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Xenoblade Chronicles X
Wii U
LOST… in… Space.
3.5/5 stars
Back in the 7th Generation, the lack of quality RPGs and Nintendo’s early decision not to localize several promising games outside of Japan prompted the Internet to start Operation Rainfall, in order to spur a deluge of titles to shower down upon the Wii like so many raindrops. The original “Xenoblade Chronicles” was the spearhead for Operation Rainfall, which successfully managed to convince Nintendo of Europe and eventually Nintendo of America to proceed with localized releases.
“Xenoblade Chronicles X” (“Xenoblade X”) did not face a tumultuous path to release, nor is it a direct sequel to what many Wii gamers (wrongly) called ‘the best RPG of the last 75 years.’ Instead, “Xenoblade X” is simply an attempt by MonolithSoft, the Nintendo second-party responsible for the ‘Xenoblade’ IP to create a new franchise name in the face of the facts that Square-Enix still owns “Xenogears” and Namco-Bandai still owns “Xenosaga.” Where is this new IP taking us? Into the sandbox, apparently.
Presentation
“Xenoblade X” is not simply an HD version of “Xenoblade Chronicles.” The character models have been redesigned to disastrous effect, with a semi-deformed semi-anime quality that makes them all look samey, with facial features that appear at times to be melting. The environments and creatures, however, are just as amazing as they were in the original “Xenoblade Chronicles,” with vast, detailed landscapes, gorgeous lighting that changes based on the time of day, and creature ecosystems reminiscent of James Cameron’s “Avatar.” Of course, the reason the environments and creatures make me gush over them the same way I did after my last ‘Xenoblade’ experience is due to the fact that they are heavily recycled. There really aren’t that many new creature designs, which is disappointing, as it is clear that the concept artists who came up with these creatures have creativity to burn. Even more disappointing, though, is the fact that, even with the HD prowess of the WiiU, MonolithSoft couldn’t get rid of the jaggies, as there are a LOT of them. MonolithSoft also used an unnecessarily small font for the game's UI, making it difficult to read the small, rapid flashes of text that frequently pop-up on screen... and impossible to read if playing on the WiiU Gamepad screen.
The audio in “Xenoblade X” is kind of a disaster. Like its predecessor, each major area of the game features a ‘Day Theme’ and a ‘Night Theme.’ For the most part, these themes are still fantastic. Unfortunately, someone in the sound engineering department decided that in order to better pander to a Western audience the game needed Hip-Hop tracks… with vocals… *shudder* These horrible Hip-Hop tracks, which feature lots of grunting and incoherent noises that invoke images of constipated geese and braying donkeys, completely ruin the experience of walking around the game’s central hub city and make a number of the game’s battle themes simply obnoxious and grating. Don’t get me wrong, there are a couple of absolutely fantastic tracks in “Xenoblade X” – some even with vocals! – but there are far too many clunker tracks that mar the game’s OST legacy.
The voiceacting is a completely unspectacular anime-style dub, with bland performances for most of the characters. Even worse, during many of the game’s cutscenes, the horrible background music is so much louder than the voices, sub-titles are absolutely essential.
Technically, “Xenoblade X” is a solid game. It never crashed on me or demonstrated any game-breaking bugs, despite having an enormous open world and numerous disparate questlines. However, just because it didn’t self-destruct doesn’t mean that “Xenoblade X” deserves praise for its technical presentation. The game is tortoise-slow with its load times… and it is loading constantly. Like its predecessor, “Xenoblade X” streams environments, characters, and enemies off the disc as the player explores, but unlike “Xenoblade Chronicles,” this game has massive, unforgivable issues with pop-in that can prevent the player from seeing important NPCs. Even worse, the models that slowly load-in start with sub-N64-grade placeholder textures that look like someone smeared mashed potatoes and gravy on the model that slowly, slowly get replaced with the ‘real’ textures… and this texture streaming slowness affects EVERYTHING in the game, including characters in the player’s party.
Story
Titling this game “Xenoblade Chronicles X” implies that it has something to do with “Xenoblade Chronicles” and its titular ‘alien sword,’ the Monado. This is not the case, as “Xenoblade X” doesn’t connect to the previous game in any way, nor does it contain any particularly exotic edged weapons.
Instead, “Xenoblade X” is like a mashup fanfiction written by someone who had just finished binge-watching the “Battlestar Galactica” remake from 2004, J.J. Abrams’ “LOST,” and “Babylon 5.” The Earth has been destroyed, caught-up in an interplanetary conflict between two opposing alien forces. Humanity managed to assemble a number of ark ships, called Whales, but only one, the While Whale, managed to escape into space. Two years later, the aliens that destroyed Earth mysteriously track-down the White Whale and shoot it down over a mysterious planet called Mira. Setting-up housekeeping in the While Whale’s intact residential hub, the last dregs of humanity need to scrape together enough resources to survive while figuring out exactly what the aliens, dubbed ‘xenos’ by the game’s characters, want.
The story opens with our silent protagonist (fully customizable, though sadly lacking in adjustable boob sizes for female characters thanks to feminist nonsense in the gaming press) being rescued from a lifepod by a brown-skinned, silver-haired woman named Elma. Elma drags our survivor back to the wreckage of the White Whale, now a city dubbed New Los Angeles, and proceeds to enroll the mute in the BLADEs, a para-military organization hastily put together in order to explore Mira and defend humanity from hostile indigenous life. Elma and a droopy-eyed 13-year-old (almost loli) girl engineer named Lin Lee Koo are ostensibly the main characters of “Xenoblade X,” as they are required for all 12 of the game’s story missions and receive the most character development, yet our bland mute takes center stage as an upcoming prodigy when it comes to exploring, solving people’s problems, and killing megafauna.
“Xenoblade X’s” main story only consists of 12 missions, and could be completed in about as many hours, were it not inspired so much by Bethesda’s Action Sandbox games. Due to this Sandbox influence, the player is required to explore huge sections of the planet Mira and deal with specific sidequests between story chapters. As a result, the game would probably take a minimum of 50 hours to get through. But the game does contain nearly 150 hours of non-mandatory content, including more story stuff that happens AFTER the credits roll. Then there’s the online aspect that relates directly to the ending quote about the ‘story never really ending’ that allows players to team up for post-game grinding through repetitive, boring missions.
It would be one thing if “Xenoblade X’s” relatively short and weak story was actually good, expositive, and wrapped itself up nicely. But it isn’t and doesn’t. Instead, it develops numerous plot threads, including how the human race now inhabits Cylon-like artificial bodies controlled from a remote location, how the planet Mira somehow magically translates languages between numerous xeno races, and how Mira seems to exist outside of space and time like “LOST’s” mysterious Island on a planetary scale… yet these threads are all just left hanging. The game doesn’t even bother to address the huge number of alien ruins dotting Mira’s surface that weren’t put there by the xeno races currently on the planet (since they are all new arrivals who, like the humans, mysteriously can’t leave).
I’ve played RPGs with worse stories. I’ve also played RPGs with worse characters. “Xenoblade X” isn’t particularly strong in either respect, but it isn’t wholly a disaster, as the sense of mystery it builds up is strong. It just feels like the writers left everything open for a sequel that will probably either not happen or won’t actually wrap up loose ends. I did somewhat enjoy the numerous references to previous ‘Xeno’ games, like the While Whale’s suspicious resemblance to the Eldridge from “Xenogears,” portions of the wreckage that look a heck of a lot like the Wave-Form Entity’s prison from “Xenogears,” and the return of the extremely Chris-like Nopons from the first “Xenoblade Chronicles,” but none of these references are actually tied-into anything meaningful. They’re simply wink-nudge moments instead of definitive links to “Xenogears,” which, even in its incomplete and rushed state, had one of the best RPG stories ever told.
Gameplay
“Xenoblade Chronicles” disappointed me with its unimpressive MMO-style combat, lack of direction for AI companions, massive number of missable and tedious-to –track-down quest givers, and its tedious Affinity system. “Xenoblade X” only fixes ONE of those flaws. Nothing is missable in “Xenoblade X,” so players need not obsessively worry about doing every side-quest before advancing the story. Other than that, “Xenoblade X” is just a slightly more streamlined version of its predecessor.
Combat still revolves around auto-attacks interrupted by frequent use of combat Arts, which have wildly variable effects. Each NPC party member is stuck in a specific character class and learns both Arts and passive Skills from that class, while the player is free to change classes via a tree with three branches and five classes on each branch. Mastering a branch allows the player to equip that branch’s weapons and use the associated Arts while in any class. This class system provides a lot of nice customization, and grinding the points to master classes really isn’t terribly arduous, especially if the player masters a class with strong weapons early on and simply uses those weapons for the rest of the game, regardless of class. AI companions can have their Arts and Skills pallets adjusted by the player, and every Art and Skill can be leveled up to a maximum of 5, granting bigger percentages.
All characters in combat still talk constantly, as in the previous game, this time due to a mechanic called ‘Soul Voices,’ which causes characters to call out to their allies to perform a specific type of attack (melee, ranged, aura, support, or debuff), and performing that move provides the whole party with a minor heal and does a bit more damage. Likewise, the annoying QTE-style button presses from the original game are back, this time providing the player with opportunities to have the mute protagonist shout out their own Soul Voice orders. Healing is even more limited in “Xenoblade X” than its predecessor, making Soul Voices and QTEs essential for drawn-out combat.
Like “Xenoblade Chronicles,” “Xenoblade X” relies far too much on evasion in combat. Enemies and characters that are too many levels apart simply will not be able to hit each other. It is also a solid strategy to ignore the Defense stat to focus on the Evasion stat, as many megafauna monsters will one-shot characters regardless, so the only solution is to not get hit.
The equipment system has taken a cue from the 'Diablo' series and adopted random loot with various colors designating the rarity, and thus the number of bonus attributes randomly generated for each piece. Characters can equip a ranged weapon, melee weapon, helmet, body armor, two sleeves, and leg armor, each with a level requirement, variable number of attributes, and variable (and enhanceable) number of Augment slots, which can be filled with customized attributes (but which are practically impossible to craft or find in any numbers before the post-game). I never found myself worrying about buying equipment or crafting Augments until the bitter end of the post-game grind simply because I randomly found Yellow Rarity (the second best) gear early in the game that had better stats than everything I could purchase until maxing out my investments in the various arms manufacturers that stock the in-game shop.
Outside of combat, the vast majority of “Xenoblade X’s” gameplay takes the form of exploration. Character movement is still somewhat sloppy, like in the last ‘Xenoblade’ game, but Bethesda could learn a thing or three from MonolithSoft when it comes to exploring, jumping, and quasi-climbing in a huge open world, as the main character is capable of some truly athletic moves. The player is encouraged to explore the surface of Mira and place data probes all over the place. These probes unlock fast travel points and serve as the player’s source of in-game income. Since enemies don’t drop money and the monster debris they do drop isn’t worth many credits, the player must setup research probes to earn a daily income, which comes in approximately every 24 minutes of game time. The placement of probes and the mapping of Mira are so in-depth that they are practically a mini-game, and both activities make heavy use of the WiiU Gamepad, both for placing probes of various types, lining up probes with various effects in order to gain bonuses, and keeping track of the player's exploration percentage for each of the game's 5 continents.
Probes don’t simply earn credits, though, as they can be used to mine rare minerals and a magical MacGuffin metal dubbed ‘Miranium,’ which can be processed into almost anything, ranging from fuel, to weapons, to household goods. Miranium and the various bits and pieces of debris the player gathers across the surface of Mira all come into play through the game’s crafting system… which is, in an incredibly stupid move, completely useless until the post-game, due to the fact that clearing the final story mission is the only way to unlock most of the crafting recipes.
“Xenoblade X” would be simply a bland mechanical sequel if not for the game’s saving grace: the ability for the player’s party to pilot giant humanoid robots called skells. Skells don’t become available until fairly late in the game, but they are an absolutely fantastic addition to the game’s basic exploration and combat mechanics. Skells not only unlock more explorable areas than foot travel (even moreso near the bitter end when skell flight modules become available), but they add the extra offensive oomph the player’s team needs to deal with megafauna wildlife thanks to the fact that character levels max out at 60 while monsters can go up to 99. Skells help even the playing field, and their incredibly customizable loadouts remind me of why I like the basic concept behind the ‘Armored Core’ series. Unfortunately, the ‘best’ skell in the game has a locked-down set of equipment, and crafting any of the ‘best’ skell equipment is locked away behind a lot of horrific online grinding, which will become flat-out impossible once Nintendo turns-off the servers.
Overall
“Xenoblade Chronicles X” offers an enormous, organic open world to explore and is truly innovative as the first open world game to feature simultaneous on-foot and in-mech activities. Unfortunately, despite this innovation, “Xenoblade X” is still shackled to all of the annoying and tedious mechanics that made the original “Xenoblade Chronicles” the least impressive of the Operation Rainfall games, as well as a weak, directionless narrative. I don’t say this lightly, but “Xenoblade X” would have made a better Action Sandbox game than Action/RPG.
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story: 2.5/5
Gameplay: 3.5/5
Overall (not an average): 3.5/5
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