A few years ago, Xenoblade Chronicles came to the Nintendo Wii. It was a spiritual successor to the Xenogears and Xenosaga games, and after much pleading by North American fans it came to our shores. It didn't hit particularly hard, but the Nintendo 3DS ($260.00 at eBay) port proved to be one of the more epic handheld experiences you could get on the system. Now we've gotten a follow-up in Xenoblade Chronicles X ($59.99). It plays a lot like Xenoblade Chronicles, but it feels bigger and looks better. The extensive number of systems in the game can feel intimidating, and it's very much a classic JRPG-style time sink, but it's the best-looking game the Wii U ($800.00 at Amazon) has seen yet, and offers an epic, entertaining adventure if you can commit to it.
Welcome to Mira
The Earth of Xenoblade Chronicles X ($19.99 at GameStop) is actually Earth, with familiar countries and continents and languages. That's not often seen in JRPGs. Of course, Earth was blown up by warring aliens a few years ago, so you're not going to see it anyway. You're a crew member of the White Whale, one of the few surviving colony ships that escaped Earth before it was destroyed. Then the White Whale was shot down over a mysterious planet called Mira. The game starts with a lot of disaster.
Fortunately, humans are resilient, so the housing parts of the White Whale have been turned into New Los Angeles, the last human city in the universe. There are still parts of the White Whale scattered throughout Mira, including most of the survivors in stasis pods. Humanity has to recover and rebuild, and that's where BLADE (Builders of a Legacy After the Destruction of Earth) comes in. Now that you've been found, you're a BLADE, too. It's time to fight for humanity.
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BLADE is divided into eight different divisions that run the gamut of activities you can engage in on Mira. Reclaimers and Curators salvage wreckage from the White Whale and collect useful materials from the planet. Pathfinders and Prospectors set new mapping and mining probes to enable fast travel throughout Mira. Mediators handle disputes among the citizens of NLA. Outfitters test and develop new equipment and weapons. And Harriers and Interceptors fight the various alien threats to humanity found on Mira. You can choose any of these divisions and switch between them easily.
Lots of Levels
While the BLADE divisions have a significant role in the game's story, they don't make a huge difference mechanically. Your BLADE division dictates how you earn experience toward your BLADE level, which is constant across all divisions. As a Pathfinder, you get the most BLADE experience placing probes on the map. As a Curator, it's collecting the many items scattered across the game. As a Harrier, it's bringing down large, named Tyrant enemies. Increasing your BLADE level gives you various advantages, primarily increasing your ability to salvage Mechanical, Archeological, and Biological objects found in Mira. Here's a tip: Bring your Mechanical skill up to 3 or 4 as fast as you can; it's needed to place probes and expand your reach on Mira. Each division also offers a different bonus, like improved defense or faster health recovery, but these are all bonuses that can be replaced and augmented with the right equipment.
Your character Class defines how you play the game much more than your BLADE division. Like the division, you can change it at any time. Unlike the division, it determines your equipment, abilities, and roles in combat. You start as a catch-all Drifter, but can quickly switch to Striker (balanced direct combat with sword and assault rifle), Commando (stealth with knives and pistols), and Enforcer (support with combat knife and heavy energy weapon). Your Class level is separate from your BLADE level, and it dictates the different combat abilities and passive skills available to you, each of which you can only have a certain number active and ready at once.
Once you hit level 10 in a second-tier Class, you unlock two more Classes. Strikers can develop their balanced role and equipment loadout more, or take a more defensive role with a heavy shield and mini-gun. Commandos can go further with dual-wielding stealth, or take a more range-focused role with a sniper rifle and javelin. And Enforcers can keep supporting with their loadout or take an offensive role with floating laser drones and a laser sword.
Then there's character level, which purely determines your health, stats, and available equipment strength. The higher your character level, the better weapons and armor you can use. This number is the main factor in whether or not you're going to get killed in different parts of Mira; if your character level is significantly lower than an enemy's level, you don't have much of a chance.
In case you've lost count, that's three separate levels to keep track of: BLADE for passive resources, Class for skills and abilities, and general character level for general survivability. There are also Skells, giant mech suits you can eventually get access to, which further expand your ability to fight and explore.
A Huge Alien World
Mira is a very open world, but that doesn't make Xenoblade Chronicles X an open-world game. The continents are laid out like massive MMORPG zones, and while you can go a lot of places on foot with ease, you'll often be blocked by monsters that are wildly over-leveled compared with you. It's not uncommon to wander around and suddenly find yourself before a path littered with level-50 monsters that can kill you in one hit, equipped with the red eye icon that indicates that they will attack as soon as they see you.
It's still much more free and open than most JRPGs, and there are some breathtaking sights to find as you explore. The starting continent, Primordia, is filled with these massive, dinosaur-like aliens placidly wandering the plains and getting drinks from the various lakes of the land. Noctilim straight-up looks like Pandora from Avatar, with vivid, overgrown plant life highlighted with bright phosphorescence.
As much as the Wii U has been mocked for not being as powerful as the PlayStation 4 ($799.95 at Amazon) or Xbox One ($200.00 at eBay) , it's proven it can produce some excellent graphics. Xenoblade Chronicles X is one of the most gorgeous games on the system in terms of visual complexity, and one of the most gorgeous games I've ever played in terms of setting design. Mira looks stunning, with a colorful and varied landscape filled with life, displayed with a massive draw distance that lets you behold everything before and below you. The matching music is fantastic, with each continent getting its own thematically appropriate and often haunting theme.
Enemies, Skells, and characters all look very striking, with the robot suits standing out as cool-looking, customizable armor that evokes Gundam and Macross. And when they all fight, the screen fills with interesting animations and lighting effects while generally sticking to a solid 30fps framerate.
The impressive visuals fall apart in some cutscenes, or any time you look too close at the characters, though. Everything else looks great, but the human faces look like they're from the PlayStation 2. Specifically, they look like they're from the Xenosaga series, with most characters sporting oddly doll-like, slightly creepy baby faces. You won't notice it when you play, but you might cringe when you stop for a cutscene and see how people talk.
Fighting Aliens
Combat is very similar to Xenoblade Chronicles. It's a real-time, MMO-like fighting system where you automatically attack the selected enemy and activate different abilities called arts, arranged on a bar on the bottom of the screen. Most arts have a cooldown, so you can't simply spam special attacks, and some arts require Tension Points (TP) to work. You gain TP through fighting, and can spend them to activate more powerful arts or go into Overdrive mode to unleash a powerful chain attack.
Positioning and tactics are very important in Xenoblade Chronicles X. Attacks might hit only your target, everyone around your target, or anything in a row in front of you, forcing you to consider where you are to set up maximum damage and to avoid drawing the attention of nearby creatures that aren't aggressive yet. Different attacks also provide bonuses depending on where you are relative to your target, like dealing extra damage from behind or gaining more TP when fighting head-on.
Xenoblade Chronicles X has a ton of systems and stats to keep track of, and that's a difficult task. There are the three ways to level, the combat arts and passive combat skills available (and you need to actively set both), HP, TP, Skell fuel, character affinity, arms manufacturer progress, equipment, equipment enhancements, collectibles, resources, exploration rates, and more. If nothing else, the BLADE divisions let you focus on playing the game in a certain way without worrying too much about other aspects, but it's still a lot of factors to juggle.
Where to Go
Unlike western open-world games, Xenoblade Chronicles X doesn't let you gain much progress by blindly exploring Mira, though that will help you get stronger. Most quests are found in NLA, with a narrative thread to send you out to different parts of Mira. You might find occasional quests in the wild, but you'll almost always be returning to NLA to figure out what to do next. You can get generic, semi-random BLADE quests from terminals, entertaining side quests from NPCs with red question marks over their heads, and affinity quests that strengthen your bond with your teammates from hand-shaking icons littered through the city. And, when you want the next story quest (which often requires certain side quests or affinity quests to be completed and for a continent to be explored a certain amount), you get your briefing in the BLADE barracks.
Managing your various quests is slightly inconvenient, since you can only display one active quest at a time when playing; all other quests you've accepted can be completed on the way, but you won't get waypoints or information about them unless you individually select them as the active quest. It means you might do a lot of backtracking through Mira getting quests done, instead of handling all the ones in a region before moving on.
Fortunately, travel is very fast. You can immediately teleport to any probe you've placed or major landmark you've found on the map using the Wii U gamepad's touch screen. Loading times are surprisingly fast, considering the size and scope of Mira, which is seamless to navigate across continents on foot; I didn't wait more than 15 seconds each time I fast-traveled. And when you get access to Skells, you can take advantage of their much faster walking speed, awkward but quick vehicle forms, and impressive jumping abilities.
The Long Haul
You can spend a long time on Mira. The many, many side quests could easily eat up your time, but even if you stick to the main story (and the prerequisite side quests for certain chapters), a 40-hour play-through is optimistic. Xenoblade Chronicles X might not be a structurally traditional JRPG, but it's certainly as long as one. Get ready to sink Fallout 4 levels of time into this game.
Xenoblade Chronicles X is a flawed but beautiful and massive role-playing game. The world of Mira is one of the best-looking settings to ever appear on the Wii U, and you'll be spending dozens and dozens of hours running, jumping, and mech-piloting your way around the terrain. It's easy to get sidetracked and overwhelmed by the extensive number of systems and activities in the game, and it isn't laid out or explained in a particularly friendly way. If you can put the time into it, though, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a rewarding, enjoyable experience. Mira looks that good, and Skells are just that fun to run around in.
Xenoblade Chronicles X is the biggest and best-looking exclusive to come to the Nintendo Wii U yet.
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