Xenoblade Chronicles is the best JRPG in over a decade and signals a bright future for the stagnant genre.
Xenoblade Chronicles is headed by one of Nintendo's second party developers, Monolith Soft, and in Xenoblade they've no doubt made their best game. The leader of Monolith Soft is Tatsuya Takahashi, a former employee of Square whose résumé includes classic RPG's such as Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII and Xenogears. With titles such as those in his C.V. you can't help but feel that the guy has the golden touch. But in recent times he's been a bit off with his games. Monolith's most recent RPG's have been the Xenosaga games and Baten Kaitos, but these games don't nearly match the quality of the games he helped craft for the Super NES and PlayStation. Xenogears for the PlayStation is a role-playing masterpiece, but it heavily relied on a rather preachy story and a lot of FMV's. Thankfully the title had solid game play to balance this out because in the latter half of the game the over-use FMV's caused the game to suffer some horrid pacing issues. The Xenosaga trilogy was released for the PlayStation 2 over the course of a few years and was described by Takahashi as 'spiritual successors' to Xenogears. These three games suffered the same problems Xenogears did without the same solid RPG foundation to back them up. The games were released to mixed reviews, making Takahashi change his original plan of releasing six games in the series. But thankfully Xenoblade Chronicles drops all the flashy elements its predecessors had in favour of delivering a purer gaming experience.
The game certainly isn't as story driven as the previous titles to bear the Xeno name, but this doesn't mean that Xenoblade lacks a good story. The opening footage depicts two god-like creatures fighting each other in a world that lacks existence. Battling away the gods eventually die. Thousands of years pass, and eventually the dead bodies of these two gods become home to life. You play the lead role of Shulk, a young 18 year old kid from the region of Colony 9, situated on the leg of the Bionis. The game proper starts a year after a war between the Homs of Bionis and the Mechon of Mechonis. The Homs are in possession of a mystical sword called the Monado, and in the war it was wielded by a man called Dunban. But the Monado is an unforgiving sword, and unless you're the true wielder you suffer a huge amount of strain from using it. Dunban nearly died after the war because of the overuse of the Monado, so the Homs seal it away in Shulk's lab in Colony 9 for further research. But without warning the Mechon make a surprise attack on the Bionis. The Monado though is the only weapon capable of penetrating the armour of the Mechon, so Shulk has no alternative but to use it himself to help the people of Colony 9. But he soon comes face to face with a Mechon that can't be harmed by the Monado, who kills Fiora, one of Shulk's' closest friends and the sister of Dunban. Eventually the Mechon leave Colony 9, but the events lead Shulk on a mission to avenge the death of Fiora.
Xenoblade's story won't ever win any awards for originality, but it's certainly a strong aspect of the game that includes some refreshing moments (which most recent JRPG's have seemed to lack).
One of the main aspects of Xenoblade Chronicles is its sense of freedom and the expansiveness of its game world. The game world is huge, about three times bigger than that of Monster Hunter Tri and beautifully designed. No matter where you explore, be it in a simple plain field of a forest or snow-capped mountain the world will just entice you in its beauty. And the world is that open that even early in the game, when your characters are only about level 5 or 6, you could walk right past a level 50 enemy. It's surprising that Monolith Soft could craft a world so large and richly detailed on the Wii's rather limited hardware. The Wii may lack all the fancy gadgets of the HD consoles, but a lot of due care and attention has been paid in creating Xenoblade's brilliant game world. But I don't think words can really do the world justice, once you play the game for yourselves you'll realise exactly what I mean.
The Affinity System is one of the biggest aspects of the Xenoblade Chronicles. Similar to the Bomber's Notebook of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, the Affinity System tracks the relationships of non-playable characters, their locations and what time they're active. Some NPCs are only active during daylight hours, while others are night lovers. Some of them are only active for a few hours a day, making finding them awkward sometimes. You can regularly update your Affinity System by talking to and recording as many NPCs as possible, and from there you can check their thoughts about others NPCs and their relationships with them. You can also track the relationships of the playable characters through the Affinity System. You get events called 'heart-to-hearts' through the game, but they can only be triggered once you've met the required affinity between two characters. Heart –to-hearts are a really neat way of fleshing out the characters as believable individuals and really add a depth that other JRPGs have lacked in recent years.
So I've already established that Xenoblade has a good story, a brilliantly designed game world that offers a great sense of freedom and great character depth, but this is only the icing on the cake. My personal favourite aspect of the game is the combat system which, in all honesty, is one of the best I've ever come across in not just any Japanese RPG but any RPG outright.
The combat is a master class. The game isn't turn-based; instead the game takes on an action battle system that is like a cross-over between that of Final Fantasy XII and World of Warcraft. If you see an enemy on screen you initiate a battle by tapping either the R or L button on the Wii's classic controller (or by pressing the Z button when using the Wii's Pointer and Nunchuk in combination). You get two forms of enemies, passive and aggressive. Passive don't attack you until you've engaged in battle with them but aggressive enemies automatically go for you when you're in range of them. Once the battle is set you press the attack icon to attack and your characters will attack automatically, with a slight delay coming in between each attack. You don't need to press any button at all for basic attacks once you've engaged an enemy, but this lets your characters Arts come in to play.
Arts are Xenoblade's equivalent of a magic system. As your characters level up they'll learn new Arts that can be used in battle. You can only equip a character with 8 Arts at any one time. Some characters might go on to learn 12 or more different Arts, so equipping them according to surroundings is a tactical must. While you are free to move around during battles you use Arts by selecting them with the d-pad. You don't have disposable magic points in Xenoblade like in other JRPG's, instead your Arts recharge after usage similar to in WRPG's such as Dragon Age or Mass Effect, which means you'll never worry about running out of MP or Ethers in reserve.
As well as gaining experience points from battling you also gain Acquisition Points (AP) and Skill Points (SP). AP is used to level up your Arts to increase their potency (you manually level them up), and SP is used to level up each characters skills. Skills aren't abilities you can directly use in battle like Arts, but they instead increase certain statistics. Once you've unlocked a skill you characters automatically enable their effects and they remain active. You can also Skill Link, so you can link a skill from one character to another, which comes in handy.
Another feature of battles is Chain Attacks. When you fight you'll notice three little boxes at the top of the screen. Whenever you attack or use an Art these boxes will fill. When all the boxes are full you can use a Chain Attack. Chain Attacks link characters attacks together one after the other, and if you time them properly you can chain as much as 15 attacks together to form one super-combo dealing great damage. Chain Attacks aren't needed all the time, but some bosses can only be harmed by chained attacks.
The three boxes don't just serve as a means to use your chain attacks though. Thanks to a quick auto-heal after every battle there isn't any healing items in the game at all, and this goes for items that revive allies also. To revive an enemy you simply spend one of the full boxes. So while chaining attacks together is a great addition you also have to be aware that if you use a chain attack the boxes empty and you'll not be able to revive downed allies until at least one is re-filled. You can only control one character in battle, and if the controlling character dies with no boxes full to revive them then the fight is over. Luckily Xenoblade never punishes you for dying. When you die you simple go back to a previously visited landmark on the map – all items and experience in tact. Some will view this as a means of making the game easier, but don't think that way. I've never played a JRPG that has balanced its difficulty as well as Xenoblade before.
One of the most interesting aspects of the battle system is that the Monado allows the party to see in to the future, meaning you can foresee an enemy attack and stop it from happening.
In my eyes the only downside to the combat system is the inability to pause the game during fights. This isn't a problem most of the time, but some of the games longer boss battles can go on without end in sight, and if you need a toilet break you'll have to wait until the fight is over.
Another thing that aides characters in combat is gems. As you adventure and gain more loot you'll come across raw materials that can be smelted in gem crafting to make gems that can be used by the party. Ala Final Fantasy VII the gems can be equipped to weapons and accessories, so if your character is equipped with a 'Strength Plus I' gem their strength statistic increases. Some weapons and accessories can be equipped with more than one gem and some come with gems already equipped, and swapping gems around due to your surroundings can really aide you. Equipping gems isn't necessary, but it adds more depth to an already in-depth gaming experience.
Exploration is something that is richly rewarded in Xenoblade Chronicles. Because of the sheer size of the game world there's a multitude of opportunities for side quests. Side quests mainly consist of two things – collecting items and killing enemies (but they're not limited to these). Collection quest require you to collect items that people ask you to find. Monster quests require you to kill a certain number of a specific enemy or kill a strong enemy. If you die during a quest you don't need to go back to the quest giver to restart the quest, and once you complete a quest you very rarely have to go back and tell the quest giver. Some quests can only be done at certain times of day or during certain weather patterns. Certain enemies only come out during the night, while others only appear during thunder storms. Obviously some quest vary from this and do require you to return to the giver, but for the most part you're not required to which saves a lot of time and makes adventuring more accessible. To make exploration seem even more accessible Monolith Soft designed the game to give you experience points for completing quests or for finding landmarks scattered throughout the world. And because of the size of the world you can teleport to certain landmarks, which saves a lot of time. You can also skip the in-game clock forward and backward to avoid having to wait until a certain time to talk to the characters who give you quests.
Visually the game looks stunning for a Wii game. There's certainly some times where the textures don't hold up very well, especially close-up to character faces (mainly Shulk's), but the world is aesthetically beautiful and most the time you'll forget you're playing the game on the Wii. But where the visuals are sometimes below par the same thing absolutely cannot be said for the music. Composed by the legendary Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, Xenosaga I) and Yoko Shimomura (Kingdom Hearts) the soundtrack is quite simply one of the best I've heard in modern times. It's quite similar in style to other Mitsuda soundtracks, (expect melodic pieces similar to Chrono Trigger's Green Memories, or songs of up-beat tempos like Bike Chase) but it isn't a rip-off of his earlier work (although, even if it was, would it really be a bad thing?). Also there's between 60 and 100 hours of gaming to be found in Xenoblade (closer to 100 hours), so you'll be getting a lot of value for money out of this one.
Despite everything positive you've read here about Xenoblade there's some problems I thought the game had. While some of these problems weren't massive they may make gamers without a bit of patience be put off by them. For a start you get very little directional help in side quests. Throughout the game you'll notice an arrow in the top-middle of the screen pointing you in direction, but this arrow only ever points towards story related quests. If you get a side quest that sends you to a location you get a small description of where to look, but once you get there you can spend a lot of time aimlessly wandering about. I didn't mind this personally because I love searching for things but, as I said, someone with less patience than me may get bored quickly. Also the frame rate drops during battles with a lot of enemies in screen. This is the only real time when the lesser hardware of the Wii may annoy you because later in the game you'll often fight many enemies at once.
For this entire generation Japanese RPG's have trailed behind those of their Western counterparts, but Xenoblade Chronicles is exactly the re-invention the genre needed and could well influence a massive resurgence of quality in the future development of games in the genre. A lot of people will say that Xenoblade Chronicles could have had better justice done if it was released for either of the HD consoles instead of the Wii, but don't let those people fool you. Final Fantasy XIII, Lost Odyssey, Eternal Sonata, Blue Dragon, Tales of Vesperia and Enchanted Arms are some examples of Japanese RPG's to hit the HD consoles, yet none of these titles are better than this Wii mega-hit. This is because Xenoblade Chronicles is a shining example that, with some hard work and determination, lesser technology doesn't hinder quality game design. The Wii has seriously lacked an abundance of RPG's and those of which have graced the console haven't been mainstream enough to catch much attention, but Xenoblade Chronicles harkens back to Nintendo's glory days when their consoles were the home of RPGs. It's needless to say that every serious JRPG fan and Wii owner needs to own this game (residents of North America should absolutely import the title from Europe), and if you're one of those who have neglected your Wii in recent times I suggest you dust it off. Xenoblade Chronicles is a genre-defining JRPG that simultaneously takes us back to the genres glory days while also signalling a bright future.
Review by: James Widdowson
Score: 9.5/10