Xenoblade Chronicles

[Terminus]

So anyone else excited for/played the massive Wii JRPG? Finally preordered it, I've been incredibly excited for it since it was announced as Monado, and I've been a part of the campaign to get it localized in North America. Very excited to play it on Friday, especially after all the really good reviews it's gotten, plus I'm just a huge JRPG fan and enjoyed Monolith's other Xeno games (Xenogears and Xenosaga, although I know they are totally different).

[Artezza Magnus]

I've played it. Probably my favourite Wii game, and the final boss is one of my favourites.

[D-D-D-Ddude]

We didn't have a topic for this? O_oAnyway, seriously excited for this game. Only got interested after that fan movement you mentioned, and I've been really psyched by the reviews. It seems like everything I could want in a RPG: Massive overworld, lots of content, and the music...I've listened to some music from the game and I'm amazed. I've read differing opinions about the voice acting/story though. Has anyone here played the European version?

[Terminus]

I know very little about the story, but I must say that I like the British Voice Acting quite a lot, as I've seen lots of various clips from the game.Anyways, It hits NA stores tomorrow! I'm quite excited to finally play this after about three years of waiting.

[BBBBalta]

Within sixteen hours I will be playing this game. And it will be awesome.The thing that interests me most is how expansive the world evidently is. Supposedly if you can see something in the background, you can go there - and from the screens I've seen, there's a lot of stuff in the background.

[Terminus]

Was going to get it today, but GameStop didn't ship it until this morning, instead of yesterday. Although I will get it Monday, and I'll have off then, which I guess will be a good thing. I'd actually probably be too busy this weekend to play it, anyways.

[Klak]

I WANT TO PLAY THAT GAME. Let us know how it is, Terminus.

[hatok]

All of you poor souls who haven't played this game.I feel the utmost pity for your incomplete lives.This game is amazing. Play it.

[D-D-D-Ddude]

All of you poor souls who haven't played this game.I feel the utmost pity for your incomplete lives.This game is amazing. Play it.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[King of the Madness Isles]

So how big is the game exactly? I'm thinking of getting it, but I've begun to doubt JRPGs, don't hate me. I like voice acting-though I love Zelda. Skyrim is second only to Zelda, in fact, and I've heard Xenoblade has some elements of a western RPG blended with the JRPG genre, so is that true? And how big is the world compared to Skyrim?(also check out my Mudcrab picture)

[hatok]

So how big is the game exactly? I'm thinking of getting it, but I've begun to doubt JRPGs, don't hate me. I like voice acting-though I love Zelda. Skyrim is second only to Zelda, in fact, and I've heard Xenoblade has some elements of a western RPG blended with the JRPG genre, so is that true? And how big is the world compared to Skyrim?(also check out my Mudcrab picture)

I don't know enough about Skyrim to say, but I WOULD say this is comparable to Oblivion... only much nicer, in every way I can think of.This game is cool, because it has JRPG styled focused narrative, but has a big open world to explore as well.It's strange, you know how games tend to have either a great story you want to keep exploring, ignoring everything else to get to the next story bit, or a game with a story that takes a back seat to exploration, or combat, or something?Xenoblade has me constantly torn between exploring the amazing world, or experiencing the amazing plot.I've barely scratched the surface of the game, but I've already internally thought 'Gee, I really should get back to the story' 'But there's so much to explore! Look, what's that? How do you get there?' 'But I wanna see another awesome cutscene!' SO MANY TIMES.I swear, this game will make me bipolar.

[King of the Madness Isles]

I have to disagree, I doubt it would be superior to any Elder Scrolls game after the first two and the spin-offs (Arena and Daggerfall are pretty broken). Though I do think it will be a nice finish to the Wii, as the last major game release on it. Had some good times with the Wii, might as well get the last great game from what I've heard.I don't really like JRPG narratives, but if it has some Western elements I'll give it a go. Like someone said earlier, you can supposedly get to anywhere you see in the background-I'll be testing that out when I get the game.

[Terminus]

Just popped Xenoblade in my Wii, can't wait to get a bit into it!My Wii can't read Xenoblade, only game it can't read (it still reads all other dual-layer games)... I'm taking my Wii apart, but that's getting to be a real problem, since Nintendo uses the annoying nonstandard 3-angle screws. Which are evil.FINALLY got it to work, after about five hours, about five minutes in, pretty good so far.

Edited April 9, 2012 by Terminus

[Klak]

Excellent. Excellent! I shall keep it on the list of games I will buy someday!

[Terminus]

It's really a great game, I find it pretty comparable to Final Fantasy XII in terms of battle mechanics, although I think XBC's graphics were overhyped a bit, as FFXII had better graphics, and that's a six-year-old PS2 game. I still like XBC quite a lot, even though the first hour feels incredibly slow.

[D-D-D-Ddude]

How far in are you, Terminus? There's definitely some problems with character models and textures looking meh up close, but the art direction gets very interesting as you progress.

[Terminus]

About two hours in, I know it's really not that far, my Wii's been giving me lots of trouble...

[hatok]

I'm sorry, I could go along with saying that you disliked Xenoblades graphical style, or something to that effect, but saying FFXII has 'better' graphics is quite simply not a fact.First of all, each given area in XII is DRAMATICALLY smaller than the ones in Xenoblade. This is a big deal. The fact that Xenoblade looks as good as it does, with short and few loading times, with such large environments, on the WII is what makes the gaphics inexpressive. You need to understand how much worse Xenoblade could, and by all means SHOULD look before you can appreciate it. With something to the scale of Xenoblade, you should expect bad draw distance, and bland environments, but Xenoblade goes in the reverse, looking nicer than most Wii games, but having a much larger environment than... well... any Wii game. Ever.And even taking the environments, the character models still have plenty of articulation, and the textures are still fairly detailed and large. There is a consistent lighting effect, weather, which affects the characters. And the special effects can be lathered right on top.And through all of this? No lag.That is why Xenoblade is a great looking game.

[Terminus]

I know that Xenoblade's world is so massive, and that makes it so the Wii simply can't handle super-top-notch graphics for this game, but I think that I stated my point a bit wrongly. I'm fine with the world, and all that stuff, however, the character models are my major issue, especially in closer up shots. The eyes and details on clothes are pretty blocky, and the character models aren't too smooth, either. That's really my only problem, especially since there are so many close-up shots that show the characters so often in cutscenes. I know that Xenoblade is massive and the world and everything takes up a lot of space on the disc, but I'd like characters in my game that are at par with characters from games, say, ten years old. I just recently got Devil May Cry on PS2, and for being 11 years old, the character models are just as good, if not quite a bit better than Xenoblade. I used FFXII as an example, though, since it has a similar amount of main characters (DMC has somewhere around 2-3) and they only look slightly worse than the models in FFXIII on PS3. If FFXII is 6 years old, I'd expect character models now to look a bit better than what could be done right before the Wii's launch.EDIT: Just booted up Xenoblade again, noticed the disc seemed to be reading properly this time (yesterday the Wii was making weird noises and crashed a couple times while playing) and the graphics smoothed up quite a bit (Shulk's face doesn't look like a mess of pixels anymore) and it looks wonderful. Although the character models are still a bit behind the modern Wii standard, everything looks fantastic.

Edited April 11, 2012 by Terminus

[hatok]

I don't think you understand. There is a limit to the number of polygons that can appear in a given area. That's why the grass is 2D, and that's why the models are blocky. Final Fantasy and Devil May Cry have much smaller areas to explore, so they can use more polygons to smooth out the characters models.Have you played Super Mario 64? At the start of the game, you can play around with Mario's face, and it's fairly detailed (Looks like early gamecube). Mario's face doesn't look like that ingame though, because ingame there are environments that need rendering, enemies whose AI needs planning.That said, there is a fairly simple trick that could have been used to dramatically improve cutscene graphical quality. Basically, instead of just rendering the cutscene in the massive world, they could make a smaller version of the part of the world they are using, and only render that. Then, using the extra processing power, they could have swapped the models for fairly high res ones. However, given the number of cutscenes, I'm not sure that this would have worked.But honestly, I think the face models just look a bit weird. Especially Dunban and Mumkhar in the opening scene. I got used to after a while, but it's certainly a shock at first..But yeah, between cutsomizable equipment and large worlds, there simply isn't enough power left over for better character models. that said, the character models DO look better than a lot of other Wii games, since many developers seem to be under the impression they are developing for the Nintendo 64, not a current gen console :/You know what impressed me though? How expressive the yes are. They have a lot of movement, which surprised me. I was expecting 'sticker eyes' (Where eyes are basically just pictures that change, it's used in a lot of games, Zelda, Kingdom Hearts, etc.)

[Terminus]

I know all about limited polygons within certain areas, I've been programming games in 3D for about a year and a half, and smaller areas are much easier to work with. However, for all the polygons that are there at any given time, it's works the Wii's processors quite a good bit, as the game is simply huge. I'm also forgetting that this is a Wii we're talking about, not a computer with tons of graphics capability, or even something like a PS3, the very little amount of stuff I've done with massive areas still allows me to run highly detailed characters fine.And Xenoblade's eyes look a lot like sticker eyes to me... Really good ones, but still sticker eyes.

[hatok]

Well, to be fair, they ARE stickers. Textures. What I mean is that the eyes are animated properly, when I say sticker eyes, I mean eyes whose entire animation is just changing to another texture. These characters have proper eye lids, and their faces crease and whatnot.