Do you think Nintendo would appriciate it if I emailed them a copy of the Gamespot review of Xenoblade, and added in at the end "Well at least we get Barbie Horse Adventures"?

I've been playing Wii on a 42inch Panasonic Vierra for 5 years now....most stuff looks fine on my set. Granted, it looks better on my 36inch Sony VVEGA SDTV, but not by much, and that's not in my gaming room and not hooked up to surround sound. I'm also so used to playing on widescreen sets now that I hate going back.

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.

Nice impressions man, thanks.

It really sounds like they took ideas from a few of the better RPG combat systems, and tweaked & modernized them by adding in a few things that RPG's should have fixed ages ago. I love the recharging health idea. And the affinity system sounds like something many RPG's have, where as the bond of the characters grows they get stronger in combat and work as a team better.

If this game was out over here I would be playing it right now, despite my backlog. I've been dying for a deep JRPG....haven't played one since FF13.

All these great reviews with 9+ ratings are making NOA look really bad.

Ravenprose said:

Reviews mean nothing to NOA, only $$$$$.

Looks like they could print a batch of 100 000 copies and sell them off easily. that should make a nice dollop of $$$$$ for them.

bugsonglass said:

Ravenprose said:

Reviews mean nothing to NOA, only $$$$$.

Looks like they could print a batch of 100 000 copies and sell them off easily. that should make a nice dollop of $$$$$ for them.

NOA cares not for dollops of money, only truck loads. Dollops are beneath them.

edgecrusher said:

Dvader said:

I keeping how this games combat is just like FFXII and yet you all hate FFXII but love this. Hypocrites all of you.

I loved it. Nobody else played it here I don't think.

People that hate FFXII hate it for other things, not the battle system.

There's no question I LOVE Catherine; it's the difficulty that both keeps me playing it and pushes me away from it ALL at the same time!

El Shaddai is something... different... I'm getting to that in my topic I created today, but I am filling in all the background details of the game first!