Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition Review - I Recommend This Game
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At last though I have finally devoted the time and energy to playing and completing Xenoblade.
Either way the game is done and after about 60 hours what did I think? I think my opinions on the game are complicated.
Let's break it down. Mechanics; oh boy does this game have em and from what I know about Xenoblade 2 that game has even more menus and systems that you can forget exist. Thankfully there aren't so many in Xenoblade and the one that you are likely to forget you can probably just ignore unless you are trying to min- max the hell out of the game for Expert mode.
Gameplay wise the game plays very much like an MMO or Dragon Age Origins. This is not turn-based and there are no direct inputs for normal attacks. When you engage in combat, whichever character you are controlling will auto attack and you have a selection of specials you can activate that once activated will go on cool down. Each character gets a whole list of skills from which you'll have to pick to add to your action bar. All in all this seems very typical to the mmo type experience. Where Xenoblade stands out is that many of your skills require you take take advantage of positioning if you want to inflict debuffs on the enemy. Side attacks and back attacks all have special effects that take place when you orient yourself correctly. Employing positioning and landing these debuffs matter. You see that blue bar up there. Yeah thats the win the game bar. Everything you do in this game combat wise is gear towards filling up that bar without which you're going to have a hard time. That is the chain attack gauge.
The chain attack gauge can be used for other things as well. It can be used to resurrect fallen party members, attempt to stop enemy special moves and so on.
Level progression. The level progression is a bit ridiculous. You will spend a lot of the game traversing huge areas that again remind me of MMO gameplay. You are expected to complete a plethora of side quests in these huge areas in order to gain experience and money. YOU NEED TO DO THESE SIDEQUEST. If you are not a high enough level because you didn't spend time grinding then you will get your ass kicked.
The gameplay is serviceable. It's not spectacular but it's not bad.
Before we move onto talking about the story this may be a good time to address my biggest gripe with the game. THE PACING. The game took me about 60 hours to complete but that's only because halfway through the game I started doing only the absolute minimum when it came to side quest. You will spend hours in the early game making your way across huge MMO style maps completing pointless MMO style side quests. Every time I entered a new area there would literally be a NPC waiting by the entrance to give me anywhere from 5-10 farm or kill quest which would have me zigzagging across the map.
The story starts off strong with a massive fight scene between these colossal beings, an epic short war movie and then bam you are in the game. You check out the start town do a few side quests, not too bad…yet, and then the Mechon attack. We see life, death and the impact on our main character Sulk. A great start and then side quest, more side quest, grinding and more grinding. The world you are traversing is beautiful. Much of the vistas are more unique than what Ive seen in most other games but these zones are too damn big.
I'm going to avoid spoilers in this review so I'm not going to get too deep into the specifics of the story but it's great. This may be one of the best told, cinematic stories I've seen in a JRPG but getting to the meat of the story is a big problem. When I look at the plot I can split it into three arcs; the human arc, the bird arc and the robot arc. 70% of the story doesn't happen till the last 3rd of the game. It took me 40 hours to get through the first two arcs of the game and the whole time I was being teased with a good story that had a few really good action scenes but no real plot, just the characters yelling we have to get to a certain place. By time all of the party members come together and the plot finally gets going you may very well be sick of playing.
If you power through to the last 15 to 20 hours of the game its non stop plot and action. The story is Xenoblades biggest strength but the pacing is its biggest weakness, too much time spent wandering in the beginning of the game and too much plot shoved into the final hours. If the opening areas had been shrunk by ⅓ to ½ and the story presented evenly this would be one of my favorite games ever.
After taking everything into consideration I can recommend you buy Xenoblade because the story is just that good.
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