Let’s discuss an amazing RPG and my favourite game of all time
TL;DR: Xenoblade Chronicles is a great game, even when played on the New 3DS, the arguably weakest version. The flaws are hard to find so the main reason for not playing it, is if RPG’s really are not your cup of tea. In the spoiler sections I try to show how to game is a step above others.
NOTE: the main body of text here was written 6~ years ago and was basically my first game review. It was not written with Medium in mind: it included a table of contents to make it accessible. I have done my best to improve the text without making major alterations. And since then, the Definitive Edition was released and there have been developments within the community as well. This review will be going over SPOILERS of the game. I advise you to either play the game or read a spoiler-free review if you have not finished the game yet.
Playing, Version and disclaimer
Let’s start by stating how I played Xenoblade Chronicles (‘XC’ or ‘this game’ for the remainder of this review) and under what conditions.
I played the 3D version on the Nintendo 3DS XL and kept 3D turned off at all times. For the most part I played with earbuds (reasonably good sound) and default speakers otherwise. I usually took the time when playing, but I have occasionally played when travelling (the longest of which was a 45 minute session).
When I started playing, I knew nothing about the game other than the intro cutscene and the first area. I do know it was released on the Wii first in 2011. I have put about 150 hours in the game and only finished the main story.
I decided to list all of the problems I saw in XC in ‘Problems and threats’. I think this game has so few problems that I better address them separate from the rest of the review.
With that out of the way, let us move on to the most important aspect of this game.
Story
Story and presentation
This games’ story and the way it is presented, is amazing.
It baffled me a few weeks after finishing and will likely for some time to come. I will introduce some of the story in order of appearance and then proceed with the presentation part.
The start of the story is pretty short for such a long game.
Within a few hours you should have a basic idea of the world and an important goal is laid out for the protagonists.
First the world is introduced. Two titans called the Bionis and Mechonis
are fighting in a world that appears to be an endless ocean. They reach a stalemate and remain lifeless thereafter. Many years pass and both titans are inhabited by creatures in their own respective image.
In some intense scenes the players views the ‘homs’ (a human-like race from Bionis) fighting the ‘mechon’ (robots from Mechonis). Key in this battle is a reddish sword, The Monado, that seems to be the only weapon capable of destroying Mechon. The Homs manage to defeat a large number of Mechon and all seems to be safe for the homs again.
This game does not linger for long on that setting. There is simply a shift to one year later leaving the player already asking what happened after the battle and why it took place at all.
Then there is this somewhat slower and a lot softer piece that takes the player to the life of the Homs in Colony 9. The main character Shulk, is introduced and his soldier friend Reyn saves him from a crab monster. Soon after it is revealed that the hero wielding the Monado in the battle of a year ago, Dunban, is alive. The brother-in-arms of Dunban, the enigmatic Dickson, who acts as Shulks father is introduced.
Shulk meets with Fiora and they both go to see Reyn, who is fooling aroung with the Monado. It is briefly explained that the Monado can only harm machines…
The three travel through the nearby cave. When their task there is completed, Mechon invade. Fiora is killed in the battle and Shulk discovers he is able to wield the Monado effectively. Most wielders could not do so, or had some caveat.
This all sets a strong goal and story for the upcoming adventure.
Shulk as leading character travels upwards the Bionis with the Monado and Reyn. Along the way they meet people that also have something against the Mechon (Dunban joins later).
Then about halfway through the travel upwards it becomes clear there is more to the mechon than just being a bloodthirsty robot army…
I could really go on explaining a lot of the game story but I think it does more harm than good. Which brings me to the presentation:
From the first cutscenes in XC it is clear ‘show, don’t tell’ is the preferred method of conveying the story. The despair of the Homs is amazingly displayed through brutal cutscenes. There are the serene cutscenes in Colony 9, basically ‘slice-of-life’. The cutscenes get the idea of ‘tragedy/comedy’ across really well. The shifts between despair and peace feel natural.
This game constantly manages to keep you in the dark about the true antagonist(s) or their motives. Throughout the game there are a some cutscenes which shows what the antagonist is doing. This is however done so well that you just keep guessing what there plans are.
Then when the first half story is finished, slowly all these scenes from antagonists and past start to make sense.
What I like a lot is that the story sometimes follows multiple parties.
In any story driven media, I really enjoy when the story keeps showing the viewer/reader things from multiple parties and at some points lets them cross paths. Dickson is kind of the prime example, since he really comes and goes throughout the story.
The story keeps expanding it’s scope through out the game and how it is executed is amazing.
What first was a journey to the top of the world becomes growth for the characters and a battle for the entire world. I can only conclude that the story of this game is great and like a thrilling and well-written book.
Characters
Most of the cast of this game are round characters. There is simply no other game that I can describe as having a few round characters, let alone most of the cast. This ties in with and strengthens the story a lot (especially how Shulk keeps doubting decisions and can’t seem to act all that well).
They are very believable characters. In the first part of the story, all the party members are almost hell-bent on taking revenge in some way, but after some point they learn that revenge will not help them.
Now the characters are also pretty diverse. Shulk is the leader but always keeps pondering about decisions. Reyn is the ‘strong and dumb’ friend of Shulk. While that does sound like a trope character, he manages to not feel that way. Sharla is struggling with losing her friend and is very protective of her younger brother. She also looks after everyone.
Riki is the child-like furry/cute creature that acts as the comic relief. But even though I could describe the cast as such, they will never fail to suprise you and go way beyond these descriptions. Shulk finds an unshakable resolve at the end of the game and Riki has a few, perhaps too few, moments where he shows he is compassionate, and could even be called wise.
Most of the party cast also has a personal thing going that sets the overall goal. Altough Riki fights for money more than eradicating the Mechon, he has a believable reason to come along. Shulk, Reyn and Dunban fight for avenging Fiora but Melia fights for avenging her father and that the Mechon threatened
The support cast also has some good round characters; Juju and Egil are good examples. Juju has little screen time but still manages to have grown from his experiences. Egil changes his thoughts about the races of Bionis and Shulk after their intense confrontation.
Then I have not even discussed the NPC characters. Most areas in the game have some NPCs roaming around. Some of them are named characters with distinct personalities. Except a few story related characters, they all have quests for the party and most quests seem to tell something
about them. These named characters are not really as deep as the party and support cast. Some quests and NPCs are more involved than others though.
One quest in particular that I liked was about two (I presume adopted) brothers. One of them is a Nopon (‘furball’ creatures) and the other a Homs. The Homs brother does not want his little brother to leave because it can be very dangerous on the Bionis.
But like most Nopon, the little brother wants to leave the town and explore.
In the end of the quest, they will fight and the winner gets to decide the fate of the little brother…
Then there are also some NPC’s that provide quests for specific party members that revolve around a trait of the party member. From the ones I have done, these quests have a small focus on exploring this trait of the party member and the rewards are a new skill tree branch (that all have character trait names like Spirit, Cowardice, Courage etc.). This reinforces the idea that these characters really learn and experience throughout this game.
Pace
Sublime.
I think the story had a great pace. It never felt like it took very long to continue or too fast to follow. The balance between story progression and gameplay felt perfectly right. The intro does not take too long and even has some action in it already. Towards the end of the game there is a long section with little story progression and then it continues with long, amazing cutscenes. XC really manages to find the right pace
for the scope they intend and the length of the game.
There is even some freedom in the pace since there is a lot of stuff
(and given the time restricted quests!) to do. The extra stuff also leads to
some character development or worldbuilding.
Themes/Motives
XC seems to have a few themes going for it.
It puts much emphasis on losing loved ones and moving on with life.
XC is tragic but never goes nihilistic. The ending is even quite bright.
A big theme in this game for a major part of the story, is taking revenge.
The whole party (well, except for Riki, he fights for money and family) is driven by revenge. I have even seen a few quest that have some revenge related themes to them. As the game progresses, it starts showing that revenge is not actually helpful. Towards the end, the main cast has completely outgrown their feelings of revenge.
There is definitely some element of regret, which Shulk displays a lot and returns in some heart-to-hearts and some other moments. This is also ‘solved’ later, with Shulk wanting to change the future even more to prevent sorrow and regret in the future.
Another nice small theme is discovering the world, in multiple ways.
Riki for example seems pretty alienated by some of the sights, never having left his village before. The Homs witness the grandeur of the High Entia capitol and are similarly shocked.
At first they are pretty humble towards these ‘higher beings’… and yet come to find they are ‘human’ as well, with their own quirks and problems.
This game, especially towards the ending, really has the theme of growing and learning.
Story verdict
10/10, amazing story, presented the best way possible in a fantastical world with very diverse characters, culminating in strong themes done well.
World
I will discuss the world by first simply describing every area and then pointing out what I liked about the world.
Here follows a list of the areas of the games in the order they are introduced. That means
when the intro cutscenes plays and you are actually free to explore the area.
Colony 9 area slopes, grassy fields and a big lake. The colony is this cute little pretty generic town. This area can also be noted for the enormous anti air cannons.
Tephra Cave a damp cave with some ruins. Those ruins look very modern in comparison to the Homs’ buildings in this game. Tephra Cave has some nice spots and really feels like a natural cave by the way it coils.
Bionis Leg has plains, small caves and elevations. It is very much an extension to Colony 9.
Colony 6 and the mine: The mine is pretty dark and has this huge central chamber filled with mining equipment. The mines are very complex, consisting of a few levels and
lots of cave paths. Colony 6 itself is a small extension of Bionis Leg with the Colony 6 city as addition. It is an odd dome shaped structure that is completely ruined at first. The buildings that appear later resemble the homs building style seen in colony 9.
Satorl marsh, a place with shallow water and foggy plains.
It stretches out pretty far and contains roads, ruins and scenery.
Then you enter the jungle which is almost one and the same with the Nopon village hidden in it. The jungle is one of the most diverse areas (very fitting), from dense tree spots to waterfalls, watering places and paths past and through these places.
Frontier Village: this city is so big it requires its own (loading) area and that can be felt. It has a length of 8 floors (highest in the game I think) and contains lots of NPCs. The village is build inside and around a great hollow tree and brightly illuminated by lamps all tied together by the brightly coloured Nopon architecture.
Eryth sea, which is a sea between the wings of Bionis.
This place has a lot of water, some beaches and floating landmasses.
It is truly huge and I do not believe I have seen all of it.
Alcamoth, the city of the High Entia is a marvelous advanced fortress that floats above the sea. It is a city area but it takes a remarkable amount of time to get from POI to POI. Instead of seeing houses you can only walk around in the lower park level and bits of the magnificent palace.
Valak Mountain is situated on one of the arms of the Bionis. The mountains are a maze of small paths and little caves. Lots of elevation. The whole place miraculously lights up at night giving a christmas feeling.
The Mechonis is also traversed in the game.
Sword Valley literally is just a part of the Mechonis’ Sword. In this valley there are bases and walkways. A grim area that reminds of the constant wars. Very linear with lots of tough fights. Through the music and waves of enemy patrols, it gives of the vibe of truly infiltrating enemy lines.
Gallahad Fortress: This area is only visited once and was actually not that big. Still, it’s an interesting set-piece.
the Fallen Arm really makes one think of the first Area, Colony 9. A small difference is there is more segmentation. There was also a thing going on with one way ledges and climbing. Which was strange given that it really looks like a flat landscape within a hand.
Finally the party make it to the Mechonis fields, which is essentialy a bare tower, where the walls and floor are covered with pipes and machines. There is a small bit outside where air vents are used to get higher on the Mechonis.
Central Factory comes after (and above) the fields. Mechons are all over patrol the place to secure the factory.
You won’t see classic assembly lines, yet still manages to feel like a busy place where robots are being constructed. It also looks so modern and advanced that it can be hard to recognize which parts do what.
Agniritha is basically the last real area.
It has the grandeur of Alcamoth but is deserted.
Yet it can be extremely hostile to the point that standing still is unadvisable.
Even this area had its own unique progession by being linear and confusing. It‘s required to find four towers and activate switches there.
Following the big story twist happening in Agniritha, the game opens the final areas. These are much more linear and combat focused.
Bionis Interior, which just looks like walking through an alien body.
Prison Island, a floating black rock which looks like a palace from the inside. Filled with fallen angels, demons and other grotesques; also surrounded by flying black ray-like creatures, this is truly a sinister place. This might sound a lot like the average RPG final area with it’s motives, but I assure you that it doesn’t feel cheesy.
Now my opinion. I really, really like this whole world. The idea of creatures living on Titans is amazing. The layout of some places is still hard to comprehend as an Earthling sometimes. I mean, a sea between wings? Truly magical.
They are all very different from one another (well, differences hide in detail for some areas) and that is not just the looks. Yet every area from one Titan manages to have similarities. There is also consistency in that they not all occupy their own end of the spectrum. Eryth Sea has lots of water, but it is not expected from the player to traverse all distance by water. Maybe it is better to say that all areas manages to stay true areas — not sightseeing or fixed panorama’s.
Though the Mechonis areas focus more on combat, they still offer a unique layout, with their many confusing walkways and height differences.
Now I do find it very difficult to pick a favourite from these places.
One of my most loved places is Satorl Marsh. At night the place feels mysterious and almost holy, especially because of the chant music. In the foggy daytime you will wrestle with Lizardmen, whom seem to be local bandits. Somehow I found it all to be very fitting.
But… Valak Mountain sports an incredible confusing and hard to traverse terrain, not shying away from one-way constructs. It has breathtaking sites and also has a magical landscape in the night.
I also love the ‘city’ areas. Frontier Villages feels cute with all the nopon running around and Alcamoth really feels like a sci-fi capitol.
I appreciate how Fallen Arm refers to Colony 9 to mark a sort of half-way through the game point. But Central Factory was something I also thought was cool.
Conclusion
XC offers an amazing world like no other RPG. It is unique and of high quality. Even gameplay aside, the variety is amazing and it’s contribution to the worldbuilding is large.
Gameplay
Battles
The most important gameplay element in this game are clearly the battles.
For those who know FF12, it is similar to the combat of that game with the wait mode disabled. It may resemble some MOBA system, but I am by no means an expert.
For those who do not know:
The active party members engage in a battle on-scene. Participants are free to walk (and flee) whilst battling. The player only controls a single active party member and the other two are AI controlled. Every party member and most enemies ‘auto-attack’. This means they have some default attack that is executed periodically when they are close enough. Every participator has a target (a single enemy of the participator) which the auto-attack and “arts” are directed to. Note that there are no turns and “arts” are activated in real-time and then need some time to be used again. These “arts” are unique for every party member (and enemies also have some unique ones) that have a wide range of effects. The battles furthermore look a lot like other JRPG; both sides have HP, defence, magic defence etc. Damage and statistics are based on equipment. There are a lot of other small aspects, but this is the gist of the battles.
Now there are three things which I think were very interesting that were added to this deceptively simple combat system:
Visions:
Whenever enemies use strong abilities you are warned a few second beforehand. Especially later in the game, you have to respond quickly to prevent the attacks. Not just any response you need to consider what defensive or offensive action works best. Battles cannot be paused so this keeps you on your toes.
Chain attacks:
Battles contain a “tension-system” that basically has to do with the morale of the active party members. During battles you can increase morale when it goes well for the active members and when the morale is high enough you can unleash a “chain-attack”.
This does freeze the real-time battle and gives the player a lot of free art uses per member. Chaining the right arts together lengthens the chain.
Stance status:
All participants can receive one of the following temporary status markers in battle through arts:
- Break: no drawbacks for the inflicted, but can be Toppled
- Toppled: inflicted cannot fight and move as long as the infliction lasts.
Can be Dazed - Dazed: same as Toppled but receives extra damage because the the defences are lowered.
It is not the most complex system in the world, but it feels very immersive and dazing an enemy is very rewarding. It usually requires multiple party members to do so. Especially because these status effects last only up two usually two seconds.
Now to add on top of a nice battle system, the battles themselves are good too. By which I mean the variation, balance and frequency. XC’s normal enemy battles take less then a minute and can even be fled easily. The balance is spot-on, requiring exactly enough attention from the player. Most areas have their own specific combat thing, like Chill status on the Mountain. The game always provides options for the player to counter such things.At the end of an area the player usually ends up exactly strong enough to tackle normal enemies in a breeze.
A few bosses defeated me once before I defeated them, because I had to learn some of their tricks, which is always a good thing. They also have specific weaknesses, ensuring that the player cannot get stuck if they are underleveled or still unskilled.
XC offers plenty for challenge seekers with the unique or rather, ‘named enemies’. These creatures are stronger variants of regular enemies and sometimes carry a few of the regular enemies as underlings. They take pretty long to defeat and always sport a specific mechanic. The “Lightspeed Sonid” is a horse-like enemy in Eryth Sea that took me quite a lot of tries to defeat. It has a lot of “Spike” damage, meaning that standing close to it
hurts every 2 seconds. Then there was “Roguish Frengel” a spider like unique that can only be fought later in Colony 9 (the first area). It has an ability that increases its level when it is around the half of its HP. When fighting stronger enemies level wise, attacks have a miss chance
proportional to the level difference. The first time I was quite surprised to find my attacks missing a lot more. Preparation is often required for these ‘bosses’. The challenge isn’t solely for challenge alone: these bosses often are tied to quests or have amazing drops.
Exploration
A lot of time in XC is spent walking around through the very diverse areas.
In addition to walking, the player can swim and climb. Each area traverses different from the previous every time. From a mine that has switches that have to be sought and activated; to a swamp with shallow murky water that slows you down or even damages you.
Areas contain of waypoints and locations.
Waypoints are POI’s that serve as the respawn points on the map and places were can be fast-travelled to.
Locations are just names for certains POI’s or places (like Three-Sages Peak or Weapon Development Lab). XC has a map screen that shows the area with the waypoints and locations and is expanded as you explore the area.
Once you discover all waypoints and locations, you have seen ‘everything’ in the area and the map is automatically filled with the full area.
I really enjoyed just hunting all POI’s down and completing the map. The areas contain amazing places (a sparkling pool in a swamp for example) and are really worth it just walking through.
There is also another small mechanic tied to exploration. The grounds and waters of the areas contain items that can be collected. Every area contains its own set of collectibles (Clear Almonds are found only in the cave and Empress Beetle in the forest etc.) which give the player a second incentive to walk around. These items, almost needless to say, tie in to quests as well as a bestiary of sorts, in which all items have a small text entry once you found them.
Areas contain a large of both horizontal and vertical space.
In some areas, mostly the dungeon-like ones, the map divides the area into floors. This vertical movement helps the idea of a journey upwards the Titans but also serves as variation on simply walking forward.
Even if you do not enjoy walking around or exploring that much in this game, the quests sometimes give you reason to find some secret cave or visit a corner not seen before. The world is large enough to feel interesting, but your speed is quick enough to not make it feel like a long boring walk (and there are even ways to up your speed). Later game areas aside, battles can be almost entirely avoided, thus always providing agency whether the player wants to explore, progress or battle.
Mechanics
In the beginning of the game, I was overwhelmed by all the things involving battles. But the in-game tutorials help a lot and I never had the feeling I would not be able to master the systems.
One of the most important things besides Combat is questing. Quests are (like most RPGs) tasks you receive from NPCs that can be completed for a reward. They range from getting ingredients for someone to slaying some local fauna to longer story based quest that have you exploring some ruins. I may have mentioned it before, but some quests are missable.
It is a pretty interesting thing given that some quests also provide choices to be made.
The outcomes of it are mostly felt within the ‘affinity’ system. Which is basically a graph of almost all characters in the game and their relations to one another. Quests affect the affinity of NPCs (you can make or break relationships) and completing quests always improves the relation of the party with the area to which the quest belongs to. The latter information is useful in determining how much quests you have completed.
Boosting affinity within the party (between party members) is required to see ‘heart-to-heart’s, small dialogue cutscenes that provide some backstory or a funny scene. It also provides bonuses for crafting and may also influence morale in battles (it is that complex, I do not know after 150 hours).
And yes, there is a simple crafting system present. Your regular equipment can be suited with ‘Gems’ like FF7 Materia, except they never grant skills. Gems can be found or gotten from quests, but also crafted from crystals. Crystals can be mined on certain spots and gotten from enemies as loot. I barely had to mine crystals though. Enemies flood you with these things.
I could eloborate on this crafting system, but it is much more fun to discover it yourself. I like to think of it as a sort of gambling minigame since the game does not really require that you use the crafting at all.
The ‘bestiary’ mentioned before is also a mechanic, since it provides rewards when completing certain things. And that’s really what I want to show with this section, the game has a lot of mechanics (though perhaps less than MMO’s and the like) but manages to weave them together very well.
Gameplay verdict
10/10 This game has the most immersive and well-executed battle system from any RPG I have played or know. It simply never gets tyring. The same is applied to the other mechanics. I never felt tired or bored by any of it.
Visuals
Quality
The game just looks stunningly good. From the moment XC starts it is good. Game-engine cutscenes don’t always look great, but XC pulls it off. The game does not even resort to complicated graphical tricks to make it
look good. The models and textures are pretty and high resolution.
The foliage looks believable, when there are particles they are used to great effect.
One could nitpick that textures tend to look worse far in the distances, but I found myself noticing that only a handful of times.
Consistency
Altough the game has two very distinct themes (mechanical and biological), every asset and cutscene seem to have been made with the same goals in mind and the visual of the game are overall very consistent.
I describe the only letdown of consistency in the Problems section.
Style
XC has a very serious style. The character design have clearly some anime influence but manage to stay very straight to the point in a way. This is not what one might expect, considering the earlier or later games in the Xeno series. The robots and some enemies have quite the eccentric and interesting designs. This clearly serves as giving them an air of technological wonders and borders bizarreness. Their general pointiness also makes them look more scary.
This game features some earth like fauna, like horses with spikes and saurian cows. There is also a fair share of typical fantasy creatures such as lizardmen and giant ogre creatures.
The enemies/wild-life on both titans feel very fitting and manage to stay within their own theme. It is diverse and helps making the areas unique.
When just looking at small pieces of the areas, they look pretty generic and generally look pretty bright (might be the 3DS version). Dungeons and caves except for one are an exception on the pretty bright textures, where these places feel pretty dark and threatening.
…When looking at the bigger picture however, it is amazing. When on the Bionis it is pretty clear that you are walking on a titan even though it might be hard to wrap your hand around some times. Mechonis can be seen menancingly standing still from most of the bionis.
In and on the Mechonis is quite another sight. The outside part has you traveling past a massive wound. On the inside is a whirling mess of machines giving the mechonis really the feeling that it completely different from the Bionis. It feels more like traversing a huge mechanical base.
When the party finally travels to the Mechonis, the transition from the two titans is very slow. The second area between the two titans even resembles the first area of the game a lot. This slow introduction perfectly soothes the ‘culture shock’.
Cutscenes
As mentioned before in the Story part, this game has some aspects which make it look more like a book. The cutscenes really try to just show things and let you think about them instead of stating anything out right. Whenever there is talking, it serves mostly for
the story except for a few instances… where it, introduces new areas.
All areas are previewed in small cutscenes and after that the party usually discusses the goal or something important about the area. The best preview was in Valak Mountain, the snow area. It shows that there is a lava spot somewhere, which I would assume would make most players curious to explore.
The best discussion was in the Swamp, with Dickson like a wise guide telling the party all about it.
Both of these things give a lot of drive to start exploring the area and progressing.
Now as for the story cutscenes, as I mentioned before, there are some amazing action moments. In fact, I never felt a cutscene was really dull.
The intro cutscenes are enough to prove that this game knows how to handle cutscenes. It is brimming with quick action filled shots. Yet it can also pause and deliver slow emotional scenes.
GUI/Menus
Clean and clear most of the time.
A nice touch is that the background of the menus changes depending on the current area.
The in-game menu contains a tutorial section, which is easily navigable.
Equipment and item screens also worked great until I got too many items and then it got kind of hard to navigate. That is very minor compared to how they handled the player easily making pretty complex choices in equipment with relative ease.
Tags above monsters in the field when targeting are always clearly readable and use a colour indication to signal how strong the enemy is in comparison to your party. There is no battle log of any kind, but the health bar and small status indication are more than enough in battles. Enemy Health is often visible at the top of the screen, and the arts the player can perform are laid out in a horizontal bar on the bottom of the screen. It takes a bit of getting used to, since you primarily rely on their icons and colours, instead of text names. But in the end it works, and the colours themselves also tie into other systems, making it possible to make fast decisions. Your exact party member status can also be found on the bottom screen, which was pretty clever to keep the top screen purely for focussing on the battle.
In conclusion it is simple, usable and most of the time intuitive. Oh and I have not even mentioned most menu items can be sorted and there are additional settings for battle UI’s. Using the touchscreen is also completely optional.
Audio
Music
This games soundtrack can only be described as incredible. It fits really good, it is diverse, yet consistent, never repeats itself too much and is plenty complex. The first few themes of the game sound very adventurous. Then comes the serene sound of the Satorl Marsh as intermission and the Makna Jungle has of course a very fitting flute based theme.
The Eryth Sea has again an interesting calmer theme as well as Valak Mountain, but Alcamoth in between gives an great vibe of grandeur.
This pattern seems to repeat until the end of the game, but suprises you and throws a lot of sharp and modern sounding songs at you when the Mechonis is reached.
This works amazing. First there is the constant swapping of themes and styles and later it stays more within the same line. Then again the music of the second half of the game also has a lot of variation. Battle music is also swapped at that point, not only providing the player with a breather from the regular one, but also strengthing the idea that new hostile
territory is entered.
Music in the cutscenes fits great. I do think some ‘epic’
sounding tunes appeared a little to early in the cutscenes, but it still great.
What I like in particular is how the music always took a background seat when there is a lot of talking. Voices are always clearly hearable and the music only gets the upper hand when called for.
This game also has two themes for every area, one for the ‘day-time’ and the other for the night.
SFX
The game has some pretty nice sound effects. It does sometimes become a bit overpowering in battles.All sounds were very intuitive simply put. Alerted an enemy? Small alarm sound. Adding a collectible? Sound of pasting a stamp in a collectors book. The sound effects I liked the most were the ones of collecting crystals.Pretty satisfying sounds that makes one think of a simple task completion sound.
Voice acting
Superb. Convincing acting, good to the ears, always understandable.
I love the voice choices.
I dare not call myself an expert so I have nothing concrete to support it.
Quality
The game has very high quality audio. One might imagine that this port has some compression issues or any audio problem, but it does not.
The audio quality is also consistently good. Never did the sound engine break in the sense that audio was cut-off or crackled.
Replayability
Even though this game is long, there is enough reason to replay it…
even soon after the first playthrough. First of, there are missable quests. Once you finished the first time, you will have a feeling when the quests will disappear and be able to complete them. Or, if you want, explicitly skip them. After all, you might want some other affinities.
Some quests can be completed differently or one that I know could even fail.
The game offers a new game function that appears when you complete the main story. A lot of things are carried over from the old save, making 100% completion somewhat easier.
Then there is simply the appeal of the game itself, which is amazing and watching the amazing cutscenes again could not hurt either.
Problems and Threats
Problems
As stated in the beginning, very few. The game suffered some slowdown during intense battles (although the music is still fine).
But that was not really annoying. There was however a single instance in which all music stopped playing and most SFX did not play as well.
Soon after, the game froze in a battle.
The other annoyance was the ‘popping’ of models in certain areas.
Especially the Makna Forest and Frontier Village had this problem.
It did not hinder the gameplay, but it was a bit disappointing seeing as this
game is very beautiful for a 3DS game.
Now if this would have happened with enemies it would be a bit of a problem, but enemies are always visible from a certain distance no matter how much the game has to put on the screen.
Nitpicks/Observations
The final part of the main story felt a bit weirdly paced.
After a great plottwist and confrontation, the party has a new goal.
From that point up until the last battle and final cutscenes is not all that long and the story things that happen in between are quite insignificant in the end. Fiora once again states how she will die soon and she does not care as long as she is with Shulk. But in the end she survives making all these scenes kind of pointless. They provide some urgency and this interesting idea, but I just did not expect her to live through it all.
Another sour spot in the game was the battle against the Jade Face, Gadolt.
AI in this game is actually very good. I played a lot of the party members worse than the AI did. But in the battle against Jade Face the AI is very stupid and gets your party members killed quickly. I did not waste much time on this inconvenience and my level may have been a
bit low, but it sure was strange to see the party members suddenly stumbling against small
walls to return to my character and escape Jade Face’s sniper.
It was also a bit disappointing that lots of gems did not have to be used. There are lots of battle mechanics, but they are not all utilized throughout the story and that leads to a lot of unused equipment and a tad boring battles at the end of the game.
Now I really like how Bionis Interior looks and feels, but this area is strange in gameplay terms. There are almost no ‘checkpoints’ and the area is not particularly hard, but you can die by falling off the small walkways (and enemies can push you off). Then there is this one
checkpoint that has a unique enemy that is alerted as you respawn there. This enemy is obviously not meant to be fought comparing it to the levels of the monsters around it. The game does this nowhere else, so it feels like more of an oversight. It is truly a shame that this area did not work out for me because it actually used a few mechanics that were not really explored much before.
Conclusion
I think XC only deserves high praise. Everything in this game screams wise design choices. I think it is easily worth a 10/10. I find it hard to imagine how it would have been on a Wii, when it is even more immersive and less limited than the 3DS version (in terms of graphics).
I like to describe this game as having ‘no problems’. It does have problems, but they are so small and insignificant in comparison to the monument of good things in this game, they can be dismissed easily.
I will go as far as saying this is the best game I ever played, — nearly — dwarfing Mother 3, another great RPG game.
There are little reasons not to play this game. Perhaps if you really don't care about story at all and dislike some RPG mechanics…. but I think most people who are ‘not into (j)RPG’s’ can enjoy this game. Most aspects are simply too good and the gameplay offers quite a lot. Perhaps you are into multiplayer games exclusively. Well this game does simply not offer that.
But… for the MOBA players out there, this game’s battle mechanics may feel straight up your alley.
I would recommend this game just because of any aspect alone. Someone looking for good explorations? Great soundtrack? Timesink? XC has it all.
Thank you for reading.