Picked it up over the weekend, spent about 10 hours on it so far and really enjoying it.

Combat feels great and the tutorials give some good explanations of how things play out, finding situations for pretty much every action/spell keep the fights interesting.

The environments are awesome, love the wide open areas and a good sense of exploration (finding badass bosses you know you can't kill, then encountering one at your skill level and having a good challenge).

Didn't know what to expect at first when I bought it, well I knew it had some huge landscapes to run about. Pretty much didn't investigate anything else about it. So far I'm alright with the story, sure it's all JRPG up in your face with its typical drama and all other things that make me cringe with manga/anime but hey, I'm enjoying it!

There's only one in-game thing I'm not sure about and that's the heart-to-heart system, seems as if it's more of a back-travel reason to go to zones (I keep finding them and it's all like "Yo you ain't ready for this").

Also, the option to change voices to Japanese was immediately used.

The english voice cast is shockingly good, I recommend giving it a shot. I find it easier to relate to characters when I understand what they're saying. The localization is good too.

Was going to pick it up but I'm not sure it would be for me.

Is this game coming out on anything other than the Wii? I do own one, but if possible, I love my HD...

Is this game coming out on anything other than the Wii? I do own one, but if possible, I love my HD...

Yeah, Xenoblade is pretty awesome. I just picked it up today after frantically searching for the special edition here in Germany (because I didn't have a classic controller and didn't want to pay 30 euro for one). I'm pretty sure that I got the last special edition copy in town. I've only played for about 3 hours but its really grabbed me so far. I really hope that this game can change the way that JRPGs are made in the future, mostly the combat not being boring.

@Oni: I'm not sure I agree on the English voice work, though yeah - localization has done a great job. The characters sure talk a tonne in battle, that's where I mainly got fed up of English VO.

@TheLastOtaku: Nice one, the Classic Controller works really well with it. Button config is great.

@Marz said:

@Giantstalker said:

Is this game coming out on anything other than the Wii? I do own one, but if possible, I love my HD...

nope, though you could play it on dolphin if you have a powerful computer to see it in HD.

That's what I've been doing, though I also bought a copy for my Wii because I'm not a filthy pirate. There are occasional issues with the emulation (sound stuttering, especially in some cut scenes) and I've had one crash in like 5+ hours of game time, so it's definitely playable. Looks pretty great.

This is one of the games that is not coming out in the US right? It sounds great. I never imported games how would I import this?

The help section of Game says that they ship to the U.S. Here are two links to both the normal game (says out of stock) and the special edition (apparently in stock).  
http://www.game.co.uk/Games/Wii/Action-Adventure/Xenoblade-Chronicles-/~r355973/?s=xenoblade
http://www.game.co.uk/Games/Wii/Role-Playing/Xenoblade-Chronicles-with-red-Classic-Controller/~r355233/?s=xenoblade 
 
As for actually playing the game Joystiq put up an article on how to hack your Wii to play other region games. 
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/19/how-to-play-xenoblade-chronicles-if-you-live-in-america/

I just started it tonight, Living up to the hype so far.

About 90 hours in. Got it 2 days prior to release for review purposes. For obvious reasons, I had to finish the review prior to finishing the game. I'm still not done with the main story - this game is MASSIVE, and to be honest, among the best jrpg games this generation. Heck, even stretching it back a few generations, it stands a real chance at a solid top 5 or top 10 entry.

Arguably Takahashis most playable and enjoyable work. None of the flaws inherent with the heavy handed (and relatively lacking) story telling in Xenogears. No enormous walls of text interlaced with a few bossfights due to budget constraints. None of the 30 minute cutscenes and crappy combat of Xenosaga. And easily a stark contrast to the corridor-based shooter roleplaying game Final Fantasy XIII or the insanely disappointing grind fest (without character, but with gorgeous visuals) that was White Knight Chronicles 2. SquareEnix and Level-5 has a crapload to live up to at the moment.

This is most likely what Takahashi wanted to create all along, but couldn't.

Lovely game.

@Marz said:

@Giantstalker said:

Is this game coming out on anything other than the Wii? I do own one, but if possible, I love my HD...

nope, though you could play it on dolphin if you have a powerful computer to see it in HD.

That's what I've been doing, though I also bought a copy for my Wii because I'm not a filthy pirate. There are occasional issues with the emulation (sound stuttering, especially in some cut scenes) and I've had one crash in like 5+ hours of game time, so it's definitely playable. Looks pretty great.

I would like to add to the chorus of duders proclaiming this game as something special. Perhaps my favourite RPG (J or otherwise) since the mighty Terranigma (coincedentally, also only released in Japan and Europe). I do hope it gets a US release.
 
It's definitely worth the trouble of  hooking up your Wii to your TV again.

I just wanted to toss my opinion in with you folks. I'm about 10 hours in and the game is incredible! The one thing I keep thinking is: Remember how everybody said, with Final Fantasy 13, when you get 25 hours in, it really opens up and gets awesome? That happens in this game at the 10 minute mark and keeps getting awesome. You can jump, like that alone is insane! See a lake down below you, jump from your cliff into it! Everything you can see, you can reach, it's incredible!

@Giantstalker said:

Is this game coming out on anything other than the Wii? I do own one, but if possible, I love my HD...

The game was developed by a studio owned by Nintendo, so no.

this game makes me wish I had a wii.
 
And lived in Europe.

Might play it if it was on a real console.

Hooked up my Wii after god-knows how long to play this. It's fucking SUBLIME. Every little thing is great. Like the designers played all the JRPGs over the last ten years and got annoyed at all the things WE get annoyed with. Even little things like being able to skip dialogue but at the same time it doesn't require you to hit 'a' at the end of every dialogue line like, for example, Zelda or Final Fantasy. Meaning you can put down the controller and enjoy the cutscenes without having to just hammer 'a', but you can also skip through them super fast. Little things that make a huge difference! And, you can run and jump. Jump around! Jump off cliffs! No invisible walls! Go anywhere (but maybe fall to your death...)!

And it jumps into the action straight away, no fucking around waiting for the intro to finish or going through shit before the world 'opens up'.

Can't help but yearn for those 1080p's though. It upsets me that this will be non-existent in all of my favourite site's end of year polls due to it not being released in NA. Tell you what, give us Trenched and you can have XC, deal?

a friend of mine bought it and he was telling me its amazing... gonna have to buy it when it gets in stock again...

did any of you play disaster: day of crisis?, hard to believe that heap of shite came out of the same developers

Man you are so lucky I wish I could buy it... freaking NOA...

The game looks indeed fantastic. Too bad I don't own a Wii and I'm not planning on buying one. :/

I'm gonna have to go the Dolphin route with this one. Not really interested in purchasing a Wii but I can't pass this game up. Just gotta wait until they restock.

The JoyStiq article excludes a few key details. While I appreciate that they tried to keep it as simple as possible, it just led to more frustration than anything.... These can all be found on the various Wikis out there as well: 
  
1) The SD card needs to be FAT formatted, and not contain anything else at all when trying to load LetterBomb. I believe only the .ELF and Private folders are needed as well.... It says to copy in everything, but for whatever reason I could never get the message to load up that way. 
 
2) The IOS file install that they point you to kept giving me an error when I tried to run it in HBC... Said that it couldn't find a couple of key files. After doing some more research, it turned out all of those additional steps and the external drive were unnecessary, all I had to do was download and run GeckOS..... Worked like a charm. now dropped 21 hours of my life into skill tree linking, affinity farming, and the lost art of excessive sidequesting. 

I'm only 7-8 hours in, but I'm also already loving it.

The only thing missing for me (playing it on the PC with Dolphin) is a way to play with more than 30 fps. It may sound weird, but when you are used to at least 60... playing with 30 fps hurts your eyes. I got used to it eventually, but it took me a while.