Xenoblade
I'm probably talking to myself here, but let's assume that there are some people here who are still using their Wii (is NOONE playing Mario Galaxy 2!?) and, God forbid, even into JRPGs.You (and that's probably a singular 'you') will be happy to know that Xenoblade is, in fact, a very good game. It's been likened to Final Fantasy XII, which is understandable since the character design was done by the same guy and the battle system is rather similar.
Although you could just as well say the battle system is like most MMORPGs, indeed, it's quite close to World of Warcraft, with auto-attacks and a set of rechargeable skills that can be activated at will.
The game features large and lushly detailed environments, full of enemies and items and whatnot. It's not going to win any originality awards for its setting, but there are lots of tiny gimmicks in the system to make it stand out as an interesting and entertaining RPG.
What I like most of all so far is how low-stress the game is.
There's a quick-travel feature, and you can change the in-game time at any moment you please (to hunt for those elusive monsters/items that only appear at night), regardless of whether there are any enemies around, although obviously not during actual combat (still a great improvement over Oblivion/Fallout 3).
If your party gets wiped out, you will be automatically sent back to the nearest Landmark, keeping any progress you've made, so you don't have to worry about when you last saved, or anything else for that matter.
Saving, by the way, can be done anywhere and at any time, which is quite unusual for a JRPG I'd say.
Other than that, there's a trading system, a Bond system that keeps track of how close you are to your party members and to other people in cities (and how close they are to each other), loads of quests (the first city alone has dozens upon dozens, so I haven't even left the first area yet after 4 hours of gameplay) most of which, thankfully, are short and easy, although they are likely to increase in difficulty later on in the game, skill trees, item manufacturing, an in-game 'achievement' system that rewards you for fulfilling tasks by granting you EXP and the like, and loads more.
It's a very fleshed out, grand-schale RPG, and they managed to squeeze a lot out of the humble Wii. Also, no gimmicky motion control, so you can just relax your hands in your lap, WHERE THEY BELONG.
I've been having a blast with it, and it's already shaping up to be one of my favorite RPGs of this year.
posted by Ingen! @ 1:03 PM
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