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Xenoblade |OT| Sorry I Kept You Waiting!

I

Icelight

Member
Zeer0id said:
Photos here
Click to expand...
Darn. Even though I knew better I still held the tiniest inkling of hope that it would be "The Secret File".

Does anyone know if the copies of that book that were given to the first 1,000 people to register Xenoblade in France were translated? Or were they just the untouched Japanese version? (if it was translated that's really unfair :( )

In any case, this'll be the first time I can think of where I've double-dipped on a game at full price both times.
 
C

chaosblade

Unconfirmed Member
Yeah, I just ordered the Japanese artbook instead. It would be nice if that was available in English one way or another, but it's safe to say that's probably never going to happen.

Icelight said:
Does anyone know if the copies of that book that were given to the first 1,000 people to register Xenoblade in France were translated? Or were they just the untouched Japanese version? (if it was translated that's really unfair :( )
Click to expand...

I'm about 99% sure it was translated, but that 1% could be me misremembering.
 
J

JumpingTheGun

Banned
I'm so excited for you guys. I modded my Wii and imported this last summer and as an adult, the wait for it was equal to awaiting Christmas as a kid. I was not disappointed. GOTY 2011 for me and easily one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard.

Now I just need to finish the damn thing. Got close to 100 hours in
Mechonis Field
and just got burnt out by all the sidequests (I'm a completionist so I was doing every. single. one.)

This thread has made me want to start finishing it tonight. Thanks SecretMoblin. I remember you helping everyone out in the Euro OT last summer as a Junior. Good times....oh and the RPGCrazied Waiting Period was fucking epic as hell.
 
C

Conrad Link

Member
Everyone needs to play this game. Just thinking about it makes me happy.

THE MUSIC

OH GAWD THE MUSIC

So wonderful.

Monolith Soft. <3
 
R

RDreamer

Member
chaosblade said:
I kind of wish you could do more to control how the AI responds to situations, but you do have at least a little control by choosing what's on their art pallet. Plus Chain Attacks and communicating after visions.

I disagree about changing party members mid-battle. They'd have to completely redo the battle system to make that work, as-is it would just break the game. But I guess it wouldn't be much worse than Chain Attacks already are, especially for late/post-game stuff.
Click to expand...

That's barely any control at all, though. At least where I am I think each character has maybe one or two abilities that can't be on their pallet.

Maybe mid battle switching wouldn't work. It's been a bit since I played, so I don't recall really. But I feel it's missing something. I'm not entirely sure that's my only reason for disliking the battle system. That's just something I can logically spell out, I suppose. I just know it doesn't feel that great. If I could describe it, I'd probably just call it adequate.

Actually that might be my whole problem with the game. Everyone's praising it up and down, but to me the thing just seems adequate. Nothing really pops as being amazing, except maybe the environmental design and possibly music. Other than that it's all just kind of passable. Maybe I got my hopes up a bit too much when I got the game, based on all the hype. Or maybe it's just hyped up a ton because this generation really has been awful in terms of JRPGs... but then again I had way more fun with FFXIII and XIII-2 than Xenoblade, actually, so I guess I'm probably just the odd man out.
 
T

Tess3ract

Banned
RDreamer said:
Uh... You would control the other team members in the same way as FFXII and Dragon Age... by setting up AI sequences. Barring that (or in addition to that), it would also be nice to just have a way to quickly flip to another character so you can use a specific ability whenever you need it.

And how do you not understand the comparison to Dragon Age? They're pretty fairly similar... Both are MMO inspired RPGs where you control one character. The PC version of DA was fairly different, but the console versions were really the same idea, except with way more depth. You could control the AI of your party, and I felt like the ability system had a bit more depth to it.
Click to expand...

Monolith already did quite a bit in their design. Just think "It's a wii game" and the few things it gets wrong doesn't feel so bad in comparison to everything else it gets right.

RDreamer said:
but then again I had way more fun with FFXIII and XIII-2 than Xenoblade, actually, so I guess I'm probably just the odd man out.
Click to expand...

You are, those games (at least FF13, didn't touch ff13-2) are fucking terrible.
 
R

RDreamer

Member
Tess3ract said:
Monolith already did quite a bit in their design. Just think "It's a wii game" and the few things it gets wrong doesn't feel so bad in comparison to everything else it gets right.
Click to expand...

I suppose that's also probably why this game is getting praised so much. Compared to almost every other Wii game it does feel immaculate. It's just compared to other things.. not so much.

Tess3ract said:
You are, those games (at least FF13, didn't touch ff13-2) are fucking terrible.
Click to expand...

FF13 was way better than what I've played of Xenoblade so far. The characters were much, much better. As I said before, I don't give a flying fuck about anyone in Xenoblade and the game doesn't seem to care. As annoying as some of the characters in 13 could get, no one touches Riki in how awful they are. The battle system of 13 is light years better, which is strange to me because I preferred the direction of FF12 and was disappointed with 13 to begin with! That's part of the reason I was excited to even play Xenoblade. I wanted to see an RPG continue with a FF12-like system. But yeah, I'd take FF13 over this any day. The battle system is faster paced and more strategic. As far as story goes I feel like Xenoblade might ultimately hit it, since 13 really squandered its story in a very bad way, but as far as pacing FF13 kicks the living shit out of Xenoblade. The story is slow as molasses and I don't care at all about what's going on at the point I'm at in the game... As far as environmental design, I suppose I'll give the nod to Xenoblade, but they're really too different to compare. As far as music it's a toss up there too.
 
S

Seanspeed

Banned
Bought a Wii mainly for this game. Usually when there's this much hype from both critics and gamers alike, you cant go wrong. I've needed a great(not just good) JRPG for a while now and I hope this is it. I'm excited. :)
 
T

Tess3ract

Banned
Everything you said about ff13 is the exact opposite.

The only redeeming character in ff13 is Sahz, because he feels the most human. Everyone else was fucking one dimensional overdramatic shit that comes almost straight out of a k-drama.

If you don't get Riki that's your whole problem right there. Riki is the Heropon, and I don't just say that because I like him, but the whole thing with his race is
they fucking troll everyone into thinking they're retarded and cutesy. If you read all the text and what's said in between the lines, you will see this. If you beat the game, you will see this. They're actually easily the smartest people on Bionis, they're all scientists (most of them).

The battle system isn't really faster paced, though I can see how it feels like it is seeing how battles are pretty short in comparison and you're always having to switch between paradigms. But that's the only "strategy" in the game, is selecting AI subroutines and watching the action happen with no real interaction on the part of the user, UNLIKE Xenoblade. So no, it's not strategic watching animations from picking pre-determined ai priority lists, it's fucking boring. Imagine never playing the game, just setting up AI lists in dragon age, and watching the game play itself. That's FF13. Whoop de fucking do.
 
J

JimmyBoy

Member
Has anyone run this on the Dolphin Emulator? If so, i'd be quite interested in your experience.

I haven't played a great new JRPG since Lost Odyssey and if I can play this in HD I will be super excited.

..I preordered it already anyways.
 
L

lennylightspeed

Member
This game deserves all the hype and then some. Other than the obvious stuff (go anywhere you see, amazing visuals, and great voice acting) this game does a ton of little stuff right. Each area has two music themes (one for night and one for day) that are close to the same song, but the night time versions are calmer, which adds to the atmosphere. The weather effects are great and with each lighting strike you can see a giant outline in the distance. The game has its own achievements system that rewards EXP as well as gaining EXP for even visiting new areas. Each named character you see in the game is a part of a giant ‘affinity’ chart that displays their relationships with others (and the relationships between your characters and allied areas). All of these elements come together throughout the story to really make you care about the people and areas you’ve seen throughout the game. It really brings impact to the story instead of just ‘save the world, k?’ that most games try to pull.

The game also doesn’t waste your time. Lose a boss battle? The screen goes black and you get reset to right outside the fight. It also features a fast travel system that lets you go to any major areas you’ve discovered. Even the menus can be navigated while you’re traveling and saves work very similar to save states in emulators. It really makes it great for those of us who grew up playing JRPGs, but now have lives and can’t invest as much time in one sitting as before. Somehow this game nails the pick-up-and-play nature of casual games within one of the largest game worlds ever.

Finally, the battle system is fantastic, which is great considering how often you’re in it. Each character plays completely different and the strategy of ‘Break-Topple-Daze’ (among other battle systems) is great. I love that there are no ‘battle screens’ and I can run up to anything to start fighting. Also, after you’re 5 levels above enemies they are no longer aggressive towards your party (but you can still initiate a battle if you want to). This makes revisiting areas much better and trims the unnecessary fighting out. Finally, nothing ever feels cheap in battles thanks to a game mechanic introduced early on that allows you to see upcoming attacks. It first ‘plays out’ what would happen if the enemy connects the attack (such as death) and then starts a countdown timer to when it will happen. It allows the battle system to have all the tension and strategy of a turn-based game, while still not breaking the ‘real-time’ action. It’s amazing.

All of these pieces come together through the mechanics and play into the story and it just works. I wouldn’t put it above something like Chrono Trigger, but rather beside it. This game does enough right and different that it’s ‘one of the classics’, plain and simple.
 
T

Tess3ract

Banned
JimmyBoy said:
Has anyone run this on the Dolphin Emulator? If so, i'd be quite interested in your experience.
Click to expand...
ibjUJIjCHjHMZG.jpg
Click to expand...

Yep.
 
R

Rhyvven

Neo Member
Haven't touched the Wii in well over a year or more...then found the other threads about this game....and will of course be picking it up. Due to the hundreds of other pages on the game I was hoping someone in this "early" thread might be able to answer this.

At the Nintendo site I am pretty sure I read that you can play with English subtitles and the original Japanese voices. Can anyone confirm if they know that to be true (obviously we don't have the game, but perhaps you saw it stated elsewhere).

Being hard of hearing, I always tend to play with subtitles on in any game, so I am use to reading along. Even with headphones, sometimes the dialogue is too low. Plus I always enjoy hearing the original Japanese 'tones" of voice as they were recorded. Thought I read a review that the characters were voiced by "English" (as in England) actors and it actually worked fairly well in reflecting each character. So that may be fine also. Need subtitles regardless.



Edit: I went back again (difficult at work) and did find it again. Confirmed at the Nintendo site. Japanese voice option with English subtitles.
 
D

dralla

Member
I'm so torn. I really enjoyed the battle system of FFXII, which apparently this is similar too, but reading about the story and characters has really turned me off. Not sure if I should drop the 50 bucks or not, hmmm
 
R

RDreamer

Member
Tess3ract said:
Everything you said about ff13 is the exact opposite.

The only redeeming character in ff13 is Sahz, because he feels the most human. Everyone else was fucking one dimensional overdramatic shit that comes almost straight out of a k-drama.

If you don't get Riki that's your whole problem right there. Riki is the Heropon, and I don't just say that because I like him, but the whole thing with his race is
they fucking troll everyone into thinking they're retarded and cutesy. If you read all the text and what's said in between the lines, you will see this. If you beat the game, you will see this. They're actually easily the smartest people on Bionis, they're all scientists (most of them).

The battle system isn't really faster paced, though I can see how it feels like it is seeing how battles are pretty short in comparison and you're always having to switch between paradigms. But that's the only "strategy" in the game, is selecting AI subroutines and watching the action happen with no real interaction on the part of the user, UNLIKE Xenoblade. So no, it's not strategic watching animations from picking pre-determined ai priority lists, it's fucking boring. Imagine never playing the game, just setting up AI lists in dragon age, and watching the game play itself. That's FF13. Whoop de fucking do.
Click to expand...

Riki is completely irredeemably stupid. I "get" him, but he's just stupid. He talks like an idiot and his whole race is fucking dumb. They're annoying to have around and annoying to have to listen to. I don't really care if they're actually cutesy or not, they are actually annoying. I mean they're not as annoying as some other games and characters. Star Ocean 4 had a cast that made me just stop the game solely because they were awful. It's just that aside from Riki no one else really does much of anything either. No one else is worth caring for.
Shulk is kind of a one, bland note hero. I know nothing about him except "Why can I see the future!?" and "OMG FIORA!!!" Reyn is a doofus who's dumber than a box of bricks. Sharla is... well, she feels like she's only there to be a healer and the story left her hours ago. I guess Melia and Dunban seem ok.
But none of them are even that strong of characters. That's my problem. I can dislike FF13's characters, but they still feel like strong characters to me.

As for the battle system, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Xenoblade literally is like setting up the AI list in Dragon Age and watching it play itself, except you had no control over the other characters. Those characters literally do play themselves. At least in FFXIII I was controlling one character, but I got the chance to change what they were doing at crucial points. I mean I'm not going to say what you're saying about XIII's system is wrong, because I do recognize those flaws, but at the same time Xenoblade doesn't do things much better at all. If that's the only strategy for you in XIII, then there really isn't any strategy in Xenoblade. In fact I can't recall having to use any sort of coherent strategy at all throughout my time in Xenoblade. I just picked my damaging attacks and that was about it. Getting behind someone or to the side of someone isn't really that strategic... I guess there's a bit of strategy in holding off for aggro, but that's about all I've found... In XIII there were countless battles, especially near the end where I died and had to adjust what I was doing and finely tune it so that I could beat it (actually that was one of my huge problems in XIII-2, that the challenge and strategy had been pretty much taken out). That isn't happening in Xenoblade at all.
 
R

RDreamer

Member
Tess3ract said:
The story owns.

100+ hours and I would play it again.

Much like Deus Ex, mentioning it makes me want to replay it.
Click to expand...

When does the story start owning though? I do get the feeling that there are a lot of cool things that will happen at some point, but I just want to know when the fuck that is. After 35 hours I feel like I've barely done anything and barely got any story reward. It's almost the exact opposite of every other Takahashi game I've played. That's perhaps another one of my disappointments. With Xenogears and Xenosaga from the beginning you were hooked, and you felt rewarded with some sort of story nugget after every "dungeon." Here it's like I have to travel halfway around the game world in order to anything at all.
 
M

mr jones

Ethnicity is not a race!
Alright you fucks. I'm doing it. I'm buying my first jRPG in years. YEARS.

I usually hate jRPGs. HATE them. The ridiculous characters, the cheesy, overused boy-turned-savior-of-world story, the cliched muahaha-i'm-so-evil bad guy, the monotonous level grinding to waste as much of my time as possible, I can't STAND that shit.

But EVERYONE is gushing about this game. The hype is just crazy. Critics, friends, and GAF all in agreement. I've never really seen anything like it since... since... hmm. Y'know, other than Katamari Damacy, and Resident Evil 4, have I seen a game get so much universal praise.

So here I go, lifting my ban on jRPGs for this title. I'm... sort of excited.
 
J

joetachi

Member
mr jones said:
Alright you fucks. I'm doing it. I'm buying my first jRPG in years. YEARS.

I usually hate jRPGs. HATE them. The ridiculous characters, the cheesy, overused boy-turned-savior-of-world story, the cliched muahaha-i'm-so-evil bad guy, the monotonous level grinding to waste as much of my time as possible, I can't STAND that shit.

But EVERYONE is gushing about this game. The hype is just crazy. Critics, friends, and GAF all in agreement. I've never really seen anything like it since... since... hmm. Y'know, other than Katamari Damacy, and Resident Evil 4, have I seen a game get so much universal praise.

So here I go, lifting my ban on jRPGs for this title. I'm... sort of excited.
Click to expand...

Dont do this on yourself theres a chance you might like it but your going into this for the wrong reasons.
 
S

Sadist

Member
mr jones said:
Alright you fucks. I'm doing it. I'm buying my first jRPG in years. YEARS.

I usually hate jRPGs. HATE them. The ridiculous characters, the cheesy, overused boy-turned-savior-of-world story, the cliched muahaha-i'm-so-evil bad guy, the monotonous level grinding to waste as much of my time as possible, I can't STAND that shit.

But EVERYONE is gushing about this game. The hype is just crazy. Critics, friends, and GAF all in agreement. I've never really seen anything like it since... since... hmm. Y'know, other than Katamari Damacy, and Resident Evil 4, have I seen a game get so much universal praise.

So here I go, lifting my ban on jRPGs for this title. I'm... sort of excited.
Click to expand...
You'll be in for a pleasant surprise :)
 
W

Wichu

Member
Zaraki_Kenpachi said:
DAMN. Those are some nice images. Is there any problems with it running do you know?
Click to expand...

It's pretty demanding so you need a good system (I can just about run it full speed with a 4.3GHz Core i5). There's a few problems with the sound (sometimes gets distorted in cutscenes and very occasionally just breaks). It used to crash occasionally, but after updating Dolphin and tweaking the settings, it was fine.
 
M

massoluk

Banned
You can't go wrong with this game. Words of warning: you have to reign in your "must collect everything, must have 100% completion", because the collectathon will drive people insane due to ridiculously punishing and random drop rate. One must realize collection quests here are entirely optional and you really don't need to complete every quest and collect every object for best ending or something like that.
 
B

brandonh83

Banned
massoluk said:
You can't go wrong with this game. Words of warning: you have to reign in your "must collect everything, must have 100% completion", because the collectathon will drive people insane due to ridiculously punishing and random drop rate. One must realize collection quests here are entirely optional and you really don't need to complete every quest and collect ever object for best ending or something like that.
Click to expand...

oh god that is not good for me.
 
J

JumpingTheGun

Banned
Yeah the amount of sidequests is staggering. I remember one particular Saturday, I spent about 6 or 7 hours alone doing them because they kept stacking and stacking. Finally I had done what needed to be done and it was already 12am and I hadn't seen any story the entire sitting. Went to sleep for three hours, woke back up and played til sunrise. It's that good/insane and a situation like that has never happened to me in my history of gaming.
 
D

Darryl

Banned
Thank you for your Xenoblade order! We wanted to let you know that we
have received your pre-order. We expect to begin shipping by the end
of April, 2012.
Click to expand...

:'( didn't realize shipment was going to be delayed by ordering from Nintendo
 
F

frequency

Member
-NeoTB1- said:
My favorite soundtrack this gen has been Nier. This will need to be something truly special to top that. I look forward to finding out. :)
Click to expand...

I enjoy this soundtrack. It's great. I liked it enough to actually buy it and it's in my rotation.
But if you ask me to hum a song for you from it, I couldn't.

Nier though is packed with memorable songs that are truly unique. That soundtrack is pure musical bliss.

It's all opinion of course. But it's not anywhere near the best soundtrack of all time for me.
 
W

WallJump

Banned
Edit: wrong thread :-(

Relevant post: This is FINALLY coming out and I'm so into Kid Icarus and I just bought a house and I don't think I can day one it. Maybe if I sell some other games. I played SSX for like a week...
 
B

B.K.

Member
brandonh83 said:
that would mean it's better than Chrono Trigger, which is bar none my favorite game of all time -- so are you saying that my new favorite game of all time comes out in a week?
Click to expand...

The game is REALLY overhyped here at GAF. It's nowhere near the best RPG ever. I wouldn't even put it in my top 20.
 
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