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Xenoblade Chronicles X - Review Thread

If it's anything like the original Xenoblade, grinding will be pretty unnecessary if you've been doing sidequests throughout and exploring, rather than heading straight through the story as fast as possible

Pretty much. The game also lets you lower a boss' difficulty (just for that fight) if you lose too many times.
 
Sölf;187342194 said:
Aldnoah hat a good soundtrack, if anything. Then again, I also really liked S1.
Then S2 happend.

Yeah, season 1 was tolerable. Even with all the Inaho hax. And the ending was good.

But then they went coco for coco puffs in season 2.
 
Something that Jim Sterling's Xenoblade Wii review made me realize is that I'm glad there's no
Mechonis
in this game.
 
A fine example of this obfuscation can be found in any quest that requires the gathering of materials. Materials practically litter the ground on Mira, taking the form of little blue crystals that players will collect in the hundreds just by exploring. However, several missions involve collecting specific rare materials, totally indistinguishable from the others when viewed in-world. You’ll often get a general location, but when that location can be as big as an entire Miran continent, there will be a LOT of wandering around in the hopes of stumbling on the right loot.

Other questionable design decisions involve the tendency for ridiculously high-level enemies to ambush you. Like the aforementioned Guar Plains, it’s not uncommon to stumble upon creatures that you’re never intended to face until hours upon hours have passed – in fact, from the outside you’ll be surrounded by gargantuan level 50 monsters. Many of them are docile, and will ignore the player, but not all of them, and they’re lethal.

Even worse, some lie hidden underground or drop from above – the fact of the matter is that you will eventually get caught by something over twice as powerful as you, and it will kill you, even if you try and run. It only takes one hit.

The good news is that these annoyances, glaring though they might be, are spread out in a digestible manner across so much quality content that it’s hard not to forgive X its foibles. After a slow opening, Monolith Soft’s sci-fi epic just gets better and better, continually opening up and offering new experiences. Just sprinting through Mira itself is like being in a world where James Cameron’s Avatar was actually a compelling idea instead of a waste of money.

Quite the interesting excerpts from Jim's review. He still gave the game a 9/10 though I'm not how many games can get away with having arguably large/annoying problems and still get scored that high.

I hope that the investment does help me forgive things like this during my playthrough.
 
Are you sure? I have to move or copy everything to do with a game (i.e. saves AND updates) making backing up saves to the internal (if internal breaks all external is useless anyway) a tedious and slow copy and delete non save parts cycle (it takes several minutes for Splatoon so will take half an hour or so for Xenoblade). If there is some way to copy only a save I'm all ears.

You can see saves that are account related and system save and move one or the other.
So it stand to reason you can choose to move whatever the hell you want.
I know I moved the eshop games and kept the saves where they were.
I'll check to be sure.
 
Hmm, not liking the fact you don't know/can't track where items are for affinity quests so you just have to wonder around the massive continents and hope for the best
 
Looks great, I can't wait to play it.

The only weirdness in the reviews I've seen is this:
The more grimdark theme

Really? Grimdark? I've been mostly on blackout on the game but I haven't seen anything that would remotely be classified as "grimdark." Did the reviewer play Bloodborne by mistake?
 
Hmm, not liking the fact you don't know/can't track where items are for affinity quests so you just have to wonder around the massive continents and hope for the best

I played Xenoblade Wii with an online guide and I couldn't imagine playing without.
 
Something that Jim Sterling's Xenoblade Wii review made me realize is that I'm glad there's no
Mechonis
in this game.

I'm not sure how that's a spoiler unless it's alluding to something really late game. If it is a spoiler, the fact that you spoiler tagged it is a bigger spoiler than actually saying it.

Spoiler.
 
I'm not sure how that's a spoiler unless it's alluding to something really late game. If it is a spoiler, the fact that you spoiler tagged it is a bigger spoiler than actually saying it.

Spoiler.

Maybe people haven't played the original game and this person wanted to be coy and vague to avoid spoiling why they don't want certain features from that game to return in this one?
 
Ah nice, I was worried after all the average early word of mouth from the Japanese version. Looks like it's decent which means I'm buying!

Is it normal that all the Nintendo sites are giving it super high scores? Seems fanboyish to me.
 
I'm not sure how that's a spoiler unless it's alluding to something really late game. If it is a spoiler, the fact that you spoiler tagged it is a bigger spoiler than actually saying it.

Spoiler.

It's a pretty light Xenoblade Wii spoiler. I know most people would probably guess you can go there, but just to make sure.
 
I don't speak German

Your edit is therefore invalid

I don't need to understand the language to like it

I like baba yetu and I have no knowledge of Swahili
I think there's something to be said for the native pronunciation of a song. I'm pretty sure most people will have stumbled across enough German in their life to know that Blumenkranz isn't pronounced right.

Baba Yetu is also a silly example since the most famous version of that song is done by the Soweto Gospel Choir who I have faith in to do a proper rendition of the language, unlike Sawano.
I don't know about that. Unless a game can constantly keep throwing new things for you to fight that will change the way you play, I'll get bored no matter how tight and well done the controls are for the combat. And after 70 hours, I would say you've seen most of what most games have to offer. I'll keep playing because of the story, the game world, and uncovering other secrets. Which is what happens to me with the Souls games. Unless I change my character build, the combat becomes more of a 'going through the motions' kind of thing.
I guess that's fair. I just think certain types of games like character action or shooters can actually have a meaningful enough combat to draw you in for many dozens of hours. Less so with menu-based RPGs.
 
Ah nice, I was worried after all the average early word of mouth from the Japanese version. Looks like it's decent which means I'm buying!

Is it normal that all the Nintendo sites are giving it super high scores? Seems fanboyish to me.

I mean, if only the nintendo sites had high scores you may be on to something. Otherwise no. X might just be a good game.
 
Quite the interesting excerpts from Jim's review. He still gave the game a 9/10 though I'm not how many games can get away with having arguably large/annoying problems and still get scored that high.

I hope that the investment does help me forgive things like this during my playthrough.

The third excerpt you quoted basically explains it.

A game shouldn't be defined by what it does wrong if it's very minor compared to what it does right. I've found in a lot of games today that imperfections aren't nearly as game-breaking as every other gamer and critic would lead me to believe.
 
Wow. Everyone is giving this game 8s and 9s and along comes Polygon and, nah, son: a 7. Why? Because they need to draw attention to themselves.

I jest, good people.
 
Great reviews

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I'm planning on picking it up anyway, but can anyone who's beaten it give me a very minor and mostly content-less spoiler answer to this question: does the game end with you killing god?
 
Overall it reviews better than expected. I was thinking the lesser focus on the narrative and open design would lead the game to a majority of 70-80s scores. Well, some of the Japanese impressions definitely made it sound like that. Great to see it score that well. Can't wait to play it.
 
Anyone know how far into the game you can do multiplayer stuff? I was going to pass on this (I couldn't even slog through all of the original), but the multiplayer aspect has me intrigued. I just don't want to have to go through say 20 hours of single player stuff to get to touch multi.
 
Quite the interesting excerpts from Jim's review. He still gave the game a 9/10 though I'm not how many games can get away with having arguably large/annoying problems and still get scored that high.

I hope that the investment does help me forgive things like this during my playthrough.

From what I've seen, he puts much more weight on what a game does right than what it does wrong. Better to have a flawed masterpiece than flawless competency.
 
Where can I find a list of the playable party members? I know the gist of it but nothing definitive

EDIT: it seems the wikia has them all listed, good!
 
Anyone know how far into the game you can do multiplayer stuff? I was going to pass on this (I couldn't even slog through all of the original), but the multiplayer aspect has me intrigued. I just don't want to have to go through say 20 hours of single player stuff to get to touch multi.

I would recommend that you pass on the game if you find 20 hours of single player repulsive. After all, the multiplayer is the same as the single player gameplay just with other people and it's not the main focus of the game.
 
I'm planning on picking it up anyway, but can anyone who's beaten it give me a very minor and mostly content-less spoiler answer to this question: does the game end with you killing god?

lol

I'm also picking it up, but was wondering if I'll have a hard time going from Witcher 3 to "I'm the chosen one who with the power of friendship is going to kill an evil man who stole all the crystals and he's my dad and also god" or whatever is in store here.
 
I would recommend that you pass on the game if you find 20 hours of single player repulsive. After all, the multiplayer is the same as the single player gameplay just with other people and it's not the main focus of the game.

It's not really that I hate the single player, just 80 hours of it is really draining. The idea of being able to do multiplayer stuff to break it up is appealing, but I don't wanna burn out on the game before I even unlock any multiplayer content.
 
It's not really that I hate the single player, just 80 hours of it is really draining. The idea of being able to do multiplayer stuff to break it up is appealing, but I don't wanna burn out on the game before I even unlock any multiplayer content.

It took me about a year to finish XC. If you're feeling burnt just play something else for a few months and come back. It's better than "hate finishing" a game.
 
This is from an old memory of mine but back then people said on GAF : "be sure to buy an external drive with it's own alientation/power cord otherwise you might witness some bugs like loosing your saved games."

I don't know if this info is still revelevant since it's been months agos, I read it.
I will try to find the original thread.
Thanks this is actually really helpful
 
I'm planning on picking it up anyway, but can anyone who's beaten it give me a very minor and mostly content-less spoiler answer to this question: does the game end with you killing god?

lol

I'm also picking it up, but was wondering if I'll have a hard time going from Witcher 3 to "I'm the chosen one who with the power of friendship is going to kill an evil man who stole all the crystals and he's my dad and also god" or whatever is in store here.

Its a Xeno game. I'd be shocked if it doesn't involve some murdering of a higher deity.
 
not sure if there is enough info out to answer this question, but should i beat xenoblade before playing this game?

i've had xenoblade downloaded on my 3ds forever now and have only put in like 5 hrs

i like the game just have such a huge backlog i haven't prioritized it but am willing to drop other games and beat it if it is recommend prior to playing this one
 
I think there's something to be said for the native pronunciation of a song. I'm pretty sure most people will have stumbled across enough German in their life to know that Blumenkranz isn't pronounced right.

Baba Yetu is also a silly example since the most famous version of that song is done by the Soweto Gospel Choir who I have faith in to do a proper rendition of the language, unlike Sawano.

My point is that I don't understand the language enough to know the right or wrong pronunciation.

All I know is that I like it.
 
not sure if there is enough info out to answer this question, but should i beat xenoblade before playing this game?

i've had xenoblade downloaded on my 3ds forever now and have only put in like 5 hrs

i like the game just have such a huge backlog i haven't prioritized it but am willing to drop other games and beat it if it is recommend prior to playing this one
Outside of some easter eggs and Nopons, there's no connection between the two games at all.
 
Sounds like a well paced game. I've dropped some RPGs after 20 hours that felt like eternity, and finished others after 100 hours that flew by.

Pre-ordered thanks to a cyber Monday deal, might not play it right away but I don't expect to be seeing it on sale or discounted anytime soon.
 
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