Star Wars

 

Star Wars is huge and part of several human generations, and right now, could possibly be bigger than ever as the so called Sequel Trilogy has finally started in last year's december. It is without a doubt one of if not the biggest communities of fandom out there.

My preference goes to Lord of the Rings's universe, but seeing as that story and The Hobbit are both fully adapted by now, our focus is entirely onto Star Wars's even larger universe, and the announced movies alongside spin-offs will keep even the main movie audience interested.

My first movie was Episode IV: A New Hope as a kid, and it kind of was the only one I saw until seeing V and VI much later in my teenage years, forgetting about those two then, and reinvigorating interest in all three after seeing the Prequel Trilogy which is infamous for it's mixed reactions.

Of course, massive amounts of merchandise including video games, comic books, action figures and more mediums combine all into the popularity it gets, and recognizable themes such as the Jedi and the Sith, robots, aliens, space opera and the Death Star keep up the familiarity.

George Lucas was also inspired by numerous older movies including Westerns and Japanese art houses from the 50's before directing Star Wars in 1977, and clever videos like on YouTube portray exact similarities towards them.

Star Wars is so huge that I honestly can only talk individually about the Episodes now, as I am not even familiar with the so called Expanded Universe term that fans often like to point out when it comes to canon.

Perhaps I will speak more about this franchise sooner or later, but for now, I am glad that I have been able to experience these space opera stories alongside the rest of the fan community.

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam

 

The fifth entry into a solid sub RPG series in general, I never expected it to have so many titles in the long run. Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam is a good continuation that fixes some tedious parts from Dream Team, adds Paper Mario into the mix as guest, and has creative battles.

By now, Paper Mario as a franchise is getting more stretched out so to speak, because starting from Super Paper Mario, the quality has gone downwards ever since, and I better not get reminded of Sticker Star's shortcomings.

Let's hope that his status in here will retaliate interest and polished design in his next potential entry. As for Mario & Luigi in this 3DS adventure however, consider the story to be very basic, but even then, where has the creativity gone too after developing Superstar Saga's unique world as a good example?

Paper Jam, like Sticker Star, suffers heavily for not creating unique NPC's or for the most part even enemies. It's sad to see this happen because it's welcoming to add in original characters for RPG's, unlike Mario platformers where I wouldn't care as much as seeing the umpteenth goomba or koopa troopa.

The paper world gets absorbed into AlphaDream's world, and with it, paper variants of Mario characters come along with it, without Luigi for some vague reason. Bowser will now be twice as dangerous and sends his Koopalings alongside Bowser Jr. to keep you busy.

Replacing giant battles from Bowser's Inside Story and Dream Team are the papercraft battles where you will fight in 3D environments against other papercrafts. More paper mechanics are to be found on the field where Paper Mario can form into a plane or squeeze through holes.

Or, Trio Attacks involve all three "brothers" resulting into generally the most destructive attacks. The highlight of this game however are the boss battles, which despite featuring very familiar foes, has creative enemy attacks that keep you quite challenged as you get further.

Musically it's not as good as the previous entries, but it's not bad either. The tedious parts which are fixed include being able to skip cutscenes and being able to fast forwards text, as well as lessening onto tutorials and rather making them more of a background idea to delve into by reading more upon them in the menu.

Mario & Luigi: Paper Jam  plays it safe and improves in some areas, and yet it's also not inventive with ideas. However, crossing over both Mario RPG worlds is an exception and I think that AlphaDream pulled a fine job with blending them.

Just, for crying out loud, lessen on those Paper Toad Quests next time!

Rating: 8.1

Xenoblade Chronicles X

 

I will admit it. A "burn out" effect of extending gameplay on Wii U's largest and arguably only RPG title has left me dissatisfied towards a sequel of which I was thrilled to play the original and call it my favorite on the predecessor console. After playing 70 hours, I will lay down my review and my verdict.

Xenoblade Chronicles X has a number of cons that are unavoidable for me to ignore. Party members are recruitable if you navigate to them into NLA somewhere, and not by a simple menu of switching them around.

Members are also restricted for various affinity and story missions for no particular reasons,annoying me towards the pre-requirements. They also do not scale with experience if you do not touch idle ones.

Hip-Hop music does not go well with this game's setting, and I was thrown into an affinity mission called the Repair Job which did not explain to me how Frontier Nav works, a tool allowing you to mine resources and revenue and acquire stats upgrades, which I learned about a few hours later.

The biggest con might be how it's story and pacing are so bleak considering the beautiful world Mira is with it's 5 huge continents of green, jungle, desert, ice and fire settings. Indigens are everywhere and will disturb your playthrough numerous times because they can either see or hear you, which only got more obnoxious.

The Art system rightfully returns, and this time, you will be able to ride on mecha's called Skells, letting you eventually fly over the continents and in the mean time grant additional battle effects, and it's likely that you will need them in order to beat the game.

Although combat is fun and the various classes for your main character means that building the avatar up can be done in many ways, the enemy design isn't that exciting, and worse, clones exist on the continents allowing for less variety.

XCX is a highly graphical experience as you are able to basically explore everything that is observable thanks to the Skells, and it's so massive that the interface's text is damn tiny, the tutorials in game don't explain crucial details towards features and it just might be the biggest open world game at the moment.

Uncountable things are there to do, and online features include going on support missions, reading messages, recruiting people and acquiring mutual goals in order to get rewards. It's so overwhelming that I think that in the long term, I did not really feel invited towards Mira.

The pro's are basically the gameplay and the landscapes, but the many annoyances and me being stuck at Chapter 10 at the type of writing while technically I am overleveled for it's boss means that I don't know when I will return to Xenoblade Chronicles X, but it's climax and ending better be worth it in an otherwise miserable bland story.

EDIT: After finally beating the game 20 hours later, I can say that I am satisfied, but the first part is leaps and bounds still better to me, for focusing more on a storyline and it's characters plus having a better soundtrack.

Rating: 8.3