What The Hell Is Xenoblade Chronicles And Why Should I Care?

Set to release in April 2015 on the New 3DS, Xenoblade Chronicles 3D will likely take those who perceive reality in three dimensions by storm. What their lives were like before the release of the New 3DS, its traffic stopping 256 MB of ram, and its ability to play games originally developed for the Wii is anyone’s guess…Except my own guess of course, because I’ve finally decided to try out Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii.   

I’ve often wondered if I’d ever get the chance to play Xenoblade Chronicles. When it was first released back in 2012 in NA, I felt compelled to borrow someone’s Wii. But then I thought against it: there were other games to play, and other systems to play them on. Time passed, as it oft does, and I soon forgot about Xenoblade and its chronicles.

It’s sort of sad in some ways actually, because I was a huge fan of Xenogears’ convoluted mess, and actually enjoyed Xenosaga enough to finish all three episodes. Part of me was convinced I enjoyed both series because they were flawed in some glaring way; because others dismissed their importance; because they were worth investing time into. That same part of me was immediately dismissive of Xenoblade Chronicles because it appeared to exist as a compromise of sorts. Rather than be heavily burdened by storytelling and narrative scope, much of the game’s focus was on its combat and exploration…and scope. As you might have guessed, The New 3DS has opened up old wounds, or certainly some form of personal introspective discourse that I had put on hold until recently.

I guess what I’m trying to get at is that Xenoblade Chronicles is a pretty good game, and certainly worth the time of those who appreciate strong gameplay in RPGs. The game’s combat system appears outwardly like an MMO, but its tempo is frighteningly manic and enormously rhythmic. Actually, scratch that. I’m sure the game is an MMO, from a combat perspective. I’ve never played enough MMOs to know what one plays like anyway. 

Importantly, I often lose myself to a compulsive need to automatically launch off skills as soon as they refill.  This primal urge is coupled with the game’s light QTE features: the player can rally their allies during combat, which increases several of their offensive stats by pressing the “B” button whenever it appears on the screen. Additionally, when one of the player’s party members is about to die, a flash of them dying interrupts combat, showing the player how they die, by what attack, and by which enemy. The player can then interrupt this death by manually administering a command to either that party member or to another one who can prevent that death.

The game’s many layers are astonishingly in their depth. It sort of reminds of why I’m proud to spend time with RPGs. I guess I should be proud of director Tetsuya Takahashi for finally crafting a game which successfully translates his ambitions in game design into what can safely be called a “final product”. The project manager in me says that that’s a job well done. The consumer in me is saddened at the need to play this game on the Wii. Part of the tumult ever present in first world problems…