Xenoblade Chronicles X Review
Platform: Wii U
Developer: Nintendo, Monolith Software
Publisher: Nintendo
Author: S.A.
Here comes one of the prettiest games you’ll ever find on the Wii U, with graphics that are seemingly breathtaking in there art style. Xenoblade Chronicles X is the next successor in the Xenoblade franchise and features, for those of you who don’t already know, Gundam like creatures. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with that term, in which case what kind of childhood did you have I wonder, that refers to giant mechanized robots. Now admittedly while you can’t fight with them in battle, which is a heart wrenching loss I feel, you may use them to travel at your leisure.
That’s a step in the right direction for the human race I feel.
This game starts off in the year 2054 and on a rather dark note. There are two alien races doing battle outside of earth’s atmosphere, and their battle is proving to be too much for the planet to bare due to significant collateral damage to the planet. On that note, the governments of the world have united under the understanding that their planet is doomed. Thus they try to take to the stars themselves, creating giant ark ships to house their various nations. Unfortunately time, and the aliens, prove to be too much for the human race and only the American ship, called the White Whale, makes it to safety.
No more humanity…Now isn’t that depressing.
Fast forward two years and we find the remaining remnants of our society still travelling through space, though no longer safe. The Ganglion, which is one of the races responsible for our home worlds destruction, attack us and cause the ship to crash on a planet called Mira. From there on our job is simple, establish a new home, find the survivors that were ejected in stasis pods during the crash, and try not to die while dealing with the planets native race. All the while going toe to toe with the Ganglion that seems to want to hunt us to extinction.
Now while the plot in the game is rather enjoyable, definitely good enough to get you hooked, the battle system is where it shines. The game features a real-time action-based battle system. This means that the player will manually move the party leader only, while party members will “auto attack” enemies that engage them within their radius. For those of you have played games like Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy XII, or a plethora of MMORPGs, you’ll feel right at home.
I’ll be the first to admit, this looks like an exciting fight.
To add to the fun of fighting, and to obviously give us a plethora of cool skills, we have manually inputted attacks called ‘Arts’. As a note of warning for those of you who like flash attack skills these abilities, like all super cool ones in MMO’s, have a cool down period after use. That said, you cannot spam, thus they must be used with some strategic purpose as oppose to a flashy start.
Another subject to note is that combat is only considered won when you’ve destroyed everyone on the field. However, if the party leader of your group should fall in battle with no means to be revived. So don’t get careless just because you think you can make it through the next enemy without healing. On that note, health can be restored by the player using healing Arts in battle. If that doesn’t suit your fancy, you can always let your health regenerate automatically outside of conflict. It all depends on when the need for a good heal arises.
In true RPG format, winning fights will earn you experience points. This points help you level up and learn new and valuable Arts. All of which can be customized by the player in the character menu section called the “Battle Palette”. Which in turn allows for a good combination of attacks to rip through the field if customized appropriately.
One last system of note is the agro ability. That is to say, the more actions a player performs, the more attention they will respectively get from the enemies on the field. That said, it sometimes pays to take a step back and let the computer take the lead. This is especially true for those of you who need a chance to heal and figure out a new attack strategy.
The feel of this game is calling to the gamer in me, and I think if you stare at the trailer above long enough, it will call to you as well given enough time. Give it a try if you have a friend with a Wii U and see if it tickles your fancy, or watch a few lets plays. I don’t think you’ll mind it too much.
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