What do you think about Xenoblade Chronicles X?

I'm very interested to read what you CAGs think about the game so far. I myself haven't bought it, since I'm still undecided.

Best JRPG I have played in years. Hell, easily in my top 5 ever.

The gameplay is addictive, the world is huge, theres tons of classes, and theres so much to do its ridiculous. I havent even gotten my Skell yet or barely touched online (I tried a bit, and it was pretty fun). I havent played my WiiU this much in like....ever

I'll throw in my two cents, but it will sound negative despite having a pretty good time with it just because I want to touch on some of the worse aspects that I've encountered. So while I do enjoy the game, it's not without its faults and I wouldn't consider it anywhere near as highly as SgtWiggles does. Just to note that I've gotten far enough to obtain a Skell.

My faults with the game are as follows:

- When you start to get more party members, it becomes a real pain in the ass to level them up & raise their affinity. Combine that with the fact that you have to go to them to add them to your party also makes it a pain. Thankfully though they seem to be in a general vicinity of one another. If you aren't planning on doing other party members affinity quests, then this probably isn't such a big issue.

- The first couple tiers of classes I found rather boring and slow. In the later class tiers it became betters (3 & 4). I can only really attribute this to early game syndrome where you aren't meant to feel powerful, but for me it goes a little beyond that. Pretty sure the original was like that too though.

- Gathering. ing. Sucks. Any quests that are associated with them can go to hell. All you get is a continent that it's on and that's it, there's no more information on how to get the item. That specific item you need may only be found in caves, during rain or early morning, etc. This can also extend somewhat to missions that have no waypoint where you have to kill a specific enemy type to get their drops. If it's a single item I usually say screw it and use my multiplayer tickets to purchase the item.

- The main story feels lacking in the little details. Doing affinity & normal missions help, but they don't really fill the void well enough to help support the main story narrative in the way I'd like to see. This is mostly because the main story is basically mission briefings and then take on a mission. Having more required story to help fill in the world would help. I suppose it's more method of delivery and makes it a pain to go out of my way to try and find more bits and pieces.

- The online messages/blade report work ok, but the messages that go global? They're all stupidly retarded and I want to stop seeing those specifically and not all of them. I'd rather not have to blacklist/temp block every single person who says to hit L+A and then other stupid crap that I'd like to filter out which has no bearing on the game. Plus the messages that go global seem to repeat occasionally which makes it worse. I think I'll just have to disable Blade Report all together, which is really a bad solution.

- Notifications for online squad missions goes away pretty quick which also makes it a pain to deal with if you want to. If you miss the notification because you're in a menu or something, the only way to see it is to go to the barracks online hub and see if it's still active.

- I'm not really liking the Skells jump. It's rather floaty and would rather of it been floaty so long as you're still holding down the jump button. Once I gain flight, this won't really be an issue anymore but until then it's kinda annoying not being able to properly control where I want to land with more accuracy.

- Squad tasks are really vague which is annoying. The gathering one gets less bad when you get a Skell though. Tasks are only used to unlock more, higher level squad missions during that 45 minute window.

- Camera indoors (some exceptions) have terrible sensitivity and make it awful to turn.

- Font size is too small. I can read it, sure, but it's not exactly fun to read and sometimes have to squint/get closer just to read quest text sometimes.

Some things I do like:

- The world is quite well put together. It looks great and performs great. Once you get a Skell though, it feels much smaller.

- The Skell design is great and how you can equip a dozen different weapons and they all show on your Skell. Those weapons of course are your artes for the Skell.

- The affinity missions are pretty well done. I also like how some of the normal missions continue the story of previous normal missions.

- Jumping feels pretty good and helps traverse the terrain. Like I mentioned above though, it's hard to do pinpoint jumping and it's even worse with a Skell.

EDIT: Added some positives and will try and think of more. Negatives tend to be longer as they need a little more explanation.

I played the game for about 6 hours now, my thoughts.

First of all, one of the biggest pros about the game is the WiiU gamepad. Just being able to go through the map on the gamepad is really helpful.

Second, the game is a cross between a WRPG and a JRPG. For example the story, item system, progression, etc is highly JPRG based. However the world, fast travel, quests, battle system, etc is very WRPG based. In my option it works because it still feels like a JRPG and not a WRPG, the WRPG elements are very hidden.

The battle system is like a MMO where you have your abilities and then you auto attack. It's not bad, and there is also different classes to specialize in (but you can change your class at any time) that grant different abilities.

The world is nice because it's not cookie cutter here is level 1-5 enemies. The game puts any enemy regardless of level in the world so you will see your level 5 enemies and then about two feet from it is a level 45. Now granted a lot of enemies wont attack unless provoked but it;s a nice change of pace.

Overall it's a really decent JRPG (I say decent because I am only 6 hours in but overall I am really enjoying my time). I would recommend it if you like JRPG's and I would also recommend supporting it just to get more RPG support for the system.

So far I've played 9 hours and I'm having tons of fun. That's saying something since this is the only RPG I've liked.

Its a very decent game and one of the best experiences I've had on Wii U. Personally, I prefer RPGs that are more structured and linear to the open-world kinds, but this one is really well-put together. It has its faults, but nothing that is anywhere near game-breaking that make me want to walk away from it. They are mostly minor nit-picky things like every game ever has to some degree.

I've only put in about 10 hours so far, haven't gotten my skell, but I've done the first handful of the story missions and a half-dozen affinity missions with a bunch of normal quests thrown in here and there. The voice acting is kinda hit-or-miss some of the time, but its not terrible.

My #1 biggest complaint is the text size on some of the menus. Even on my 55' TV its still hard to read sometimes, but then, I'm almost blind as it is, so I guess that's mostly a personal thing.

I'll probably take several months to work my way slowly thru this game. Might even take the whole year to get thru with everything at my current pace and limited time.

Sounds like it's worth picking up?

Hellraiservtx said:

Sounds like it's worth picking up?

Click to expand...

I bought it like a few weeks later after its release. I'd say its worth picking up. I'm not much into RPGs or similar genres but I enjoyed it.

I haven't played much of it since it came out, but I've had the game since it released. I need to go back and just start from square one with it, but I did really enjoy what I had played of it. Definitely one of the better JRPGS to come out for consoles in years though. 

Bumping this thread to see if anyone beat this game and their thoughts on it..

Frankly, this was the game I got the Wii U for (a nice clearance discount didn't hurt either) since the original was so awesome but this game just wasn't that enjoyable to me. I got it a launch, played it for a few hours and then quit. I decided to try again a few weeks ago and just felt like I spent more time forcing myself to finish the game just b/c I paid $60 for it.

The game just felt tedious most of the time... the sheer volume of everything (items, equipment, "farming", monsters, quests) mixed in with the randomness made it feel even more tedious. It's made even more tedious when if you want to get the best equipment/skell, you need to spend a lot of time grinding/farming for equipment and for many things, there's really no good strategy. The game also forces you to explore/do side-quests just to progress the story, which is not fun consideration the randomness of everything (items popping up, combat). The exploration becomes a bit better once you get a Skell (chap 6) and is really fun once you can fly (after chap 9). However, exploration in and of itself isn't all that reward. Skell battles could have been cool, but they're usually long and boring. You either have powerful weapons that take forever to cooldown or weak weapons with quick cooldowns. The on foot combat is a bit more enjoyable but they seem to move slower than they did in the original game. Some battles can be very painful due to the terrain and trying to balance Skell/vs foot combat. Speaking of battles, the game has arguably the worst final boss sequence ever (each time you think you're done... NOPE THERE's MORE!!), which takes place after some very poorly balanced boss battles. The presentation is complete crap due to  the long ass load times and constant/regular pop-ins and texture loading delays (a HD install option would have been nice) and all the options/variables result in menus that are convoluted to all hell). The cut-scenes were flat out awful with stiff dialogue, near emotion-less faces/non-existent body language, which weren't helped by the crap cast of characters (who, outside of 2-3, have zero personality, and all of them just look like your generic anime characters), and a story that's basically non-existent until the final chapter, where it seemed like the developers realized they forgot develop the story from the intro, and then decided to just throw in whatever ideas they had... and then it all goes to hell in the epilogue.

With all of that said, the best thing about the game might be just... jumping into your Skell and literally being able to just go anywhere to take in the scenery and creatures of the world. It is nice. At it's core, this really should have been a good game but feels like it was marred by trying to include too many things with poor organization. 

Sorry for the long walls of text. Just wanted to vent. I wanted to play a good JRPG and I was really hoping this game would redeem it self eventually... it never does. 

Haven't played it yet but picked it up for ~$20 when Target had it on clearance.  Interested in trying it eventually but in terms of RPGs on the Wii U, I think TMS #FE is the most fun I've had with the genre in a looooong time.

That game is going to be the rarest game on the Wii U.  Well, maybe after Game & Wario and Devil's Third.

Right now i've got it in the backlog, but I've played a couple of hours. Massive game. Too overwhelming when I've got other games to play first

If I buy Xenoblade Chronicles X used instead of new, will I be missing out on anything? Any codes or DLC or stuff like that?