This review contains spoilers
I remember buying the original Xenoblade for £7 at a Gamestation - there were so many copies, they just wanted rid. I bought it on a whim and six months later they were selling on ebay for £100+. It was insane how much buzz this game got. Ever since then I've been on the Xenoblade train.
This isn't so much a review as just...talking about the game? They're one and the same, but based on the previous paragraph it didn't matter what the game was really like - it was getting 5 stars. Having said that, I feel this is the weakest Xenoblade.
The story and world are good - just good, mind you. From the first reveal of the Mechonis Sword & Uraya titan, this game wants you to know the world is a merger of Xenoblade 1 & 2. Well tbh, outside of these two the amount of callbacks or even hints is scant. I was expecting to be able to recognise landmarks and melodies. This isn't any of that - Aionios is very much it's own thing, but from seeming to pluck at the nostalgia strings with the main menu imagery, it does bugger all with it afterwards. The story kept me interested and there was some very good twists and moments of suspense - then the ending happened and despite knowing the lore and background of everything, so much was lost on me. Things were just assumed you'd know. Agnus and Keves were from two different worlds? Did they ever say that? Everything just felt a little flat. Compared to the ending of 2 which was a great culmination of a fantastic story, it was a let down.
The script is typical Xenoblade (so bad accents and weeb shit everywhere) - there's even your stereotypical hot spring scene! I can't say I enjoyed a lot of the script that much, though the main six characters (particularly Eunie & Lanz) were all well characterized, though a lot were bound by the stock personality they were given. Voice acting....eeehhhh, it's a step up from 1 & 2 but coming from FFVIIR (or even FFXV) to this is just...yeeesh.
The music was a big disappointment to me - the OST for Xenoblade 2 was fantastic (as was Xenoblade X tbh) and I expected much of the same, with hopefully some remixed tracks from the first two games. Yeah, there's not much memorable here, or even nostalgic. There's a lot of soft melodies that vanish from thought the moment they stop playing.
So, on to the battle system, which I'm fairly sure is the main reason most people play these games. Is it good? Yes. Very good. Is it better than 1 or 2? Errrr...
For me, the battle system in 2 was perfection - it was overly complicated to start with, but once you understood and found your feet you were pulling off ridiculous things. In this, once you've realised the Break->Topple->Launch->Smash wheel is absolutely broken, battles become trivial. I ended up beating the last superboss on my first try with middling equipment and gems - the real time system with AoEs works really nicely but it's completely broken in some areas. When you've got 20+ classes to balance, it's easy to make this mistake. Then they said you can have 7 CHARACTERS IN YOUR PARTY WHY DID THEY ALLOW THIS - the screen quickly becomes a mess of people and noises and particles and half the time you don't know who is where or what they're doing. Pair this with character switching people so annoying to do you might as well not bother, and you start getting through the battles as quickly as possible (hence, breaking it with Break -> Smash early on). Hell, even the Ouroboros system is broken once you work out how to hit Interlink Level 3 consistently.
There's so much more I want to say about this game but I'd run out of room even here. I loved it, I really did (140 hours of playtime proves it) - a lot of the above is critique but there's so much here to love. I just think the scope of what they did was so small compared to what was available and that they played it very safe with everything. I can't wait to see what the DLC will be, and I'll be there day one. But I come out from all this feeling deflated rather than satisfied.
This isn't so much a review as just...talking about the game? They're one and the same, but based on the previous paragraph it didn't matter what the game was really like - it was getting 5 stars. Having said that, I feel this is the weakest Xenoblade.
The story and world are good - just good, mind you. From the first reveal of the Mechonis Sword & Uraya titan, this game wants you to know the world is a merger of Xenoblade 1 & 2. Well tbh, outside of these two the amount of callbacks or even hints is scant. I was expecting to be able to recognise landmarks and melodies. This isn't any of that - Aionios is very much it's own thing, but from seeming to pluck at the nostalgia strings with the main menu imagery, it does bugger all with it afterwards. The story kept me interested and there was some very good twists and moments of suspense - then the ending happened and despite knowing the lore and background of everything, so much was lost on me. Things were just assumed you'd know. Agnus and Keves were from two different worlds? Did they ever say that? Everything just felt a little flat. Compared to the ending of 2 which was a great culmination of a fantastic story, it was a let down.
The script is typical Xenoblade (so bad accents and weeb shit everywhere) - there's even your stereotypical hot spring scene! I can't say I enjoyed a lot of the script that much, though the main six characters (particularly Eunie & Lanz) were all well characterized, though a lot were bound by the stock personality they were given. Voice acting....eeehhhh, it's a step up from 1 & 2 but coming from FFVIIR (or even FFXV) to this is just...yeeesh.
The music was a big disappointment to me - the OST for Xenoblade 2 was fantastic (as was Xenoblade X tbh) and I expected much of the same, with hopefully some remixed tracks from the first two games. Yeah, there's not much memorable here, or even nostalgic. There's a lot of soft melodies that vanish from thought the moment they stop playing.
So, on to the battle system, which I'm fairly sure is the main reason most people play these games. Is it good? Yes. Very good. Is it better than 1 or 2? Errrr...
For me, the battle system in 2 was perfection - it was overly complicated to start with, but once you understood and found your feet you were pulling off ridiculous things. In this, once you've realised the Break->Topple->Launch->Smash wheel is absolutely broken, battles become trivial. I ended up beating the last superboss on my first try with middling equipment and gems - the real time system with AoEs works really nicely but it's completely broken in some areas. When you've got 20+ classes to balance, it's easy to make this mistake. Then they said you can have 7 CHARACTERS IN YOUR PARTY WHY DID THEY ALLOW THIS - the screen quickly becomes a mess of people and noises and particles and half the time you don't know who is where or what they're doing. Pair this with character switching people so annoying to do you might as well not bother, and you start getting through the battles as quickly as possible (hence, breaking it with Break -> Smash early on). Hell, even the Ouroboros system is broken once you work out how to hit Interlink Level 3 consistently.
There's so much more I want to say about this game but I'd run out of room even here. I loved it, I really did (140 hours of playtime proves it) - a lot of the above is critique but there's so much here to love. I just think the scope of what they did was so small compared to what was available and that they played it very safe with everything. I can't wait to see what the DLC will be, and I'll be there day one. But I come out from all this feeling deflated rather than satisfied.