I was expecting to see an impressive Monolith RPG today, but I have to say that it's even exceeded my expectations. The game looks great, there's the huge scale we wanted, and even what seems like online co-op. In fact, when I was watching the stream live during my lunchbreak, the connection kept dropping out, so I missed a few seconds here and there from the video, but thought I at least got the jist of it. Then, I come home after work, fire up my browser, and see this:
Fucking mechs! Holy shit! I'd completely missed that bit during the stream, so it was crazy to get a "oh, and also there's mechs" bonus when I got home.
Seriously, though, I hope Nintendo has some faith in this and releases it worldwide this year with a decent marketing budget behind it, as I think it has the capacity to do surprisingly well. Of course Xenoblade didn't set the world on fire in terms of sales, but the critical success and fan acclaim it garnered puts a sequel/spiritual follow-up in a very good position, because unlike Xenoblade, everyone (and particularly the gaming press) is going to take it seriously right from the start.
X has some good things going for it as far as a solid worldwide performance goes:
- Follow-up to hugely acclaimed Xenoblade
- Nice graphics
- Dramatic sense of scale
- A style that neither seems "too Japanese" nor "too western" to alienate too many gamers
- Fucking flying mechs
- Online co-op
- Hopefully fairly accessible combat
- A good amount of polish
- Fucking flying mechs
We've seen games that do similar sorts of things do very well in some or all regions, such as Final Fantasy titles, Skyrim, Monster Hunter, etc., but this seems to hit the right notes while still feeling completely unique. Especially as JRPGs (and particularly Final Fantasy) have declined in popularity in the west in recent years, Nintendo should really push this to take over that old audience. Release it worldwide this September/October, give it a big marketing push and make sure the English localisation is solid, and Nintendo could really have something on their hands here.