Have you ever played a game so immersive, so rewarding, and so exciting that it simply permeates your every thought; that while you’re travelling, you can’t wait to get home… or even postpone your sleep because you’re so excited to accomplish your next goal?  Xenoblade Chronicles X can easily have this effect on many people, and I’m not immune to its charm either!  I can confidently that this is one of the most ambitious titles I’ve ever played.  From the story, to the individual characters, the plot, battle system and customization, every piece is crafted so intricately and perfectly that it’s very easy to fall in love with it.

The story follows a colony of humans on a spaceship after the Earth is destroyed by aliens.  The aliens eventually find this spaceship, and damage it enough that the humans are forced to crash land on a remote planet named Mira.  Although the game allows you to use any team members that you meet throughout the game, the main two that you will use are Elma and Lin, two protagonists that joins forces with the main character to take on all of the games major missions (“Story Missions”)–the story is largely centered on humanity’s struggle on this new planet, such as feuds with the indigenous creatures, as well as the ongoing search for “The Lifehold’s core”, which is a major part of their spaceship that was lost on the planet.  The Lifehold’s core contains most of the other humans, who are kept in stasis.  They hope to find it, and revive all of their fellow humans to join them on Mira to live a sustainable life, and perhaps “reboot” the human race.  Needless to say, not everything is exactly as it seems, and the game really keeps you on edge from one story mission to the next, revealing certain agendas, and building on the depth of many characters.  It is easy to connect with some of them, as at times it had me wondering “if this kind of situation happened to me, how would I react?”  Also, as you progress through the game and complete specific missions, you can have some of the other intelligent species on Mira join NLA, or “New Los Angeles”, your main base of operations.  Seeing NLA grow and expand with each new species addition can feel like a reward in and of itself.

The main base of operations is held in a city called “NLA”, short for “New Los Angeles”, which is named after its Earthen counterpart (excellent choice, if I may say so myself!).  NLA, in and of itself, is incredibly large!  By my educated guess, if you were to do a direct route, on foot, from one edge of the city to the other, it will probably take you 15-20 full minutes of travelling!  The bulk of your adventure will be held in the “administrative district”, where you can purchase and modify gear, participate in online missions, as well as gather side missions for the main game.  The planet, Mira, consists of five main continents–these continents are so massive that it’s hard to explain, and can only be experienced.  If you use the map below as a guide, please bear in mind that NLA is only the circular area you see at the bottom of the map.  If you use my analogy of NLA being 15-20 minutes of travel in diameter as a guideline, then it’s easy to speculate that each of these individual continents can take HOURS travelling by foot to explore them, and that’s not even counting all of the caves underground or under other areas as well, as there’s still more of the game I need to explore.

The graphics are very artistic, but lower quality in other ways.  As a videophile of sorts myself, I can definitely see the difference in graphical quality between this game and other Wii U games, such as textures sometimes taking a bit of time to load, and character edges coming off as blurry.  However, you would have to actively be looking for this difference in order to notice it.  The game’s artistic direction is so fantastic that this very easy to forgive.  From the tiniest detail like the many blades of grass that appears on the expansive grasslands of Primordia, to the atmospheric particle lighting in the moonlit wilderness that is the continent of Noctilum, I find myself often stopping in the middle of gameplay simply to take in the atmosphere.  The landmarks, such as grizzled mountains, lofty cliffs, and aged grand trees are so extremely finely detailed and crafted that they serve as the perfect companions to these environments.

When it comes to exploration, you can go ANYWHERE.  I mean, quite literally.  Anything you can see in the distance you can travel to.  The game is never bound “invisible walls”, and nothing is unreachable.  However… monsters are littered all around Mira, so you always risk running into a higher leveled monster that you can’t handle, if you’re not careful.  As long as you’re traveling by foot, there are little to no load times, so you never lose your sense of immersion when going from one landmark to the next.  Just like Xenoblade Chronicles (for 3DS and Wii), you can reach many checkpoints throughout the planet, and then “Fast Travel” to those locations so you don’t have to worry about footing it from your current location.  This however, does cause load times to appear, but they don’t take very long at all.  Also keep in mind that I was playing through this game by pre-loading all of the special free packs from Nintendo, which speeds up loading times of the game, so this experience can vary if you have not downloaded those packs.

You can fight absolutely anything that moves in this game–from the tinest insect, to the largest dinosaur.  Of course, it isn’t practical to fight everything that moves–you need to study each creature meticulously to decide whether you can take it head on or not.  Some of the largest creatures I’ve met in this game even rival some of the largest creatures I’ve found in other games, such as Monster Hunter.  In similar fashion, if you choose to fight a monster that’s much larger than you, you can always choose to target each of their appendages (arms, legs, etc.) separately to cripple them and make the fight easier.  Those that have played the previous title (Xenoblade Chronicles on 3DS/Wii) will find the combat unchanged.  Choosing to fight any creature triggers combat–Xenoblade uses a combat system that’s very similar to the ATB (Active Time Battle) system of the RPG games of yesteryear.  Both you and the enemy can use any of your assigned abilities, however when you use up an ability, you have to wait for it to fully charge before you’re able to use it again.  Unlike most other RPGs, the game never cuts into a separate combat scene–this means all battles happen right in the open.  However, this also means if there are any other wandering enemies around, they can join the fight too!  The one insect that you’re fighting can easily become one insect, several hounds, and a dinosaur if you’re not careful enough.  Because all battles happen in the open, you never feel disjointed from the world around you, which is another thing that adds to the immersion.

There is lots of customization in the game, with most of the focus being on the main character.  At the start of the game, you can choose to be male or female, and can adjust a variety of base options for an average human, such as size, skin color, and facial details.  For clothing, the in-game appearance changes based on the armor you’re wearing–however, there is an option to equip “fashion gear”, which masks the primary armor–in other words, you can equip the strongest gear, but maintain the appearance of other gear that looks better to you.  There are lots of wacky options for aesthetic gear, ranging from swimsuits to cat ears and everything in between.  The practical gear gives your character a very “armored” look.  On the technical side of things, you can customize: your class/weapons, ground gear, skell, set augments/slots, purchase upgrades for gear, and assign arts.  The game uses a branching system for classes, starting with one beginner class, branching into three advanced classes, and each of those advanced classes branch into two expert classes each.  Mastering each expert branch allows you to master the weapons, meaning you will be able to use those weapons with other classes.  Each class has a group of arts that can be learned for each weapon, and skills that are specific to that class–most can be unlocked by leveling up the class, but others have to be unlocked by completing main and side quests.  Mixing and matching classes, weapons, arts and skills already make up a near limitless amount of combinations… and you would think that would be enough, but they also go the extra mile with augments and upgrades!  Upgrades are the more basic of the two, where you can use monster parts to create enhancements for your gear.  These can vary from attack damage, elemental properties, defensive properties, and a whole lot more.  Augments do more of the same, but instead they work as equipment for equipment, in a manner of speaking.  For gear that has “slots”, you can attach an augment which will give the gear better properties.  While augments can be equipped and unequipped, upgrades can not.

Skells are a major part of the game.  After a certain point, you unlock your very first Skell–they are huge mechanical robots that can fight, transform into vehicles, and fly (although that comes later on).  I simply cannot understate how satisfying it is piloting these machines–creatures who were once an impossibility to fight, you are now able to overcome, and other average sized creatures become very easy!

Transforming into a four-wheeled vehicle makes getting around Mira SO MUCH EASIER considering how large it is–and flying so high in the sky that you can admire the expanse of Mira’s mountains and volcanoes is simply breathtaking.  Similarly to characters, Skells can also have changeable weapons and armor, as well as take advantage of upgrades and augments.  A Skell’s arts are dependent on its equipped weapons–skells can have many weapons!  The following parts of a Skell can have weapons–two on their back, two on their shoulders, two in their hands, and two at their sides–that makes a grand total of eight weapons!  Setups may vary because some weapons make take up both slots (such as a two-handed weapon).  The two downsides to skells are that they essentially only have three lives, so you have to be very careful when using them, and using techniques consumes fuel, so excessive use of a skell may render them useless after a long time.

I personally enjoy the music of the game, but I’ve also heard of others disagreeing with the musical style.  The style is very non-traditional to an RPG–it can range from rock-rap, to ambient, to pure techno/electronica.  A good majority of the music has lyrics too, including the battle music, which is a very unusual, but not necessarily bad choice.  A lot of it is very catchy, so even if you don’t enjoy it, it’s very easy to make fun of.  I can’t confidently tell readers if the music is good or bad, as it’s a matter of preference.

This game has online features, but they’re more passive than active.  When you join a Conquest squad, a list of “tasks” and a time limit appears in the lower-right corner of the screen.  These tasks are groups of monsters that need to be hunted by all of the members of your squad.  When one of the tasks are fulfilled, you get “reward tickets”, as well as rights to start corresponding “squad missions” from your home base.  Fulfilling tasks are cryptic because no information is provided other than general pictures of the monster type–at least, if there is some way to figure it out, I haven’t learned of the method yet.

Reward tickets can be traded for monster parts, which can save a player a lot of time and effort in fighting or grinding the same monsters for a specific materials.  Squad missions create an environment where you can team up with up to three other players online to take on a mission in a limited environment.  Coordinating to work with your friends on these is a hassle, because you have to make sure that your friends are on the same conquest squad as you are, and some of the missions are level dependent.  And even then, you’re working against the timer on the bottom right of the screen because if it runs out, you have to start over with the task targets portion again.  Occasionally, a “global nemesis” will appear, and these are super-powered bosses that keep regenerating their health each time you beat them–the amount of reward tickets and monster parts that you receive is based on how many times you beat them within the time limit.  You are also able to “scout” avatars online which makes a carbon copy of that player for you to play with, for a fee.  This can be helpful in taking on some of the harder parts of the game, if the characters on your current team don’t quite make the cut.

Then, there is the structure of missions.  There are many types of missions–story missions (which I mentioned above), affinity missions, normal missions, and basic missions.  Story missions are pretty much self explanatory–they are missions which are essential to progressing the game, and most of the time you will be forced to have Elma and Lin in your party, since they are the two main characters besides your avatar/main character.  Affinity missions are missions which are specific to other characters you earn throughout the game, and can only be unlocked if you have a good relationship with them.  To build a relationship with an unlocked character, you simply have to use them on missions and also respond to in-game dialogue in their presence.  Unfortunately, you cannot do affinity missions while you have a story mission active, and vice versa.  Normal missions and basic mission can be taken on at the same time as story or affinity missions.  Normal missions are side-plot driven missions, and basic missions are your run of the mill MMO-style fetch quests, slay quests, etc.  Working on basic missions can be difficult because the in-game encyclopedia isn’t always very good at letting you know where certain things are, even if you’ve been there before, or fought those creatures in the past.  And as of this writing, it’s actually very difficult to find this information on the internet as well!  This game is so massive that even the internet is taking a very long time in mapping all of the possible monster drops and locations–just another testament to how massive it is.  Choices in Story/Affinity/Normal missions can affect other parts of the game–I’ve seen it happen a handful of times, but it may have happened in other areas I haven’t noticed.  I haven’t beaten the game yet, so maybe there’s more to be revealed, or perhaps I may have to look up a wiki on the differences that certain choices make.

If I had to nitpick and find one chief flaw with the game, it’s the learning curve.  Mainly in customization and combat, the game does little to no job in explaining how to access these functions and how they work.  These features are detailed in the game’s electronic manual, but since a lot of newer generation games are tutorial based, it can be easy to feel lost or disjointed right at the start, and perhaps a little intimidated.  And even if you are able to learn the intricacies, it takes a while to figure out which creatures you’re able to fight using a sink or swim approach–for example, a level 20 creature that’s the same size as your avatar may be easier to fight that a level 15 creature that’s several stories tall.  Thankfully, when your avatar dies in battle, there’s no real consequence other than being teleported far away from the site you died at… however, as mentioned before, skells have only three lives so you want to be more careful with those.  If you have earned a skell, more than likely you’ve already had enough experience to gauge the strength of monsters, but it can be frustrating when you’re flying around, and all of a sudden some goliath level 60 monster comes from out of nowhere and wrecks you faster than you can say the word “Wow.”

There is more that can be said about this game, but the points above covers most of the major highs and lows of the game.  Overall, I would say that if you have a Wii U, this game is a MUST BUY.  And if you don’t have a Wii U, go out and buy one along with this game!  I truly believe that this game alone makes the Wii U worth it, and I’ve already clocked 100+ hours into it because of all the content… and still haven’t beaten it!  With all of its missions, likable characters and story, breathtaking environments, eccentric soundtrack, adrenaline fueled combat, and much more, I can confidently say–this is my game of the year for 2015!

Review Summary:

Pros
+ Huge boundless open world/sandbox environment ripe for exploring
+ Fantastic artistic direction
+ Near endless customization for characters and mechs (Skells)
+ Load of missions and near endless content
+ Exciting combat that doesn’t interrupt gameplay
+ Rich story with many plot twists

Cons
– Difficult learning curve
– Music enjoyment based on preference
– Online potential falls short of expectation

Final Score: 4.5/5