Xenoblade is my favorite game of all time. It renews standard JRPG formula and brings something new to the whole genre.
Let's get the not that important thing out of the way first, the graphics. Well actually I wouldn't call them not important in this game, because the game looks superb, and it's even on Wii! It of course has jagged edges and low resolution because of Wii's limitation, but those didn't seem to get in the way of the developers from creating the most beautiful, and one of the largest worlds ever in video games. Graphics don't need to be high resolution to look beautiful, and because you're not in first person and constantly looking things up close, they don't even seem that muddy compared to some first person 360 and PS3 games, developers clearly knew how to exploit the point of view when creating the graphics.
Story is really, really good. The first two hours threw me completely off and it introduced story twists rarely seen in video games, especially RPG's. It's also great that the game immediately begins in the middle of battle and you get to actually control your character as it introduces the combat mechanics. You're n ot given some 30 minutes of cutscenes before you can start even move in the first town, and it doesn't take another hour or so to get to combat like in some games.
So, what is the story about? You play as Shulk, a young boy living in Colony 9 and really skilled in fixing things. One day these evil mechanical beings called Mechon attack Colony 9, and you get a hold of a sword called Monado, which lets you see in the future and is basically only weapon capable of harming the mechon. I gotta mention the cutscenes here because they're just awesome. The fight scenes in them are superbly done, they're fluid and look like they're from some anime. If you think games like Mass Effect are cinematic just wait till you see this game, ME, and almost every other game too looks so clumsy and awkwardly done compared to Xenoblade's cutscenes. The camera moves like in the best of anime and character movement is tight, it has those "oh snap!" moments. But I digress. So, with Monado Shulk is able to chase the Mechon out of the city, but he swears revenge for them for attacking his home, and goes with his friends to try and kill them once and for all with Monado, that for some reason Shulk is the only one able to wield correctly and use its powers.
This seems like just a revenge story at first, and it is that, but as you continue things start to come to light and maybe not everything is as it seems. As for the characters, no one is your typical emo anime douchebag, and no one has really crazy and stupid looking haircuts either. Shulk is likeable, optimistic person, and others are very likeable too, even the sometimes annoying comedic relief, Riki, who actually is maybe the best fighter in the game. They don't overuse him either, but keep it to just the right amount. Every character grows during the game, everyone has their own story arc and they're very emotional at times.
World as I said is big, one of the biggest ever in video games. Bigger than Skyrim or any other game these days. It's not full of interactive stuff like Skyrim though, it's all pre-rendered. Story takes place on these two colossal kind of like gods or titans, named Mechonis and Bionis. In the beginning there was only sea and these two battled, and eventually both got a fatal wound to each other, and they freezed, and in time life began to grow on both of these titans. Mechonis and Bionis are just huge, you start from Bionis' leg, climb up it's knee, to his hip, backside, head, arm, inside it, just everywhere and eventually you even get to Mechonis. These titans have really varied locations on top of them. There're green forests, snowy mountains, summer-y beach and ocean, waterfalls, big cities and there's some kind of fungi growing inside it too. All these areas look simply beautiful. Outside areas also have day/night cycle, and everything looks a bit different at night, and music reflects that a bit more calm nature of night.
Now for the combat, and this is maybe the biggest change to more traditional JRPG formula. You have a handful of characters to choose from. Shulk is really heavy hitter, there's two tanks, a medic, support, DPS guy and one that can be modified to be bit of all or focus on one area. The setup is more like in some MMO actually. You have two tanks because both serve a bit of different purpose, other one is your heavy armor dude with massive physical defence and focuses more in supporting the group rather than attacking heavy, while other is agility type in light or no armor at all, dodging attacks and also dealing pretty massive damage with fast attacks.
When you enter combat an action bar is at the bottom of the screen, where you choose what attack to perform, the character does it, and you have to wait for it to cool down, kind of like in MMO. You control only 1 character at a time. AI does great job, there's never been any instance when you fail because medic didn't heal you or something like that, and they never get in your way. You have maybe around 15-20 skills available, but you can only put 8 at a time to the action bar, it's all up to you how you want to arm your AI partners and yourself to support the group best and also attack hard.
You get AP from battles that you get to use to upgrade these skills. You can't upgrade them all at one playthrough though, so you have to choose your best skills and maybe couple of extras. These skills also have tiers from 1-3. 1 is open immediately, but to be able top upgrade your skills further you need to buy manuals and use them to unlock these tiers.
There're variety of monsters to slay around the world. Most of the enemies are docile and won't attack you, but some attack you if they see you, but you can sneak behind them, but some attack based on sound. There's clear icon above each enemy that what level it is, red means it's way out of your league, it's yellow when they're somewhat above you but you're able to beat them with some careful tactics. Icon also shows is it docile or attacks on sight or when hearing you. When you return to areas where enemies are way below your level, even those that normally attack on sight won't come at you, you yourself have to initiate combat if you want to fight them, it doesn't force you to fight with enemies you can kill with just one hit. Though there are some bosses, or more special enemies in quests, that will attack you regardless of your high level.
Armors and their design in this game are a huge plus. I always love when armors in games visibly change the appearance of characters, but Xenoblade takes it even further. Each armor on every character doesn't look the same, they're completely different from each other. For example armor on Shulk is completely different from Dunban, your agility tank, who can't use his right arm and has in all his armor some kind of cover over that arm, but others don't. There're probably 50+ different armor types and it's always fun to try each of the armor on. These armor also have weights, light, medium and heavy. Light of course gives better agility where as heavy gives more physical defence, you get the picture. Every character can use every armor once you unlock the ability to use them by having high enough affinity with others, which is kind of like how much the other person likes you. This affinity doesn't change the story, but changes the combat with variety of different buffs and little stuff like giving more exp from finding locations.
The game is really balanced between action, exploration, story bits and cutscenes. There's never the feel that story is forgotten for too long, or that cutscenes are too long. Monolith has found a perfect middle between giving great story heavy cutscenes while keeping them brief, and actually letting us play the game which seems to be really rare in JRPG's for some reason :D
I would probably call this game like a single player MMO on Wii, if that makes any sense :D Many things like the action bar and cooldown, and discovering locations like in Guild Wars 2, or the specializations of characters like tanks, medic etc. just remind me a lot of MMO games and in very good way.
Xenoblade is just awesome game, story kept me guessing and as it began to really unfold, it held me on the edge of my seat for the last 20 or so hours. I've gotten way over 100 hours in the game, first time completing took me around 80-90 hours, and now I'm on my second playthrough on new game+, so you definitely get your money's worth from the game. Combat is great, music is great, story is great, world is great, graphics are great. This is just a perfect game for me, the best one ever made. If you like JRPG's and have Wii or Wii U, get this, right now. And if you don't have Wii, I think this game alone is worth buying the console or just buy Wii U.