Archview #3: Xenoblade Chronicles

 Spoilers: It's the best JRPG I've played since Persona 4.

 Grab the big, open spaces of your favorite Western RPG, add the narrative focus of your favorite Japanese RPG and mix it with the battle system of an MMORPG and you get Xenoblade, and that's the fastest way to describe it.
 Xenoblade tells the story of two giants, who were locked in deadly combat, until eventually they killed each other, and life was born on both of them. Mechons on Mechonis and Homs(Humans) and other races on Bionis. For many years the Mechons have been attacking the Bionis, and the races of Bionis had no means to defend themselves but the Monado, an ancient sword that hurts the wielder, but allows them to destroy Mechons. This sword finds it's way into Shulk hands, granting him the ability to see into the future, an ability that he will need in his quest for vengeance. The story is very good, with a marriage of original ideas and stablished tropes, told via excellent cut-scenes that never fail to impress.
 The game play like a western RPG in that the enviroments are huge, and you can reach any place that you can see. Waterfalls in the distance? You can reach them. Towers? You can reach them too. Nothing, absolutely nothing is out of limits. The game has a great sense of scale and has some amazing views from some of the highest points in the game's world. It has to be said, that since it's so huge, travelling is slow. You can make it a bit faster by inserting gems into your equipment, but it's not enough. Swimming, in particular, is very slow, and some of the high-level areas can only be reached by swimming, making it a chore to reach them. The game does allow fast-travel to many Checkpoints in each area, and you can fast travel anytime you are out of combat and to any place, regardless of where you are, making it quite convenient.

 Another problem with the huge areas are towns. Getting quests can be a bit of a hassle, since you need to find the NPCs on the town... NPCs that may be avaiable only at certain times. So you need to comb the city both at night and during the day just to search for quests. And there's no way to know if new quests popped up, and the map only shows you the Quest Symbol if you are close to the NPC that has a quest, so be prepared to return to the towns after every major plot point and comb the cities. Again. And search the cities after completing quests too, since each quest completed raises your affinity with the town, which in turn, opens up more quests.
 The Combat system feels out of an MMORPG. You control one character, in a party of three, and autoattacks are automatic. You can move the character around to reposition him, and on the lower part of the screen you have a customizable pallette with all the Arts you brought. There's no mana, so Artss are ruled by Cooldown only, also, there are no items, so combat is based solely on Arts. Unleash many Arts, and you'll raise the three-segment tension bar, which allows you to revive fallen comrades or use the Chain attack. Chain Attacks freeze the enemies, and allows you to use one Art per character, though if you raise the affinity between characters, you may get the chance to use more arts. Shulk's ability to see into the future affects battles too, so when a enemy is about to use an attack that'd kill a ally, Shulk gets a vision of it, granting you time to stop the enemy or make it change targets.

 The game looks amazing, while character's faces are a bit emotionless, all the areas in the game look incredible, and the character are well animated. Different armor pieces actually look different on the characters. There are about 9 different looks per armor piece, with different colors, and most of them look really good, and they are are reflected in the cut-scenes! The music is fantastic, and the voice acting is excellent. The britsh voice actors also bring a certain freshness to the dub, since it's usually American VAs who dub games. And the game has lots of little details, like the characters speaking with each other during and after combat, and optional "Heart-to-Heart" spots, where you can watch a short cut-scene between two characters, adding depth to their personas.
 Xenoblade is a LONG game, it's not your average 40 hours RPG. If you are gonna play Xenoblade, get ready to make a commitement with it. The game has a lot of content, be it sidequests(There are over 450 different quests.), the world itself, the optional Heart-to-Heart moments or even secret areas.
 It does have a few shortcomings though, mainly, some of the "gathering" quests. Everywhere you go there are blue spots on the ground, these spots are Items that can be collected, and "what" item they are is completely random. Some quests task you with gathering a certain amount of a certain item, and finding them can be a real pain in the a$$, you might find yourself going from one end of the area to the next multiple times just praying to find that last item. Then there are the rare drops. Some quests task you with gathering certain enemy drops, and sometimes, it'd be a quantity of a rare drop from a rare enemy, so you are gonna have to rereturn to the same area to make the enemy respawn until it drops the damned item. And with Unique Monsters, you are gonna have to soft-reset in order for it to respawn. This is not fun. My last gripe would be with the amount of HP monsters have, normal battles can last a wee bit longer than needed, having level 20 enemies endure more than 4 autoattacks from a level 60 character is not amusing.

 Luckily, it's few flaws don't put a damper on the whole experience. Xenoblade is a game that was worth the wait, and quite probably the best JRPG released this generation. Right now, it sits among my favorite RPGs, a feat I never expect from Monolith Soft, creators of Xenosaga and other underwhelming games. If you have a Wii and like RPGs, Xenoblade Chronicles is a must have.

 It's a 9/10