esse jogo eh a maior pegadinha dos jrpgs me venderam a segunda vinda de jesus cristo em um jogo e eu recebi 55 horas do pior sotaque britanico ja visto sendo constantemente gritado no meu ouvido enquanto eu repetia o mesmo combate de mmo para prosseguir em uma historia que eh a fusão todos os rpgs dos anos 2000 em um. eu recomendo que voce escute a trilha sonora pq ela eh pedrada e veja os cenarios bonitos mas nao precisa jogar nao (curiosidade: com 55 horas eu poderia ter feito um curso de mecanica e agora eu saberia trocar agua de carro mas eu escolhi jogar esse jogo )

I didn't hate the 200 hours I spent on Xenoblade, but I don't think there's anything it does competently either (not even the music).

-Just big open fields with limited checkpoints and no interesting movement options to justify it.
-Combat was OK, Tension wasn't explained well but I like clicking Berserk > Magnum Charge > Sword Drive for beeg damage. Sometimes I would have to strategize against unique monsters but usually you will be facerolling your arts against common fodder.
-Story was meh. Too anime for me to take seriously (and this is before they quadrupled down in XC2), and it ain't no Star Trek morality play. Somehow it's better written as a comedy than as a drama.

A monument to misplaced AAA maximalism.

Idk why I chose this version to be my first experience with this legendary game. I think I just like stupid shit too much. This is just my review of Xenoblade, as this is how I first played the game and I do not plan on playing DE, despite owning it. Anyway, it's genuinely so sad that this, what would've been an easy 10/10 and probably one of my favorite games, is ruined by a SLOG of a final chapter, filled with the absolute worst bosses and 10 hours of grinding just to beat 3 shitheads. The game is amazing in every other sense. The music and story are amazing, as most people know, and I really like the style. it's not "dark" but has a dirtier type of palette and feels real. This is a feeling I only get from looking at the 3DS and Wii Version, so I'm glad I played it on 3DS. This version is an absolute miracle, it's not pretty, but it's incredible to watch in action. It only crashed on me once. That's incredible for something like this. I think the gameplay is kinda whatever, xenoblade fans can say whatever they want but a LOT of this game is RNG, and it can be frustrating. Unless you're at least 3 levels above it, theres a chance an enemy will just squad wipe you. That's what made the last chapter annoying. But still I enjoyed my time enough for this game to still earn like a 9/10.

yes, i played the 3ds version as my first xenoblade experience. the fuck are you gonna do about it?

xenoblade chronicles is one of the worst types of games - games that have this legendary status where people will swear up and down that it's perfect, and make long ass reviews in youtube comments about how it changed their life or they're super nostalgic for it. but despite its ultra hype legendary status, it kinda fucking sucks and gets ruined by stupid shit that fans are willing to look over.

this game makes me feel like i'm playing some shitty MMO where i have to grind for 3 hours on stupid fodder enemies before doing one thing of value. the way level scaling works and how enemies just a couple levels above you get stat modifiers and can just easily roll you is the single dumbest thing i've ever seen in an RPG. literally full stop, game is already ruined because of that. there is no worse feeling than grinding your ass off, doing sidequests and killing unique enemies (that more often than not, have stupid high time to kill compared to the exp they reward), finally killing one boss, then doing it all again when you get walled by another one an hour later.

in my experience (doing as many sidequests as i could, not running from every fight, etc) i somehow fell pretty far behind on the level curve, so i was doing this a lot. and now that this game is done, none of the story beats or characters are gonna stick with me - all i'm gonna remember is the moronic, repetitive grinding, searching for items with a 10% spawn rate or waiting for unique enemies to spawn. combine that with grinding for colony 6 resources, arts manuals, and more, why fucking bother??? i get that JRPGs usually have some degree of grinding and not all of those things are required to progress, but it still feels like shit.

story's pretty good, though. plenty of sick turns, worldbuilding is great, although a ton of characters feel like they get shafted in the latter half of the game. i'm pretty amazed that i don't really hate any of the party members though, even after sitting through HEROPON BREATH MAKE MONSTA SHAKE for 80 hours.

i didn't really enjoy putting together builds/teams, unfortunately. it may just be cause i'm a dumbass, but this feels like one of those games where it always feels like you're playing it wrong. every team you end up with feels just a little weird, you're constantly questioning whether you've got the right summons on melia, triple-checking which gems you have... i didn't really find any part of combat fun, even if i thought auto-healing between battles was a really smart addition.

most of the time, with games like this that people hold in such high regard that i unfortunately can't bring myself to like, i usually feel kind of bad about it. like i missed out on a really great experience because combat/something else didn't click with me. but with xenoblade, i don't really feel that way. enjoy your single player FFXIV i guess, im not gonna judge you for it

Playing Xenoblade had me in about as much of a tumultuous position as the characters did in the game. I remember the reason I wanted to play it was because I wanted to know more about Shulk from Smash Bros and it was my friends favorite game. The first time I played it, my friend Wilson had just beat it for Spring Break, and he handed me his 3DS before class and almost forced me to play it. As someone who like to play games at their own time, this was not appreciated. He had really wanted me to play it and I didn’t have a New 3DS so there was no way I could unless he let me borrow his, which I was not gonna let happen in case something happens to it. Skip to about 2 months later, I myself bought the 2DS XL with the intention to beat it. I gotta say, I hadn’t played a game like that before because as soon as I start warming up to it, something widely annoying would come up and absolutely make me want to quit. I had grown up usually playing action adventure games, or turn based games, so having pretty much a grindy, repetitive, single player MMO was unlike anything I’ve ever played and pretty much the opposite of what I do enjoy. The one thing that did keep me going was the story. Despite all of the issues I had with the game, the story was very captivating. Everyone talks about how the story is so rich and intriguing, but I was very soured because I would always be underleveled and have to grind somewhere just so I could see a cutscene before I got stuck in another boss. Even though I would still say the beginning hours of the game were still very strong in the narrative department, I didn’t want to continue because I kept getting new mechanics and new enemy’s at me. Ironically, in trying to rush the game, I spent the most time I had in any other game trying to beat it. I would play it every other month, sometimes a couple hours a week, sometimes just an hour before I got pissed off. This went on for about 2 years. Sometime after Covid had started to spread, I decided to try it again. I don’t know what clicked in me, but once we got to the final chapter, the final act, I genuinely couldn’t believe what had happened in the story and I had to know how this ends. I spent that whole week playing, grinding, exploring, and just doing anything so I could be at the level I needed to beat the final boss. Once those end credits rolled, I had not felt a sense of accomplishment and finality in a game like that before. Finally it was complete. The interesting part was that I started to appreciate a lot of the things I used to despise. I felt I had never given the game a true shot for what it was and I almost missed it when it was done. The good news was the remake was about to come out with a new DLC, which I picked up later, but I was just happy to see that the game did live up to the hype and was worth the difficulty I had in beating it. I was also happy my friend had someone he could talk to about the game, even though I’m sure he was pissed I dropped it so many times. Wilson, if you ever stumble into this, go pick up your copy of the game man, it’s been 5 years. Imma keep it if you don’t remind me 😉