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.
GG posted a tweet about there being shortages due to unexpected demand or something or other. Maybe this will be another unexpected runaway hit like Demon's Souls or something. I hope so. Let me check if they sent my copy...
They probably only had like 50k copies for all of Europe or something
500 in Australia.
I did a little research today. I walked around the center of Rotterdam and only one store actually had Xenoblade. I think there are not many copies printed in Europe. Hopefully the word of mouth will carry it like it did with Demon Souls.
Xenoblade get bitches.
Will play later.
Did you buy it on the highstreet or did your copy arrive? That was very quick
Played some more yesterday and today.
Some pretty epic shit started happening. All very anime, highly emotional and cool, not original but thrilling nonetheless.
I'm really, really starting to admire the battle system in this game. It's a cinch to use, yet has layers and layers of depth. Fights are exciting but also tactical.
I can't really tell you what happened as I don't want to spoil the story, but let's just say that the stakes were immediately raised, as was the tension. And now, finally I am setting out on this epic, massive adventure. Seems like it will be a huge shame for the North Americans to miss out on this one.
Wow @ Gamespots Xenoblade review, all this and only 9.0?
So anyway, Xenoblades combat, they keep adding layers of depth. So basically you target an enemy and hit fight. But you can also lure enemies near you to pick them off.
Enemies have different behaviours and icons which tell you how they might react. Some attack you on sight, some ignore you, some only attack you if they hear you, others react to ether. Then some have a group behaviour where they will join their monster bretheren in action and you might get mobbed.
So anyway, you get some enemies like the Mecha who are invunerable to anything but the Monado sword. And to get them you have to combo attacks together. You hit a break move then wait for your buddy Reyn to topple them. Then you have various "arts" which are basically special moves that have all sorts of properties, like you can use a side attack to lower their defence stats, or a back slash which causes double damage.
And there is an aggro system (agression) some enemies get pissed and target a specific party member and the game blatantly shows you who is being targeted by whom. So for instance is someone else is drawing aggro then the monster won't be focusing on you and you can sneak up and whomp them in the ass with a special move. When you use a special move, you have to wait a time before you can use it again and each art eats up different levels of your art points.
Also, no need for potions, your health and your parties health are only effected in battle. Once out of battle all your health recharges in a minute or less, sort of like master cheif's armour in Halo.
When you fill up a special bar you can initiate a chain attack - the screen freezes and you select an art for each character to use - you can chain the right ones together to get like a 21 hit combo. But you need a certain amount of your special bar full in case someone dies.
About that, like Gears of War when someone fall you can run up to them and revive them if there is one bar left in your special bar.
But there is also affinity and tension. Affinity is how well the characters have bonded, which allows you to pull of more special moves with better effect. Tension is how geared up the party is to fight, you can run up and shout encouragement to your buddies to gear up their tension and make them fight better. But there is also a trick to this like getting a better reload in gears of war, you have to hit the button at the right time to match a moving icon.
Also there are monado powers, which are seperate from your normal arts (special moves) so far there are two, one which enchants your whole group making everyone more powerful and able to attack Mecha which you normally can't harm unless toppled. The other move is a Monado buster which causes extreme damage in a one hit blow.
Also, did I mention that there are no random battles, but also that you can see the level of any enemy nearby and see your own characters levels on screen at the same time so you can know relatively well, how well you are going to fare against a level 4 iron bunny as a level 10 character set.
Also you can make gems and put them into armour or weapons to boost up their attributes.
It all sounds quite complicated but like I said, you initiate a battle, the characters auto attack, you just control one character of your choice and just his movement - then with the d-pad you can just initiate any special moves or 'arts', that you want.
Also, in a nice move the quests, you don't have to go all the way back to someone to tell them you beat the quest you were given, the game just records that you did it automatically. Nice.
One thing I haven't worked out is what to do with all the items I have got. They all have weird names and I assume a purpose but I don't know what yet? I just sold anything I couldn't equip in the beginning, now I'm holding onto everything till I can read the rest of the manual.
I never thought I would be this into the combat system of an rpg but it is really remarkable.
It's a lot like MMORPG combat but I guess it's all new to you since you haven't played such games? Though it's definitely done in its own way many of the basics are the same, from aggro levels to how you do specials (except on PC you press their hotkey or click on your action bar rather than highlight it with the arrow keys and then confirm the action with a button). The Last Story also has similar ideas in its own way. I got the game too but I only played a bit, I'm just about to leave Colony 9 (well, story wise, I think I'll stick around and do some side quests). If you're playing on a 4:3 SDTV and have a hard time reading some of the text, set your Wii to widescreen 16:9 mode when playing Xenoblade, and set your TV to widescreen also (so that it doesn't stretch the image) the picture and text is clearer that way, which is especially evident in the equipment screen with the stat comparisons. There are no downsides for Xenoblade since in 4:3 mode it adds huge black bars that give it the same picture estate as widescreen on a 4:3 TV, you'll just have to switch it back for other games.
Did I just play 5 hours straight? Holy shit, where to begin. Well let's do the easy one first.
No my copy arrived.
About the rest. GG pretty much explained the battle system. Except that if you keep attacking normally a tech fills up with each strike. Doing other techs will not fill the bar up. When it is full you can unleash a powerful attack.
And GG for all the items. Each named character you see, you can trade stuff with them. Don't bother buying stuff in shopes.
Well the exploration in this game is awesome. I already saw some level 70 monsters casually swimming by. I also beat one named monster. The giant worm you find at the beach. But here's the thing, I beat him with Shulk alone. It is hard fighting on you own, but I did it. Done tons and tons of sidequests, explored a lot. Picked fights with monster dozens of levels above me and died.
I like it a lot more then TWEWY. This game has so much more freedom and armour actually make sense here. Also the gem slots are like the badges in Paper Mario, awesome.