Xenoblade Chronicles

[Wolf Kanno]

I'll drink to that. I think they finally came into their own on this one. Unlike the Saga games, this one's pretty universally praised

Takahashi said that when he was designing this game in the beginning, he wanted to make amends for what he now sees in hindsight as poor game design in the Saga Franchise. He specifdically said he approached it as a game and asked the question of "what would players find fun".

[Del Murder]

Squqre Enix needs to adopt that model, instead of 'what makes us the most money' or 'what haven't we tried yet'.

[Vyk]

That makes sense. I love how they keep spoon feeding you bite-size morsels of plot. There's always something going on to keep you engaged, but its not frequent enough to be annoying, and its not 20 minutes of cut-scenes that over-stay their welcome. Its just a conversation here, plot development there, a smattering of character development sprinkled around. Its nice

[Wolf Kanno]

What a bunch of jokers.

My favourite thing about the game is how streamlined everything is. Walking over to glowing spots to harvest things without having to wait for some kind of animation. Not having to return to your quest-giver to get your quest rewards. No-loading fast travel if you're hopping around the same area, or just fast travel in general. The rest of the game is pretty great too, but it seems like they took extra care with all the interface stuff like that.

I can totally agree with this, I played an hour ot two last night, just doing some of the side quests and the interface has made the game so much more user friendly and less of a hassle. I just decided to check out this beach to the far east of Colony 9 and along the way, I completed 4 quests all in the span of about 10 minutes and I only had to return to one quest giver, and he certainly made it worth my while. I also starting playing a little more qith Quick Travel last night as well.

The Heart-to-Heart actions are also pretty fun, working like a beautiful combination of Star Ocean's Private Actions and Persona 3/4's Social Links. You get some intriguing background information on characters and unlock gamplay bonuses for doing them.

The game really has taken the best parts of both Westerns and Eastern RPG design and made something really fun.Strong linear Story, battle system, art design, and characters from JRPGs; and then the open world, multitude of sidequests, non-linear gameplay of a WRPG. It's really taken what FFXII tried to bring to the genre and pushed it to the next level.

[NeoCracker]

smurf every god damned one of you.

*Grumbles in a corner about not having a Wii anymore*

[Vyk]

I never get rid of a system unless it dies. There's always the nostalgia. Or if you get rid of it during its activity cycle you risk issues like this. But other than hacking and emulating I bought a wii for this very purpose

[Wolf Kanno]

I finally obtained the Monado, confirmed that Dunban is the Uzuki expy for this game, got to see the battle system really open up, and witnessed a pretty shocking early plot twist. The plot twist in question actually has me bummed Major Xenoblade Plot SpoilersI really like Fiona and I did a lot of quests and at least one heart to heart with her, she was also a great party member and I was so happy she bucked the trend of usual female childhood friends. Doing all that side content actually made me really get attached to her more than I thought, so now that she's gone, I'm a bit sad...

The plot is starting and now I'm trying to move away from Colony 9, but' it's hard because there still so much to do there.

[edczxcvbnm]

I got as far as you did last night Wolf. If there is one thing that is annoying the hell out of me it is the interface. Then it hit me. They had to design it in some way to make up for the lack of buttons on the wiimote. This would have been a much better game on the PS3 or 360 due to a better controller...plus they could have had better textures and stuff. It doesn't look bad but it defiantly feels like a PS2 RPG.

smurfin' Wii on that troutty controller :/

[Wolf Kanno]

I'm curious, what's your issue with the interface? I actually find the controls to be pretty good, and was surprised they are still mapped like a Japanese game like FFVII and FFTactics, with the confirm button being the far right button on the d-pad and the cancel button being the bottom right, which is usually reversed when the game gets brought out to the West. Granted, the game is a bit menu-heavy but it does categorize the menu's pretty well so the menu window isn't cluttered and overwhelming. Now that I've gotten the hang of combat, I actually like the combat interface as well. It's a bit underwhelming to look at but as I said before, watching and playing are two different experiences for the combat system.

[Vyk]

I'm happy with the interface. I feel extremely comfortable wit the wiimote. Nice to be able to play with my hands resting at my sides with the nunchuck cord over my lap. So glad there aren't motion controls. Most RPGs have clunky interfaces. You get used to it and learn to like it. This one didn't bother me at all. Except I keep forgetting to back out that one last time. Since you can wander around with options open. Then when I hit A or Z I open a menu or open the story update summary instead of talking to someone or targetting an enemy lol But I like it. Not nearly as bad as something like a tactics game

[Sephex]

Finally playing it today. So far I like it a lot and I am starting to see why so many fans were clamoring for it to reach the states.

[Fynn]

This is easily the best game I have ever played. Too bad I accidentally deleted my save file 100 hours in But I'll try to give it another shot this summer. Words cannot describe its awesomeness

[Wolf Kanno]

I just hit a milestone moment. I just reached the Bionis Leg, and was shocked to find Grand Pulse, just a huge sprawling land mass with gorgeous mountain ranges and an impressive ecosystem. The thing I would have to trudge 40+ hours to get to in a Motomu Toriyama FF title, is the third area of the game. For those who can't play the game, the starting location, Colony 9, is located on the foot of Bionis. I just got passed the knee and arrived on the thigh, and it's about the size of Grand Pulse. I haven't even explored the whole place yet.

The Seer ability of the Monado has to be the most intriguing idea in the entire game. It's really changed the direction of the story, and I am amazed it's actually utilized for gameplay and quests as well. The new Shield option is also an intriguing gameplay mechanic and makes me really interested to see what else the Monado is going to do to mix up the gameplay routine. It's use in quests have been wonderful since it tells you if an item is important for a future quest, or just adding stories where you get to see results of people's choices. Speaking of which...

I also really love the NPCs in this game. I feel the largest reason I like doing the quests in this game is just watching how interconnected all the minor NPC townsfolks lives are with each other. I can honestly say that the mountain of side-quests really endeared me to Colony 9, so I definetly felt a bit more invested when misfortune befalls it. I've also just been amused watching how everyone knows each other and basically helping people fix their relationships with one another. Suddenly finding X amount of items doesn't feel as much as a time waster when you're doing it to placate a mother's kids so she can go on a date you set up with an inventor that helped you fix the pendant that said mother's son had broken and she was furious at him because it was a memento from her belated husband. Doing these quests are almost like watching a mundane soap opera unfold before you and it just feels gratifying to have what would usually be considered tedious quests for the sake of padding, actually have more meaningful weight to them.

[edczxcvbnm]

So my problem with the interface is that I feel it is clumsy. Lets equip your characters: You have to go to the top to change what you are equipping and can't cycle through everything in the inventory screen. You can cycle through characters but not what you are equipping (weapons, armor, pants, boots).

Instead of having everything easily it is in these disorganized squares with little to differentiate them. Why couldn't they do a simple list?

31/45
Weapon 1
weapon 2
weapon 3 x4
Weapon 4 x 25

Yeah you can sort things but that should be a simple button hit and not bring up another menu for me to select the sort. The only reason to bring up the menu is because you have no smurfing clue what order the items are currently sorted in or will be sorted in because there is no way to tell at a glace.

I also hate how I can't remap the buttons on the controller (I have ALWAYS hated the old school RPG button layout and have always changed it immediately).

With all of that equipment there isn't an easy equip best option to make it stupid simple. I grant you that it is a bit more complicated than it use to be but it would still be useful after you buy a bunch of crap from the store.

I wish instead of selecting an enemy to attack that I could just hit a button to attack and have the enemy hit be the target I lock on to.

You mention FFVII and FFTactics as having bad interfaces. I grant you they weren't perfect but I don't accept that this sort of thing should be compared to a 15 year old game. If you are on the level of design with a game released 15 years ago you are probably doing something wrong. Things with interface design continues to advance forward.

I could go on but you get the idea.

Like I said, it isn't a deal breaker but it should have been way better.

[Wolf Kanno]

So my problem with the interface is that I feel it is clumsy. Lets equip your characters: You have to go to the top to change what you are equipping and can't cycle through everything in the inventory screen. You can cycle through characters but not what you are equipping (weapons, armor, pants, boots).

Fair point and I agree that cycling would be better far better.

Instead of having everything easily it is in these disorganized squares with little to differentiate them. Why couldn't they do a simple list?

31/45
Weapon 1
weapon 2
weapon 3 x4
Weapon 4 x 25

Yeah you can sort things but that should be a simple button hit and not bring up another menu for me to select the sort. The only reason to bring up the menu is because you have no smurfing clue what order the items are currently sorted in or will be sorted in because there is no way to tell at a glace.

Actually there is a reason for this. Because not all the equipment is the same, even when the name says differently. With the exception of Unique Armor, most of the other armor can come in either the Slot or Normal flavor. I noticed this with the Million Driver weapon. I had one that was normal, three that were slotted; two of which had two slots, and one of them had three slots. So... saying Million Driver x4 would not have worked because two of them are very different from the other two. They are not always the same even if they share the same name or type.

Likewise, you can't use an optimize function either because perhaps you wanted the 2 slot version but it gives you the 1 slot version instead. An optimize function would have caused more headache than good.

I also hate how I can't remap the buttons on the controller (I have ALWAYS hated the old school RPG button layout and have always changed it immediately).

I don't mean to come off condescending or rude, but I would probably be more sympathetic if this were an action game we were discussing. For an RPG, you usually only use three buttons at most; so I'm afraid you're annoyance is a bit lost on me. I actually don't mind the Japanese style controls, it makes the game feel a bit retro for me.

With all of that equipment there isn't an easy equip best option to make it stupid simple. I grant you that it is a bit more complicated than it use to be but it would still be useful after you buy a bunch of crap from the store.

As I showed above, the equipment system is set up in a way where an optimize function wouldn't work smoothly. On the other-hand, not having the ability to directly equip an item after purchase is a bit annoying.

I wish instead of selecting an enemy to attack that I could just hit a button to attack and have the enemy hit be the target I lock on to.

I feel they did it this way because you can start off your first attack as one of your Arts instead of just a normal attack. Especially useful if you are trying to use Backslash and just finish the enemy in one hit, instead of just letting the auto-attack do everything so painfully slow. If you just hit a button, you would have to deal with Aggro Control until you could perform the Art you wanted, wasting a few seconds that could have been resolved with two Art attacks instead of three or four moves. So despite seeming tedious, it actually makes random encounters a little less of a chore if played with.

You mention FFVII and FFTactics as having bad interfaces. I grant you they weren't perfect but I don't accept that this sort of thing should be compared to a 15 year old game. If you are on the level of design with a game released 15 years ago you are probably doing something wrong. Things with interface design continues to advance forward.

I never said the interface for VII and Tactics were bad, in fact I pretty much implied that I was pleasantly surprised that they were the same as Xenoblade. I simply stated the control layout was the same as a Japanese setup, because developers and distributors didn't feel the need to re-map the controls for a Western audience. So this was a misunderstanding.

*****************************************************

If I have one interface complaint, it's that the character affinity chart gives me a time for when characters are active but doesn't give me a place. Only a handful of characters actually move from district to district so it would be nice to have a way to track them down. I have a scientist character I met once in Colony 9, and have yet to see her again since. I also need to recheck the manual and see if their is a quick map feature, instead of having to stroll through the menu options to read the area map. Still, none of this is seriously annoying either.