My Full Thoughts On Xenoblade Chronicles X

This blog was originally posted on my Game Informer Online Blog on January 5, 2016. The text of the blog has not been updated. Although it is an older blog, I hope you will still enjoy it as I poured my heart out writing this one!

​I didn't intend to write a review of Xenoblade Chronicles X when I was playing through it. I knew Xenoblade X was a strong contender for my annual top 10 favorite games of the year blog so I thought I would try to finish it before January. Even after finishing the story at the 70 hour mark I felt the paragraph I'd soon write for my blog would be enough, but after concluding what I wanted out of the post game and reflecting on my experience I rapidly came to feel that I wanted to more substantially share my thoughts. A handful of friends asked me in person and on my Twitter (@JustinMikos) what I thought about the game as I was playing and I often had to give brief and somewhat mixed responses that lacked nuance. Certainly, that is not good enough.

Two months ago I decided to review Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax. I hadn't written a review in a long time so I mainly did it for fun. I wrote my review in my typical style as I did for my newspapers in high school and college, but I'm discarding that here in favor of a more personal approach. While I could easily write a formal review if I wanted to, I have the opportunity on my blog not to and I feel that makes sense for this unfathomably large game that always remains personal despite its size and complexity.

Fair warning, I will not share any major story spoilers about Xenoblade X here nor will I talk about the many themes it explores beyond the premise. I will however discuss the game at length in regards to its design and gameplay systems and also the story structure and the nature of its ending. Most of that information is well available and has been part of the discussion surrounding the game for the last few weeks (and earlier if you followed the Japanese launch), but if you want to go into Xenoblade X fairly blind and haven't yet been able to do so I'd suggest you return to read my thoughts about the game later. They won't go anywhere :)

My history with Xenoblade dates back to Nintendo Power where I read a brief blurb about its original announcement at E3 2009 where it was simply called Monado. I had largely forgotten about Xenoblade until closer to its release when I saw the infamous exploration trailer online. That not even three minute trailer fully and immediately sold me on the game. It sampled a handful of the game's absolutely amazing environments and one of its standout music themes, The Gaur Plains. Quick research from there led me to realize that Xenoblade would be the next evolution of the "offline MMO" genre established by Final Fantasy XII, one of my absolute favorite PS2 games and my second favorite Final Fantasy behind VI, which of course made me even more excited to play it.

Despite announcing Xenoblade in Los Angeles, Nintendo of America had gone silent about the game. At E3 2011 the game was again absent and word got out that despite an impending European release Nintendo of America refused to let Nintendo of Europe show the game which led many to believe it would not release here. Fans were rightfully upset and began to coordinate on message boards across the internet in a movement that would become known as Operation Rainfall. I participated in Operation Rainfall's letter writing campaign for Xenoblade which was neat because I received a letter back from Nintendo.
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In December, Xenoblade Chronicles was finally confirmed to release in North America in April of 2012. When I reviewed Xenoblade for my column, The Gamer's Corner, in UC Irvine's New University newspaper, I loved it even more than I thought I would. Xenoblade Chronicles would go on to be my personal Game of the Year in 2012 and one of my absolute favorite RPGs of all time, something that I was happy to share and discuss whenever appropriate (including the Xenoblade Grind Time livestream I appeared on when I interned at Game Informer!). I loved the game so much that I bought a New 3DS at launch just for Xenoblade Chronicles 3D.

As for Xenoblade X, obviously I was thoroughly excited since its unveiling as X in the infamous January 2013 Nintendo Direct where Nintendo basically announced every Wii U game in development. My passion for Xenoblade X was at its peak when I interned at Game Informer. I used my two years plus experience of learning Japanese in college to translate all the information I could from the three Japanese Nintendo Directs focusing on exploration, combat, and the Dolls and online features. I watched some scenes a few times and occasionally consulted a kanji dictionary to make sure I had everything as accurate as possible. Those three feature articles were some of the work I was most proud to publish during my time as an intern and if you read and commented on them I want to say thank you!

All of that history culminated and constantly influenced my opinion when I finally played through Xenoblade X for 75 hours throughout December. So now that I'm done with the campaign and finished what I wanted of the post game what do I think about it?
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Xenoblade Chronicles X is a glorious mess and I mean that largely lovingly. It offers outrageous highs due to its colossal ambition on every front and even where its execution falls short of that outrageous ambition you certainly can feel it, but it's never bad. When I saw the credits roll I was shocked how short they were. It merely took about four to five minutes to scroll through Monolith's staff and the other companies that made Xenoblade X a reality which you would never believe for a second when you gaze out from any point on the alien planet Mira.

Exploration is the one thing Xenoblade X clearly prioritizes above all else and Monolith unquestionably succeeded here to the highest degree. Mira is insanely vast and expansive. It features five continents to explore and an ocean filled with small uncharted islands to discover. What's most impressive about the world isn't its size, which is larger than many of the biggest open worlds of 2015 like Fallout 4 and the Witcher 3 combined, but rather its density. Xenoblade X features impressive verticality that is in part only possible because it's sci-fi setting can break away from reality in spectacular fashion.

Primordia, my favorite of the five continents, is like the Guar Plains from Xenoblade Chronicles amplified to an absurd degree. Primordia isn't just one massive canyon with multiple tiers to explore, no there are multiple mountains separated by vast plains, lakes, and rivers and often accompanied by Xenoblade's distinct, awe-inspiring overhanging rock structures that are more massive and spectacular than ever. Some of the most dense areas of Primordia have three distinct ground floors, the tops of the overhanging rock formations that can only be reached by flight, and even multiple cave networks that run inside and below mountains. With so much going on in these spaces your mind will frequently struggle to believe how this was all constructed to feel just right.

No matter where you look you'll always see the spectacular landscape accompanied by skies that are accentuated by Mira's multiple moons, voluminous clouds, and more rarely by rainbows (even sometimes in the dark!). Weather conditions vary throughout the continents, but no matter if it's rain, lightning storms, or something else they always manage to impress.

​Most excitingly, you literally can explore every inch of land you see because not a single piece of terrain is off limits for you to interact with. Even before you get your Skell (a giant transforming mech) and upgrade it with the ability to fly you can sprint around and leap impressive distances. There is no fall damage so you are encouraged to make spectacular leaps and perform tricky platforming. If you told me before release one of the primary activities I'd perform in Xenoblade X was Skyrim-like mountain climbing and furthermore that I'd enjoy it I wouldn't have believed you, but here we are and it is awesome! Movement just feels so darn good which is essential in a game about moving throughout an open world.

Adding to the unbelievable nature of how right Monolith nailed exploration is that all five of the main continents offer completely unique terrain to traverse. Nothing was copied and pasted in the outdoor environments which is mind blowing for one of the largest open worlds created, especially one built by such a small team of developers. The unique nature of each environment means you are always pushing into new areas and when you do revisit and fully explore each space they are truly memorable.

​Each environment actually has four different contexts for exploring it since you'll explore Mira first on foot, then with a mech that can jump large distances and transform into speedy ground vehicles, and finally by flying with the flight module, the fastest form of travel that lets you explore literally everywhere from the tallest mountains to the islands floating in the sky. The world essentially shrinks each time you get one of those upgrades, but the end result is that it feels more intimate and more under your control which is a very satisfying feeling. Regardless of how far you are into Xenoblade X, there are reasons to mix and match both traversal on foot and the various types of traversal in Skells which means you never truly lose anything despite the upgrades.

And before I start to move on, now is a great time to mention that the world is totally seamless and feels remarkably solid. When you kick off from your home base of New Los Angeles in your flying Skell the world doesn't feel like it will fall apart. As you seamlessly fly out of your base from any point at high speed you are simply out in the open world and with no loading you can fly all the way to the distant corners of Cauldros if you so choose. There is some pop-in sure, but it is absolutely amazing to play an open world and not feel like it will collapse on you at any point.
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While exploration for exploration's sake is certainly worthwhile when the world is so beautiful, there are many other reasons to traverse it. There are tons of enemies to fight and interestingly they aren't all cleverly situated to be around your level! Yes you could be wandering around as a level 10 working towards an objective and suddenly come across a pack of level 30 monsters or even a colossal level 70 dinosaur that is above even the level cap! It pays to take your time exploring so you don't wander into danger or maybe if you are like me you'll recklessly disregard safety for adventure and profit! Scattered throughout the landscape are treasure chests and mining points that yield loot and give battle points to power up your abilities so you'll want to wander into areas that don't feel safe. As you progress, you can more casually stride through more of Mira which makes you feel satisfyingly powerful. 

There are also survey spots scattered around the world where you can plant data probes. These are the biggest rewards early on because they help you set up an economy that gives you the two types of currency used to buy armor, upgrades, giant robots and more! Survey points also establish fast travel locations, a handy and essential convenience feature, and reveal the surrounding objectives for each hexagonal node on the map displayed on the gamepad. If you are a completionist, that map becomes indispensable in roughly figuring out how much of the game you still have left to conquer. After 75 hours playing, I only completely surveyed roughly 35% of Mira so I still had plenty more I could do.
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Before I talk about the story and battle systems, I do want to give a brief shout out to the music composed solely by Hiroyuki Sawano. Xenoblade Chronicles had one of the best soundtracks of all time and was composed by an all star group of musicians including Yoko Shimomura, Yasunori Mitsuda, and ACE+, so the decision to switch solely to Sawano made me nervous. Even if it's not uniformly excellent, I appreciated the variety of genres that Sawano took on and very clearly poured his whole heart into. Alongside the orchestral bombast you'd expect from Sawano there are also some rap and pop tracks with vocals. There are some embarrassing duds most unfortunately with the main battle theme Black Tar and a track included with the Limited Edition soundtrack called In The Forest. The majority of the tracks though are quite catchy and fun. I really enjoyed CODENAMEZ, THEMEX, Don't Worry, and, my personal favorite, the tyrant boss battle theme Uncontrollable which always gets your blood pumping.

Ok so all of the above has been pretty excellent so far so where do things get messy you might ask? Well sort of everything else. I'll start with the story.

The premise of Xenoblade X is that Earth was caught up in the battle between two alien armies. Our planet is completely destroyed in the crossfire, but a few ships carrying survivors manage to escape. One of the alien forces catches up with the ship we follow, The White Whale, and causes it to crash land on Mira, an unknown alien planet. As the ship breaks up in the atmosphere escape pods and the habitation deck (New Los Angeles) carrying the crew separates from the rest of the ship and becomes humanities' stronghold on Mira.
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So what is the threat exactly? Somewhere on Mira lies The Lifehold which contains the majority of the remains of humanity sleeping in cryostasis. If it is destroyed that would be a huge blow to rebuilding humanity especially as the crew alone is struggling to fight Mira's dangerous wildlife and the aliens that pursued them. A group called BLADE is formed to find the Lifehold and address any other problems that arise from operating society. The premise then is excellent since it basically tasks your created character along with a handful of elite soldiers with exploring the whole planet to ensure humanities' safety (which as I've said is when Xenoblade is at its best).

There are twelve main story missions in Xenoblade X, multiple affinity missions tied to each of the many characters you can recruit into your party (all of whom you can play as yourself), a large amount of normal missions, and a seemingly endless amount of basic missions (the kill X number of things, get X number of things type of missions). The story of Xenoblade X is spread across all of those many mission types aside from the basic missions.
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There are a handful of roadblocks set up from playing through the main story straight through as you are required to pursue specific side missions or survey a certain amount of Mira in order to accept the next mission. Successfully completing each chapter often grants you access to new features and exciting new questline opportunities so you'll likely want to jump off the main story path anyway. Only towards the very end of the campaign does the difficulty begin to spike which can cause frustration because you are locked out of accepting affinity missions if you are on story missions or vice versa.

Looked at positively, the main campaign feels paced more like a TV show or an anime (I don't think it's a coincidence there are 12 missions), but because of the big breaks between episodes the pacing does tend to suffer and not every mission is devoted to tackling the most interesting mysteries of the story. By the time the main campaign wraps up you'll get a solid answer to some of the main questions, but many mysteries remain unresolved and some new ones are even introduced last minute that obviously aren't answered either. The cliffhanger ending suggests there will be a sequel of some sorts, something that's been hinted at as of the latest interviews, but of course that doesn't help you from feeling cheated right now.
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Where Xenoblade's story finds more success is in the affinity missions and the normal quests. Affinity missions all have voiced cutscenes like the main campaign and are focused on specific characters and introducing new alien races that will join you in New Los Angeles. While the main campaign really only focuses on three central characters, here you'll gain insight into all of your party members and your created character is thrust into a more prominent role. An exciting number of new themes and mysteries are introduced and explored in the affinity and normal missions which are best left to discover for yourself. I was often surprised by what topics were introduced and how they were resolved which often made these missions feel more worthwhile than the too straightforward main story.

Part of the problem of tackling all of the missions and yet also one of the game's biggest strengths is the lack of guidance throughout. Sure you get a few tutorials here and there, but Xenoblade X never quite tells you what you should be doing.

What content is worthwhile? Where should I be exploring right now? Where do I even start to find the collectable items I need? Am I playing the game wrong? These are some of the questions I found myself asking as I was playing through. There is an extensive digital instruction manual in the game, but it can't always offer explanations for some of the more basic questions like what certain abilities do or what certain icons actually mean so it is not a great help with some of the bigger questions you'll have. Still it is liberating to make genuine discoveries like finding a good cave to explore and conquer or discovering a quest with huge story and loot payoffs. 
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Perhaps one of the best examples of the pros and cons of this lack of guidance lies with how the battle system changed for me as I played. You start as a jack of all trades class, but then you choose to work towards one of the six advanced classes and maybe mix and match abilities later since you can change classes freely. I worked towards the first of the six advanced classes at the top of the skill tree and I had a large number of abilities and skill options to bring into battle. I made sure to include a good mix of abilities including two buffs, Offensive and Defensive Stance, a taunt called Decoy Round, and two damage dealing abilities, Rising Blade and Tornado Blade. Rising Blade could deal a lot of damage toward one enemy if you are directing its aggro at you while Tornado Blade hits multiple enemies at once and does more damage if you are buffed so these five abilities complemented each other especially nice.

When I was done leveling my class, I began having trouble dealing enough damage to enemies while staying healthy so I added a skill to give me health back every time I triggered a buff, but that still wasn't quite enough. I thought the game had become static at this point as I was done leveling up my class and getting new abilities.

What perhaps was my favorite gameplay moment in Xenoblade X was when I realized I needed to better understand how all my skills best worked together. By investing into my taunt ability, Decoy Round, and making use of augments and slotting gear (systems that the game never directly pushes you towards and something that you can even miss entirely in terms of the latter), I was able to create an engine of building TP in battle. TP powered my buffs and a universal ability called Overdrive that significantly speeds up the cooldowns of all your abilities and even grants you a temporary third tier of ability charging which can enable you to deal obscene damage and immediately reuse certain abilities. By upping my TP capacity with augments and using one of the bonus abilities of Decoy Round to grant me large amounts of TP based off my morale gauge I was able to constantly remain in Overdrive and activate buffs which boosted my damage output considerably and kept me constantly at full health because of my perk. My TP engine was so effective that I can't even remotely describe what the final boss music sounds like because I was in Overdrive for 90% of the battle which causes a unique theme to play.
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That kind of discovery and build is never hinted at and is only of the many possibilities in building your character. The flexibility and depth of all of Xenoblade's systems and how they all work together reveals itself the more you pore yourself into it and that is awesome.

While I'm on the subject of the battle system, I do feel combat in general is a lot of fun. It's at its best when things are going slightly wrong as you'll have to make tough decisions of how to spend your TP or when to use abilities to turn the tide of battle back in your favor. There is a good variety of enemies to fight and they range in size from tiny bugs to dinosaurs and some are even terrifyingly larger still. A new feature to the combat is that you can target specific weak points or limbs of the enemy you are fighting, which can help disable it in some way mid-battle and help you get specific loot drops.
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You'll be using a mix of ground combat and Skell combat throughout the game and both systems are deceptively different despite the UI being largely the same. In fact, I never truly felt comfortable in Skell combat despite being able to use them for over 40 hours. Exploring the depths of Skell combat and building the perfect Skell is one of the major focuses of the post game so sadly quitting the game where I did means I didn't get to experience that. Still it was fun frequently ripping health bars in half with my giant sword and blasting through hordes of enemies with my Gatling gun.

That sort of brings me to the end of my thoughts here. Despite thoroughly enjoying the game for 70 hours for the main story and all of the exploration I did, I only spent about five hours in the post game to clean up a few quests that I knew I really wanted to tackle. The grind required to build the perfect Skell to take on all of the many super bosses that roam the land and to fight global nemesis in online co-op doesn't have much appeal to me as it's roughly an additional 100 hours of content (the asynchronous online features are cool though!). Also, as I mentioned there really isn't a way to judge what missions are worthwhile until you delve into them. Playing the affinity missions requires you to up your affinity with the required party member and even though it is certainly easier to do that in the post game I don't find it worth it to grind for hit and miss story content. The same goes for the interconnected normal missions that force you through some bland missions or searches for needles in a haystack (the size of a continent) to get some of the most interesting content that brings multiple threads together. I know I'm missing out here on some of the most rewarding story content, I've read about a few of the missions I'll be missing and man they do sound cool, but grinding is never something I want to do in RPGs.
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Xenoblade X will not be my personal favorite game of the year for 2015, but that's ok because in so many ways it was personally the most important game I played in 2015. It is a really interesting and experimental game and because there is nothing else quite like it, Xenoblade X was able to so thoroughly capture my attention. From the few interviews out there, it seems like Monolith is keenly aware of where they have succeeded with Xenoblade X and how they can improve for next time. Xenoblade X will likely serve as the foundation for a new game that could be truly spectacular on every front. Whether it's entirely new or a direct sequel to Xenoblade X, something that seems a tad more likely at this point, I'll definitely be very excited to follow its development and play it.