My jaw dropped a couple of times while watching the latest direct fro XCX. I was looking forward to it, but I didn't know they would go all out like this. Frankly, I didn't think a game on the Wii U would be able to handle something like this. Yet here it is, in all its glory. Customizable mechs of all shapes sizes and varieties. You can ride them, you can fly them, you can deck them out with a ton of firepower. Oh and what's this? You can have a whole squad rolling in mechs right along side you? Yes please.

There's also an online aspect where you can form a squad of 32 people (GB squad anyone?). It's a network across which you can interact in various ways. You can team up with 3 others to tackle online quests. You can complete communal monster hunting quests. You can also send out messages with tips in them to the rest of your squad and gift any loot you don't need to others in the team. This game has a bazillion features.

Here's a subbed version of the direct. I skipped to where the mech action starts. Online features start at the 22:14 mark.

Holy shit. That looks incredible.

Okay that is REALLY cool.

I wasn't joking. My jaw dropped. And it keeps getting better the further the demo goes.

Japan, I wish you would learn that calling mechs "dolls" is never cool. I barely tolerated it in Gundam Wing, if only because the term "doll" was used to denote AI-controlled mechs that were part of a network, as opposed to mechs flown by a pilot.

Anyway, I still think it's really ballsy to include mechs in this game, because how big is the world? Xenoblade Chronicles was large, but it maintained that sense of scale because you were on foot getting everywhere. I wonder if having a fairly speedy vehicle will make the world feel a little smaller. While I always appreciated the airship in Square RPGs because you felt like this powerful badass once you got one, it did make the scope of the world seem a little smaller since you could circumnavigate the world with relative ease.

Also, I'm all about the mech with the most doh-ri-fu-toh. Tokyo doh-ri-fu-toh, if possible.

@bisonhero: I think it's pretty cool

I kept saying to myself "there's no way this on is on a Wii U" throughout the whole thing, haha.

Definitely looks like a day one purchase now.

I saw a bit of this unsubbed, but yeah, it looks like it will be really frickin' cool!

I purposefully haven't watched anything on this game because I just want to be surprised, but I finally cracked and yuuuuuuup, I can confirm that that does look pretty fucking awesome.

Bleh. There's just something about this game I'm not feeling. I really don't like the online aspect. Online is in every other genre. It doesn't need to be in JRPG's too. They are like one of the last bastions of true single player. Also "Dolls" is just a dumb name. This game just seems super overwhelming, and not in a good way. Like it's just gonna be a ton of work and not really fun. The first game was already a handful and this just adds even more on top of that. I'm sure I'll check it out, but out of the three headed JRPG monster coming our way (this, FFXV, and Persona 5) I'm probably the least hyped for this.

@kishinfoulux: At the moment, I'm most excited for Persona 5, then Xenoblade, then FF XV.

I'm usually not into shoving online into a game, but this doesn't seem like a half-baked and hastily crammed in feature. Looks solid and fun to me. Even if you absolutely refuse to play with other people, you have the option to just use the characters from the game to do the online missions, so it's not a problem either way.

I continue to maintain that man, those are some ugly faces on the character models. Can I just play the whole game as a mech?

Also really weird that the two narrators don't have transitions as they change from one pose to another. Is the animation for that just not completed yet or something?

What the fuck are thOSE FACES HOLY SHIT that is creepy.

Those mechs look cool, but seriously that girls face is a fucking nightmare factory.