A pretty flawed game in terms of how it handles quests and story but an incredibly ambitious one. I can't think of anything else that would make you wait 30+ hours to unlock one of the main selling features, but there's something about working your way up as a blade on that harsh planet that makes the moment you finally get a skell license and eventually take flight so special and satisfying... It completely changes the world you've come to know so far. Soaring around an exceptionally designed open world fighting monsters in the sky with Hiroyuki Sawano music blasting is something you won't find anywhere else.

So many things about XCX make it feel like a true evolution of XC1, in gameplay and art design, complex mechanics, intricate area layouts, so much customization and freedom, that were all just thrown out of the window for the next entries. The whole thing feels genuinely impossible to pull off on this toaster of a console, its scale and visual fidelity impressed me more than anything on Switch ever has. In the best way it doesn't feel like a Nintendo game at all.

I really enjoyed spending most of last month chilling exploring this alien planet. It's just been sitting on my shelf for years unplayed after I failed to get into it before, and it ended up being my most enjoyable Xenoblade experience since the original. 1 and X truly feel like they're in a different series from 2 and 3 to me. Had I played this back in 2015 I don't think I would have been nearly as impressed by BOTW, or any open world for that matter. I would recommend checking it out now because any future port is going to be missing some stuff, it's very tailored for the Wii U unfortunately.