XenoblaDE was my most anticipated game of the year (the fact that we are getting less games this year is irrelevant). I had played the original on the New 3DS a few years back but the glaring lack of QoL in that game made returning to it kind of unappealing. Which is why i was really pleased with XenoblaDE having big QoL updates, which i'll touch on later. But before i get into specifics, i do want to state something: XenoblaDE really is just Xenoblade 1 with a new coat of paint, for better and worse.

The good: it's Xenoblade lol. A lot of the good stuff about the original is kept here. The story and characters? Great. The exploration? Great. The music? Great. The remastered soundtrack was a welcome surprise and i think i honestly prefer it over the original soundtrack, for the most part. The shift in artstyle finally allowed the characters to emote and it made scenes a lot more impactful. In general, XenoblaDE probably has my favorite art direction out of the entire series. The QoL upgrades are so good man. Quest and item tracking is a Godsend and it makes doing quests not torture. Coesmetic gear is also a solid addition, i could finally play through the game without looking like a stupid clown. Expert Mode is an excellent addition to the game and it gives me hope that Xenoblade 2's bonus EXP system is here to stay.

The bad: It really is just Xenoblade 1 with a new coat of paint. While the QoL and artstyle shift did wonders, a lot of my gripes with the original are still here. Combat is decent but still feels weak compared to Xenoblade 2 and Torna and Chain Attacks being RNG-based is still one of the worst parts about it. Affinity takes 10,000 years to level up, effectively locking most Heart-to-Hearts behind endgame. Vision Reacts is a terrible song, why was it allowed to exist? And the worst one of all, level penalties are still a thing. Ironically, DE introduced some new problems, even if they are smaller in scale. Item tracking does not apply to Colony 6 reconstruction for some reason, making rebuilding Colony 6 just as tedious as it was in the original. Time Attack feels very lackluster compared to Xenoblade 2's Land of Challenge. And as a very minor nitpick, is it me, or are the Landmarks too spread out sometimes? The worst offender is in Makna Forest, where the Landmark closest to the final boss of that area is still quite a way away from it.

On Future Connected: I've talked about this before so i'll keep it short and simple: It's a good piece of extra content. It's essentially a mini-Xenoblade X in the sense that if you just do the story, you will be disapointed but doing the sidecontent (all the Quiet Moments at least) will improve your enjoyment of the overall story significantly.

Who knew that the last Fire Emblem game i'd end up playing before i could say that i've played every Fire Emblem would turn out to be the best one in the series.

For a long time, i've always argued that Conquest had the best gameplay out of any Fire Emblem game and it is a very solid game in that department. However, after playing Radiant Dawn, i realized that the true chad king of best gameplay belonged to Radiant Dawn, although Conquest is still a very close second. I really liked the height mechanic, as it not only gives ranged attackers an extra niche but also served to make certain defense maps more interesting. 2-E and 3-13 rank among the best defense maps in the series for me. I also liked that Wyverns exchanged their flying weakness for thunder weakness, as an attempt to make them not just better Pegasus Knights. I mean, they still are, but it's a good distinction that helps them stand out more.

The highlight was Part 3, i felt that it had some of the maps there had interesting design or objectives. Like in 3-P where you take control of ballistas to somewhat clear a path on the other side for the Laguz allies. Or in 3-3 where you have to burn all the supplies in a set number of turns. Or once again, 3-13, a unique take on the defense map where instead of just protecting a certain tile(s), you have to defend a perimeter. If an enemy unit crosses the line at the map's halfway point, you lose. These are just some examples, i found the maps to be pretty interesting in other Parts too. 3-E probably has the best gameplay/story integration in the series imo.

Story-wise, this is definitely Fire Emblem's most ambitious title. Of course, it's still a Fire Emblem game, so it does fall into some of the pitfalls that plagues the series. Such as how most of the villains are poorly-written, the worldbuilding and whatnot is pretty much exclusively telling, not showing. The Blood Pact plot device is dumb (although it's not this horrendous can of worms that some people made it out to be imo) and the whole thing about the Branded is kinda just shoved in. The game makes it a point about how Branded have to hide their brand, lest they be turned into outcasts but Soren is a Branded and he was walking around with the Brand on his forehead in plain sight, not giving a damn. And he still doesn't. Nobody seemed to care, yet being a Branded is considered a bad thing in this universe.

Despite all that though, this is probably Fire Emblem's best plot in my opinion. I really liked the different perspectives throughout the game and the fact that two of the factions were not on the same side (even if they join forces eventually) is something that i'd like to see in future games. And not in a branching path style like in Fates or Three Houses. Micaiah is one of the series' better Lords in my opinion, even if she suffers from Ike stealing her spotlight. Although, now that i have full context, it could've turned out a lot worst.

The biggest problem with this game is the lack of Support Convos. Now, most of the cast are returning characters from Path of Radiance so the lack of Supports really only hurts the brand new characters (especially Nailah and Volug, we know jack shit about Hatari and Supports would've helped there) but having Supports would've still meant only good things. As such, Fire Emblem is a rare case where my favorite game in a franchise does not have the best cast in that franchise. I'd still argue that Echoes and Three Houses have the best cast of characters in the series.

Honestly though, a lot of Radiant Dawn's faults don't bother me as much because playing through this game reminded me of a time when i considered Fire Emblem to be my favorite video game series of all time. I would never say that i lost interest in Fire Emblem but the series' flaws have made itself more appearent to me over the years and while i still like it a lot, i don't hold it in as high regard anymore. But Radiant Dawn reminded me of the time i did.

(updated review)

As a fan of RPGs, i've been feeling that sci-fi RPGs are kinda uncommon, or at least in terms of what i'd like. Most are either fantasy, modern times or is post-apocalyptic. And as sci-fi is probably my favorite genre, i feel the uncommoness of sci-fi RPGs more than most would. Of course, Xeno being my favorite video game franchise of all time makes up for it but i've been wanting a sci-fi RPG that wasn't Xeno for a while now. Final Fantasy exists but i've never really been interested in it or the Square Enix big three for that matter. I tried Star Ocean but it plays like a typical Tales game so i was turned off pretty early on. Anything else, i hadn't really thought about.

So here's where CrossCode comes in, a game i've had my eye on for a while on after it was recommended to me. Sci-fi Zelda-esque RPG with a main lead that looks like KOS-MOS? Yes please. There's a lot to like about CrossCode. The combat is cool, feels a lot like Ys (specifically the top-down games). The spritework is very appealing, the puzzles are very cool and then there is Lea, the best part about the game. I never expected to like Lea as much as i did but damn, she's such a good character. If you had told me before a silent protagonist would rank among my favorite video game protags of all time, i would've called you a dumb dumb because while i don't usually have anything against silent protags, i prefer characters that actually talk. But somehow the guys over at Radical Fish Games did it. Made the perfect blend of a protagonist with a lot of personality while also being silent (most of the time). Lea is so expressive that you can basically fill in the blanks to what she says. She has a few words she says that the game explains by saying they are preset words hardcoded into her and these few words still add a lot of character to her. Lea is so good that she is the reason the story works in the first place. Changing any aspect of Lea's character would make the story just fall apart because Lea is the story.

The other characters in the game are nice but nothing too special. They're all pretty static in comparison to Lea but it's fine, it works for this kind of story. But i do need to talk about Emille. Emille is Lea's first friend and this is very important because out of all the characters Lea befriends, Emille is definitely the closest friend she's made. There's this one cute scene where Emille is talking about her dislike of bugs and she's clearly exaggerating it but Lea takes it 100% seriously and gives her a comfort hug because Lea cares about Emille that much. Lea is so good guys.

Moving onto the gameplay, the combat and puzzles are great. As i've mentioned before, combat feels a lot like Ys, perhaps a bit more involved due to the multitude of skills you get. And i really like how each of Lea's modes has different stats, not all of it is just a raw power boost. Although i will say i wasn't a fan of Elemental Overload. Basically, using one of the modes too much causes it to stop working. Problem is, Overload is universal so if one mode is close to that, all modes that aren't normal mode are. This is pretty annoying, especially with bosses that can only be hurt by a certain element. I can't really think of a reason for Elemental Overload to exist, certainly it's not to prevent spam because SP does that already. But that's my only gripe, combat is cool and the Lv.2 and Lv.3 Arts are very based. The boss fights also make good use of the modes you've unlocked and it all culminates into the absolutely incredible final boss. That second phase is one of the coolest final boss fights i've ever played.

The puzzles in the game are very cool conceptually but it's kinda hard for me to talk about them in detail. You just gotta see it to believe it. That said, the first two dungeons simply have too many puzzles and in that regard, those two dungeons are basically gonna be an endurance test for some people. Get past it, and it's all smooth sailing after that (and honestly, the first two dungeons feel much better on a repeat playthrough). That said, slow-mo puzzles are bad, there isn't a single good one.

I will say that as good as the spritework is, the depth perception kinda fucks with you sometimes. It was at it's worst in Sapphire Ridge in my experience, due to the area being in eternal night.

Now it is worth mentioning that the ending of the game is a little bit underwhelming.....which is where A New Home comes in. I won't go into too much details because spoilers but A New Home is the epilogue DLC that might as well be packaged with the game itself because it is that vital. The real ending to the story is found here, after completing the true final dungeon, which also happens to be the best dungeon in the entire game. It's super long compared to the others but the mechanics in it are so damn good that i didn't mind. It took me three days but it was worth it. And the boss at the end chef's kiss.

All this and i'm not even taking into account New Game+. I'm of the belief that CrossCode has the best New Game+ in any game i've ever played as it gives you a bunch of different options to spice up your next playthrough. It even allows you to get rid of Elemental Overload, for example. And then there's Sergey Hax, which turns the game into a hilarious comedy as Lea takes out enemies in a single hit.

Honestly guys, CrossCode is a masterpiece. It ain't every day a new video game studio puts out a masterpiece as their first project but RadicalFishGames did it.

I've never had a nostalgic attachment to Paper Mario. My first Paper Mario was Sticker Star (hahahahahahaha), a game i enjoyed a lot when i was like, 12, but i recently replayed it and saw it was actually bad (though i still don't think it's the devilspawn that Paper Mario fans make it out to be). I've played The Thousand Year Door and Super Paper Mario, both fun games that i liked but never really put them on the pedestal that you usually see them on, The Thousand Year Door especially. I didn't have a Wii U so while i've seen lots of funny clips of Color Splash, i never got to play it and never knew anyone personally who had access to it.

So here comes Origami King. Literally announced out of nowhere as Nintendo's one and only big summer title because Covid. I was surprised but even though i thought the game looked good but there was that thought in the back of everyone's mind: "will it finally be an RPG again?" Things looked promising, gone were the sticker-based combat in favor of something more resembling RPGs, Partners were kinda back, no world map, instead having the return of an interconnected Mario world. But people were still looking for signs that it was an RPG. And then the infamous Nintendo Treehouse came perhaps turned a lot of people off. Many people, including myself admittidly, saw Sticker Star 3. I thought to myself, "game's probably fine but i'll wait on a sale". That was until i saw a Tweet from Lonley Goomba where he basically said that Origami King was just a Zelda game in disguise. That Tweet sold me. I didn't wait for a sale, i purchased Origami King at full price. And man, was i pleasantly surprised.

The beginning of the game is very slow and very handholdy. It is arguably the worst part of the game, which is a valid concern as first impressions are important. In my opinion, the Red Streamer will basically weed out the weak from the strong. Those who hold first impressions in very high regard will likely drop the game here. Those who persevere will be in for a treat. The Red Streamer is basically just normal Mario stuff, down to the visuals and music, though their are good moments to be had. But once you clear the Red Streamer and move on to the Blue Streamer, the real game begins. It is the Blue Streamer where the game begins to truly shine.

The character writing is honestly amazing. Olivia is genuianly a fantastic addition to the Nintendo character roster, Bobby the Bob-omb was fun to be around, the Bowsers reclaim their humorus glory. There's even a few heartfelt moments, which is very nice. The Legion of Stationary, the office supplies that served as bosses that everyone thought was a stupid-ass concept (which on paper, (heh), it is), are actually characters. Yes, office supplies are characters. Each one has a distinct personality that, apart from Colored Pencils and Scissors, isn't related to what they are. But even Colored Pencils and Scissors were fun. Colored Pencils was a pretentious artist who thinks the "modern" and "pop-culture" isn't real art and Scissors was actually just an anime swordsman, complete with the "heh, nothing personal kid" and "i'll handicap myself to make it fair".

The world is visually and audiably fantastic. A common criticism levied towards the post-Sticker Star Paper Mario games is that "oh it focuses too much on paper, it's not an aesthethic choice anymore". I feel that that criticism should not apply to this game in particular. The world is expertly crafted. You can tell it's all paper and cardboard materials obviously but the world feels very much alive. I honestly can't really criticize the game for "focusing on paper" when the world just looks so good. It helps that apart from the Red Streamer, it's not generic Mario environments. The Blue Streamer contains the Autumn Mountain, a beautiful red-orange mountain with a slight Japanese theming that you can hear in the music. Shogun Studios is a Japanese-theme amusment park with the best song in the game. The Yellow Streamer has the Scorching Sandpaper Desert, one of two "open" areas where you get to drive around in a car, ramming through any enemies you come across, while searching for the hidden Temple of Shrooms. Snif City is the city that never sleeps, so much so that it contains a room with an unexpected banger of a song in one small room and it only plays there. The Purple Streamer is literally just Wind Waker, complete with the Trials of Power, Wisdom and Courage. The Green Streamer is a resort spa in heaven spanning multiple floating islands, where Bowser's Castle accidentally crash landed. The best part, there's even a bit of worldbuilding that you can uncover in order to connect most of the areas, so the areas aren't just there to be there.

Did i mention the music by the way? Oh, it's so good. A lot of good bangers in the battle themes, i will repeat what i said about Shogun Studios having the best song in the game, the final dungeon theme is fantastic. This game was a pleasant surprise but the biggest surprise was how good the soundtrack is in this game.

But what about the gameplay? That's the important part, right? Is there incentive to battle? Turns out the anwser is actually yes. A lot of things are actually expensive in this game. Most of the coins and confetti you get will be from battles. Yeah you can find a few in the overworld but it won't be enough to catch up. I can count the number of times i exceeded 10,000 coins with one hand. You also need 10,000 coins to progress at a certain part during the Green Streamer, no way around it.

The battles themselves can be pretty satisfying. At first, they might not seem like much but when the games begins throwing harder puzzles at you, completing them correctly is honestly very satisfying. There's also overworld combat, where you have to hit enemies in their Achiles' Heel to make them vulnerable from any attack. There's enough of these battles that it didn't feel like just a gimmick. What is admittidly more gimmicky are the boss battles, which play completely differently from normal battles. However, each boss battle has it's own way of being solved. The trailers did a horrible job of demonstrating this. All they should was "oh you just have to get from the outside to the inside" but it is much more than that. If anything, the trailers horribly simplified how boss battles actually are. More often than not, you can't just run in and attack. Figuring out each boss' weakness and then exploiting it is part of the fun. And a lot of the time, that weakness might change into a different one once half-health is hit.

Outside of combat, there's a much bigger emphasis on exploration, with each area keeping track of how many of something you've done. The folded-up Toads are basically Korok Seeds from Breath of the Wild except the ones that are hidden well are actually hidden well and not "hey you found a Korok Seed by complete accident hahaha". The dungeons themselves have a very Zelda feel to them, though i wouldn't go as far to say as they are as good as Zelda dungeons. Still, they serve their purpose well. Speaking of Zelda, there's even Zelda-esque trade quests that you'll have to do every now and then.

If i have some negatives to say, i'll say again that the game has a very poor start. The Red Streamer really is the worst part of the game. You can't mass-buy items. Some items are sold in bulk but you can't select multiple quantities for different items. This is 2020, c'mon IntSys. There is a pointless game show you have to do during the Green Streamer and Origami King as a game is sometimes kinda unintutive in what you have to do. Lining up enemies during combat is satisfying, yes, but the game is very stingy sometimes on what counts as a lineup. There would be times where i swore i lined them up correctly but the game said no.

This game is not an RPG. It is a Zelda-esque adventue game with RPG puzzle elements. If you're someone who absolutely insists that Paper Mario should be an RPG and nothing more, this game isn't for you. But if you're willing to open your mind, absolutely try this out and hopefully you're strong enough to make it through the slow beginning. Paper Mario: The Origami King is a great addition to the Switch's first-party library and I hope that this game is remembered fondly, free from the negative preconceptions that Sticker Star and Color Splash gave it.

So it being a Mega Man-inspired game, i finished Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX a day after it's release. The game can very easily be described as "short but sweet". I mean, it is a Gunvolt game so it wasn't really long to begin with but for the first time in the series, this game only has one ending. The gameplay is very quick and satisfying. While the Gunvolt series takes more inspiration from the Mega Man Zero games, Luminous Avenger is more reminiscent of the Mega Man X games. The main character, Copen, acquires EX Weapons by defeating each boss and each boss is weak to a certain EX Weapon. In terms of difficulty, while the main challenge of the series comes from trying to get the highest rank, on a base difficulty, i'd say this game is the hardest in the series because, especially early on, Copen doesn't have a lot of health. You can Prevade through attacks (Prevasion is an ability in every game where if you have enough EP (as Gunvolt) or Bullits (as Copen), you can nullify attacks. You can refill these meters at any time so you can really just Prevade through everything though you can't move if you do) but given that dashing into enemies to lock onto them uses up Bullits and you only have three (can be increased to five) and Prevasion uses up two......yeah, you might find yourself taking a bit of damage. The final boss also kicked my ass a few times. There are difficulty settings as well:

Fearless basically makes it so you lose all your points if you take a hit
Cautious gives you three hits before taking away all your points
Casual(?, i forgot the actual name) basically makes it so no matter how many hits you take, you'll keep your points

as well as optional equipment you can buy to make the game harder for you, like All or Nothing, which removes checkpoints or another part where your HP is always 100. You can even disable Prevasion if you want.

On the music front, the OST is decent with the vocal songs being bangers, as is the case for the series. There are three catagories for songs. Overdrive Songs, an Anthem Song and a Darkness song (i'll talk about those two later). Overdrive songs are triggered when you get 1000 points (and because you can lose these points if you aren't careful, you can also lose the song).

The game also has a story and it's nothing to write home about. It's mainly there to move the game along but it and the characters are nice to have around. Talking to the characters increases the chance of Lola's Anthem triggering, which basically revives you and gives you unlimited EX energy. You can still die and you won't gain any points but it's nice. Lola also has a Darkness form, activated by the EX Weapon Darkness Trigger. This also gives you unlimited EX energy and increases the power of everything but if you aren't locked onto enemies, you'll slowly take damage. The only way to deactivate the mode is to use an SP skill (by which i mean the only one) or trigger an event. The ending does leave me intrigued, though. Speaking of the story, the game does not take place in the same universe as the first two Gunvolt games so you could start here but i still wouldn't recommend it. Which brings us to....

The few flaws this game has. For starters, this game is definitely geared more towards the veterans of the series. Not only is it the hardest game in the series but the game doesn't really teach you anything. There is a manual (which i didn't look at because i've played this series before) but even aside from that, i actually don't know what most of the EX Weapons do and i just have to make assumptions based on what i see visually because there are no descriptions apart from names. The only EX Weapon that has any sort of description is Darkness Trigger. And speaking of EX Weapons, this game has the Mega Man 2 problem where one of the weapons is objectively the best one. Unless you're fighting a boss where a different weapon is more ideal for more damage, if you aren't using Orbital Edge, you're playing the game wrong.

So where does the latest entry in the Gunvolt series compare to with the rest of the series? Well, it's a great game but i don't think it's as good as Azure Striker Gunvolt 2. That game had a better story (not that this series is played for story) but also the best gameplay. You can either play as Gunvolt or as Copen and while i personally prefer the former, the latter has a more balanced selection of EX Weapons. So my ranking would be: Gunvolt 2 > Luminous Avenger > Gunvolt 1. While i wouldn't recommend starting with this game, for series veterans, it's an absolutely worthy addition to the series and Inti Creates' library.

I'm going to say it right now, Tropical Freeze is peak 2D platforming. Donkey Kong Country Returns was really good and Tropical Freeze took everything good about that game and made it even better (much like Super Mario Galaxy 2 took everything about Galaxy 1 and made it even better). Level design is top-notch with a decent challenge. A 2D platformer where the water and ice levels are actually good (the latter was definitly important in a game called Tropical Freeze). At first i thought the constant lives you get was gonna get in the way of that but i later learned that that was the game being fair. You will appreciate all those lives you amass. Soundtrack was absolutely fire.

The only really negative thing i can say is that some of the bosses drag. All of them take the same number of hits to beat but the times you can hit them is what's different. I also do wish the buddy Kongs were more balanced. Because Dixie is objectively better than Diddy in this game and Cranky gets very few oppertunities to shine. But that's more nitpicky, as any level can be beaten solo.

Anyways, Tropical Freeze gets welcomed with open arms into my prestigious 10/10 club as it's fourth member. It's that good of a game, i highly recommend (though perhaps wait on a sale, it shouldn't be $60 anymore but we all know how Nintendo is).

Unfortunately, for a long time, i did not have a Wii U. I've played some Wii U games and even beaten them thanks to my good friends but one game i've wanted to play most on the system was Xenoblade Chronicles X. None of my friends had it and i eventually resigned myself to accepting i'll probably not get to play it. Then comes the Switch, which starts getting port after port of Wii U games that sold well and didn't sell well. Mario Kart 8, Tropical Freeze, Tokyo Mirage Sessions, etc. But despite all these ports, Xenoblade Chronicles X was nowhere in sight and with Tetsuya Takahashi admitting it'd be kinda hard to port, as much as i wanted it, it did feel like it wasn't gonna happen. So i bought a Wii U in 2020.

Xenoblade Chronicles X wasn't the only reason i bought a Wii U. Nintendo's strange decision to not put Super Mario Galaxy 2, the best 3D platformer of all time, in Super Mario 3D All-Stars was pretty baffling so me buying a Wii U served as both a way to play Xenoblade X and Mario Galaxy 2. But the primary reason was to play Xenoblade X. And after 88 hours of gameplay and one month of real time (the Wii U arrived on October 2nd), i am now ready to release my full thoughts on the game.

I'm gonna start with arguably the biggest selling point of this game: Planet Mira. The Xenoblade games all have very open areas but Xenoblade X is the only game in the series that's truly open world. Though a few parts aren't explorable until later, the rest of Planet Mira is always within reach from the moment the game sets you free from the tutorial. This game has the second least number of regions out of the Xenoblade games, at only five, six if you count NLA. Torna ~ The Golden Country only has two but that is excusable and if you don't consider Torna to be it's own game, then yeah, Xenoblade X has the least amount of explorable regions. And yet, that was never an issue because Monolith Soft is king of world design. Each region is distinct, teeming with wildlife and you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by exploring. No fall damage means you're able to explore to your hearts content and virtually no loading screens outside of fast travel means travelling the world is seamless. But you are quite literally an invasive species on this planet which means everything is out to get you. Before playing the game, i would always say that Xenoblade X is the most hostile game in the series and now that i've actually played it, i can say that for certain. Which is what made the exploration all the more satisfying. Planning out your jumps to climb steep paths and such to avoid dangerous enemies is so good and adds an extra layer of exploration. The enemies in this game really don't follow level rules and while that is common in Xenoblade games, in the other games, all the high-level enemies usually stay off the beaten path, with the exception of the occasional Unique Monster. In Xenoblade X, there can be Lv.60 enemies roaming outside of the gates of NLA at night. The game does everything right to drive home the point that you don't belong on this planet and i love it. This world is so good that after i got my Skell and later the Flight Module, i would choose to get to my destinations the long way by zooming around in vehicle mode for flying there instead of fast travelling.

But it's not just the main regions that make the world of Xenoblade X so great. The hub area of New Los Angeles is quite possibly my favorite hub area in any game. Seeing it slowly grow from being just a city of humans to a city of all sorts of races was very nice to see. As more races come into NLA, more quests open up, exploring more parts about each race and how they interact with the other races. And even when you aren't doing quests, simply walking around NLA can show just how lived-in it feels. I'm legitimately reminded of Star Wars with how all these vastly different races can gather together in one place and feel normal. Even the Ma-non ship that's hovering over the city fits in so well. What sets it apart from Star Wars is the context of humanity. In Star Wars, humans are just another race. The main characters in the movies and shows tend to be humans mostly but in an alternate timeline, Luke Skywalker could be an alien and it wouldn't have changed anything. In Xenoblade X, the humans are from not that far in the future. The game takes place in 2054, which means that most of the characters could be the kids and grandkids of millennials and zoomers. Hell, a few of the characters are millenials and zoomers.

All of this is thanks to Xenoblade X being a God at sidequest writing. Early on, it may not seem to impressive but as you play through the game, pretty much every sidequest is part of a chain. A good chunk of these sidequests also have different outcomes depending on what you did during them and some sidequests can even affect whether a later one or not would trigger. There's one sidequest where i'm tasked to kill a group of indigens hiding in a cave and when i get there, i find out they are just kids and i'm given the option to take them out or to spare them. I chose the latter. Later on, i get another quest from the same client who gave me that first quest with the piglets and it's revealed that the piglets have grown into wild boars that are attacking everyone in sight and now you have to go take down those same boars and the client mentions how kindness can get you killed before he dies of his wounds. There's another sidequest that's basically just Alien meets The Waters of Mars where the people running the water purification plant outside the city walls are attacked by a parasitic creature that takes control of it's host when the host comes into contact with water. The sole survivor of that quest will either live or die depending on if you let her take a shower before finding out the secret of the parasite. And that's the thing with some of these quests. For some of them, you don't know if the people you're trying to help will make it out alive.

Of course, not every sidequest results in someone dying. In a general sense, a lot of them are exploring the daily lives of the various residents of NLA and not once does a sidequest feel the same as one you did before. Some of the sidequests can be pretty funny. There's one where a Zaruboggan, aliens that can absorb pollution, willingly gives his supply of toxic material to a criminal who intended to poison the water supply. The criminal releases the toxic material into the water only for that same Zaruboggan to comes along, goes "ooh, free pollution", absorbs it all and leaves the criminal completely dumbfounded.

And since we're still on the subject of sidequests, i'm gonna talk about Affinity Missions. Affinity Missions are the main source of character development and interactions for anyone not named Elma or Lin. Each character has a set of three, sometimes two characters can share an Affinity Mission. Some non-playables also have an Affinity Mission. I always love it when characters get their own little stories devoted to them and while i won't say that every Affinity Mission sticks the landing, they are all worth it in the end. Heart-to-Hearts are also still around but they don't matter and it's great that Affinity builds up a lot faster.

All of this is helped by Xenoblade X having a very decent quest tracking system. XenoblaDE still probably has the best one in principle but lol, imagine doing XenoblaDE sidequests. Anyways, Xenoblade X tells you what locations you need to go to and if you ever get lost, you can always turn on the Follow Ball, an orb of light that guides you to your destination. When it comes to collecting items, the game can tell you what enemy to kill or what region it's in but you're on your own there.

But what about the rest of the game. How's the combat. Well, the combat is basically perfect. It is the combat system of Xenoblade 1 taken to the next level and made far more engaging. This is the game where Monolith Soft began to weave healing into the combat itself without interrupting the flow of combat. Soul Voices are pretty fun to trigger, probably because they add a bit of a rhythmic feel to the combat. It's also the main way to heal as actual healing Arts are very rare though i will say that healing via Soul Voice isn't as reliable as i'd hoped, at least not on-foot. I would like for the sequel to at least give one healing AoE for every character. Or maybe that's too much haha. At least buff the amount of HP restored from Soul Voices. At any rate, there's never any downtime during the combat. Skell combat is really fun too although i do wish Overdrive wasn't as RNG reliant. There should be guaranteed conditions that you can meet like the Alrest games' Chain Attacks. And speaking of Alrest, i will say that in the end, i do prefer the combat of Xenoblade 2 and Torna, due to hit-based auto-attacks, auto-attack cancelling and Art cancelling but it's basically preference at this point. I absolutely see why many fans do consider X to have the best combat in the series.

The soundtrack bangs. It's very different from the rest of the series and i can sorta get why some people got turned off but trust me, if you play the game, you'll like it. I used to hate the NLA theme but after playing the game, the NLA theme has rightfully earned it's spot in my mind......NLA Night still sucks tho. Honestly, there's a very few amount of songs i don't like but Xenoblade X's soundtrack is still a certified banger by all accounts. Thank you Sawano.

All that said, there are a few things in Xenoblade X i'm not a fan. For starters, sometimes the game can be unintuitive. Whether it be the requirements for Heart-to-Hearts, some secret objective in a quest that can help you save a life, the fact that probes are not single use, or the fact that Augments don't show up in the terminal at all unless you got the first required item on the list, which you won't know what it is unless you look it up because there's no way of seeing in-game before you find it. None of this plagues the game, it's just inconvenient.

I'm also not a fan of how gear and EXP is handled. Thankfully, there's no level penalties like in Xenoblade 1 but your level does determine what gear you're able to equip. This is made more of a problem by the fact that inactive party members do not gain EXP so characters you don't use will fall behind and, at least for a good while, it can be a pain to catch them up. There are easy EXP strats but that doesn't come until later. Level-restricted gear would've been fine if inactive party members gained EXP.

Skell Insurance is stinky. Some things just don't belong in a video game and insurance is one of them. I hope the sequel treats Skells like the pre-Blade Xeno games treated their mechs: if a Skell's HP drops to zero, you just can't use it for the rest of the battle.

And let's get to the elephant in the room: the main story. It's.....there, i guess. The end of Ch.7, all of Ch.8, Ch.10, 11 and 12 all range from decent to good but honestly, the story is basically one glorified prologue. The character relevancy is weird in this game because if your name isn't Elma or Lin, you basically don't exist in the plot but with the way everything is structured, it's not as big of a deal. It's still not as bad as the character relevancy problems in Xenogears and Xenoblade 1. I'm not mentioning Cross here because Cross is an avatar and unlike in some games (cough Modern Fire Emblem cough), Cross is literally just a person. There's nothing special about them and whenever they get praised, it's because they've earned it.

Anyways, easily the worst part of the plot is the villains. There's five main ones, only one of them is actually decent, three of them are killed off so unceremoniously and the big bad honestly has like no presence. They aren't the worst Xeno villains but they are definitely down there.

At the end of the day though, the story is not that important. This is a JRPG that purposefully puts the main story in the backseat because the side content is the real main content. If you play this game and you only do the minimal side content needed to advance the mains story, you will be left disappointed.

Ultimately, despite the problems it has, i find them to be overall not that much of an issue in the long run. The good of this game extremely outweighs the bad and the amount of fun this game brought to me makes me confident in saying it's a masterpiece. It's not my favorite game of all time, that title still belongs to Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but i'm glad to say that my favorite video game series of all time put out two masterpieces in a row.