Xenoblade Chronicles is perhaps most famed for the fact that North American gamers begged for its localization through an online movement called Operation Rainfall. Given the hype behind it, the question of whether the game lived up to the all the fuss is one that naturally arises. The answer is yes and then some. In what is widely seen as a stagnant genre that relies too much on archaic design philosophies, Xenoblade is an intelligently designed adventure that is just as breathtaking as it is smart. The game boasts a number of design choices that are just begging to become mainstays in the genre as well as having one of the most captivating game worlds of all time to boot. Xenoblade Chronicles is a game that is more ambitious than its peers but somehow that ambition is more tightly managed than the more mundane aspirations of lesser RPGs.
Perhaps the most typical aspect of Xenoblade Chronicles is the story. It starts out as standard JRPG fare with an orphaned hero who is entrusted with a great power. In this case, the game's hero Shulk becomes the wielder of the Manodo, a large red sword that grants him the power to glimpse the future. After a legion of evil robots called Mechon devastate Shulk's hometown, Colony 9, Shulk sets out for revenge. What seems to be a simple set up soon turns into an epic struggle that involves the very fabric of fate and the philosophical question of whether the world needs gods. It isn't the deepest story in the world, but it is always eventful, constantly serving up twists and turns and new mysteries. And whats more: instead of fizzling out or slowing down, the story is always getting better, and in the later stages of the game, it becomes truly epic. Combine that with a cast of instantly likeable---if not particularly deeply developed---characters and you're looking at one of the better stories in the genre. It's too bad that the writing can be stilted at times because the British acting is surprisingly energetic.
For all the positive points of the narrative, it is not the story that makes Xenoblade Chronicles truly epic: it is the game world. Up front, the game promises a lot by setting its world on two titans called the Bionis (the organic world) and the Mechonis (the mechanical world), but it completely delivers. Environments are huge and sprawling, with impressive draw distances, but at the same time they are so detailed that they instantly immerse you. There are plains sprawling with wild life and expansive, towering geography; marshes that glow with a magical blue light at night; tropical forests fronted by giant bridges overlooking rushing rivers and raging waterfalls; bustling towns that range from fairly typical mercantile colonies to towns that are truly unique, like Frontier Village, which is essentially a city built inside of a tree. Furthermore, there is a gorgeous sea with floating islands and coral beaches; a futuristic metropolis that is the capital of an angelic race called the High Entia; an icy mountain complete with giant crystals, towering slopes, lava caves, and angry geysers; a gorgeous collection of beaches and ancient mechanical ruins that make the shape of a "fallen arm" as well as a series of monolithic mechanical vistas. Every environment, save for one, is unique, interesting, and beautiful. It is rare that a game world is as captivating as the one in Xenoblade and for that alone the developers should be commended. Despite a bit of pop-in and some framerate hiccups, the world of Xenoblade is a true technical marvel, especially on a console as underpowered as the Wii.
Luckily, the gameplay is just as impressive. Part of this has to do with the pacing. The game gives you tons of things to do outside of combat (there are literally hundreds of side quests) and it fervently encourages exploration. Although the basic structure involves trekking from point A to point B to push the story forward, the game gives you experience points for finding new "landmarks", effectively providing the player an incentive for exploring the beautiful and massive game world. It is the perfect fusion of the freedom that WRPGs are known for and the tightly controlled narrative that is the bread and butter of JRPGs. You won't find another JRPG that is as well-balanced from a pacing perspective. Never does the game feel like a claustrophobic journey through corridors, but it doesn't ever feel aimless either. You can choose to be curious and bask in the game's pitch perfect sense of adventure or you can simply push forward.
Although the game offers more to do outside of combat than the highly divisive Final Fantasy XIII, you're still going to be fighting quite a lot. Monolith-soft has made combat as enjoyable as possible by crafting a system that is accessible but offers tons of depth for more hardcore players. Basically, you control one character in your party (however, you can configure your party however you want) and the AI controls the other two characters. Your character will auto attack, but your job is use the right special moves at the right time to achieve maximum damage and to effectively heal and effectively employ buffs and debuffs. The twist is that Shulk's Manado can anticipate the future even in battle. This means that the game will grant you a "vision", which basically means that the game will tell you when the enemy is going to hit you with a powerful attack. This knowledge allows you to do something to avoid taking lethal damage: you can shield yourself or heal to minimize the effects of the attack and thereby change the future. The game also has combo attacks, which lets your three characters attack in a chain. This feature lets you take brief control of your other characters to effectively string together attacks with your main character. I find that this establishes a good middle ground between controlling one character and controlling the others. Another feature that lets you take brief control of another character is the act of "warning". At the cost of one talent gauge bar (the talent gauge is a bar that fills up as you land hits; when it is full, you can unleash a chain attack), you can warn one of your comrades of an impeding attack, which allows you to use one of their special attacks to combat it. One bar of the talent gauge also buys you one revival of a downed character. I found that darting around and reviving downed characters before being decimated added some exciting tension.
Even regular enemies can be pretty challenging, so its nothing short of brilliant that your party recovers all their HP after every fight. Without a harsh penalty for dying, battles are squarely focused on the fun of a good challenge instead of making the player worry about how many potions they'll have to use if they just barely survive the battle (Xenoblade has no health potions whatsoever; healing arts take care of all your medical needs). Of course the most challenging fights are the boss battles. A few of them will make you rage, but all of the boss encounters are great fun and most of them will have you at the edge of your seat.
One of the most notable aspects of Xenoblade is just how much customization there is. There seems to be hundreds of weapons and pieces of armor and amazingly, most of them are different in appearance as well as function. You can spend hours fiddling about with the different armor/weapons options. Like other games in the genre, you can outfit your armor and weapons with gems, which increase stats like attack power, HP, agility, defense, accuracy, etc. But the cool thing about Xenoblade's gems is that you can collect them as loot or you can make them from crystals you harvest in the game world by loading the crystals into a gem-crafting furnace. This metagame is relatively simple but it is very satisfying to be able to make your own gems, offering a degree of flexibility and freedom that is not seen in other games in the genre.
There are many other systems and some of these have a steep learning curve, but the brilliant thing about their execution is that the game doesn't force them on you. You can beat the game without ever messing with skill links or heart-to-hearts or any of the game's other optional activities.
As I mentioned before, Xenoblade has tons of side quests, more than I've never seen in a JRPG (there are literally hundreds of them). Many of them are fetch/kill quests, but some of them are quite interesting (there is one quest in which you are tasked with rebuilding an entire village) and most of them pay off in experience. You also get money for completing side quests but experience and equipment will serve as your primary motivation. The game gives you so much loot that lack of money is never an issue. One of the most brilliant design choices in regards to the side quests is that you don't actually have to return to the quest giver to complete a quest. This kind of convenience is what makes Xenoblade such a smartly designed game.
Although much care has gone into the making of Xenoblade, there are a few rough edges, namely the character model visuals. Environments are nothing short of breathtaking, with their vibrant and creative art design, but the characters can look a little shoddy. To their credit, they have varied and realistic features (this is not a JRPG in which all the characters have huge alien eyes), but they don't look like they are sporting very many polygons, giving them a low-res look that is a little jarring in comparison to the gorgeous environments that they are traversing. However, though it is disappointing that the character models lack polish, it is understandable. With a game world that is so ambitious and expansive, something had to be sacrificed. If I had to choose between high fidelity character models and a huge game world, I'd choose the latter every time.
Xenoblade is a good looking game most of the time, but is always a good sounding game. The music is beautifully composed with gorgeous melodies and plenty of sonic atmosphere. With not a single dud in the soundtrack and a surprising amount of mesmerizing tracks, Xenoblade's OST is the best I've heard since Final Fantasy X.
As a final note, I think it's important to mention that you should use a classic controller if at all possible. The remote/numchuck set up is not bad, but it does not feel nearly as natural as the classic controller set up. With the remote/numchuck combo, you might find yourself having to get used to the controls. With the classic controller, no such learning curve exists.
As superb as Xenoblade is, in some ways it is a bittersweet experience. It does such an excellent job of wrapping freedom, exploration and a tight narrative in smart design choices and breathtaking locales that you can't help but feel a pang of regret that there were not more JRPGs like this released this console generation. Hopefully other JRPG developers are taking notes.
GAMEPLAY: 5/5
DESIGN: 5/5
STORY: 4.5/5
VISUALS: 4/5
PLAYABILITY: 4.5/5
VALUE: 5/5