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Witcher 3 is out, MGSV is out. Xenoblade Chronicles X is next.

Quantity? You judge a game's success based on the quality of the people who buy it rather than the quantity of the people who buy it?

tumblr_nouwfiVASC1rtmwk6o1_400.gif
 
Shitting on Fallout 4, despite knowing and seeing very little.

Putting Xenoblade Chronicles X on a pedestal, despite the mediocre impressions after it's Japanese release.

Makes a lot of sense OP.
 

Oppo

Member
the people bagging on MGSV 's level design are cracking me up.

it's pretty much the best I've ever seen.

game has a 94 metacritic. 94. like, how often do you see that. it's universally acclaimed.

I hope XCX turns out to be good but I feel it cannot possibly live up to the insane hype placed upon it by the poorly served Wii U audience.
 
Shitting on Fallout 4, despite knowing and seeing very little.

Putting Xenoblade Chronicles X on a pedestal, despite the mediocre impressions after it's Japanese release.

Makes a lot of sense OP.

Wait, hasn't X's mediocre impressions consisted solely of Kotaku contrarianism? They also said that the first Xenoblade was a mediocre game and something about "Don't believe the hype."
 
Shitting on Fallout 4, despite knowing and seeing very little.

Putting Xenoblade Chronicles X on a pedestal, despite the mediocre impressions after it's Japanese release.

Makes a lot of sense OP.

where are these mediocre impressions of the open world of Xeno X?

the world of X with its unique design wants to be explored, and i think most of the people that played it know that, like me.

some negative impressions that i know are all about the story, which i think is alot better than the one of Xeno Wii. This one is a lot more Xeno like, and how it looks is only the beginning of something bigger.
 
Just to make sure. But we're not considering Yakuza 5 as "open world", right?

Because if so, then you were all wrong from the beginning...

But if OP is considering every genre that is Open World, then XCX is not the next =X

Either way, it'll probably be a good game when it comes out.
 

Pif

Banned
I don't think the game is gonna be so hot. Unfortunately.

Just Cause 3 will complete the trinity for this year, mate.
 
Lol at the Fallout 4 dismission

Xenoblade was an open world game before...
Only Witcher 3 and MGS 5 changed the IP formula

yeah.. xenoblde is an open world franchise fromt he start. its great that they added vehicles though,.
Shitting on Fallout 4, despite knowing and seeing very little.

Putting Xenoblade Chronicles X on a pedestal, despite the mediocre impressions after it's Japanese release.

Makes a lot of sense OP.

huh? i only heard positive impressions so far. sales were shit though
 

somethingsomething those polygons had to be pulled from somewhere somethingsomething

Yeah' X's faces are awful, and anyone making the "The polygons for the rest of the world had to be sacrificed from elsewhere" argument needs to realize that character models - The thing that the player is going to see the most - should be the LAST things that polygons are sacrificed from to stay within polygon-budget.
 

Ekid

Member
I lost a lot of hype for XCX when I read that they replaced the original mc by an avatar mid-development to add some online missions that I did not give a fuck about.

And I as feared the story suffered greatly because of it.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
Hide your bias a little more OP.

Although i love JRPG's i really can't stand that MMOish combat system that i've seen from the footage we've seen. And now that there's no actual connection to the original Xenoblade, or a set main character, the story is bound to suffer
 

TI82

Banned
Does barely better bear comparison with three times the polygons, much better textures and details?

You can say these technical things but the actual effect is right there, barely better and considerably less personality. Especially in that make a character compared to Shulk lol.
 

DNAbro

Member
It has less story than MGSV. I'd say a lot less actually.

About 25% of the Xenoblade fans and general gamers who play XBX will be pleased imo with about 75% of Xenoblade fans and general gamers being horribly disappointed.

that's almost a physical impossibility.
 

Majestad

Banned
Metal Gear has one of the saddest excuses of an open world I've ever seen. Stop putting it in the same sentence as The Witcher 3, which is like the complete opposite.
 

Bebpo

Banned
And the Xenosaga fans will be pleased.

It was clear from the beginning, that it has nothing in common with Xenoblade except the gameplay.

ummmm....

I would not tell anyone in their right mind to expect anything like Xenosaga or Xenogears. You have expectations like that you're gonna end up on youtube setting the disc on fire or something.


Xenoblade X is a pure gameplay game with minimal story kind of like MGSV, that starts out good with some interesting level design (the 2nd area has the best level design in anything Xeno) and a solid on-foot battle system and challenge and then you get robots and it seems better for a couple of hours and then you realize there's no more gameplay in the game because the robots broke any level design so it's just flying around a bunch of big empty areas (there are no mech dungeons in the game because everything is designed to be possible on foot) and the combat is even more broken but the mechs are overpowered so it's not worth going back to on-foot battle system. Nothing happens story-wise until the last 2 hours of the game which is basically the Ground Zeroes of prologue for Xenoblade Episode 2 one day, and instead the whole game is mainly 60 hours of filler with nice graphics, music and a million MMO quests. The exploration is the best thing it has going for it and is amazing, especially when you go from on-foot to flying in your mech. But that's the first half of the game. A couple of hours after doing that, the rest of the game is just repetitive filler until the final chapter.

I'd call myself one of the biggest Takahashi/Xeno-fans here, Xenogears is my favorite rpg of all time, I worked on the Xenosaga ep1 fan translation project with duckroll, I thought Xenoblade was fantastic. I had a Japanese cell phone for his Pied Piper spinoff which was ok for an old-ass cellphone game back in the day. I even loved Soma Bringer on DS for the writing even if the gameplay was mediocre. I'd never been disappointed by a Takahashi game in my life until XBX, XBX was just...not good. It's not terrible, but it's a very average 7/10 filler game and that's horribly disappointing coming from him and his team.
 
The way XCX is getting trashed you'd think it was a total critical bomb in Japan. I get the OP willfully ignored the AAA 50's-esque post nuclear apocalyptic elephant in the room but there is a lot of hyperbole going on. The combat, character design, or whatever may not be your thing but chances are that if you liked the original, you'll like XCX too. There is a story, it's just not as emphasized as with the first game. Seeing as I already spoiled much of the for myself, I actually prefer XCXs story. There are much more unique side quests than the original which was one of its biggest complaints. They flesh out the world and NPCs. I'm expecting it to average into the 80s when it releases out west. The import reviews I've seen are 8s and 9s.
 

Sakura

Member
It has less story than MGSV. I'd say a lot less actually.

About 25% of the Xenoblade fans and general gamers who play XBX will be pleased imo with about 75% of Xenoblade fans and general gamers being horribly disappointed.

I strongly disagree.
 

True Fire

Member
Definitely one of the if not the most interesting open world so far. Towns, deserts, forests, volanic areas, shores, alien stuff and more different biotopes without any loading screens is pretty impressive and I've never seen something like this before, let alone on consoles. You can dive, fly, explore floating islands.

Using "Towns" in plural is pretty generous. The biomes are also really repetitive to explore, and there's very jarring transitions between them that is immersion shattering. The game world is like a Bionicle map.

I liked how you never knew what you were going to get next with Xenoblade. With X it's like... "oh, I guess I'm going to be running around the designated desert area for the next few hours. then maybe i'll go back to the designated forest area for a few more hours!"
 
ummmm....

I would not tell anyone in their right mind to expect anything like Xenosaga or Xenogears. You have expectations like that you're gonna end up on youtube setting the disc on fire or something.


Xenoblade X is a pure gameplay game with minimal story kind of like MGSV, that starts out good with some interesting level design (the 2nd area has the best level design in anything Xeno) and a solid on-foot battle system and challenge and then you get robots and it seems better for a couple of hours and then you realize there's no more gameplay in the game because the robots broke any level design so it's just flying around a bunch of big empty areas (there are no mech dungeons in the game because everything is designed to be possible on foot) and the combat is even more broken but the mechs are overpowered so it's not worth going back to on-foot battle system. Nothing happens story-wise until the last 2 hours of the game which is basically the Ground Zeroes of prologue for Xenoblade Episode 2 one day, and instead the whole game is mainly 60 hours of filler with nice graphics, music and a million MMO quests. The exploration is the best thing it has going for it and is amazing, especially when you go from on-foot to flying in your mech. But that's the first half of the game. A couple of hours after doing that, the rest of the game is just repetitive filler until the final chapter.

I'd call myself one of the biggest Takahashi/Xeno-fans here, Xenogears is my favorite rpg of all time, I worked on the Xenosaga ep1 fan translation project with duckroll, I thought Xenoblade was fantastic. I even loved Soma Bringer on DS for the writing even if the gameplay was mediocre. I'd never been disappointed by a Takahashi game in my life until XBX, XBX was just...not good. It's not terrible, but it's a very average 7/10 filler game and that's horribly disappointing coming from him and his team.

Here's the real question: Does XCX actually have an ending though?
 

tbd

Member
You can say these technical things but the actual effect is right there, barely better and considerably less personality. Especially in that make a character compared to Shulk lol.

What's your point now? You were talking bullshit and that's it. No need to move the goalpost about this.
 
The open world moniker is a mess. Bloodborne gave me a much better sense of freedom, exploration and discovery than most of these bloated hub worlds and/or barren fields in otherwise linear game structures.
 

foxuzamaki

Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
It may do, but I have read that nothing much happens in the story.



I can only go by what people have said. It could be completely wrong, we'll just have to wait and see.

The thing about X's story is its built around the world, gives it that much lore, it has a main story and it has kizuna/affinity quests which have almost if not just as much production value as the main story quests and gives characters much needed development, there is also normal quests which is more like the better quests in xenoblade, cept theres alot more of them and helps fill out the world and the people in them aswell as adds more the main story, same as kizuna quests, its the simple quests that you have to avoid, its stuff thats on the billboard that you can accept for fun if your into it. basically do all the story quests, kizuna quests(which are sometimes required anyways) and normal quests, dont bother with simple quests unless you want to.
Here is one of the first and most detailed impressions for xenoblade X from somebody who has played it.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=162171571&postcount=942
I'm at work right now, but I'll post some of my impressions since I have a few seconds.

- Some data probes are a fucking BITCH to find. I found out later that some are in caves. Since they're drilling, it would make sense that they wouldn't be above you. If they're outside, there's a very very visible pillar of light that you can follow to go where you need to get.

- So far, I haven't found a way to set the navigation ball to take me to data probe spots I can't find. If there is one, that would make some things much easier.

- Simple quests are total garbage, and the drop rates for some of them are beyond silly. DO NOT focus on them. Instead, focus on normal quests and kizuna quests. Normal quests are far more fleshed out, fill out the world, are really fun, and in general, what I want out of Xenoblade. There's also a large amount of them, so there's really no reason NOT to focus on them.

- Quests that involve killing a specific creature, getting a very specific red item, or meeting a specific person all have waypoints, making questing easier. That said, it's not always apparent HOW you get to the waypoint. The navigation ball and Hover Camera (which you actually have early on, though the game doesn't tell you) are incredibly helpful for getting a lay of the land and finding the right route to where you want to go.

- The map in hex grid mode shows you when certain hexes have something new available (quests, kizuna, etc.) even if you're NOT in the region. This is incredibly helpful, as I can check if there are new quests in an NLA region when i complete something without having to warp back and run around searching. (NLA quests open over time, so you'll have to return every once in a while to open up more)

- Don't expect to just complete the hex grid objectives from NLA out. They're set up in such a way that you're going to encounter some tough ones surrounded by easier ones. It makes for some interesting traveling and route plotting.

- I love that I can swim out into the water and try to find a path to a new place without taking the well trodden (and monster-plagued) path. No invisible walls that I've found. Combine that with the fast run speed, huge jump and no fall damage means exploring the world is a real treat. I absolutely love it.

- Once the online element opens up, there are some really cool asynchronous online mechanics that integrate well into the gameplay. You can "rent" other player's characters to fill out a slot in your party, and if you see a squad member standing around in the field, they can give you support ability buffs based on the Union they're part of. There's also a set of icons under the minimap that shows which Unions are being repped in your current squad (darkened means none, lit means at least one, green square means you're currently blessed with that union's support ability, I believe)

- Additional Online elements: you can turn on whether or not you see your squad teammates' achievements as they play. I found when I was playing yesterday (a holiday in Japan), the "Play Award" notification kept coming up on my screen every 2 seconds. It's out of the way, though, so it wasn't a big deal. Nice to see that my squadmates are playing the game too.

- Kizuna quests are really fun. Like Xenoblade, you have a marker that you go to and activate. Once activated, you're given conditions you have to meet in order to start the quest (Level, Kizuna rating with a specific character, and who can and can't be in the party when the quest is activated). Once the kizuna quest is activated, you're unable to do side quests or main story, and instead do fairly long side quest that revolves around a specific character. The prerequisites for doing kizuna quests is pretty lax in comparison to Xenoblade 1's kizuna cutscenes, and because they're visible on the watch, you can easily do them once you've fulfilled the conditions.

- I recently changed my class from Drifter (base class, assault rifle and knife) to Assault (Assault Rifle and Sword). Completely new skills means you suddenly play a little differently, but it wasn't hard to get into the new class. Tempted to change to Forcer eventually, so I can become a Galaxy Knight (also known as the best class name in existence).

Phew! That's a lot to read...
 

Xaero Gravity

NEXT LEVEL lame™
Xenoblade Chronicles X is going to be my game of the year... without a doubt.

It's a good thing Mario Maker recently released and that we have TGS and Paris Games Week too. Otherwise I'd probably go mad. Actually there is FFXIV patch 3.1 too, luckily, but other than that I don't have any actual games I want from now until Xenoblade Chronicles X. Everything else I want, is in 2016 (or beyond), that we know of.
I've never understood this line of thinking. How can something be such a such fire GOTY for someone without them playing it? Any dev, on any given day, can screw up. And I'm not trying to single you out, as you may have already played the Japanese release of Xenoblade Chronicles X for all I know, I'm just speaking in a broad sense.
 

Bebpo

Banned
The way XCX is getting trashed you'd think it was a total critical bomb in Japan. I get the OP willfully ignored the AAA 50's-esque post nuclear apocalyptic elephant in the room but there is a lot of hyperbole going on. The combat, character design, or whatever may not be your thing but chances are that if you liked the original, you'll like XCX too. There is a story, it's just not as emphasized as with the first game. Seeing as I already spoiled much of the for myself, I actually prefer XCXs story. There are much more unique side quests than the original which was one of its biggest complaints. They flesh out the world and NPCs. I'm expecting it to average into the 80s when it releases out west. The import reviews I've seen are 8s and 9s.

FYI everyone whose has "spoiled themselves" and because of that thinks there's a story. Almost all of that happens in the last 30-60 mins of the game of a 100 hour game. There is extremely minimal story like MGSV for the majority of the play time. It even has something comparable to the MGSV tapes instead of story, where a bunch of characters stand around pre-mission every mission with a free camera instead of a cutscene and talk about the upcoming mission. You have "main ops" and you have to do a bunch of filler and side ops to open up the next main mission. It's like MGSV's Chapter 2 progression for the whole game of XBX.
 
Does barely better bear comparison with three times the polygons, much better textures and details?

If we're going to compare Xenoblade Wii faces to Xenoblade X faces and mention higher polygons and texture resolution...

Then I shall compare Morrowind faces to Oblivion faces, on basis of higher polycount and better texture res.

garn31-4t.jpg


Oblivion's faces have far more polygons and a much higher texture resolution, but you can't seriously tell me that Oblivion's faces are anything better. That's a Bethesda designed Vanilla character, and it looks like a monstrosity compared to that face in Morrowind.

Same goes for Xenoblade. The faces in Xenoblade might have been low-res and low-poly, but they looked somewhat NORMAL. Xenoblade X's faces are much higher poly with much better textures, but just like Oblivion they look like freaks of nature.
 

Bebpo

Banned
Here's the real question: Does XCX actually have an ending though?

Not really. It has one, but most of the questions brought up aren't answered because the game is clearly XBX Episode 1, so they better make XBX Episode 2 or else...lol

Also they should have just called it Xenoblade X Episode 1. It would have tempered story expectations a lot and wouldn't leave people playing it wondering why nothing is happening in the story 40 hours in.
 

Epcott

Member
Wait wait wait... Since when are JRPGs open world? Does that mean my beloved FFVI (and all before it) is open world? Sure Xenoblade Chronicles X has a large map, but open world?


Next open world game I'm looking forward to is Fallout 4 and eventually Final Fantasy XV
 

DJIzana

Member
I've never understood this line of thinking. How can something be such a such fire GOTY for someone without them playing it? Any dev, on any given day, can screw up. And I'm not trying to single you out, as you may have already played the Japanese release of Xenoblade Chronicles X for all I know, I'm just speaking in a broad sense.

I just know the type of games I like. Been playing since Atari ages and yeah... I just know what types of games I like and what I don't.
 
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