I don't think that's true at all. I loved the game more than pretty much anything else I'ce played in the last few years and I still have my issues with it. It's one of these games that are so big and ambitious that they are pretty much guaranteed to have its fair share of problems -- but in relation to the whole package the gripes are still relatively small.
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Xenoblade: Thoughts & impressions way after the hype.
- Thread starter ZombiePlatypus
- Start date
I don't think that's true at all. I loved the game more than pretty much anything else I'ce played in the last few years and I still have my issues with it. It's one of these games that are so big and ambitious that they are pretty much guaranteed to have its fair share of problems -- but in relation to the whole package the gripes are still relatively small.
Lumpy Onion
Member
I am surprised how often I hear people complaining about tropes around here. Trope this, trope that, RPG trope, moe trope, shounen trope, anime trope, ahhhh! I have been playing JRPGs since the nes days and never find myself saying, "That is trope no.35 so I can't play this game." Glad I don't pick my games' stories apart hunting for tropes. Same goes for movies and TV.
Just needed to make that rant.
I love me some Xenoblade, but what in the actual fuck??
Couldn't you pay the same amount and have it shipped to your address?
Lumpy Onion
Member
I would. Sounds like an epic journey for an epic game. Do it!
Yeah? No? Maybe? At the very least, it's "pretty good", so go ahead.
I think I should go for a third playthrough where I skip most of the sidequests. There's just so stupid amount of them I get bored of the gameplay in the first half of the actual story. Maybe the game would be a bit more enjoyable if I skipped most of them.
But I want to do all the quests in jrpgs..... Goddamn, I really hope X is going to have way less and way more meaningful side quests.
The Hermit
Member
The first trailer I saw from this game was this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtTlUcjtqTY
I was amazed, but quickly forgot about it, because: its a JRPG (besides very few exceptions, I loath them), that trailer probably wouldn't represent the game itself ( eh!) and it wasn't going to be translated anytime soon, if ever.
When the PAL version was released, I noticed the OT growing fast and decided to mod my Wii and import it. I fell for Gaf hype many times before, and most of them didn't end living up to it.
Not this time. This game was even better than I could have hoped for. It was the GOTY of 2011 and easily in my list of best games ever.
I was amazed, but quickly forgot about it, because: its a JRPG (besides very few exceptions, I loath them), that trailer probably wouldn't represent the game itself ( eh!) and it wasn't going to be translated anytime soon, if ever.
When the PAL version was released, I noticed the OT growing fast and decided to mod my Wii and import it. I fell for Gaf hype many times before, and most of them didn't end living up to it.
Not this time. This game was even better than I could have hoped for. It was the GOTY of 2011 and easily in my list of best games ever.
SoraanTribal
Member
Agreed. It's one of my favorite games, but it isn't perfect. But the flaws it does have are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. Of course, some people think it has major flaws like the story and gameplay, but I just cannot agree about those.
Also agreed. Even still, using a trope isn't necessarily bad. The Last of Us uses SO many "zombie" tropes, but it's all about the execution. I never really look at games or movies like that, anyways unless they are handled poorly.
Sigh Gaf, I was all good and ready to dive into this game feeling excited for it, but when I tried to play it for the first time a while back, I immediately disliked the MMO style combat. I don't understand why they didn't want to implement real time combat and sword swinging (especially considering they already created a seamless transition between walking and fighting) but instead opted for the method of pressing a command and having the characters start auto-attacking foes. Even the presence of the other team members wouldn't really stand in the way of real time combat if you could pause the game and give them command occasionally.
Was I wrong to dismiss this game so soon, i.e. does the combat simply require getting used to? All other aspects of the game seem great to me, just not that which you are doing for most of the time...
Sigh...
Was I wrong to dismiss this game so soon, i.e. does the combat simply require getting used to? All other aspects of the game seem great to me, just not that which you are doing for most of the time...
Sigh...
Give it another chance. I also hated the battle system the first time around, but when I decided to replay the game a few months back and knew what it was going to be like, I enjoyed it a bunch more. I still think it's somewhat bad and boring and so on, but enjoyable enough.
heh, yeah that was an amazing time. Watching North American Gaffers going crazy, modding their Wii's and then importing Xenoblade from PAL land...The whole internet reaction experience was great and the greatness of Xenoblade topped it all off.
Well, it goes for over $100 plus shipping (minimum) on Amazon or eBay. I don't mind the drive (I enjoy driving). I do mind the gas money, but even taking that into consideration, $75 is cheaper. However, it does not come with case or manual, which usually does matter to me, but disc only is better than no game at all, I guess. Gonna try to find box art front/back scans to color-print and make me an imitation case, just for collection purposes.
Edit: I got lost on the way there. Buuut it ended up being "only" $66.77 total with my PowerUp Rewards card. No regrets.
I guess I just never really see those problems discussed at length. Or more or less never had time to read through the ol' OT.
I just can't say that the game was that great, even though it had it's honestly great points, so many little things just added up into this big dissatisfied feeling that i just spent 100 hours getting mad.
We must not have played the same game then, because they were all there, and the game spent far too long on archetypes and tropes I've seen too many times. Honestly the last JRPG I played where the main female character wasn't a delicate young magic girl in the finest tradition or some variant of that was probably Phantasy Star 4.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, not really, not played it but need to, many older titles. They aren't all like that, recently played Persona 3 which came along after I stopped playing them and was suitably impressed. That one is light on a lot of the trope boilerplate, or at least doesn't force it on me. But that is the exception. It might be getting better, but Xenoblade isn't the best example of a break with tradition, or at least not the traditions I tired of back in the day.
Can you think of any JRPG where the main character has a mentality beyond high school level, or where the 'old guy' in the party isn't in his early twenties or mid-thirties? I can't, or I can think of many many that do the opposite. 16-20 seems to be the sweet spot, it's basically assumed.
Actually did try that one, and it certainly felt fresher to me than Xenoblade. Unfortunately I set it aside and then donated my Wii to family.
...Seriously? Fuck, I really loved Golden Sun. I better unwrap that copy now that my contract is done then...
The first female character you meet is a mech pilot. The second is a sniper. The third I suppose is the delicate magic girl. Certainly far from the main or only female character.
DirtyDeedsDoneDirtCheap
Banned
It has the biggest scope out of any JRPG I've ever played, an absurd amount of content and an interesting battle engine. That said, the only reason why any late-game encounter may give a properly equipped party pause is that freaking annoying passive ability where they reflect back at you all the damage they take when toppled and the plot only ever really got good until the very last 10 or so hours in a colossal, gargantuan game.
I think I like Nier and Mother 3 more but I think this hits all the sweet spots of what a JRPG should aspire to be and recognize it as quite possibly the "best" example of the genre when taken as the sum of its parts, if that makes any sense.
I think I like Nier and Mother 3 more but I think this hits all the sweet spots of what a JRPG should aspire to be and recognize it as quite possibly the "best" example of the genre when taken as the sum of its parts, if that makes any sense.
Human settlements in the game are all roughly the same size for story reasons, so Colony 6 is not a small village. Shulk is an 18 year old military engineer and scientist, and Fiora is neither introverted nor shy. She's also not a delicate magician, she's a melee damage dealer. You sure you actually played Xenoblade?
Not very much, admittedly. Like I said, lost interest sometime after the game decided making me sit through chats about hidden crushes between longtime childhood friends and other nonsense I've sat through before was a good idea, then subsequently sending me to the local cave to kill things. After the appearance of the magic sword.
There was nothing inspired or new in what I played, so I stopped playing. It's entirely possible the game is trying for the 'epic arc' that many JRPGs like to use and was merely frontloading some tedium, which is fine, as long as the way it's handled doesn't make it feel like a commodity product off a shelf.
I guess it's primarily hype/disappointment, the game had been billed to me as a fresh take, and didn't do anything to satisfy me of that in the bit I played. You really have no idea how burned out on this genre I become years ago. Xenoblade felt like a game that would be 'fresh' to genre fans, but not really 'fresh' to people who aren't or who got fed up with the genre.
So... you stopped playing after an hour.
Yup. When I'm needing a game to get me back into a genre I got absolutely fed up with and it wiles away an hour on the very stuff that made me not like the genre anymore, I move on.
I realize that it may be that I've changed, I used to be able to drop 40-50 hours on a JRPG and not break a sweat, and throwing away an hour out of that is no big deal, but I don't have the patience anymore. When there are games in my backlog that I could be playing that don't do that, I have far less tolerance for the ones that do.
tl;dr I don't like JRPGs anymore, I guess. Again, with the notable recent exception of Persona 3. It's certainly not free of Japanese tropes, but it at least dispenses or heavily spins most of the familiar JRPG tropes. And I still do need to play NIER.
Sorry, did you play it for an hour or six hours? Leaving aside that Shulk isn't prepubescent and Colony 9 isn't really a small village.
1 hour, not half-dozen, that was hyperbole on my part. And granted, not technically prepubescent but exact age aside, that character archetype/outlook/maturity level hasn't changed in years.
Colony 9 wasn't small in terms of area no, but thematically it served the same purpose as every starting-village-teen-hero-grew-up-in ever.
All I'm really asking for is a hero that's already finished the growing-up stage, doesn't start out in a home village with an innocent childhood sweetheart, doesn't have to knock around said village doing menial tasks, etc. The JRPG 'epic arc' formula needs to be discarded or have heavy liberties taken with it before I'll get back in to this genre.
You're aware that this is not an issue with JRPGs but RPGs in general, right? You're introduced to game mechanics by doing simple tasks and fighting basic enemies, usually before the main narrative arc begins and this usually happens to be where you live (everybody has to live somewhere) or whatever your initial "main base" tends to be. Dragon Age 1 and 2 do this, The Witcher 1 did this, I have only vague memories of the opening of Mass Effect 1 but after your very simple mission on Eden Prime, didn't you spend a lot of time doing busywork on the Citadel? If the place is important, then you're gonna spend time doing quests there. I don't see why that's a problem.
That's a fair assessment of Shulk, it's true he is not far removed from your typical protagonist. I don't really agree with the Colony 9 criticism in isolation, as it's a necessary device that drives the plot for around half the game. Obviously if you can't be doing with the that plot as a whole then fair enough. Personally I don't have a problem with it, it's a tried and true setup.
If you've got a DS/3DS, have you tried Radiant Historia? The protagonist in particular may be more to your liking.