Xenoblade Chronicles X (2015)

I've been having a great time with this (Definitive Edition)!

Last week was my spring break, so I got to spend the last four days of it sinking a good amount of time into this. I own it on Wii U (bought it just a few years ago after finishing XC:DE), but I never got around to it. I'm glad I waited, though, because the things I've seen people mention as QOL upgrades would have been awful in their original iteration.

Honestly, my only complaint is that there are SO. MANY. VOCAL. TRACKS. in this OST. Nine times out of ten, I'm going to hate a track with vocals in a video game. See: the boss battle track in Blue Dragon. Instant mute. (I'm not talking about choral stuff--like, the field music for Gormott in XC2 is one of my absolute favorite tracks from the entire series, and that's got lots of "ahhh~ahhh~ahhh" in it.) They just always feel really corny, they're never mixed well, they have stupid lyrics, etc. I loathe both the day and night tracks for New LA ("UH UH UH YEAH UH UH YEAH UH"), and considering how much time you spend in the city, it's torture. There are also several battle tracks with vocals, and, worst of all, there's one that has played in a few storyline cutscenes that's INSANELY LOUD, to where you can barely even hear the characters speaking over the god-awful singing.

The Xenoblade OSTs are some of my favorites in gaming, and while there are some otherwise great tracks so far--and the actual instrumental parts of the offending tracks are solid-- the vocals are killing meeee.

(Also, XC: Definitive Edition has its own entry. I don't remember where to add one, but can this Definitive also get a separate entry on the site?)

Day 34: If any of the Xenoblade Chronicles games deserves a remaster on Switch 2, it'll be X. I would love to see it HD visuals and tweaking the soundtrack like they did with Xenoblade Chronicles 1 for switch just to make it even better would make me buy it again. Probably. It's a big time commitment. I kind of regret not finishing it but it was becoming grindy and the real fun of the game is discovering and exploring new, vast, lush biomes. But once you can fly everywhere, the game world suddenly feels smaller....

](https://youtu.be/8Lkfz5xzs7I)

I've owned a physical copy of this for years and I am finally playing it.

30 minutes in and I am very impressed and curious to know about what lays ahead. Exclusives like this on the Wii U are tough to come by. This feels immediately accessible and ambitious. There is a certain excitement: probably due to a combination of it and my Wii U having sat on my shelf for so long. It feels somehow nostalgic to break it out and play. Seems like most people agreed that Chronicles X was an interesting release, and I have no experience with previous Xenoblade titles, so this will probably lead to me checking those mainline entries out.

Stuff I really like so far:

• Graphically/technically impressive
• World feels alive. I love the themes and story it's portraying. I like when it feels sort of lame and JRPG'y with not the best voice acting. It's fun.
• Soundtrack is not what I expected, and I am okay with that
• Weird combat system has me thoroughly confused, it's awesome even though I don't understand it (yet)
• Feels like playing a true open world game so far. I've been looking for a good RPG to open up every so often, and slowly chip away at. I also see that there were (are?) online functions. I will have to check the current/past situation out in that department. This has a single-player MMO type feel to it so far and I like that.
• Achievements in a Wii U game? Cool. Developer attention towards meta is always nice.

Stuff I do not like:

• Slippery controls/character & menu handling-- changing settings helped a lot and I am sure I will get used to it
• Tutorial/intro is a nightmare of info dumps and over explaining as is the custom for a JRPG
• I can't really play on the Wii U tablet because the font is way too small for the display :(
• Graphics look a bit fuzzy but it's not really a complaint. Over all I adore how great this looks on the Wii U hardware. I will eventually want to see it running with modern upgrades on a computer.

Debating whether to dump this game or not. It has some value to me as I got it for Christmas off my girlfriend in 2015 but I don't know if I can push through it anymore. The game feels as if it is asking too much of the player and doesn't make it any easier to play. Some grievances are the forced mining elements (I still don't understand how this works), traversal which isn't even made any better by the Skells, too many skill areas, high-levelled enemies being everywhere and attacking on sight when all you want to do is explore, too many mountains that make it difficult to navigate or see where you're going, a rather poor map system, no healing system other than tapping B when a prompt appears, locking story progression behind arbitrary prerequisites.

The world is beautiful and massive in scope but I feel that for me there is just too much going on and the expectations of the player's time is ridiculously high. I have to play this game with a computer near by every time I boot it up. There's no real sense of achievement, only frustration as I head the wrong way to try and scale a mountain or can't find a mission icon to interact with. I want to love this game and there have been moments I've enjoyed it but it is becoming too much as better games come along and ask me for my time. 35 hours in. It might be time to call it.