Best JRPG of this console generation. No joke. No jerkiness. All serious. It does a lot of new things, it does them right. It learns from others games, and it does it right. It puts every freaking thing that had "RPG" attached to it this generation to shame bigtime.
 
..
 
Of course, I still haven't played Last Story!

Oh yeah... I remember playing this on Dolphin in 1080p months ago...

Queue the comments of "Another reason to dust off my Wii!" and "I don't know if I can play a game that looks like this in 2011.

HERPA DERPA DOO

Thank goodness. Now all the whining can stop. Gamers whining about a worthless cause is annoying. It was coming. No operation weaksauce didn't do it. Nintendo was just trying to stretch the titles because wii u is probably coming in fall and this and Last story are the last big core games for the wii. I preordered it from gamestop. Hopefully the rest of the people complaining day in and day out will do the same.

Good news for wii owning jrpg fans!

Not entirely my cup of tea but cool nonetheless.

What the fuck? OH FUCK YES! I did not think it possible, but this day has arrived! If there is hope for the Philosopher's Sword to see a release in America, then mayhap there is hope for other games. The Last Story, Pandora's Tower, and maybe even Shin Monshou no Nazo. OH JOYOUS DAY!

That is really great, a little surprising since last I checked the game had done fairly paltry numbers in Europe. At the very least this gives Nintendo some hardcore goodwill going into the Wii U and something decent to play in the meantime, Nintendo has been exceptionally terrible in the last three generations with releasing games during the last year.

@Woowookins said:

Aqui-... Acque-... Acqua-... Aqua-BarbieGirl... Acquiesced...wha? O.o

Alex's vocabulary is quite astonishing and at other times, absolutely insane. A+

Isn't the big story here that Gamestop is apparently getting into the business of selling games exclusively?

Today the fans are victorious! Operation rainfall...actually worked.

Good job Nintendo of America releasing a game 6 months after people have either imported or bootlegged it when all you had to do was change the region code.

Imported and played it already. Try to imagine the RPG that Square-Enix have been trying (and failing) to make for the past decade.

Now try to imagine that RPG was actually made, and it turned out to be really awesome. That's Xenoblade.

Too bad they waited so long that the people who wanted it the most went out of their way to get it (imports/piracy). Good work.

It will sell like shit and they will never do this again

Been looking forward to playing this, but didn't want to emulate/import it.

Going to preorder as soon as available, and I hope Last Story and Pandora's tower also make their way over here. (Will likely depend on how well Xenoblade sells over here)

@Rawson said:

Imported and played it already. Try to imagine the RPG that Square-Enix have been trying (and failing) to make for the past decade.

Now try to imagine that RPG was actually made, and it turned out to be really awesome. That's Xenoblade.

I agree with you on that one buddy. This is what the FF12 battle system should have been. Square was obviously trying to give it a semi action MMORPG combat feel, but failed to implement the good side of battle systems from MMORPGs, positioning and team synergy.

This was easily one of my favorite games this past generation, and I will purchase this even though I already have the import just to support it. My only real issue with it was the majority of the sidequests being throw away kill/collection quests right out of the MMORPG book. Aside from that though, the main storyline was interesting and kept a great pacing from the moment you leave the starting town and onward (which actually doesn't even take as long as it usually does with most other JRPGs). The music is also fantastic.

Any Wii owners that are or even were fans of JRPGs at one point, owe it to themselves to check this one out.

You assholes better buy it now. I always feel bad for publishers who listen to rally cries like these, release the game, and then it bombs because people were all talk.

Props to the folks who took part on the campaign ... now save those bucks to get the game

@wsowen02 said:

It will sell like shit and they will never do this again

Very sad... very true.

I see this less as a reach of goodwill and moreso Nintendo realizing "Fuck, we have NOTHING for next year, and we need to prioritize development for Wii U... FUCK IT! Just put those goddamn RPG's out." I'd way rather see Last Story come. It actually has a combat system that looks...remotely interesting.

Now it's time for us to show Nintendo that is worth listing to their fans and buying a copy. I know I will even if I don't play it, just to show that there is still a market for these games in North America.

@Amphetama said:

Awesome, now just bring out The Last Story and put a bullet in that thing.

I wanted Pandora's Tower. We can never be satisfied can we? :p

I'm glad it's coming over, but the information coming out of NOA was needlessly obscure. They clearly have intended to do this, and have just been timing it to spread out sales. Kind of a self-cursing move by NOA. Like many people, I went ahead and imported the game, spend an hour getting the region lock off, played it, and loved it. So NOE gets the sale because NOA felt the need to play games with customers.

Fucking amazing game. Got a little out of control sometimes with the optional fetch questing and could've used a little extra control or something in the combat system, but I mean that in a 9.5/10 way, with story, music, graphics, world design, presentation, everything else really moving the bar for the genre. Just a shockingly beautiful world and concept. There's no excuse for dicking around with consumers and making people grovel and / or work around the system in order to get access to this level of work. NOA, what a bunch of jokers.

Guys, don't fool yourselves here. Nintendo probably looked closer at the sales of Xenoblade in Europe than Operation Rainfall. Hard sales data is always more reliable than the promises of consumers. And the reason why they waited this long to announce it was because they didn't want to distract any attention away from Zelda.

I don't play jrpgs but I might try it out.

I just ordered the PAL version of this earlier today too, I think I can still cancel at this point. I'm not in any rush to play.

Too bad I already imported it >< Oh well. Here's to hoping we'll get Last Story, etc as well.

@dagas said:

@paulunga said:

Now let's see it sell like shit because JRPGs don't really have market anymore. And this isn't a particularly good one either.

yeah because 93.82% on gamerankins means it's shit right?

Not everyone is going to like it, but a game that reviews higher than Oblivion, Call of Duty 4, GTA3 and Bioshock has to be considered a good game even if you personally don't care for it.

Eh, I gotta admit I haven't played more than 2 hours of it. I mostly bought it for the sweet red Classic Controller Pro it comes bundled with in Europe. I think having played White Knight Chronicles II just before that has left a bit of a sour taste for the semi-real time battle system.

My greatest giant bomb dream is to see endurance run of this game one day. A man can dream

Between Skyward Sword, Rhythm Heaven Fever, and Xenoblade Chronicles, looks like my Wii is going to have a good couple months.

Yay! Now I'll go ahead and put it on my Wish List!

Should be on the 360.

I've been looking around, and it seems store exclusive releases don't do particular well. If it turns out to be a GS exclusive then Nintendo may be shooting themselves in the foot (sales wise) right from the get-go.

I'd wear that vest.

@Olu said:

My greatest giant bomb dream is to see endurance run of this game one day. A man can dream

Yes....

YES.

Please. Yes.

The thought of it....it's like the perfect game for them to Endurance Run. A really cool counterpart to P4. It would be just so....YEEEESSSS!

@Amphetama said:

Awesome, now just bring out The Last Story and put a bullet in that thing.

this!

Congrats America. It's a great game

As much as I love Chrono Trigger, this game should have been the third endurance run.

woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

AMERICA

"Oh yeah, we really didn't have anything for 2012! Pie in our faces it is!"

Cool, now if only my Wii wasn't in some box in my closet...

This sort of sucks since I already imported it, they even use the same voice actors. Depending on cost I may buy it anyway just to support nintendo for finally doing something that makes sense and doesn't have the word "Mario" or "Zelda" in the title.

So apparently your going to be able to buy it from Nintendo themselves http://store.nintendo.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Xenoblade?storeId=10001

So this is basically what I recommended they do a few months ago, sell it themselves and through speciality retailers (like the Nintendo 64 version of Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine). I'm going to guess this is going to be the type of game Gamestop and EB (they still exist in Canada) are going to only buy enough to fulfill pre-orders and there is probably only going to be one shipment of copies).

I normally don't advise pre-ordering anything but in the case of limited run games like this it might be a good idea.

@Unknown_Pleasures said:

Should be on the 360.

Really hard to do that when Nintendo owns 90% of the developer.

@lamiafusion said:

As much as I love Chrono Trigger, this game should have been the third endurance run.

And if Nintendo had caught wind of a Xenoblade Endurance Run, Giant Bomb would be told by Nintendo to cease and desist. Because that's how Nintendo rolls.

Cool, now if only my Wii wasn't in some box in my closet...

I modded, I imported, I loved it, I sold it because my Spidey sense was tingling, and now I'll buy the US version next year. :D

@Hailinel said:

@UnrealDP

Cool, now if only my Wii wasn't in some box in my closet...

And you doubted this would happen. Who's laughing now, chuckles?!

I said that nobody buys Wii games, Nintendo waited until they milked the import sales and Wii games still don't sell well so I bet this games going to make tons of money, I mean really. This whole release is just to quell rabid fans, right?

Woa, this is awesome news. I will finally buy a Wii when this comes out. I guess sending that letter and posting to Nintendo really did work.