Xenoblade Chronicles

[TKz]

Yeah, so, any fellow Brits out there going to be picking this up in the next few weeks? I wasn't so interested in it until I watched some of the gameplay earlier today and decided for £30, I'll probably pick it up along with a classic controller, because fuck using the Wii remote for a JRPG. Looks really good, the graphics look great for a Wii game and it'll hopefully be better than FFXIII at least. The battle system is supposed to be like a combination of XIII and XII, but better than both. So that's good. There's also duel language options apparently, so even if for some reason you don't like the EU voice acting (I don't know why you wouldn't, it's all pretty good and doesn't sound quite as goofy as... FFXII for example) you can play with the Japanese and subtitles turn on!

http://youtu.be/h6dgXE9BcTs

That's the video I was watching earlier that sold me on it!

[Ruki]

Seems interesting enough. Is it only available for the Wii?

[TKz]

Yeah, Wii exclusive, but it can use the classic controller if you have one, so that's nice.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Ooooh, and it's a Monolith Soft game.

[Ruki]

I lack a Wii, so I shall forget this game even exists!

[Beefus of Bethesda]

The Glory of a Modded Wii, I'll be downloading this as soon as it hits the tracker.

[Robsturgh]

This looks amazing. So much so that I'm almost considering shelling out for a Wii. Almost.

[TKz]

You can get one for like... £60 over here. I found it to be a pretty worthwhile investment. I get a surprising amount of use out of it. And yeah, if you mod it, which I've heard is pretty easy, it's even more worth it.

[Beefus of Bethesda]

You can get one for like... £60 over here. I found it to be a pretty worthwhile investment. I get a surprising amount of use out of it. And yeah, if you mod it, which I've heard is pretty easy, it's even more worth it.

Insanely easy and way more than worth it. If I didn't mod my Wii last year it would still be collecting dust but now with a deadPS3 and a shitty DS, it's the centerpiece of my entertainment center, everything runs through it.

EDIT: I love the Internet, as I'll be playing over here in Canada before you guys can buy it.

I guess [North] America wins again.

Edited August 17, 2011 by Beefus of Canada

[TKz]

Well if you want to look at it like that then everyone wins, because the downloads aren't exactly limited to just NA.

So, I'm 5 hours into this now, I was going to buy it but after modding my Wii and finding that Xenoblade was pretty much the only well seeded torrent, I ended up downloading it. I actually regret that after these few hours and think I might end up buying it just based on how good it is.

This game is freaking wonderful. Anyone that likes the Final Fantasy series should pick this up, because it's everything the last few games since X have failed to be. It takes the battle systems from XII and XIII, combines them, polishes them up and makes them fantastic. Usually two things I hate are RPG's with XII style battles and enemies that appear on screen, but both are done so well here that I can't complain about it at all.

Anyone that was disappointed with the complete lack of how open XIII was will love this, I've played five hours, but I think I've actually only played like 2 hours of story because I've been running around doing side missions and so on mostly. So far they've all been stuff like kill x amount of x, or find this item (which usually requires killing something), but again, really I'm not far in the game at all so I expect it'll open up more.

The characters are surprisingly likeable, the voice acting is a bit... eh, at first, but it starts to grow on you. The story is really quite interesting and has played out really well so far, so much so that I haven't been able to stop playing since I started earlier today. The cut scenes are just the right length too, the longest being about 5 minutes (if that) and you're pretty much always in control of your character and free to take any route you want to get somewhere. Obviously there's only really one route to continue the story (in my experience so far, remember only 5 hours), but if you feel the need to go off to east and explore first, you can.

Lots of fun little extra bits too. Different enemies at day and night, but it's actually a fun system as you can set the time of day/night, armour buffing from creating gems, your weapons and armour actually physically change when you change them (which I love, it's great to see your characters appearance change as you progress.) Overall it feels a lot like a JRPG team sat down, looked at the pros and cons of the genre as it is and then decided to learn from both past mistakes AND where a lot of western RPG's have succeeded.

Controls are fine as well, for anyone wondering. I was a bit hesitant because I have to use my Wiimote + Nunchuck at the moment as I don't have a Nintendo Classic Controller, but it's actually been fine to use. I mean, having two analog sticks, one for camera and one for movement, would be preferable, but it's really not bad at all right now.

So yeah, for those who found that to be tl;dr, if you like RPG's, if you like games, if you like fun, buy this game. Or acquire it through sneaky means. Either way, play it.