My relationship with this game is a complicated one.
Back in early 2019, I had just come off of my first playthrough of Xenoblade 1, and even though I had just played Xenoblade 2 and Torna the year before, I was still desperate more more Xenoblade content. So, of course, I decided to play X. I managed to grab a preowned copy at GameStop, somehow, and I started it, expecting yet another masterpiece.
...that's not what I got.
I was a much less patient man back then, so I dropped it almost immediately. Past the opening cutscene nothing about the game, especially the story, really grabbed me like the rest of the series did. This almost became a cycle. When Xenoblade DE released, i tried to go back to X, and dropped it again. When Pyra and Mythra were announced for smash, i tried to go back to X, and dropped it again. This kept happening for basically every Xenoblade related announcement that happened, up until very recently.
The recent Xenoblade 3 DLC trailer had me hyped to no end, so of course, I yet again returned to X, hoping for it to finally click. This time was different, though. I told myself that no matter how bored I got, no matter how annoyed I became, I would finally beat this game that had been stuck in my backlog for so long. And I did. I finally did.
It was hard, at first. The beginning of this game, past the tutorial, is so unbelievably boring. I found the side quests to be almost akin to Xenoblade 1's infamously boring fetch quests at that point, and like I said earlier, the story wasn't really grabbing me yet. The only two things that kept me going was the gameplay, and the idea of skells. I found the soul voice system to be an incredibly interesting way to implement healing, and I had heard that once you get skells, the game got infinitely better. Well, it took a while, but I finally managed to get the skell license, and after all this time, it finally clicked.
I finally understood all of the ravings. While I still find it to be so insanely dumb to have a story that takes 50 hours to get good, the gameplay and side quests had me so consumed that I didn't care nearly as much any more.
I was riding on this high for basically the rest of the game, right up until the last chapter. Not gonna spoil anything, of course, but holy shit. the final boss of this game is ASS. Maybe my ground gear was just garbage, but even on easy mode, I had zero chance of beating this five phase monstrosity for the longest time. I grinded xp and money (to get a level 50 skell) for FIFTEEN. FUCKING. HOURS. And still, the only saving grace I found, and the only reason I finally beat the final boss, was this sort of half assed infinite overdrive using Elma, since I hadn't gotten the FMJ class on my custom character and I was not willing to grind any more. I am a strong believer that a bad final boss can sour a mostly good experience, and i feel like that's the case here, as i was originally planning on rating this a 9/10 instead of an 8/10.
Despite all of my complaining I still think that, as a whole, Xenoblade X is a great game. I had a great time losing myself in the amazing world that is Mira. I just hope that, whenever X2 finally rolls around, they tell a story of similar quality of the mainline games, while maintaining the gameplay and exploration quality of this one.
Back in early 2019, I had just come off of my first playthrough of Xenoblade 1, and even though I had just played Xenoblade 2 and Torna the year before, I was still desperate more more Xenoblade content. So, of course, I decided to play X. I managed to grab a preowned copy at GameStop, somehow, and I started it, expecting yet another masterpiece.
...that's not what I got.
I was a much less patient man back then, so I dropped it almost immediately. Past the opening cutscene nothing about the game, especially the story, really grabbed me like the rest of the series did. This almost became a cycle. When Xenoblade DE released, i tried to go back to X, and dropped it again. When Pyra and Mythra were announced for smash, i tried to go back to X, and dropped it again. This kept happening for basically every Xenoblade related announcement that happened, up until very recently.
The recent Xenoblade 3 DLC trailer had me hyped to no end, so of course, I yet again returned to X, hoping for it to finally click. This time was different, though. I told myself that no matter how bored I got, no matter how annoyed I became, I would finally beat this game that had been stuck in my backlog for so long. And I did. I finally did.
It was hard, at first. The beginning of this game, past the tutorial, is so unbelievably boring. I found the side quests to be almost akin to Xenoblade 1's infamously boring fetch quests at that point, and like I said earlier, the story wasn't really grabbing me yet. The only two things that kept me going was the gameplay, and the idea of skells. I found the soul voice system to be an incredibly interesting way to implement healing, and I had heard that once you get skells, the game got infinitely better. Well, it took a while, but I finally managed to get the skell license, and after all this time, it finally clicked.
I finally understood all of the ravings. While I still find it to be so insanely dumb to have a story that takes 50 hours to get good, the gameplay and side quests had me so consumed that I didn't care nearly as much any more.
I was riding on this high for basically the rest of the game, right up until the last chapter. Not gonna spoil anything, of course, but holy shit. the final boss of this game is ASS. Maybe my ground gear was just garbage, but even on easy mode, I had zero chance of beating this five phase monstrosity for the longest time. I grinded xp and money (to get a level 50 skell) for FIFTEEN. FUCKING. HOURS. And still, the only saving grace I found, and the only reason I finally beat the final boss, was this sort of half assed infinite overdrive using Elma, since I hadn't gotten the FMJ class on my custom character and I was not willing to grind any more. I am a strong believer that a bad final boss can sour a mostly good experience, and i feel like that's the case here, as i was originally planning on rating this a 9/10 instead of an 8/10.
Despite all of my complaining I still think that, as a whole, Xenoblade X is a great game. I had a great time losing myself in the amazing world that is Mira. I just hope that, whenever X2 finally rolls around, they tell a story of similar quality of the mainline games, while maintaining the gameplay and exploration quality of this one.