Xenoblade Chronicles X review
Xenoblade Chronicles X is a strange game, even by JRPG standards. The distant planet of Mira is harsh and unforgiving, filled with verdant plains and giant beasts, and Xenoblade unceremoniously plops you into the middle of it all and expects you to figure most of it out on your own. Its a lot to take in, and its opening hours are often as overwhelming as they are awe-inspiring. But if you can sift through its bewildering, convoluted systems and its lackluster plot, youll find an adventure thats still well worth undertaking - and youll get to pilot a giant mech while you do it, too.
Caught in the middle of a conflict between two rival alien factions, humanity makes the best effort it can to flee Earths imminent destruction Battlestar Galactica-style, and ends up crash-landing on Mira, thousands of light-years away. So here you are, on a planet thats filled with structures and rock formations that would never in a million years exist on Earth, and its your job to carve out a space for humanitys survival. That means surveying the planet, gathering resources, fighting massive, screen-sized Tyrants and other, lesser beasts, planting data probes, and taking on odd jobs and requests from the citizens of New Los Angeles, the last bastion of the human race.
This struggle for survival becomes Xenoblades overarching plot, and by making it the focus, Xenoblade avoids many of the pitfalls that plague narrative in open-world games while introducing a few new ones of its own. On the one hand, it makes sense for you and your crew to dink around for hours just chipping away at side quests because your work is usually a net positive for humanity as a whole. Unfortunately, this shift in focus makes for a passive narrative, with the biggest story beats happening to you, instead of because of you. It takes nearly a dozen hours for a proper villain to make itself known, and even longer for a conflict to arise out of it. While Xenoblades sense of narrative scale is admirable, its big story beats are spaced too far apart, becoming brief punctuation marks after hours upon hours of other activities. It makes for a plot that ends up feeling sparse, and as a result its biggest twists fall a little flat.
But while the overarching plot is relatively weak, Xenoblade more than makes up for it by filling out the world with tons of interesting side stories. These vignettes are well worth taking the time to discover, vacillating between goofy and heart-wrenching and everything in between, and do a lot to flesh out both the world youre exploring and the people and species you come across while rewarding you with new items to buy or unlocking additional gameplay quirks. Best of all, these quests are able to do it without dumping a ton of lore over your head.
When youre not hoofing it to your next quest destination and soaking in the breathtaking sights, youll spend your time fighting the indigenous wildlife in a fast-paced strategic combat system reminiscent of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. Xenoblades twist is that many of the skills used by various party members will combo with your own - follow up your buddys stagger attack with your topple attack and youll cripple your opponent for a few precious seconds. Its a complex, frenetic, multilayered system, and figuring out which combos work best keeps combat fresh, even when you have to grind a bit to level up your party.
Then you get your own Skell - Xenoblades name for its giant transforming mechs - and they change everything about how you interact with the world. After spending over 30 hours exploring Mira on foot and getting intimately familiar with its layout, the Skells allow you to speed through - or, eventually, fly over - previously insurmountable obstacles. Xenoblade really wants you to earn it too, taunting you with glimpses early on and forcing you to undergo a series of fetch quests and trials to prove you deserve to own one.
Once you get one, youll find that combat is similar, though your attacks have a lot more punch. Theres also more risk involved, as youll need to watch your fuel and health levels as you use them. Run out of fuel and you wont be able to use abilities in combat; blow up your Skell and theres a chance that youll lose it for good unless you pay a hefty repair fee. Skells provide a unique risk/reward hook to the gameplay.
In addition to fighting the native flora and fauna, youll have to scour the globe for randomly-generated item crystals, and thats where much of Xenoblades grind sets in. Most missions involve some combination of finding particular items or defeating a certain set of monsters, and require you to smartly navigate the environment to find your objective. Unfortunately, many of Xenoblades quests dont explicitly tell you where you need to go, leaving you to wander each of Miras five ridiculously large continents for hours while you hunt down arbitrary item drops. Its best to just load up on as many side quests as you can and whittle away at them while you take on the more unique affinity and story quests, or youll drive yourself crazy for hours looking for a single California sunset. You really shouldnt have to do this, but its the best way to keep things moving forward, and at least you get some regular rewards for your efforts.
If all of this sounds like a lot of information to handle at once, thats because it is, and Xenoblade shoves you into the deep end with only a few tutorial messages to get you up to speed. There are dozens of incredibly deep intertwining systems that are given a screen or two of explanation before youre thrown to the grexes.
Like Mira itself, trying to get a grasp of Xenoblade Chronicles X can be inscrutable and vexing at times. But in a way, that quest for knowledge often mimics the plight of the humans who find themselves stranded on the alien planet that becomes humanitys new home. Understanding Xenoblades complexity isnt easy or always immediately obvious, but stick with it and youll find a vast, untamed land where simply existing is its own reward.
Source: Gamesradar.com
