It’s no secret that I absolutely loved “Xenoblade Chronicles” (2010) on the Wii. It takes a special kind of RPG for me to push everything else aside and dump 100+ hours into sidequests and story (which alone takes up at least 50 hours of your first play-through), but “Chronicles” was gorgeous, well-written and flush with excellent battle systems that they took the time to introduce and incorporate so you wouldn’t be overwhelmed right out of the gates. Your party was full of well-written characters that each had substantial depth and made you care for their individual outcomes and dreams. In the end, the plot jumped a teensy bit off the rails, but overall the narrative helped build the backbone for the most trope-free, fun, innovative and rewarding JRPG to come out in the past ten years.
Enter “Xenoblade Chronicles X”, which retains talented writer and designer Tetsuya Takahashi and will again include an open world exploration that can take place on foot or in glorious Mechs. (And… is this a hint of a “Battlestar Galactica”-esque, search for “Home” story that I sense in the narrative?):
In pursuit of their goal for “seamless exploration,” they’ve yet again shown that the sprawling world can be seen across backgrounds of the hugely immersive environments. One of the best aspects of “Xenoblade Chronicles” on the Wii was that, no matter how strapped they were with the Wii’s hardware at the time, they still managed to pull off gorgeous environment art that seemed to reach off into the distance forever (all of which you were able to explore by the game’s end). Did you ever notice that the load times for travel from place to place were almost nonexistent? How did they pull that off on a Wii!?! Seriously!
And, fear not, fans of the Nopon! “Tatsu free at last!” was clearly included for one reason – to let all the true Xenoblade fans know that their love for the fluffy, wing-clad, whimsical race will never die! (I don’t care what the haters say. Riki was one of the best non-human party characters in any JRPG!)
As a fan of the series, the developers, and especially of RPGs with elegant mech design, I’ll be pre-ordering “Xenoblade Chronicles X” for sure, but we unfortunately still have quite a wait to go through since it’s likely not coming out until late 2015. In the meantime, don’t forget that you can always go back and play through “Xenoblade Chronicles” on your Wii U (with crisper rendering and reduced load times!), and experience it in its full glory. Now, if you’ll excuse me…
