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Xenoblade Chronicles

by Andrew Brown - July 31, 2011, 3:16 pm EDT
Total comments: 5

An in-depth look at what's sure to be a role-playing masterpiece!

Having sampled Xenoblade Chronicles for a fairly lengthy amount of time, I have to say this game more than lives up to the hype.

The story goes that long ago, the world was a void of endless sky over endless ocean. Two colossal titans were born, gigantic humanoids of black and white, somewhat resembling Reshiram and Zekrom from Pokémon. The two clashed in an epic battle, ultimately killing each other simultaneously. It is the corpses of these two gods that form the world of Xenoblade, their two swords lodged firmly into each other connecting them like bridges.

Much later, a battle is being waged between the humans, allegedly known as the Homs, and a race of robotic enemies called the Mechonis that are invading the land in attempt to take over. Here we're introduced to the legendary sword seen on the game's cover art, known as the Monado, and the concept that using it is ultimately damaging to its wielder.



The cutscenes are fully voiced, though the English voices are quite poorly acted. There is next to no attempt to fit the lip syncing of the facial animations (which were animated to match the Japanese voices – but this is hardly an excuse), and any emotion in the voices comes off as hokey and transparent. You can however choose the original Japanese voices, and English subtitles will accompany the cut scenes. The voice settings can be customized for each save file, allowing you to have multiple files with different language options attached to them.

At first look the graphics aren't much to write home about – there were plenty of blocky models and polygons clipping through each other in the opening cinematic. But upon seeing the open locations of the actual game, I was quickly put in my place. The world areas are simply enormous, with intricate details like tufts of grass flowing in the breeze and city streets littered with objects stacked haphazardly against the walls. All the textures use soft pastel colors that blend and shade well together, giving the game a rich, artistic, painting-like look. The draw distance is incredible, allowing you to see for miles. The shape of the world remains constant to the areas as well, and a quick look to the skies with the free camera rotation will often give you a rough idea of which part of the god's body you're standing on, and where the other one is located. High-up locations give breathtaking views of the surrounding areas, with thin bridges spanning through the air that simply beg you to leap over the side just to see how far you can fall. Of course, this is allowed as there are no invisible barriers to fence you into each location, and the game often rewards you for exploring well outside your planned travel route.



Once you have visited a location, you can freely revisit any one of the places from the pause menu, allowing fast-travel between the regions and various points within each map area. The game can be saved from any location without the need to reach any particular checkpoints, and you also have the ability to freely change the time of day at your leisure. Different enemies will roam the lands at different times, and NPC characters offer different quests depending on the time.

The diverse (and awesome) soundtrack also changes dynamically along with the time, with day and night versions of each of the overworld tunes.

There are no random encounters, and no separate battle scenes. All enemies can be seen on the map, and if you carefully approach and target them, you'll be presented with a little information panel. This shows the enemy's name, the level, and a little icon that shows how it will react to your presence. Some enemies are vicious and will attack you on sight, some are peaceful unless provoked. This helps you plan whether to engage the enemy, tactfully slip past, or flee the area in case it spots you.

In battle you're given free roam around the immediate area. If you stand within sword's reach of an enemy, your character will automatically hack away until you choose a specific command. Party members will act similarly, with everything happening in real time, while an internal clock will count the “turns” that have taken place and the delay between moves. Enemies sometimes take more damage if you hit them from the back or side, but if you focus too much on one opponent it will become aggravated and focus all its attention on you, making it difficult to maneuver around it. As the battle progresses, a meter in the top left rises that, once full, allows you to perform a combo attack with all three party members at once. This can be used very cleverly with various attacks that inflict different status ailments on foes, for example, one attack can cause “stumble” making the enemy lose its balance. From there, another attack causes a stumbled enemy to fall over, and then a third attack does critical damage on an enemy that happens to be laying on the ground. Another cool battle feature is a future sight ability that allows you to see a critical move that an enemy will make, who it will hit and how much damage it will do. Then, as the turns progress, a timer bar at the top will count down as you race to prevent the attack from happening, or prepare to shield from it as best you can.



There is a decently-sized cast of party member characters. These characters can be rotated in any way you like, and you don't need to have the main character in your party if you so choose. Like in other RPGs, you can build friendships and relationships between the cast members, but Xenoblade actually gives you a chart showing how much your team likes each other, and there's a list of unique story events that occur, showing you where each event takes place and between who, allowing you to build up your friendship and go check it out.

There's a large list of weapons and armor to collect and swap between, all of which are actually seen on your characters as they run around, even in cut scenes.

Finally, completionists have a lot to keep them busy. There's a plethora of sidequests for rare items and weapons, a gigantic list of overworld items to find and deposit into a flora and fauna checklist, a huge system of Materia-like items to link to your weapons, providing additional abilities and skills, there's even a list of achievements for meeting certain conditions, each with various rewards.

After the demo, I was told that an Australian release date will hopefully be revealed very soon. No word was given on whether Australia will get the special edition with the red Classic Controller Pro included, but nonetheless this RPG looks like a true gem for fans and newcomers to get into the genre alike. 

Talkback

EnnerJuly 31, 2011

>and any emotion in the voices comes off as hokey and transparent.

Heh, maybe that's how it is with the Japanese voices. Anyway, it is very nice that there's dual audio. That way an English-speaking audience doesn't have to be aware of poor acting.

Shorty McNostrilJuly 31, 2011

Wow. This game is sounding pretty good. I have heard people praising it but I never got around to looking more into it.  I think this one may be worth picking up.

Is this the part where we show absolutely no empathy and laugh at our American friends?

TJ SpykeJuly 31, 2011

Quote from: Enner

Heh, maybe that's how it is with the Japanese voices. Anyway, it is very nice that there's dual audio. That way an English-speaking audience doesn't have to be aware of poor acting.

Maybe I have been lucky, but most games I have played have had pretty good English voice acting.

EnnerJuly 31, 2011

Quote from: TJ

Quote from: Enner

Heh, maybe that's how it is with the Japanese voices. Anyway, it is very nice that there's dual audio. That way an English-speaking audience doesn't have to be aware of poor acting.

Maybe I have been lucky, but most games I have played have had pretty good English voice acting.

You can see how lucky you have been by checking out YouTube for Great Moments in Voice Acting: Chaos Wars and other games.

TJ SpykeJuly 31, 2011

LOL, that was so bad. The actors sounded so wooden and bored, like they didn't want to be in the studio.

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Xenoblade Box Art

Genre Adventure
Developer Monolith Software Inc.
Players1

Worldwide Releases

na: Xenoblade Chronicles
Release Apr 06, 2012
PublisherNintendo
RatingTeen
jpn: Xenoblade
Release Jun 10, 2010
PublisherNintendo
Rating12+
eu: Xenoblade Chronicles
Release Sep 02, 2011
PublisherNintendo
Rating12+
aus: Xenoblade Chronicles
Release Sep 01, 2011
PublisherNintendo
RatingMature

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