Xenoblade Chronicles

(2020-07-??)
Just finished this and I'd give it a low 7.

Good: Story, environments/world, Affinity system

Bad: shallow combat, repetitive quests, general grindiness.

The plot was super cool. I really liked all the twists in the last 10% of the plot. The characters were pretty typical JRPG tropes.

The gameplay while initially really fun (wow a huge world to explore, real time combat, different moves!) quickly turns into you doing the same thing for every single fight. And wow there are so many fights. The game is kind of defined by a huuuge amount of fetch quests and kill X of this creature. Drop rates can be pretty brutal so you really do grind for a very long time.

Honestly if it wasn't on Switch, which afforded me the ability to play it like 30 minutes every morning, I think I would have bailed on this game a long time ago. Binging it was pretty brutal due to the grind and repetition.

That being said, in addition to the plot the game had enough cool systems to keep me coming back. The fact that there are tons of high levels mobs you can theoretically fight from the get go is super cool. The world is pretty damn open. The Affinity system where talking to person A shows a relationship with person B which then shows a relationship to person C, and doing quests for all of these develops these relationships, was really cool. I maxed out all the Affinity ranks for towns and I enjoyed it. That and rebuilding Colony 6 was pretty sick as well.

So I mean yeah, if they focused on making the combat more fun and the quests I dunno more lore-driven and less grindy I would have honestly been an easy 8 or 9 on this game.

Likely won't be trying to play Xenoblade Chronicles 2 because it sounds like more of the same. That being said, Xenoblade Chronicles X is apparently the same thing with less story but better gameplay. Now that sounds like something I'd be interested in...if they ever re-release it for Switch.