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