We are only Gods of Ourselves.

Xenoblade Chronicles is a lot of things. A passion project; a bloated bore; a good game. The amount of time, care and love put into this piece is apparent, and exactly why this game is seen through to the end, despite its own attempts to prevent the player from doing so.

The Bionis, and the Mechonis; All there is, all there was. The concept of living atop giants, absurd as it is, is fully realized. We come to understand the world as it is; a living being, with flesh and blood; antibodies and parasites. A true living world. The sheer scope, what it means to live upon a giant, is purposefully obfuscated at first. As the player travels up the Bionis alongside Shulk, they experience the various climates, cultures, and people inhabiting the body. A snowy peak on the head, a town plagued by falling debris on the resting calve. The world is fully realized and understood, and is by far the strongest aspect of the game.

The world of Xenoblade however, is not enjoyable to explore in and of itself. Exploration in game is marred by the slow movement speed of the party, and the large, expansive, empty lands you travel. You are never truly incentivized to travel, explore, to visit every crack, crease, and crevice. Sidequests will ask you to travel to a pond, kill some fish, without any compelling reason as to why you should do so. There’s a sense of aimlessness to it all, akin to wasting time, as if you’re procrastinating the main story. There is no natural reward for exploration, all you find off the beaten path is more monsters to fight, and the occasional ether mine. The monsters are rarely anything more interesting than what you’ve already been fighting, and the ether mines only serve as a method to further bloat the gameplay systems.

Ether mines are used to obtain ether gems, which insert into equipment to allow for additional effects in combat. An interesting mechanic encouraging unique builds, but the execution leaves much to be desired. There is rarely any easy way to obtain the gems you want, so it is often up to chance as to if you will have the gems you actually want. Gem crafting is the easiest way to obtain these enhancers, but it's a slow, tedious, and unengaging process. Your inventory quickly fills with items for gem crafting, but you will never be excited for the process, as your inventory will be so full you won’t know where to begin. This bloat defines the regular equipment system as well. Your inventory will so often be filled with assorted equipment, with the most minute of differences, with no easy method to sort or dispose of useless gear. Gear is sorted into various categories and types, making sorting them and finding what you want even more of a bore. The equipment management feels is a hassle, discouraging you from actually changing things up and experimenting like the game intends for you to.


The game begs you to experiment, but the mechanics constantly discourage you from doing so. The affection and skill link system encourage using various groupings of party members to raise their affections and unlock skill links, but the game often expects you to have Shulk in the party, as he hosts various unique skills. Not having Shulk in your party is a death sentence against various enemy types, so your party building is unfortunately limited. The lack of control over the AI beyond a rudimentary tactics system results in your party members often not doing what you’d like them to. This discourages you from ever even controlling other party members beyond Shulk, for the AI is not capable of making the proper strategic situations required of his role. This further cements Shulk as the only character you should control. Swapping party members out is made a hassle, the lack of a load-out system results in the player having to re-select their skill links, swap out their arts, change their equipment, gems, etc, until they fit properly within the new party. This bloat and tedium requires a lot of patience from the player, and is not appreciated in a game that is already so long as is.

This bloat extends to the narrative as well. While the game starts off strong after the Mechon attack, it starts to flounder soon after. It never becomes a bad story, but it spends too long stumbling around in areas that end up being meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Many areas serve as nothing more than highways to the next story location, with nothing of interest beyond the visuals and atmosphere of the areas themselves. Many locations could be cut from the game as a whole and there wouldn’t be any major loss. The story picks up once you reach the Fallen Arm, but everything before then is a peak or valley of quality and pacing. The fight with Xord is exciting and piques your interest, but much of the story between then and arriving at Alcamoth feels somewhat meandering. This sense of aimlessness can extend to the central cast as well. While Shulk is a well rounded central figure, many characters feel like they don’t have much to offer. Reyn, Dunban, and Melia all bounce off Shulk very well, their relationships real and believable. Riki and Fiora are both fun, but they definitely lack a sense of depth that makes the rest of the cast interesting. Sharla bares the worst of this aimlessness however. She doesn’t have much importance in the plot, primarily serving as a vehicle for Reyn’s character development. Beyond that, all she has for personality is her relationship to her fiance. She is entirely dependent on these male figures for her character, and it’s disappointing to see that she could be entirely written out of the story with relatively minor changes.

The biggest flaw of the narrative however, is the writer’s excitement to tell it. Foreshadowing is an important technique in stories, and can serve to make narratives more interesting to experience on repeat. When the foreshadowing actively spoils the narrative however, it instead serves to make the first experience worse. Numerous scenes in the story feature characters making incredibly obvious allusions to future narrative beats, the most egregious of which is Dickson’s betrayal. Dickson is shown throughout the game to know more than the average Homs, to an absurd degree, and that is perfectly fine. It makes him a character you have many questions about; as to how he knows so much about the Bionis, all the people living on it, and so on. The issue however, comes in when he is often shown to be planning behind your back. Constant scenes of him turning away from the cast and saying “The plan is all falling into place,” give the player the idea that he is suspicious and not to be trusted, not naturally, through their own wit and intuition, but unnaturally, through him saying things that obviously incriminate him as a suspicious individual. It showcases a lack of respect for the viewer to be able to pick up on character traits themselves. It makes any future events involving that character less surprising, less exciting, and less impactful. Dickson betraying the party could have been an unexpected and exciting part of the narrative, but it is instead expecting, awaited, and uninteresting. There are still good twists, but much of the game is brought down by this failure.

This doesn’t make the narrative unenjoyable however, and the message of the story within is still poignant. What starts off as a simple revenge tale, is denied at the last minute. Shulk forgoes revenge once he learns what is truly happening. He breaks the cycle of revenge, and denies his own destiny. He is not the one to choose who lives and dies, and neither should anyone else. He controls his own fate, and the fate of others should lie with others. He denies Zanza, believing that a God should not be free to control the fate of others unimpeded. He decides to fight against the concept of fate itself, because nobody should have control over the fates of others. Defeating Zanza has Shulk choose to deny the path laid out for him, and the path laid out for all life. We are not born to die, we are born to live. Denying the path of godhood, he wishes for a world with no gods. We are the ones who will carve our paths forward, and we are the ones in control of our destiny. Only Gods of ourselves. No greater power has control over us.

The gameplay cycle of Xenoblade is a mess. There are so many minor flaws that build up to bring down the overall experience. But despite that all, it is clearly a labour of love. A world created from the ground up, wholly unique and unlike any other. A story about hope and optimism, encouraging players to cease their own destiny. Characters that fight through it all for the hope of a better tomorrow. It is a story worth experiencing despite its flaws, and a game that deserves recognition for what it achieves. It is a beautiful mess of an experience.