Now things are getting interesting.��
Listed on Nintendos japanese site
IGN eyes on trailer and screens
A lone warrior chopping through an army of robotic warriors with an outsized Cloud Strife-like energy sword. Colossal war machines advancing though a misty canyon, shooting anything that moves. The few remaining human defenders hiding behind simple wooden shields that are no match for high-energy weapons. Welcome to the world of Monado.��
The debut trailer for Monado: Beginning of the World premiered today at E3: 2009, and first impressions for the new Wii RPG are that the beginning is going to be pretty exciting. Things kick off with that canyon-set battle, revealing more and bigger enemies with an interesting steampunk design. Things likely don't end well for our lone warrior, as we soon segue to a young blonde hero discovering that energy sword - now inert - only to see it flash blindingly to life the moment he picks it up. Your standard JRPG Hero's Journey (tm) is definitely in full effect here, with just a dash of King Arthur.��
Gameplay appears to be open-world, where you'll traverse lush jungles, glowing forests, climb sheer walls, and encounter the crumbling remains of a conquered people. It looks nicely textured and details pop, animating at what looks like a smooth 30 fps.��
Players will pick up two partners in their travels, and while combat initially looks turn-based, we saw all three party members attacking simultaneously. Transitions into combat are completely seamless; characters approach enemies, draw weapons, and it's on. One scene showed your team (wielding much smaller edged weaponry) surrounding a lizard-man enemy, who didn't make much of a dent in their lifebars before it was downed. A much larger lizard-man (a good twenty feet tall) and giant mutant crab monster probably fared better.
(back up link - check the japanese site first link in post for proper quality trailer)
Hit the HQ option.
N-Europe reviews Xenoblade
Monolith provides the biggest and most ambitious game on Wii by a long-shot. Xenoblade Chronicles reignites the JRPG and adventure genres in one classy swoop; that this grandiose spectacle is under the banner of Nintendo is the cherry on top.
10/10
Clearly no one in America would want to play this game.
Fuck yeah Europeans, thank you NOE:
Xenoblade Chronicles:soundtrack offer
You see, if more peeps had bought Little Kings Story, none of this would be happening.
Present company excepted.
OK, preordered. I said i wasn't going to buy another full-price game this year besides Dark Souls and Zelda yet here I am carried away by the hype this thing is carrying.
IGA if this is not the best thing since *tries to find alternative to sliced bread given that he doesn't like sliced bread* the everything bagle ... i will triangle joke you and fart in your eye
by the way I would have really liked that red classic controller but I never found that special edition of it. The soundtrack news is good, though i wish is was a CD in box as they did with Baten Kaitos
I pre-ordered yesterday, it shipped today. Fingers crossed I will have it thursday.
NGamer reviewed Xenoblade
"From gameplay to storyline to visuals, an amazing piece of work"
93%
The Mirror reviewed it too
Finally, after years of waiting, the Wii has a quality RPG to call its own.
Some Wii adventures have flirted with greatness, but Monolith Soft has finally battered down the door and delivered a brilliant Japanese role-playing game.
While the wonderful art design raises the roof with great detail and vast environments to explore, it’s the solid combat system that steals the show.
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It borrows heavily from PS2 classic Final Fantasy XII, with hot-key commands used to dust up foes. But its added strategy comes from having to position your player to inflict maximum pain while the mechanical monstrosities must be brought to their knees first. The only fly in the ointment is that battles can become frantic affairs, as special effects-laden attacks and a screen full of enemies makes it hard to see what it is you’re targeting.
But Xenoblade Chronicles is simply majestic. It will last you dozens of hours and looks and sounds incredible. Definitely one of this year’s biggest surprises.
I got Xenoblade and have played several hours of it.
When to begin, ah the combat looks complicated with all the menus on screen in the videos, but is pleasently simple and accesible to use. You choose your target and choose fight. Your character auto attacks whilst all you do is move him about with the c-stick to position him in good attack or defence positions. Then with the d-pad you can just select all sorts of special moves.
When you play the game in 16:9 it's full screen, if you play on a 4:3 set you get large top and bottom borders.
Voice acting is a mix of good and bad but the bad is kind of endearing and it's never terrible. Graphics swing from low poly, low resolution blurriness to staggeringly overwhelmingly huge, grand and beautiful backdrops - running at a good clip too. Menus are easy enough to navigate but there are tons and tons and tons of customising options and different things you can do should you choose too. You RPG nuts will be in stat heaven, to me it's feels sort of bewildering yet I haven't been stuck in the game get because I haven't been tinkering.
The map isn't bad, not good though, you can't zoom into it and text is rather small in the whole game aside from speech bubble text. It's sort of like those HD games when you play on an SDTV and you have to lean forward to read it.
The camera is bothersome playing with just the remote and chuk. You have to hold down the C button before moving it, I may change to the classic controller just so I can move the camera more easily and that is what you will want to do - to get breathtaking views of the landscape. Characterisation seems good so far, nothing original or great, but fun and likebable.
Music is gorgeous, that reminds me, I have to download the free soundtrack.
Gamereactor review
"100 hours for one of the last gems you'll find on the Wii, and one of the most engaging J-RPGs of this generation."
EDGE mag review
"No game released in the genre in the past decade has demonstrated such a concerted focus as this breezy journey to redefine and repopularise the genre by learning from past mistakes."
"The story is fast-paced and engaging, with regular set-pieces to reward investment. A strong, characterful translation from Nintendo helps enormously, while the all-British voice cast gives the game’s key characters an uncommon, fresh tone. But the greatest triumph is that, unusually for a JRPG, many of the best stories in the game aren’t prescribed, but instead generated by your own inquisitiveness.
Wonders and terrors are equally positioned in the world to imbue even the slightest diversion off the beaten track with drama and anticipation. When married to one of the strongest battle systems in the genre and a cast of characters and story that twist convention, this world becomes irresistible. It’s a potent return to form for Takahashi, then, a glowing comeback for the Japanese RPG, and an injection of creativity for some tired hardware. Xenoblade Chronicles manages to impress, enrich and, best of all, inspire wonder."
9/10
Damn the environments in Xenoblade are so big, you have to push the camera over and above the edge of the screen to see the top peaks of canyons. Have any of you guys ever seem one of the wonders of the natural world like the Grand Canyon?
Same sort of feeling here.
Also because the game scale is so big much of the environment is meant to be viewed at a certain distance, you may never come face up to a texture on some of the backdrops. It means that artistically they've gone to town on them. Remember RE4, some of the rock textures looked awesome until you jammed your face up to them? Same idea here.
Unfortunately the close up visuals, especially in the cutscenes is a little assy, there is some sub-Dreamcast looking stuff but you have to forgive it because that allows for this super scaled world.
I don't like playing as Shulk purely because of his character model, it's a little small and meek so I choose Rein as my party lead with a hulking sword on his back. But Shulk has the Monado sword.... damnit, which should I choose?
BTW the Dunban voice actor is lame.
Okay, one thing I don't like about the town Colony 9 in Xenoblade is that you can't go through doors and look inside buildings. There are some buildings where you can walk inside but very few and you can never actually open a door and rummage about inside like in a Zelda game. I love doing that in these rpg like games, just investigating the town in detail.
Played more Xenoblade, tried out the classic controller - it's useless. Well, it's good for the camera as you can freely rotate but you still have to hold down a button and then press A and B to zoom in and out. But it has a fatal flaw in the combat stakes.
In the game you use the analogue stick to move your character about and avoid attacks and move in to attack. When you are using the chuk and mote, you can freely use the d-pad on the remote to select special moves and healing and still move your character at the same time. With the classic controller to use the d-pad to select special moves in a realtime battle you have to take your thumb off the left stick so are rooted to the spot. Unless you can change the movement to the right stick and camera to left stick on the CC - it's no good. And frankly the regular CC I have (not the pro) isn't very comfortable anyway.
I toyed around with item selection, it's easy because it tells you on the stats page when an item is benefitting you or if it will lower your stats with simple red for bad, blue for good colours. And the "arts" essentially special moves or healing abilities all have a bar which represents how much you have upgraded them so it's all very easy to keep track of and to use action points to improve the arts skill level.
On the graphics front the art is great and the scale incredible. If they make a similar game for Wii U it will look eye melting good - I can see them doing this for real.
They did say that they had been experimenting with HD hardware for quite some time now
Xenoblade is dispatched! It is coming!
Some data.
Xenoblade has sold 141,059 copies in Japan.
What do you reckon will be the Euro and Aussie numbers?