Big mecha in a beautiful world? I'll take it.
What it is.
It would be very unfair to just try and list all the things Xenoblade Chronicles X does right or wrong. Sure, you could take the game apart and weigh the good against the bad, but that would be missing the point entirely. This is a huge game. It's a JRPG, so it's huge by definition, and it has a lot of systems that you need to learn in order to play the game and enjoy it like it was designed to be enjoyed. That will take you the first, say 10 hours. The rest can take anywhere from 120 to 200, and surprisingly, there is enough content in this game to make those two hundred feel not empty at all. There is a ton of things to do, and the game is very smart about how it makes you do them. Story missions have progress requirements, so you'll be doing exploration and affinity missions in between, because you'll have to. The best part of it is that you'll really enjoy doing both.
XCX has two pillars on which it stands, the first one being a beautiful, huge world that you can't wait to fully uncover, with all the amazing species of "indigens", as they're called in the game, great looking vistas, and a lot of secrets. The second pillar is the very solid gameplay experience. Sure, the combat feels like an MMO, but it's been enhanced enough to be really tactical, engaging and enjoyable. What's even better is how the game handles things that usually would be huge frustration generators: you can save wherever you want, fetch quests turn themselves in, you can fast travel literally everywhere, and hard bosses give you the option to lower the difficulty after three defeats. And that's just scratching the surface of how player-friendly it is.
It's clear that the guys at Monolith know very well what the modern player doesn't like to do in games, and because od that potential frustrators are pretty much removed from the game entirely.
The story in the game is very much an anime mecha story, and while most players will probably consider it pretty regular, I found it refreshing and the several plot twists it offers were just what I needed to go, "yeah, that's cool!" It might not be life-changing, but it's deep nonetheless, and optional character stories are nicely embroidered onto the canvas of the main questline. And if I'm being completely honest, open world RPGs of this scope can mostly only wish to have a story this well scripted. It doesn't have to be groundbreaking when it's written so well.
It's important to go into this game knowing that it's an anime game, so to speak. The cutscenes are LONG and full of typical anime moments, with sorrow, humor, weird Japanese comedy, soapy drama, and so on. The fact that the guy who voiced Teddie in P4 voices XCX's Teddie equivalent is pretty great, and the dialog translation isn't awful.
As I said above, writing about every single system in the game is pointless - there's just so many, and as a matter of fact all you need to know is that they work, and after some initial getting used to, they're pretty great.
I should probably also mention that I haven't noticed anything in the game that's broken enough to actually mention here, and believe me - I looked. The only thing that might be a slight annoyance is that sometimes after fast travel the enemies take a moment too long to load, and then they suddenly appear out of nowhere, 20 levels stronger than you. Still, it's hard to get angry at that because there is no penalty for dying in this game whatsoever (if you die on foot). Sometimes when you ride your mech in its vehicle form the same thing happens, and you stop in an empty space only to be surprised by enemies that loaded in too late, but you can just drive off and there won't even be a battle. Other than that I really have no complaints because everything else in the game is very much a question of taste and personal preferences. If you don't like the battle system the way it is, you won't enjoy the game even if the system itself is flawless, right?
Aftertaste.
Xenoblade Chronicles is a game that lets you do everything you want. It lets you dress your character up in cool anime-wear, pilot giant robots, and explore a world that's nothing short of stunning. To me, the planet Mira and exploring its riches was what made the experience such a magical one. The visual style is so vivid and full of life that it's really hard not to think about that place even long after the Wii U is turned off. There are some really intelligent messages in the game, and that makes the entire journey even more worth taking. It takes a long time, sure, but isn't that what we expect from JRPGs anyway? I must point out that not only is Xenoblade Chronicles X a fantastic game on its own, it's also a great entry in the Xeno legacy. I was really immersed in this very believable world, bewitched with the creature and landscape designs, and really quite honestly, in love with the game. I think it would be hard not to be, if you consider yourself a fan of any of the game's elements. Sure, some people just won't get it and see it as a mediocre "single player MMO", but that would pretty much be the equivalent of calling Skyrim a bad game because of the amount of glitches present in it. You know what I mean?
Yeah you can take it apart, summarize everything and weigh it - you'd get a very good game.
If you choose to just look at the picture in its entirety - you get a fantastic game.
I give Xenoblade Chronicles X five stars because it just feels like that; it's a game that you want to play all day and all night long. I really didn't like the early morning hours when I wanted to continue playing, but my body just wouldn't have it. That to me is the mark of a five star game, you see; when a game is so engaging and immersive that you want to take sleep out of your life (or you take days off work on some bs excuse) just to play it more, all the little issues just don't matter anymore. In other words, when a game is mediocre, you have to weigh the good and the bad, because you're trying to justify the purchase to yourself and to others - some issues are just too important to overlook when the whole game is just nothing special. But when a game like Xenoblade Chronicles happens, none of that even matters, and that's your five stars right there.
