Alongside the sudden shift to science-fantasy, Xenoblade Chronicles takes the grindy, mindless cooldown combat of MMORPGs and absorbs into it nearly every idea from the past no matter how developed. For this 80-hour trip, half of it is a fairly competent, well-crafted experience, the other half is the epitome of filler. It really checks off most boxes of what constitutes a quality JRPG (aside from the awkward writing), but beyond the premise, they fail to establish any sort of identity.

Wildly overrated, Xenoblade Chronicles encapsulates everything that went wrong with JRPGs since the PS2 era: Large empty spaces designed to show off console capabilities (that are a slog to traverse through), generic humanoid characters (their cast of FFX rejects) and an even more banal storyline littered with JRPG cliches; bombast for the sake of bombast, set after set of exaggerations that don't inspire awe but indifference and exhaustion instead.