Xenoblade Chronicles X (Wii U) Second Opinion Review

For a game that took place on the abandoned corpses of two titans, Xenoblade Chronicles was somewhat linear. The playgrounds were massive, with plenty to see and do, but progress still moved along an easily defined line, with Shulk and company moving from one area to another and there not being much incentive to jump between them, with a few exceptions. Xenoblade Chronicles X exists on the opposite end of the pendulum: there's almost no direction at all.

Players are dropped right into the thick of things, and while tutorial screens appear here and there, most things are unexplained. It's a blessing and a curse, as this is a game with a tremendous amount of content—NPCs, story quests, side quests, and gameplay elements—and explaining everything in too much detail would likely be overwhelming and boring. The lack of explanation found, instead, is also overwhelming, but it's far from boring. There's a certain appeal to being able to get right to work, especially for players of the first game, but the lack of direction can also be frustrating at times, especially considering the first few character levels offer very little to actually do.

Character customisation is rich, where the main character is built from scratch. Offensively missing from the Western release is the female character breast slider; a one-size-fits-all approach to female figures is never a good thing, and some will even have difficulty making a proportionate character—those who make the main character short, for example, are stuck with a top-heavy-looking lady. That aside, different pieces of armour show up in-game in most cases, and while it can sometimes be odd to see a T-shirt sleeve sprouting from a scale-based fantasy-type armour, it all fits into the quirky tone that led to things like the famous "underwear Shulk." On the flip side, different armour can be set to appear in-game while keeping the stats of another set, so the developers have their bases covered.

Xenoblade Chronicles X's story is a strong one: Earth is destroyed, humanity takes to the stars, and one ship, the White Whale, crash-lands on an alien planet called Mira, where the crew gets to work trying to survive. Unfortunately of note is an artificiality that underlies the entire experience. From the graphics to the progression of the story, it feels like a video game, and it seems like a deliberate design choice, and even if not, it's quite jarring. The environments and creatures, for example, are beautiful and realistic—giant wheels, bioluminescent plants, floating islands; all of it dripping with lore. Meanwhile, human faces are static and look painted on, animations are stiff and stocky, sound effects (footsteps and swimming, in particular) are repetitive and grating, and story progression is locked behind arbitrary player levels and the completion of often unrelated side quests.

Crises and emergencies arise, yet level-grinding means the main characters decide to just put those off in favour of hunting down some mining zones. A game like this could've easily benefitted from immersion, but the developers have opted for the opposite. One instance in which this works in their favour is the battle system, where attacks are automatic, but skills and position are selected and timed by the player - a system sometimes criticised, but one that stands out as original, especially compared to these other artificial-feeling features.

Another negative example is in the forced silent protagonist trope. Gamers can pick their character's voice (and the game brilliantly lists the voice actor for each in the character creation menu - a small touch, but one the industry could use more of), but as part of the story, the main character is silent, with players left picking from nods and head shakes. Suddenly, during battle, the main character can shout out attacks in addition to grunts and sometimes full sentences, despite being told that they can't talk during many cut-scenes. It's an odd choice, but the rest of the cast is colourful enough to make up for the blank-slate protagonist; the interactions between Tatsu and Lin Lee are golden, while Elma shows a surprising amount of depth and basically serves as a surrogate primary protagonist. The voice cast is strong and performs their roles well.