83.If you were tired of listening to people talk about Operation Rainfall for the Wii, and decided to finally play one of the entries, I feel its safe to say that this game was the crown jewel of the whole endeavor. The Last Story had some nice ideas but never took them as far as it should have and its story was blander than saltine crackers. Pandora's Tower was intriguing but was way too dungeon crawler for most people's tastes and overly relied on the motion controls for its gameplay. Xenoblade Chronicles biggest problem was that it was a game that probably should have been made on a high spec console, but considering Tetsuya Takahashi's track record of finishing games, it may been marred with the same issues as his past titles if he didn't have Nintendo pushing him along to finish the title to a satisfactory level.
Here's an interesting history lesson for people who care. Xenoblade's life began shortly after Xenosaga Episode 2 was released. After fighting internally with his company for so long, and finally realizing he had lost creative control over his series, Takahashi kind of just washed his hands from the project and started brainstorming ideas for a new game. He came up with the idea of a game taking place on the bodies of two dead giants and he quickly had the art team build a small model to visualize his idea. From there, the project gained interest within the staff of his company, but the project sat in a standstill for a while due partly to finishing the Xenosaga series for Namco. In this time frame, Monolith Soft had been sold to Nintendo and the development team worked ona few projects for their new company. When Nintendo decided to try and win back the hardcore crowd for the Wii, after the high of casual gaming and the novelty of motion controls wore off in the industry, Nintendo asked three different companies to make an RPG for them. Mistwalker, Monolith Soft, and Ganbarion. With the opportunity brought up to them to make a new game, Takahashi brought back the idea of his two gods and the projects quickly went under way. Hoping to make amends for his past mistakes, Takahashi made the focus of the title be playing something gamers would find fun, and so he made sure to free this game up from his usual cutscene hell of previous Xeno titles. The game came to be called Monado: Beginning of the World but once the game became close to completion, Nintendo asked him to change the title to contain his trademark Xeno title, as an ode to Monolith Soft's past titles. At this point, we get into the Operation Rainfall details, but its nice to note that the game did well enough for Nintendo that the game has spun off into its own franchise now, with a spiritual successor in Xenoblade Chronicles X and the upcoming sequel.

So what the hell is this game you may ask and why is it on this list?
Xenoblade begins in the distant past, when two giant gods: one made of flesh known as Bionis, and one made of machines, known as Mechonic; waged a bloody battle against each other for control of the endless ocean world they resided in. Their battle ended in a stalemate as both gods killed each other in the last strike. Thousands upon thousands of years later, life emerged on both worlds in the shape of their respective gods, and while they each built up their own civilizations, they foolishly continued the war their creators had started. Flash forward to a few years before the beginning of the plot and the Homs of Bionis are setting up a last stand against a military surge of Mechon. There ace in the hole was a man named Dunban, who had been chosen by the Monado, a sword that belonged to the Bionis itself and shrunk down to human size which had the power to defeat the Mechon. Despite taking a heavy toll on him, Dunban led the charge against the enemy forces and won the war, but at the cost of the use of his dominant arm. Years later, in the peaceful Colony 9, which resides on the foot of the Bionis, Shulk is an engineer who builds weapons for the colony and studies the Monado. His life is pretty peaceful until the Mechon inevitably attack the Colony, led by the sinister Metal Face, a large Mechon immuned to the powers of the Monado. During the raid, Shulk awakens the power of the Monado and becomes its bearer. He vows revenge against Metal Face and his Mechon brethren and goes on a journey to kill him, but soon learns of a terrible power the Monado has, the ability to see the future. When he gains a vision that shows his closest friend dying, Shulk is troubled by the prospect and doesn't know what to do. Eventually Shulk uses the visions as a guide to fix bad futures and the plot begins to take on a more interesting direction. For a game made by the infamous Xeno team, Xenoblade is surprisingly straightforward. You'll feel the teams influence towards the end, but that can be anywhere from 40 to 120 hours later. What really sets this game apart from others for me is the world design. Takahashi has a knack for creating some of my favorite gaming worlds and he does a pretty good job trying to make them well thought and consistent, which I always appreciate. The very premise of the game is exciting and the game has some of the most gorgeous locations I've ever traversed through in a game. Combine this with a stellar soundtrack and you have a game worthy of standing side by side with Chrono Cross in terms of artistic beauty in a game. The tech snobs may snub the title for not looking as good as it could due to the Wii's low graphical power but I'm frankly impressed that something this gorgeous came out of the Wii. With that said, I will criticize the devs for really screwed up priorities of where to put their effort. So in most, non-major dialogue sequences, you're stuck looking at a really neutral looking face which comes across really weird when you listen to the VA cast do their best to be expressive. Okay fine, the team ran out of money and couldn't add more expressive faces for minor dialogue sequences. So um... is there a particular reason why all the girls have jiggle physics regardless if they are the low endgame models or the ones used in cutscenes? I mean you've got Shulk spilling his heart out in this one scene with a face that says "dull surprise" and yet anytime Sharla so much as turns her heads, the "girls" bounce around a little which is very noticeable. Combat is pretty interesting, the game drops any pretense of items and MP, instead utilizing a cool down system popular in MMOs. This frees the player up to use whatever skill they want with reckless abandon and form more concise party tactics. The A.I. in the game is pretty good considering and escapes a lot of the issues I usually have with such companions. While combat looks pretty dull when you're watching it, its a surprisingly involved process as you watch the rhythm of the battle and take advantage of specific party techniques to utilize the follow up moves. For instance, Shulk has a move that can stun and enemy mechon, while Reyn has a move that will topple any enemy with this stun effect in place. Being toppled allows for regular weapons to hurt the mechon without the aid of the Monado's abilities. There are several other move-sets like this and one character in particular has their whole combat style based around inflicting different types of status effects and damage based on how you chain his skills together. Speaking of which, unlike a lot of other RPGs, you can actually build any party combination you want and are not required to keep Shulk in your party, this is pretty cool because it opens up more interesting party combinations but also because it introduces you to the fun fact that all the characters play differently from each other. Shulk is a jack of all trades type character with a heavier focus on doing direct damage and setting up chain attacks. Reyn can be set up to be a tanking character who controls enemy aggro or a direct damage dealer if need be. Sharla is the team medic but her skills cause her medic gun to overheat, so her whole shlick involves carefully balancing healing with negating heat from her weapon so as not to stall it. Dunban is the guy whose abilities have different secondary effects depending on which order you chain them together and he works as an agility based tank who dodges enemy attacks while controlling aggro with his high damage output. Melia is the team mage and her skills begin by casting a party buff but can then be transformed into a powerful damaging spell, so she's all about balancing the right party buffs and knowing when to sacrifice them to bring in the hurt. Riki is another jack of all trades type character with an emphasis on damage over time skills from various status effects he can use. These different styles makes playing through the game with different leads not only rewarding, but also breaks up the sheer monotony the game can fall into sometime. The Vision element in the plot also comes into play in combat as Shulk will occasionally have visions during battle showing the player the boss is either revving up for a powerful attack or a party member may end up getting killed by the enemies next attack. After the vision, you have a set amount of time to prevent it by either changing aggro, using one of the Monado skills to protect the party, or even simply healing a low health party member. Successes help build a special meter that allows the party to chain together all their moves together to gain boosted damage in a similar concept as XII's quickenings. While the level design is fantastic and the gameplay is pretty damn solid, the game has a few glaring faults against it. The one most people won't argue with is the games awful inventory system, which is probably worse than Mass Effect 1's system if you can believe that. It has an absolutely clunky layout and UI that may likely be a result of the devs assuming most gamers will only have access to the Wii mote and not a classic controller. Combine that with the games sheer number of equipment and weapons to keep track of, which is exacerbated by enemies having the same issue as FFX's fiends and loving to drop two or three pieces of armor and weapons per trash mob, and you'll find yourself eventually having to rummage through the whole system to sell the crap and keep the good stuff. The fact that NG+ forces you to choose a certain amount of gear to carry over, thus forcing you to have to dig through the inventory system again, is quite the slap in the face. The game also suffers from the same issue that almost all open world/sandbox games suffer from, which is being bloated with too many sidequests. Granted Xenoblade does a great job of making this as user-friendly as possible as most quests will auto-settle once you complete the requirement and you don't have to backtrack to the quest giver. The game also features an extensive and well thought out NPC system where the NPCs all have interconnected stories that continue to open up as you advance the game. This makes chatting with the locals and accepting the quests far more rewarding as these quests tend to fill in some interesting gaps in the plot, some surprisingly character development for the cast, and helps to really get you invested in the world and characters. As you do more missions and grow a stronger bond with a town, more missions will be unlocked which may create a new story link between two NPCs. Its a neat concept and I love the fact the NPCs are actually developed into people instead of just information hubs. Still, the amount of missions in this game are exhausting and I still feel the game could have stood to have half of them cut out of the main game.It would have done wonders for the game's pacing. The game also has Heart to Hearts, which are kind of like Tales' skits between two characters. The whole party has them with each other and you really get a strong indication of where everyone stands with each other. Even better is you will often see fun quirks not present in the main plot as much, such as Shulk's fanboying over technology or Riki finally dropping his obfuscating stupidity to show that he's a lot smarter and mature than most of the cast. Its a great idea and I wish more games would do stuff like this. In truth this game is filled with great ideas and barring a few snags here and there, the game does it's best to be as user friendly as possible which is much appreciated. If you're looking for a game with one of the most imaginative settings and world designs that Japan can offer you should definitely check this game out.