Xenoblade Chronicles X

2023-01-19
Xenoblade Chronicles X feels like a classic 7/10 to me. It's a game that does so, so much and dreams so big--occasionally even lands those ideas--but often enough fails such that it really holds the game back.
The best example from my 60 hours playing the game was about 10-15 hours into game I was kind of getting sick of the formula (and I'll talk about that more in a bit) but I just knew I had to make it to the Skell, the equippable mechs you can use after you finish chapter 9 in the game. So I stick it out and around the 20-24 hour mark I finally unlock them. And it's fine, I can move around the world faster or whatever. And then I buy some new gear for it. Oh ok this robot boy really packs a punch, I can fight bigger stuff and grind easier. Then I grind and buy the next rank of the mech and this thing RULES. I'm absolutely whomping shit that would terrify me or take 5 minutes of grueling combat to beat before. At this point I went from feeling like the game was a slog to loving the game. So much so I was pretty engrossed for the next 40 hours I spent playing the game. What's my point? It's this: why on Earth would a game make you wait 20 hours to get to the most fun part of it? Working to get something cool, earning things is something we have to do in real life. Games shouldn't make you work that hard. They're supposed to be fun things for your downtime. Now, I like games that have you grind or work to get things but it shouldn't be a slog along the way. It should be fun. I shouldn't have to do the unfun part of the game for 20 hours to do the fun part.

As many have already stated XCX is pretty much a single player MMO. And as someone who's played a ton of those I can really tell you it's true. You have a wide variety of classes you can change into, you have weather systems that change and affect gameplay, you have an absurdly massive world--I mean when you're on foot it's just unconscionably large--, enemies with huge drop lists that are random and based on appendage breaking, you have a bunch of moves you use in a real-time combat system where you're basically rotating moves on a cooldown, you have mounts (Skells), and not only that, as previously mentioned, you have to earn them by playing for a long time first, you have an absurd number of stats that are hard to understand and are randomly attached to gear that's dropped, a dizzying number of side quests of varying qualities, most of which are kind of trash to the point that you start ignoring all the story parts after a while because you don't have 40 hours of your life to spend reading mid-grade writing (sorry m8s), and on and on.

Now a game of this scope in size and depth of mechanics is always going to be a double edged sword. It's unwieldy, requiring a player to really invest in them to get the most out of it. (The in-game tutorials are woefully lacking requiring the player to legimiately read the surprisingly detailed digital manual accessible from inside the game.) But if you do invest there's a lot to min-max here and a lot to love as you explore ways to cheese the game starting off as a person struggling to fight the weakest mobs to someone who can kill superbosses in under a minute. Was I the latter? Eh, a little. But that's the problem. I had to read a ton online about how you're supposed to play the game if you want to win that just isn't explained at all. Did you know that you should really be grinding black Puges to have them drop a lvl 30 G Buster sword and Phoenix Wing for your Skell because then you can one shot a huge number of enemies in the game? No? Well, you should because otherwise grinding is a pain in the ass. And some fans online would say "That's a meme build, it's not even good. You should make a custom build by learning the game because it'll be stronger." To which I'd say, how? I finished the game and I don't even think I understood how Overdrive works and it seems like half the builds require you stacking hard to understand skills and stats around that. Oh and I'd have to spend 10s of hours farming augments to truly become that powerful? No thanks.

But you know what? Even despite all that it does have a sick powercurve you can take part in with some online searches and that was enough for me to have a fun. They do such an amazing job building this huge dynamic world with so much to do and then giving you ways (not well explained ways, mind you, but ways) to slowly master it. By the end of my 60 hours I really felt like I understood Mira pretty well and could tame everything it threw at me (except for some of the 70+ superboss enemies).

Other call outs:

• The story has really cool scifi ideas but overall is held back by being overly tropey and such having paper thin, predictable characters.
• For a Wii U game it's actually gorgeous. I mean it looks really great. I was amazed seeing the world for the first few hours.
• I actually did think the lore and various xenospecies were cool. The way it unfolds only if you do a ton of side quests and affinity missions is pretty cool. But again also its Achilles heel because this game hides alllll the best stuff behind optional stuff you can easily miss that you have to put of ton of time to unlock. Lame.

Overall I'm really happy I played it. I'm especially happy I stuck around to get a Skell because if I had stopped playing I would have missed the best this game has to offer. I'm sad knowing there has to be a ton of people who did the same. They left at the worst part of the game not knowing there's some wonderful sights to behold later on if you're only willing to sacrifice some time and invest in the complex systems around it all.