Xenoblade Chronicles

Oh my god what the …

It turns out that Xenoblade Chronicles fucking rules and has sucked me in hard. I don’t really know what I was expecting but I think the wide bottomed, Kingdom Hearts-esque characters made it feel like we were in for a bog standard fairy tale story. But I’ve been shocked at the story far, gasping and guffawing like a rube at a county fair. I was shocked at the death of Fiora so early on in the game and I was even more taken aback by Shulk’s blind calls for revenge. It’s a surprisingly adult story in a way I find a lot of games miss. But there are no punches pulled here and the deeper I go into the story the clearer it gets that there may be no happy ending.

There is something so modern about this game that I had to watch some footage on it’s earlier releases. I had thought this game originated on the (New) 3DS but it was actually the wii! Crazy! I wasn’t able to put my finger on why it felt so new until I switched my focus to Resident Evil 2 Remake… There is no penalty when you die, no lecture about what you are doing wrong and there isn’t a paragraph telling you that you can switch to a lower difficulty but that when you do you won’t be able to switch back so you have to be really sure and - hey look, I know you’re frustrated with this thing that you clearly are doing wrong but can I make 3 separate confusing suggestions to you in this moment…? No? Okay well do you want to continue?

When you die in Xenoblade - you come back and that’s that. Respawned at the last landmark you reached with all of your money and items. And since this game manages health for you there is no limping back to the nearest town to find a bed, praying you don’t run across a random battle that wipes you out again. You come back and you move on. Incredible. The way it handles health is also pretty intersting. This may be something other JPRGs have done but none that I’ve played. You only lose health in battle, and there are no items to take. You can manage health with magic but that’s it. Once the battle ends, you regain all of your health and lose any status effects. It’s always pushing you forward, never trying to hold you back.

I can’t stop thinking about how much this all reminds me of Monster Hunter. The living, breathing world full of small and large monsters roaming around, mostly minding their own business as well as the little monster interrupting a fight a with a larger monster, complicating things and making it just a bit harder starts to really sign the post card. Gem crafting with monster parts, slotting them into armor and weapons, the vague names for these gems and often confusing descriptions are all very reminiscent of the Monster Hunter franchise. God, it even has layered armor!

In this article from 2012, Kat Bailey spends some time talking about the parallels between XC & MH (vindicated!) but also with MMOs of the time. This isn’t something I’m really familiar with so I’ll take her word for it. She does a good job drawing in threads from other games of the era, games that I certainly haven’t played (like any of the Final Fantasy games mentioned). What I do know is that it’s got its hooks in me, and it did it quick. I’m constantly in awe of the technical aspects of the game. The draw distance is pretty good, the map is huge, you’ll keep going and going before it needs to load you into a new area. There is a day and night cycle along with random weather events (which can be linked to side quests) and each area is more breathtaking than the last. Sometimes you’ll climb up a hill or move up through a series of cliff sides and you’ll get to a vista and in the distance a giant orangutan will just be strolling along or you’ll see a mountainous tortoise covered in trees crawling about. It’s a very thrilling experience that leads right into grand adventures!

Currently I’m moving up the leg of Bionis to he waist in hopes of getting to the spine so we can climb up to the head. There is a fabled ancient race that is supposed to live up there, according to legend, and we think they will be willing to lend some help to defeat the Mechons.

Since I’ve been on such a Resident Evil kick, I decided to pull out my Nintendo Switch Lite and turn it into a dedicated Xenoblade Chronicles device. I’ve had a Switch Lite for a while, they were on woot at some point in 2020 and it struck me right. Funny that I bought the most portable console the year I went outside the least, but it was 170$ and yellow and I had a soft spot for the looks. I lent it to a switch-less friend for a couple of years, but then it came back and just sort of sat around. I’ve considered selling it but it never felt worth it. So now, I’m going to see if I like it as my Xenoblade machine.

The Party Adventures On

I’m still going strong with this, even though I haven’t updated much. I just went through a few cool areas; the Satori Marsh, Bionis’ Interior and Makna Forest. I have switched out Sharla from my party and swapped in Dunban. Sharla wasn’t keeping us healed enough and we weren’t building up the friend meter or whatever it’s called. I was trying to clear out the Raguel Bridge on Bionis’ Leg and these monsters were just whooping my ass. The switch up helped me get through it and he’s been in my party since. Clearing out that bridge started the Colony 6 rebuilding quests which is cool, but I haven’t dug into them yet. They seem like late-game quests with the amount of materials they require so I’ll check in periodically.

Makna Forest continues the vast, sweeping landscapes that have been standard up to this point. I love these big canyons and giant monsters roaming around, there is a feeling of a truly exotic world we’re traversing. Arriving into Frontier Village my mind immediately goes back to the comparisons of Monster Hunter. This kooky village full of weird little guys? They’re the palicos of this world! And then we got this little Nopon furball into our crew … god dammit. I’m going to have to play around with my party now. I’ve got this snooty Entia lady (Melia), an indebted Nopon (Riki) and a one-armed general (Dunban), I’m going to have to play with these guys and see what they can do.

After a bout of lengthy cutscenes and story exposition I started to push forward on the main story quest. Melia is in the middle of some kind of ritual to get crowned successor of the High Entia and while this should be straightforward she has opposition. In her dungeon sequence the gang runs into an assassin and a Tellethia that have been whipping my ass even though I’m overleveled. I did a little digging into my character stats and looked up a few things online and determined I needed to get better gems and one way to do that is side quests and filling out your “Collectopaedia”.

I did one quest that I started when I was just starting to explore Satori Marsh. A Nopon asked me to secure “the giants treasure” to ensure that it did not fall into the wrong hands. I started it but proved to be underleveled so I shelved it for later. Now that I’m in the 40s, I started back on it and what a cool quest. You have to go searching for this treasure and on a cliffside overlooking the ocean you find it… and a huge, giant spider crawls up the cliffside and surprise attacks you. I love stuff like this, take a normal fetch quest and turn it into something memorable and unique. On the flipside of that, there is a lazy Nopon trapped in a cave and he sends you on a dozen little fetch quests that keep you running to and from his little hideaway. After the third one it started to get old but I stuck with it and by the end of it, you can tell this little lazy furball is just doing it for kicks. Also memorable!

All of these side-quests I’ve been doing have really leveled me up quite a bit. I feel like I’m sprinting my levels far ahead of where I need to be for the story. The problem is the loop of collecting, executing and completing side quests in this game is extremely addictive. I like how streamlined the whole process is. I’m also enjoying running around the world, discovering new locations and completing the map. I’ve leveled up enough to finally beat that Tellethia and would-be assassin which means I’m back on the main story path.