Fun-house Mira
If there's one piece of advice I have to offer anyone about to dive into the world of Xenoblade Chronicles X for the first time, it's this: make sure you read the in-game manual from digital cover to cover. This game is huge, not just in terms of world-size, but in the amount of mechanics and gameplay systems players are expected to learn. XCX does a good job of introducing players to some of these systems during the normal course of play, but it takes its sweet time to do so, and - if, like me, you enjoy going off the beaten path and exploring at your own pace - you'll bump up (and be perplexed by) a lot of these systems long before they are covered by in-game tutorials. Luckily, the menu is available directly from the pause menu, and it does an excellent job of explaining the nuts and bolts underpinning some of the game's more arcane subsystems.
Early on, the main thrust of the game is to chart the wilds of Mira. This vast, untrammelled land needs to be tamed if you and your fellow colonists hope to survive. With that in mind, it's up to the player to head out and forge a path through the wilderness. You do this by journeying to specific points on the map and planting beacons. These beacons then fill in details on your map - always available from the gamepad, handily - letting players know what secrets lurk in the surrounding territory. Sometimes completing a segment is as simple as finding a piece of treasure or defeating a Tyrant - a unique, high-level creature - other times you have to complete a specific mission, the criteria of which is not always immediately clear. Frustratingly, some missions will lead you directly to the objective, while others will only supply you with vague, maddeningly unhelpful instructions. This isn't so bad if it's a random gathering quest you can just ignore, but when it happens during an affinity mission it can stop you dead in your tracks. These quests can't be abandoned once you've accepted them, so I'd strongly advise players to save before they embarking on any, just so they can fall-back if they find themselves stumped.
Unlike most RPGs and open world titles, taking on one of XCX's main story missions isn't as simple as walking up to a point on the map and triggering a cutscene; most of the time, you will need to meet certain requirements before you can progress the plot. Sometimes this means taking on an specific side-mission, or one of the aforementioned affinity missions, or boogeying around the map until you have uncovered a certain percentage of the world's secrets.While I can see this causing headaches for players who want to just blitz through the game's campaign, I actually like it as it makes exploration feel meaningful; you aren't just rattling between waypoints for no reason like in some open world games.
Not that you'll need much of an excuse to go exploring; Mira, the planet upon which humankind finds itself stranded after an interstellar war reduces Earth to atoms, is a world that begs to be investigated. One of the first things gamers will notice is just how huge the game world is, so much so that your first tentative steps on terra firma can be a little overawing; huge, grassy plains sway into the distance, arches of rock claw the sky, massive, lumbering monsters prowl ceaselessly, and there's a towering robot on almost every street corner. The world may not be as dense and detailed as Fallout 4's, but in terms of raw scale nothing else -save perhaps the original Xenoblade Chronicles - comes close. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to explore an alien world, complete with all manner of mind-bending flora and fauna, this is probably as close as you can get without flinging yourself through a wormhole.
If you ever need a rest from exploring, you can head to the colony of New LA. Humanity's home away from home, this flat-packed cityscape is where you'll take on missions, chat to your fellow survivors, stock up on goodies, and begin to get to grips with some of the game's more unusual features, of which there are many. One of my favourites is the ability to upgrade your arsenal by investing in different weapons manufacturers. Pad their coffers with enough Miranium and they'll develop new weapons and armour for you to buy. Luckily, Miranium isn't too hard to come by, although you will have to do a bit of legwork to keep a steady supply trickling in. Every probe you place on the map can be subbed in with a mining or research probe. Mining probes yield Miranium, while research probes will bring in bucketfuls of credits. Deciding how to disseminate your probes is almost a game in itself, and tweaking your layouts to bring in the maximum amount of resources is surprisingly satisfying
And you'll want to bring home as much of that bacon as you can, especially if you want to take advantage of the giant robots, known as Skells, that become available later on in the game . These mechanised monsters can only be piloted once you've earned your license --an event that doesn't arrived until a couple of dozens of hours into the game. You get your first Skell for free, but upgrading to one of the better models is not cheap, especially if you want to outfit your whole team with robots of their own.
Instead of just being a fancy new place holder for your player character, Skells really open up the game world, allowing you to reach previously unassailable peaks and stand toe-to-toe with some of the game's more mountainous monsters. I wouldn't go as far as to say Skells completely transform the feel of the game - you'll still be flinging yourself around the map fighting monsters - but they do change things up enough to keep the game feeling fresh as you pass the 40-hour mark.
Whether you're on foot or piloting a mech, combat in Xenoblade is pretty simple. The game uses an MMO-like system, your abilities, or Arts, available from a menu which pops onto the bottom of the screen whenever you cross blades with a hostile beastie. You can switch between blades and boomsticks by hitting the Y button, allowing you to take the fight directly to the enemy or dish out damage from a distance.
Combat works best with a balanced team whose arts complement one another - Elma, for example, can stagger enemies with her Shadowstrike, and if you follow this up with a swipe from your combat rifle you'll send enemies sprawling. Once they're 'toppled' it's time to bring out the big guns and do some serious damage. A lot of Arts rely on positioning, requiring players to constantly change their footing if they want to stay ahead of the enemy. In practice, Xenoblade's combat feels like a cross between an MMO and an action game, striking a nice balance between depth and accessibility. My one complaint would be that -outside of one or two tricky boss battles- the game isn't all that challenging, but if this is anything like the original Xenoblade the difficulty will ramp up significantly nearer the end of the game.
Xenoblade is truly massive, in every sense of the word. It offers players a breathtaking world to lose themselves in, and more gameplay mechanics, features and systems to master than nearly any other game I can think of. Early on, it does feels like might become a victim of its own ambition, creaking under the weight of so many different ideas, but the more you play the more you appreciate how good a job Monolithsoft has done of weaving all these disparate elements into a satisfying whole. There are problems, mainly to do with some occasionally dodgy quest design and fuzzy tutorials, but these are easy to ignore when weighed against everything the games gets right.
I'll carry on updating these impression the further I get into the game, so please make sure to check back regularly for updates.
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