Must see if you want all the areas of the game spoiled I guess (I still think there's a big chance it's coming to the West, it's only been 3-4 months since the Japanese release, some Monolith Soft games were delayed a year or so).
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds while the pessimist fears this is true. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
Watch it and then I will use this on you.
More english videos
I don't like how the lines overlap each other in battle.
Alright. Played a little more last night and checked out new game+ a bit. Think I'm done with this for now until I do an inevitable replay (which will be very nice thanks to the new game+ feature). Here's my thoughts:
Battle system
+Fast
+In addition to the normal choosing of commands, positioning and party member interaction make it more interactive than FFXII and thus more fun.
+Chain attack system is great. Connecting the same color attack increases damage exponentially, while tumbling an enemy opens up opportunity. Interesting decision choices.
+Tumble, paralyze, aura systems are great and lead to a lot of interesting battles.
+Every character is totally unique. Exact opposite of FFXII. By endgame no character is even remotely alike. All have their uses. All are fun to main as.
+Over 100 optional boss battles. Some are quite challenging and require good strategies, others are pushovers. Some just depend on what level you are when you fight them. But there's enough of them throughout, that you'll always have exciting fights with good rewards.
+No punishment for death gives an incentive to push yourself and try to fight anything you think you can. If you die, you simply start at last warp point and don't lose anything.
-3 party feels too limiting. Especially since so few spell types crossover. Someone is hit with poison? If you don't have the 1 character with cure status, you just gotta wait it out which is annoying. At times you are basically required to keep Shulk in your party and then you're limited even further to only 2 open slots. 4 person party would've gone a long way.
-AI is not terrible and you do have some control over it, but at the end of the day your AI partners will not play their characters as efficiently as you would have, which can be a bit annoying.
-Always auto-attacking while in battle. This is built into the system and so defenses are built around it occasionally. But sometimes you just want to NOT ATTACK so you don't trigger the counters, but you can't. >_<
Field/Questing
+Great dungeon/field designs. Really intricate places with tons of secrets to reward those who explore. Lots of variety.
+Awesome weather effects. Every area has unique weather at random parts of the day.
+Gorgeous day/night cycle with music that fades nicely between night and day. Some areas become completely different during the night than they are during the day.
+One of the best endgames ever. As you go through your adventure you come across many monsters or places you can't fight or access. Endgame is going back and doing everything you couldn't during the main game. Very rewarding and pretty long.
+Quick travel and the ability to adjust time is awesome
+Save anywhere is fantastic and needs to be in more jrpgs
+400 optional quests. Some with neat stories. Some with great rewards
+Hundreds of unique named NPCs with their own stories that play out as you become more involved in the towns/cities by doing their quests
+Skill trees and borrowing skills from other trees is a good dynamic that provides lots and lots of passive skills. Some very good.
+Good amount of hidden things. Hidden skill trees, hidden attacks, hidden extensions of normal attacks, Ultimate weapons, Hidden areas, hidden npcs, etc...
+Gem crafting is neat and gems are very useful.
+Loot is alright. You get lots of it, but 75% of things in the game are useless
+Almost nothing important is missable. The few quests that are give you fair warning although they don't tell you when they expire.
+Character relation system is neat. Good rewards for building it up between characters.
-Some quests with rare drop grinds which are the worst thing ever invented. The only times I truly hated playing XB was spending 20-30 mins grinding an enemy for drops.
-Towns are sometimes too big with not enough quick travel landmarks. So when you're running quests there's a ton of in-town running back and forth to talk to people.
-Running speed is a bit slow for the size of the areas. Even with gems that boost running speed, it's capped at 125% for no reason. Should have at least uncapped it to 200% on new game+
-NPCs can be a pain to find without a guide of where everyone is at what time. Since every town has a day/night cycle you have to check the entire towns (which are huge) twice when looking for quests.
-Limited inventory SUCKS. Especially because you're constantly bombarded with items. Almost every time you kill an enemy (95%?) they leave a treasure with like 3-4 items each. Most of it junk. But just because it's fast (and because you can't compare it to your current equip) you click "take all" and move on. This means you fill up your inventories quick and often have to sell stuff to make room.
-Comparing equipment is really tedious. Especially if you ever think about buying from a shop.
-Character relation system between characters grows way to slowly. After 120 hours with everything done, you'll still only have about 50% of the relations maxed out. Growth needed to be at least twice as fast.
-Wish the game had field treasure chests as another way to reward players for exploring
-No beastiary. Inexcusable for a game like this that requires drops all the time.
-Because of no beastiary and the amount of named npcs you often have to find (and sometimes the unclear quest intructions), XB is a "wiki or die" game when trying to 100% it. Without some sort of a guide it'd be near impossible to do everything on the first run.
Story:
+Very interesting plot set in a very unique world.
+Great pacing, exciting cutscenes, mysteries, foreshadowing, twists
+Smart writing. You will not find a more intelligently written rpg this gen. The game avoids most cliches and stereotypes and at no point will you roll your eyes or have to deal with stupid characters acting idiotically. The characters (even the lead) are all intelligent people and act accordingly.
+Good length. Story size is probably about the size of two of the Xenosaga games combined. Smaller in scope and length than Xenogears though.
+Satisfying tale from start to finish. The story is great from the start and never dips even once before the end credits roll. A grand adventure.
+Good cast. Everyone is likeable, no one is generic game/anime stereotype. Character depth doesn't go as deep as something like Xenosaga.
+ or - depending on what you want. XB's story is great and cinematic, but it's not melodramatic like XG/XS/FF/KH. You will not get white room speeches with piano green grass playing. I think this is the biggest change from Takahashi's previous works. XB is not any more mainstream or less ambitious than XG/XS. The story is just as original and creative and well told, it's just that Takahashi has moved away from trying to pull the emotional strings of his audience and make melodrama. Instead it's simply a story where things happen and you enjoy them and watch the story unfold.
Graphics/Audio
+Gorgeous environments
+Good character design
+Visibile equipment is pretty varied and has some real cool designs
+Nice range of tunes that are incorporated very well into the gameplay and cutscene
+Great voice acting
-Wii image quality drags things down a bit
Other
+Large game; takes at least 60-70 hours first time. If you plan to do everything, you're looking at ~120 hours first time.
+New game+ is great. Almost everything carries over.
-Game clock stops at 99:59. Really dumb for a huge game like this
Overall
While there might be a decent amount of small negatives spread throughout the title, the fact of the matter is that in the face of the giant adventure that Xenoblade presents, they're all minor issues that only pick away at the greatness of the experience Xenoblade gives. Anyone willing to invest the time to explore the world of Xenoblade will find that it's populated with hundreds of creatures, quests, characters, bosses, and hidden tales. All which add to up to a truly satisfying console rpg experience unlike any other out there.
Without the budget/time issues that caused the 2nd disc of Xenogears, or the production issues that caused Xenosaga Ep2, Xenoblade feels like the first time Takahashi has been able to give the game experience he wanted from start to finish without resistance blocking his way. And if this is the kind of experience that Takahashi wants to give, then I can only look forward immensely to whatever he creates next.
The three years Monolith Soft spent creating Xenoblade feel truly justified by the end product. As the best game in their resume to date, and the best rpg on a Nintendo system since Chrono Trigger, Xenoblade stands as a proud example of how great rpgs are made.
A+
You excited now GG?
Iga_Bobovic said:Impressions from Bepbo at Gaf
The three years Monolith Soft spent creating Xenoblade feel truly justified by the end product. As the best game in their resume to date, and the best rpg on a Nintendo system since Chrono Trigger, Xenoblade stands as a proud example of how great rpgs are made.
A+
You excited now GG?
No 
I can't explain why either cause I don't know myself.
Here is the 4 minute English video I think it's the videos I posted above only in one long video.
gamingeek said:No
I can't explain why either cause I don't know myself.
Here is the 4 minute English video I think it's the videos I posted above only in one long video.
Gotta love the English accents. Now I will play it in English for the lulz. Nah probably stick with the superior Japanese voices.
I have listened to the soundtrack so often that I recognize the music in the trailer
When the trailer starts and the party is walking around the field the Gaur plains music plays.
When you are chased by the giant spider the Confrontation with an enemy music plays.
I really like the music, some of it reminds of the Endless Ocean music, not the opera stuff, the in game stuff.
gamingeek said:I really like the music, some of it reminds of the Endless Ocean music, not the opera stuff, the in game stuff.
There was no opera in Endless Ocean. 
The more I look into this the more I really want to play it. I haven't sunk my teeth into a console RPG since Dragon Quest 8 and lord knows I'm overdue. The real question is HOW am I going to play this. I may need to buy a new Wii, but if it's still not coming out for a while I may just hold off for the Wii U, though I really don't want to buy a console at launch.
Why would you buy a new Wii? What is wrong with your old one?
Nothing is really wrong with it, though I have noticed it's louder than it used to be and some games take longer to load. For the sheer number of hours on it I suspect it may not last more than another year.
The real reason is competition. I have two kids now who are of gaming age and like to play the Wii. A game like Xenoblade isn't something I'd just play for an hour or so and then move on. I could certainly play the dad card and tell them I can do whatever the hell I want, but they're crafty demons and would find a way to get back at me.
Thinking about this you've got to give it to Nintendo, this reverse psychology strategy is genius. Tell gamers they can't have the game, that they're somehow not worthy of it. Make them beg for it. Preorder it on amazon in droves. Campaign for it en masse. Go on night vigils ...
Then "grudgingly" SELL it to them. And make them feel special and thankful as they give you their money for your product.
GENIUS
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Listen to Wu-Tang and watch Kung-Fu
Huge Iwata Asks feature on Xenoblade
In English
Takeda:
It sounds obvious, but when I was working on the scenario, that was my whole world. Then when I actually came to play the game, I’d see all these elements that had grown out of the main story, things that hadn’t been in the scenario, such as the overall atmosphere, the villagers’ appearance and so on. I felt like I’d written a huge volume of material, but it actually only amounts to one section of this vast world. I found that really overwhelming.
Iwata:
So even the scenario writer was overwhelmed! (laughs)
Takeda:
Yes, I was. For instance, there’s an area called Colony 9. The sheer scale of it is incredible. When I was working on the scenario, I had in mind the type of village that appears in regular RPGs. But then when I actually came to play the game, I found that this single village had so many ideas put into it that it could have made an entire game in itself. That’s why, as we neared the end of the development process, it was really brought home to me just what a monumental project I had been involved in.Iwata:
I see. Now, generally speaking, one finds that the bigger the game world gets, the less detailed it becomes. But with this title, you were looking for a world that was ‘both vast and intricately detailed’, weren’t you, Takahashi-san?Takahashi:
That’s right. I wanted to make it so that even if you went to the far edge of the map, you wouldn’t find it empty. I wanted to ensure that wherever you went, there would be something there waiting for you, be it something you’d been seeking, a quest, or a fearsome monster. In certain places, I also wanted to have secluded spots where players would think: ‘Wow, there are beautiful areas like this here in this world!’Iwata:
So in other words, you made sure the player’s investment in the game would always be repaid.
These are the 3 signed posters in the Special edition of Xenoblade
Fuuuuu - skip to 3.36 mins
From Neogaf about Xenoblade's battle system
wsippel said:Billychu said:Considering how many cues it takes from FFXII it practically has to be. FFXII is in the top 5 RPGs of all time for me.
Plays and feels quite different, though. Xenoblade is much faster and more hectic. You constantly have to watch and manage aggro and change position, as the skills only really work if you manage to hit your enemy from a certain angle. That's especially important for the secondary effects of your skills. To knock an enemy down, you do a sweep attack from the side, but you can only knock him down if he's dizzy, which means you first have to hit him with a different skill from behind. Stuff like that.
wsippel said:eLZhi said:That sounds absolutely obnoxious.
Not at all. It's quite engaging and surprisingly strategic, at least for anything other than trash mobs. You constantly have to keep an eye on your AI companions, because they might break your chains, change position themselves, or your tank might not keep the aggro up if you're too aggressive, in which case the enemy will focus on you, and most of your skills are not meant for a frontal assault.
There are no FFXII like gambits to program AI behavior, either. What you can do is get close to one of your allies and issue orders directly (you basically get access to their skill list for one strike), but that uses up your combo meter. And you need the combo meter to revive fallen allies and to do combo attacks. A combo attack means that your whole party attacks in rapid succession, too fast for the enemy to react. You can either use it to chain certain attacks to get a certain status ailment (dizzy -> knock down -> paralyze for example), or ignore secondary effects to keep the combo going for several rounds and more damage in total. The system is quite simple overall, but allows for many very different strategies.
wsippel said:eLZhi said:Gotcha. That makes more sense then. Before it just sounded tedious.
Interestingly, I found it a lot less tedious than pretty much every other RPG combat system I've seen so far. Battles are almost always meaningful in some way. It either makes sense that you were attacked, or you attacked for some reason. It's not just the system itself, it's the overall design. Large beasts with lots of armor and HP are usually neutral and won't attack you if you don't provoke them. Predators will usually attack you on sight (or, if they're blind, if they hear you - yes, there are enemies you can simply sneak by by walking slowly and not getting to close), and their attacks are quite powerful, but they don't have many HP, so the battles are usually very short. For aggressive trash, many insect enemies for example, it's usually best to attract as many of them at once as possible, run around to lure them to you without engaging combat (your AI teammates will just follow you unless you issue an attack command), and kill all of them at once using one of your Monado powers. Low level mobs typically won't attack you either way, which is something I absolutely hated in FF. Complete waste of time - no challenge, no reward. Here, beasts ignore you or outright flee if you're a few levels above them. You have to actively hunt them down if you require stuff they drop, which can be a challenge in itself.
There are also other, more complex things you might or might not take into account. Some areas are more or less dangerous during certain times of day, or depending on the current weather. Passing the swamp at night time is extremely dangerous for example, while by day, it's a rather sleepy and idyllic place. Part of that is due to the fact that some beasts change behavior depending on whether it's day or night. The world is surprisingly alive, and awareness and knowledge of your surroundings will be rewarded. That's probably the single best thing about the game.
Fucking assholes!
Must See Xenoblade Exploration video 14 minutes of Epic exploration