’t have $60 for the game. I start talking about how I’m interested in the game and my friend buys me Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition for the Nintendo Switch for my birthday and I drop the walkthrough. I start playing the game, I’m like, “ok cool. I auto attack and choose special arts and abilities when I’m in position. I don’t think I like this.” I drop the game. 2 Years later, I pick the game back up again and totally ate it up. Folks, this game was so good, I can not fathom how much I liked this game.
Let me get into it.

The combat is great. I originally put the game down because I was avoiding all the enemies because I didn’t want to waste time. I wasn’t leveling up and when I went to fight my first “boss” I got rocked. I didn’t like it. All I wanted to do was enjoy a story, not fight some machines. When I came back to it, I switched on casual mode and had a blast. It was smooth and fluid, fun and satisfying. I was a master at it, I no one could touch me. The whole “break, topple, and daze” system is really the bread and butter of the combat system. The UI is presided in a very clear and concise way for satisfying play and I was never really confused on what to do or where to go. The only couple of gripes I had with the battle system is that some enemies and bosses were immune to the “break, topple and daze” thing. Don’t do that, it was just annoying, not changing. And the other was that sometimes I would inflict break on a boss, and my other party members didn’t get the memo. The party member UI is a little bit stupid but that’s AOK!

Story (no spoilers)
I cannot believe this game. How can we have the most touching scene in a video with the stupidest British voices ever and it still work? How? All jokes aside, this game warmed my heart is much and I have no question about it. One of the reasons I love “The World Ends With You” so much is because it had hard religious undertones and I’m a sucker for that. So it’s no surprise when they start throwing around words like Apocrypha and gods, I was all in. Every character motivation felt real and genuine and I loved every character. The game also plays on your expectations a bit but throws you for a loop. The finale of this game was standing ovation, 10/10 blown away. You all know what I’m talking about, but the narrative chops that are introduced in the final 10 minutes of the game is wild. The game paced so expertly and perfectly, I just want to give this game a warm hug. That’s what this game is, a warm hug. When the final song played, I actually got emotional. I have never been prouder in a cast of characters than this game. 👏 👏 👏

No matter how hard you try to break us, the future is ours to shape! Always!

The premise of Xenoblade Chronicles is simple, yet effective. Atop the colossal Bionis, the three childhood friends Shulk, Reyn and Fiora are living their best lives, until one day a particularly evil robot shows up to disturb the local peace. With the help of the legendary sword Monado, Shulk embarks on a journey across the Bionis to track down the unknown assailant and get his revenge. Not only is the Monado arguably one of the coolest weapons in fiction, it's also especially useful in combat against the machines and allows the wielder to see into the future. The theme of fate is ever-present, as Shulk has to deal with visions involving the people close to him dying several times, and only he can change the future to prevent these events from playing out, while also pursuing his own goals. I'll not take away any more from the story, since I found it to be pretty intriguing and well written until the end, despite having quite a few tropes here and there and also some predictability to it. Even with the sheer amount of downright meme-worthy lines or shonen shenanigans, the core narrative is still surprisingly solid and doesn't fall flat in terms of twists either. Yes, Dunban being "over there" is actually important to the plot. The setting of the two titans is incredibly unique and memorable, but also just straight up cool at the same time, the area progression is really satisfying here. As for the main cast, they all have their reasons to join Shulk in his fight against the Mechons and their voice acting is superb. It's a shame Adam Howden never got any major roles besides Shulk, since he especially nailed those screams and emotional moments. But honestly, the rest of the cast is just as good and I like how many unknown voice actors are featured here (and their British accents).

While the main storyline is not as long as I expected it to be, Xenoblade is still jam-packed with side content, rocketing up the overall possible playtime by a significant amount. Most of the side quests are just fetch quests or "kill x amounts of these monsters", but there are also several skill trees or other cool rewards locked behind others. It never crossed my thoughts until I beat the story, how much Xenoblade rewards interacting with the world on the side, as there's even a whole chart accessible through the main menu where you can see the relations between every single named NPC and the locale they belong to. There's an entire trading mechanic I didn't even pay attention to in my playthrough, but it's cool to know it's there, I think little things like this or the info you can read up on the named NPCs on the chart improve the already impressive worldbuilding by a lot again. Now, one of my biggest regrets is not interacting with the Colony 6 side-story at all, there were many side quests related to it and I couldn't complete any of them because I somehow didn't do the initial one. Honestly, it's a shame it took me so long to properly appreciate those aspects, so I'll definitely focus on them on my eventual New Game+ playthrough.

Amidst the fierce battle cries of "Now it's Reyn Time!", "Electric Gutbuster!" and "Star-searing flames of ABSOLUTION!", I actually ended up liking the combat very much and was surprised by how unique it was. By the end it devolved into chain attack spam for me, but before that point, I think the MMO-style approach is really fitting and fun overall, while the cheesy battle lines of the cast add a whole layer of entertainment as well. Here, good preparation is half the battle already, as you will need to decide which skills your AI-controlled party members should use and how to efficiently combine those with the tactics of the rest of the team for optimal results. I said the combat is "MMO-style", because skills are locked behind cooldowns and your active character is using auto-attacks in the downtime to fill the special bar, like in the case of Shulk it's used for the Monado Arts. His signature sword not only specializes in slicing through machinery, but can also buff him or his party in various other ways, like shielding them or granting everyone the ability to hit the Mechons. Each of those abilities uses different amounts of the special gauge, so it's up to you to decide what's the best approach for certain combat situations. It would be pretty unwise to keep throwing out Arts which use your full gauge, as enemies and especially bosses can counter those by attacking with so-called Vision Attacks. Those come in three forms, Red, White and Purple. By casting the Impulse Art on a party member, they can dodge a red attack, which is pretty straightforward. Things get interesting for the white attacks, as they require you to have a properly leveled Shield Art to even block the move - so if an enemy uses "Attack VII", you need the skill level of your Shield Art atleast at 7, anything below will not block. The use of haptic feedback is also really underappreciated from what I've seen, every time you hit with a chance attack you get vibration on hit and everytime you break an enemy's vision attack the controller emulates this "breaking" effect with a stronger rumble. There's also a pulse while seeing the animations for vision attacks playing out, resembling a heartbeat, and that's pretty cool if you ask me.

Teambuilding is a central mechanic in Xenoblade Chronicles, and also one that is handled in an interesting way. First of all, you get access to most of the cast fairly early into the story already, so you can experiment with different teams through many different areas and see who has your favorite playstyle, who you want to main and who you don't actually like at all. This availability of being able to build around your team without even getting to the meat of the main story yet is such a nice change of pace, since I know so many games where you get party members so late, that they're basically unusable, as you have probably already have a good team composition at that point. Looking at you, Fire Emblem. But Xenoblade doesn't have this issue and it's just really nice, so I hope the other two games in the trilogy adapt this approach as well. As for their actual involvement in gameplay, each teammate has an unique role and playstyle, so you can basically play any possible combination of party members together and it will work somehow. Another neat feature is the ability to choose any character besides Shulk as the leader, allowing you to control them in the overworld and battle, it's very handy for certain encounters (or if you're just a big fan of the character). Like personally I played Melia on Mount Valka so I could have an easier time reaching the airborne enemies and it ended up being a really pleasant change of pace! There is also a whole layer of customization here besides the current party setup, since you can tweak individual characters to your liking by equipping them with gems, certain armor pieces or adjusting the skill trees. I really like how skill trees are handled here, like you still can normally unlock character-specific skills of individual branches through EXP, but you're also able to make use of the skills of other characters if you raise the friendship between them accordingly. This is not a metaphorical statement, raising the affinity between two teammates comes with a nice amount of extras - you unlock new heart-to-heart events across the world, the possibility of extending chain attacks is higher and as mentioned before, you gain access to a bunch of the opposite character's skills. Very nice!

As for the soundtrack, the Definitive Edition features an (almost) entirely revamped OST with new arranged tracks. I've only heard a few of the original tracks in Smash before, so I won't compare the new arrangements to the original compositions. With that out of the way, I'm a big fan of the musical score for DE and especially the more emotional songs here really hit me at times. Hearing Engage the Enemy for the very first time in-game with the corresponding cutscene is an ethereal feeling and gave me shivers in combination with Adam Howden's performance there. Gaur Plain is also one of my favorites, even if that one's a basic pick - maybe because it's just a memorable, good song. My final nomination goes out to Mechanical Rhythm for just being a pretty sick standard battle theme, which could easily pass as a boss theme elsewhere.

Considering I'm planning to do a NG+ one day to catch up on the content I missed, it's needless to say that Xenoblade Chronicles left quite the impression on me, even after finishing the game. Now onto Future Connected and I'm looking forward to playing Xenoblade 2 in a while too. Here's hoping that the rest of the trilogy will be just as fun!

I wrote an April fools review for this where I just linked to a YouTube video relating to Kagurabachi (read that instead of this tbh). I think it’s fair I write an actual review on this. For starters what a 4/10 game this is. First problem is the world design and how it doesn’t really make you want to explore. In most cases your gonna to find what a rare enemy or a landmark that gives out exp which you can get while grinding. I’m no master at this game I will never argue that but it feels to me that at a certain point being underleved can make fights next to impossible. Doesn’t help that the main ways to get exp are through the fights, exportation, and side quests. All of them are not great with fights you get minimal amount of exp where you have to take on hoards of enemies to gain a single level. Exploration can also grant exp but it’s usually not too much unless it’s a hidden area. On the topic of exploration I just have to say why is climbing so slow and traversal in general makes it a bitch to get anywhere and it’s not like in God of War 2018 where Kratos and Arteus have a conversation whenever they are in the boat to distract you from the nothing gameplay going on. That leaves the side quest and holy pad most of them are fetch quests and add nothing. Sometimes you get an interesting reward like Monado armor but I never got it and I was fine. Alright so most of your exp is combat but that has to be good right uuuuuuuuh. I think near the start the combat is alright when you team is pretty limited on what you can do and you have to plan accordingly (even though you can’t control your teammates). However by late game every encounter just was topple locking the enemies gaining energy for a chain attack and doing it again. Which just stems from being punished for being in encounters for too long. It makes Sharla the healer awful since she is made to be low dps but keep you alive for longer but fighting longer just sucks. So in conclusion Light heal> Sharla. The only saving grace for combat is visions which show you when a big attack is coming and how to deal with it. A decent way to make people not spam chain attacks all the time since they are overpowered. Quick thing on chain attacks why is the chance of it ending random that makes no sense. Visuals: they look fine nothing groundbreaking but fine for what they are. Music: it’s fine gets the job done I’m not a huge music guy and it should be set dressing and not a major part of why you enjoy the game. Alright plot some yall call this peak? Let’s start with the obvious why do they always make it obvious there is something going to happen. Easy example is Dickson where he has his ever iconic line “I feel bad for manipulating those kids” and it’s supposed to be played for a big twist in the third act. This is like that one line in the DORA THE EXPLORER movie where the adult character kept saying he was a bad guy. I think a better idea would be a more sidelined manipulator like Makima where if you are paying attention you notice something is off but to the average person would not pick up on it. But that’s the easy answer they wouldn’t make it obvious that the character that was killed off is alive right. What do you mean they pretty clearly tease Fiora’s return. Blonde hair and and breasts it could be anyone especially not girl who had blond hair and moderately sized breasts but was “dead”. But favorite one was definitely that Gadolt is still alive. Like they don’t mention his ass for more then half the game but the moment they do a new robot is keeping an eye on them. Oh of course it’s Gadolt. Onto the actual plot two titans clashed but eventually brought forth different life biological in bionis and Mechanical in mechonis (very original names). They were bitter enemies for some unknown reason (we are keeping tally of every anime trope ) 1. This came to ahead with a battle that will deiced the fate of the bio vs mech life. Fuck this cliffnotes going to go full speed ahead. Shulk is just your average orphan 2 that lives a quiet life 3 with his friends. Till one day the enemy that hadn’t attacked in ages did 4 and Shulk finds out he is special 5 and can wield a special blade called the Monado. His journey is about growing and changing his perspective.He starts his adventure with pure revenge but develops into something more. He meets people from a variety of places 6. This all pulls ahead when his motivation is alive and that guy from the prologue is alive. He then learns that not all Mechon are bad 7. They travel to Mechonsis and learn that they attacked first 8. Shulk tries to make peace until he is interrupted by Dickson doing that evil thing and unleashing the true villain who was inside Shulk all along 9 and he can be considered a god 10. Shulk believes hard enough and comes back and defeat god in a quick enough recap. Anyways time to bitch about Zanza. First off they make it pretty obvious that he is the final boss just due to how the game is set up. You skip two major parts of bionis being most of prison island and inner bionis which had my head scratching till I realized that they were probably going to pull a the bad guys aren’t the actual villain. With making some of the people of mechonis good. Yeah I called Zanza being the final boss. Also his ass barley does anything he could took control at like any moment but didn’t that makes like 0 sense. This isn’t even a why didn’t Jotaro use Star finger. Since he is op on his own and could probably solo most of Mechonis since their god was stuck in Fiora for some reason (I don’t remember if it’s explained you I will not bitch). Also this is a more minor nitpick I wish he looked a little more different then his original human form since he is a god. Alright let’s wrap this up characters I won’t comment on since I used like the same 3 so I saw no heart to hearts. Shulk is a fine protagonist except he still has trouble telling his team about visions. What did I think of future connected? Didn’t play it. Will you play 2. Hell nah. In conclusion go read Kagurabachi for some good action adventure.

A beautiful game. Wonderful characters and story, love how everyone can really emote in the Definitive Edition, and the world is a fantastic character in itself. It really grabs that old JRPG feel, that promise, of losing yourself in an immense, vivid world packed with colorful characters, societies, and sights to see. The crazy plot was a lot of fun, and the nonstop hype train ride of the third act was legendary among JRPGs I've played.

I have a few gripes that mar this game from getting the extra half star or so. While the towns were impressive in how vivid they were, I just couldn't get into how drab the NPC dialogue presentation felt. It's a little better with bigger text boxes in XB2, at least. Building on that, the sidequests. On one hand, they were fine as brain-off, I-just-want-to-grind-while-listening-to-three-hour-long-youtube-videos activities, but on the other hand, there were... simply too many of them, and not many had much narrative pleasure to them.

Another gripe is a bigger one - the combat. I found it okay to bad for much of my play. I think it works for the game Xenoblade Chronicles is - the lack of a loud transition to a seperate screen into menu-based turn based combat, opting instead for a seamless, cooldown-based real time system is a boon to the exploration. The game would be much worse off with a system like, say, Final Fantasy 10's-and I think FFX's battle system is fantastic.

Unfortunately, the game's battle system (and that's not even getting into the crazy level scaling, or how I had to grind for a few hours just to beat a miniboss that was incredibly easy but unhittable because I was 5 levels below it) discouraged me from really wanting to bite into the side content of the game. I missed out on a lot of bond talks, a lot of the later bosses, a lot of the post-game areas... but, I was satisfied with my time. So, so satisfied. When the changed title screen came up after the post-credits cutscene, I teared up a bit. I'm tearing up a bit writing this sentence now. What a journey. Just... man.

✅
-Amazing soundtrack
-Addictive battle system
-Beautiful and fun environments to explore

🚫
-Underdeveloped characters outside of optional dialogues
-Battle quotes can get annoying
-Plot progression can feel repetitive and drawn-out

Structure is Xenoblade’s strongest attribute - narrative and geographical. So much of my experience is driven by my anticipation to see a new area and experience its music. It’s a little hard to go back to the first game and lose the ability to switch characters during combat like in 3, but there is an intentional puzzle-like satisfaction in making your ideal party and prioritizing who needs the benefit of your control. It seems intentional for sure. Melia and Shulk aren’t super reliable unless directly controlled, but the flow of combat totally shifts depending on your party. I particularly love to play as sharla and choose when to attempt the headshot art on enemies, usually partnering her with characters who can constantly topple and daze enemies. It’s hard to not want to play as shulk for the whole game though, but there is a rewarding feeling to mixing it up. I try and prioritize different members every time I play and I’m always surprised at how many new strategies and combos I previously neglected.

Xenoblade’s strongest trick for me is the unveiling of new sights. Walking through a tight canyon with no music, suddenly approaching a wide open zone as its music kicks in. Climbing a structure for several minutes and looking down to see how small the world below you looks. The scope is so effective, especially for the hardware it was constructed on. Monolith Soft are experts at making the world a strong characteristic of the game.

This is my fourth time beating this game I think. I still hold it precious and it is one of my all time favorites, but the flaws are very evident to me and are harder to ignore. Xenoblade 3 is one of the best games when it comes to giving every character a strong purpose, backstory, and interactions with other party members. Nobody really feels neglected. Xenoblade 1 certainly favors a couple of characters. Fiora especially comes across as incredibly shallow. There’s definitely a problem with all the female character’s motives being driven by their assigned male counterparts. It’s worst for fiora, but I still like all of them. Melia certainly has a lot more going on with her own people and Sharla has several moments of agency. The game’s story is very focused on our connections to other people, so I don’t think my previous critique is immune to rebuttal. You can say Shulk’s whole character revolves around Fiora, but it simply comes down to the writing, not the overall concept of the characters. The presentation of their personal motives and desires lack a good balance. That being said, I love every party member. Individually there’s criticisms to be had, but as a collective group and what they stand for is fantastic.

Xenoblade 3 is my favorite of the trilogy, but 1 still has a few things that were never surpassed for me personally. The idea of two civilizations living on two dormant gods is incredibly creative and makes for a wild map to explore. The OST still contains my favorite songs in the series, though not my much considering the ridiculous quality of the trilogy’s entire OST. Xenoblade doesn’t have the best towns in the genre at all, but 1’s towns felt the most fleshed out to me, as little as there were. Helping reconstruct colony 6 is cool. The starting colony has a wonderfuly cozy design and geography. The Nopon village has a cool vertical design that feels completely distinct from the colonies you visit. 3 may be my favorite, but it’s mostly colonies that look the same and The City. I do wish xenoblade focused on fun towns to hang out in.

Side quests are also a point of contention for people but I don’t mind them being excuses for quick EXP or items. My only problem is how one NPC will give you 7 quests back to back and you have to talk to them multiple times. At a certain point I stop collecting side quests and to this day I can’t think of one that had an interesting narrative hook. I probably missed out on some good stuff, but they don’t encourage keeping up with them.

I’ve criticized the game a lot, but my 5 star rating still holds strong. It’s always going to be one of my favorite games. Its release on the Wii got me back into JRPGs at the time after being away from the genre for a good chunk of time. I’m so glad this became a whole series with Nintendo and I love the entire trilogy. There’s something special about Monolith Soft’s approach to world design. Nobody does it like them. The only game to make me think “this reminds me of xenoblade” was my recent experience with FF7: Rebirth.

Huge games usually need to find exploring its map not boring; whether it’s a mount or vehicle. I’m surprised no xenoblade game has tried to introduce its own version of a chocobo (let’s ignore the mechs in X for now). I would love a fun way to get around faster, but not once have I dreaded making my way through these worlds on foot. They’re easy to hang out in and get into battles every couple minutes. Encountering a giant gorilla named “Delirious Daniel” that is level 99 is a great aspect of these worlds too. It doesn’t scale with you, yet somehow it’s paced so perfectly that you never feel too ahead of the curve or too far behind. The clockwork-like design it must take to pace the games out like that is intimidating to think about. These designers are legends, I can’t wait for Xenoblade 4.
(Also please re release X. Thank you)

I like Xenoblade Chronicles. Xenoblade Chronicles has a good story and I like the combat.
But fuck man there's nothing to DO in this game. So much of your time is going to be spent walking around the beautiful but empty open world. Side quests and affinity are a boring slog since there is so much fetch questing involved, and even the combat (the best part of the game) is dragged down by the fact that you really can't fight monsters that are over 3 levels above you, which means that you can rarely ever challenge yourself, something the rest of the trilogy managed to solve. The chain attack is so awesome, but is dictated by RNG tied to shit that's just not fun to do.
Also I didn't play Future Connected. The chain attack is replaced by a side quest (gross), half of Shulk's monado arts are useless without vision (ew), and the story wasn't interesting enough for me to care about playing it myself (womp womp).

Impossível tankar o bostil

A gameplay é lamentável com um combate repetitivo e sem graça onde você nem sente que tá acertando o inimigo, sua única indicação de impacto e o número aparecendo na tela

Exploração vergonhosa, o mapa, por mais que seja bonito, é praticamente vazio, o caminhar dos personagens é tão lerdo que você pode habilitar pro personagem andar numa linha reta sozinho. Os pontos de teleporte são colocados em locais MUITO distantes dos objetivos seja se side-quest ou main-quest, é torturante explorar o mapa, PRINCIPALMENTE PQ SÓ REPETE AS MESMAS 2 FUCKING MUSICAS, se você for jogar, mute o jogo, é sério.

Essa foi uma das piores experiências que eu tive com um jogo, cada vez que eu jogava um pouquinho eu saia exausto, querendo que acabasse logo.

Eu vou terminar a história pelo Youtube por respeito a um amigo meu que fala que a história é boa, mas até o ponto que eu joguei foi o suco do genérico.

People championing the first Xenoblade Chronicles maybe undersell just how much capital-V videogame happens over its dozens of hours. The grand scale is admirable, but there are still secret platforming challenges and dungeon mini-bosses breaking up an epic tale that seemingly wants its players more interested in human nature, free will and Xenoblade's cast's thoughts about both.

A secret about me, though, is that I like platforming challenges and dungeon mini-bosses. Slot that into a game that, despite never really maintaining a logical through line, keeps up an emotional through line told over days of game time blending high fantasy and science fiction with found families, actual hippies and a landscape that is, quite literally, two giant fighting robots, and I think you've got something special.

Se você ignorar a quantidade de caminhadas desnecessárias, sejam longas ou curtas, o último ato bem longo e meio chatinho, o Riki e o fato do jogo repetir as mesmas 5 musicas o tempo todo, sobra um video game bem daora.

Reclamei das caminhadas, mas até certo ponto ela são extremamente bem vindas. Principalmente na primeira metade do jogo, com as áreas massivas e cheias de cantinhos pra explorar. E a medida que novas mecânicas e novos personagens vão sendo adicionados, as grandes caminhadas se tornam bem prazerosas enquanto você tá experimentando as novidades e fazendo side quests.

E as tais mecânicas são bem legais. Nos primeiros minutos de gameplay, o jogo parece ter um ritmo de batalha bem maçante, mas quando mais você joga, mais interessante fica. Seja montando equipamentos, escolhendo a party ou combinando ataques, a gameplay fica bem divertida até o final. Contudo, depois das 20h de jogo já tava bem cansado e sem vontade de enfrentar mob, então fiquei evitando bastante eles e perdendo nível por conta disso. Faltou um estimulo maior pra enfrentar inimigos ou continuar interessado em fazer side quests.

Além do Shulk e do Alvis, o cast não é tão marcante não. Dão pro gasto, mas não me apeguei muito. Os diálogos entre eles são bem repetitivos ao ponto de parecer que nenhum desenvolvimento de personagem aconteceu nas 20h que você já botou no jogo. Poucos deles são cheios de charme ou mostram ter alguma verdadeira profundidade.

No final, já tava bem cansadinho e não via a hora de terminar. A história deu uma caída que se recuperou só nas cutscenes finais. Os plot twists meio esquisitos e aquelas respostas complicadas pros mistérios do jogo dignos de JRPG.

Enfim é um joguinho legal que carrega certo charme principalmente no seu vasto mundo. Ansioso pra pegar o 2 pra terminar de jogar que tá engavetado a 6 anos já.