Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition (Switch)

 

Don't worry about the future
It's all right
Because a better picture we can't find
Just like our dreams
They've got to be free
So, Anyway, Let's move on

Finally it arrived, the remaster of the best Xenoblade Chronicles-game! 150 hours later and I can say I pretty much say I did a whole lot better this time around. I checked my old save and realized I only finished something like 65 % of Mira, but in this version I reached 97-99 % (pretty much only super-bosses and conditional Tyrants that I at the moment just doesn't care about right now... or rather, I can't get a one-shot build on my skells to work). Now, why did it work better? Mostly since I knew FrontierNav and could place the probes a lot faster. I saw myself boasting about 6-7 million credits on the Wii U, I reached almost 90 million this time around. Also, 100 000 Miranium and constantly 350 000 credits on each tick (I might have looked up a more efficient way to place the probes, but I fixed 100 000 credits and 30 000 miranium on my own). I also noticed I didn't fix the missions I thought I had, like Blood Lobster. I'm a bit more thorough this time around overall it seems. 

Changes then? Well, for one the gamepad wasn't here so they put it all on a button to bring up the map. Felt like second nature the first time I tried it so it worked beautifully. They added 4 characters and allowed you to change them from a menu instead of finding them in their habitat. Which allowed me to actually get Lao to the max with affinity. They also put away a lot of the restrictions on who to bring on certain missions and made sure all characters leveled at the same time so no need to grind each and everyone. On one hand, makes the game a lot faster, but I kinda feels it destroys the narrative a bit since they don't actually need to be there (still shows up in the cutscene) and since you don't need to put in the time with the characters I didn't get to know them as much this time around. 

They also added some story chapters after the final of the original game. Another phenomena happens that seems to destroy the planet and as Team Elma tries to figure it out a skell shows up that is the original Ares Prime that the other skells are based on. It was thought destroyed in the intro cutscene from the original game, but apparently it ended up between dimensions together with its pilot Al. Al is the last human since he needed a real body to pilot the Ares that Elma had brought from her planet as it also was destroyed by the ganglions and ghosts, the two warring sides that ended up destroying Earth. The ghosts reappears here led by the Old One, the ganglions god. He is named Void and captures the Ares Prime and steals it's power core. Al and Team Elma prepares the humans and allies to evacuate Mira since Void is destroying the whole planet. They still need the cores for the Ares to make a dimensional jump since that what happened. As Earth was destroyed the whole universe followed, but the White Whale made a dimensional jump by mistake and that is why Mira doesn't exists on a star map. Al figured it out trapped between dimensions and is the shadowy figure that found Lao after the original game, apparently in-between dimensions include the after life. Anyway, they learn that Void created the ganglions... and since then they fight each other? I think the plot starts to loose me.

They finish preparing the escape so all evacuate on the redesigned Ma-Non ship and flies toward Void and his continent to get the power core. Team Elma is scattered so you have to collect them all, get six spears that are used to bind Void's power... you know, it sounds a bit like the final battle against Vecna in season one of Critical Role? Kinda fun then that Matt Mercer is Lao, and Doug is... Dogi. And isn't H.B. Albert Wesker? A pity that the new voice actor for Vandham doesn't really match him. Anyway, do all this and fight Void who seeks death since he was a Samarian that was punished to eternal slumber for... some crime. He dies, the orbs are returned and Al in the Ares Prime take his place on the ship to make the jump. Team Elma buy him time to gather enough energy. Your avatar is furthest away destroying the ghosts while the order to retreat before the jump is told. It's really intense if the avatar is going to make it or not, but it does and we're off, ending up in another dimension.

On one hand I kinda dislike this since it means Mira gets totalled and nothing really mattered. I can't wrap my head around why the Ganglions fought the Ghosts or why Void fought the Ganglions. I expected Lao to return and it feels a bit like a cop out that the post-credit scene of the original just was the after-life and such. On the other hand, if this sets up for a sequel I'm all for it. They ended up on another planet and the most fun of the original game was running around and exploring this unknown world and setting up probes to gather resources. You need another planet and it felt big back in 2015 (or 2017 when I played it), but with the open world games of Zelda and other things you need to go bigger and Mira only had those five continents... well, I know we have 5 continents as well, but still. A lot of water on it as well. If they build on that I can see it working out, but if this is it, I'm not gonna lie, feels a bit underwhelmed for waiting 8 years for a continuation. Especially since my interpretation was that they built up the planet to be something akin to a living organism that caused all this, but no answers there, and we didn't get why the mimeosons survived or who Cross (our avatar) exist. I mean, our avatar can pretty much be another being that happened to take over a mim for all I know.

Final part, it was fun to replay it and see the allusions to the twists and I actually double taked on some conversations when they mentioned the mims and such before the "reveal" and I can se how I didn't caught this before. I also played it as a woman this time around (I actually restarted since I played the first 4 hours as a guy again, but that would have been boring, besides she looked a lot better in the bikini, a damn shame about the boob slider... I mean... let's move on). Knowing some of the deaths and how to avoid them is kinda fun and now we have three save files compared to the original one. And the online, since you have to pay for it now they changed it radically. You get reward tickets every day meaning you can play it offline from start to finish. They added missions that reward you with miranium, battle points, affinity and so on so no need to fear. This is the ultimate version of this game. I still recommend it since it still felt awesome, although can't beat the highs from the first time playthrough.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch)

 

Well, we got the green grass in every other main game.

The latest in the Xenoblades series, actually the 4th game in the series, but since X is standalone compared to the others it might not count (still waiting for that X-2 or better yet, a Switch-port of X). It begins with the boy Noah together with his friends Lanz, Eunie and Joran running to watch the fireworks and then the timestops. And then we get the set up for the world. There is an eternal war between the nations of Keves and Agnian as they fight for supremacy. Killing enemies fills the flame clocks of their mobile bases and depending what level you reached you get more or less resources, all trying to get to gold class and a chance to end the war. The other way is to reach ten terms in the war and get the homecoming, a ritual back at the castle where they send the bodies, almost like Logan's Run with reaching 30 years old. It's actually 20 here. So we have child soldiers that are grown in tubes at the castle, get one year of training and then sent out for war in 9 years. Survival rate not high as we can understand. They are transfered to colonies that are lead by a commander that report to a consul that reports to the queen. Noah and gang belongs to Colony 9... ha! Nice reference!

One day after destroying an enemy colony Noah, Lanz and Eunie, together with the one month away from homecoming (aka retirement) Mwamba is sent on a special mission when an unknown energy have been located. Noah and gang belong to Keves and the Agnians have been sent out as well. During skirmishes between them the unknown energy seems to be from a cloaked ship that contains humans and are lead by... Vandham? From 2? Same voice as well. Great. He was on a mission to get an "egg" to "the city", but was shot down. Noah and friends fights the Agnians soldiers Mio, Sena and Taion. Vandham stops them from killing each other and activates the egg that gives them the power off Ouroboros. At the same time the real enemy behind all this appears, Mobieus. Who just happens to kill Mwamba... oh no, so close to retirement. This was a joke my friends made while watching the Ridley Scott Robin Hood, it was the same laughter here. They drive him of with their new powers, Vandham still croaks, but tell them to go to the city and escape the war. They don't listen, but go back to their own colonies, who now begin hunting them since they have been marked by Mobieus. They reunite and head of together, along with Riku and Manana, their nopon companions (and Riku is the most tolerable nopon in the whole series). 

Their travels take them around the world as they free the colonies on both sides with Lucky Seven, a sword Riku made that Noah got and is able to cut through anything (which he only uses to destroy flame clocks in cut scenes). It's revealed that Mobieus controls everything, the queen being robots and the consuls being Mobieus themselves. They are pure evil in their sadistic nature as they seem to delight in the suffering of humans, watching them on a screen, using them as chess pieces. Killing is just more fun for them. The city turns out being descendants of the first Ouroboros that began fighting Mobieus. Best moment in game is when the players have infiltrated a prison to get information on where the real queen of Agnus is hiding, but they are betrayed and it turns out that two of Mobieus, N and M is... I would say clones, but I think it's the other way around, or that both are clones of Noah and Mio. They get captured and Evil!Noah separates Mio and the rest as she only have one month left before homecoming where her body disintegrates. At the same time Mio and Noah had developed feelings for each others and that moment as he tries in vain to break out from prison, screaming her name as Evil!Noah describes in details how he will enjoy tormenting Noah with this. Spoilers, but it turns out Evil!Mio switched places with Mio so that she could end the constant cycle of death and destruction around her, which sends Evil!Noah into madness. 

You find the queen and it turns out that it's Nia from 2 and the queen of Keves is Melia from 1. Apparently the two universes that was created by the experiment by Klaus was on the verge of merging so to counter that the queens created origin to... restart the worlds after the merger? I thought so, but after getting it to work at the end it seemed like the universes was divided again? I don't get that really. Before that though it was hijacked by Mobieus led by Z that at the merging of the universes freeze time and created this constant world of war... why? Maybe to give life to Mobieus? After finishing the game and defeating Z, I still get what Mobieus deal was. They just appears to be sadist with no goal. The main thing they talk about during the end battle is that Z is some personification of fear that is clung to the present and don't dare to go into the future, to change... I get why the human Mobieus does it, they fear dying, but I don't get Z. That's where the game fell apart for me, it's no finding Elysium, or defeating the Mechonis, or finding the ship with all the people of Earth. Which isn't fair since the games play better than 2 since I actually got the chain link system and such, and no random system in side characters, here you do quest and get them and make another quest to level them up. And gems are back from one, but you only have a set that is shared between all the characters so just upgrade them and pick and chose for you. And the damn collection could be exchanged with Noppon coins instead, diminishing the aggravation to find every single item to upgrade weapons, classes or such. 

(After reading some reddit threads on the game it seems that Z was fueled by the fears of the people stored in Origin and keeping them in an eternal stage of war feeds that and continues to support Z) 

Music is fine,  the flute that is thematic for the game is an acquired taste, but it isn't bad. Graphics are on par with 2. Most fun is I got the game one day early so I could play it before anyone else, sadly it was the first week after my vacation so it still took me 5 weeks to finish the 140 hours to reach the end. And I had to restart the final battle after getting beaten at the very last second when my healers fell. So I used all my bonus exp to go from lvl 77 to 93, meaning it went a lot better. Didn't want to replay the three phases more than twice. Gameplay probably the best, but I still prefer X, and 1 story above this. I don't know about 2. It also freeze on me once so I had to restart from the last save, twice the sound went out of sync with the game.

Overall, good game, interesting concepts from the start with the black and white analogy, pacifism, war. One thing I don't agree with was some anglo-saxians saying it was a critique of capitalism... in what way is it about capitalism? There are two monarchies with a complete pyramid of resource distributions depending on how good at killing things you are. Really, they get out of that by trading with each other and not giving, but actually trading different things they have stocked and such. I guess it was an American that made that remark and they missing the points since the left seems to have wired to only see "capitalism bad" that they can't read it in any other way. Give me strength! *Ahem* Where was I? Yeah, the ending feels kinda flat and it seems to be most shared thoughts of the game. 

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition (Switch)

The Bloody Rage of the Titans!

Xenoblade Chronicles is back on Switch with the first game... and I played it through again... another 120 hours. I've already mentioned the story so we can cut that, but it's still a great game. The music is fantastic and the graphical update is good. I recall starting the game back in 2014 and noticing that the eyes on the characters where a bit dim or almost hazy. Not so much anymore. They also improved the item limits so I didn't get the same sell all at a time. And the best thing they did was making the questing easier with the option to let the map show you where the items or persons are together with a dotted line on the map how to get there. No more guessing which enemy carries what item. Love it, might explain why the main game only took 106 hours this time around. Of course, the Colony 6 side quest is still a guess on some of the things, but you got the visions for that. Games move a bit slower with the change of the menu layout. I started up the 3DS version and when you pushed X you got to choose the menu while walking around. Here the games stops and bring it up. Probably due to using a bit more shortcuts on the d-pad. And I think they made certain parts easier, like the battle with Loretha... cause isn't the pools of ether gone?

Some more new thing was a battle arena where you can take on challanges, either however you want or limited to a pre-set party and level. Finish it with a special rank and you get items and equipments. I pretty much forgot it after getting Melia. Now, the big meat of the definitive edition is an epilogue chapter starring Melia and Shulk one year after the original game ended. They travel on the Junk (a machina ship) to the Bionis Shoulder to get to Alcamoth which I guess disappeared after the battle with Zansa. They get shot down by some beam from the city and crashes in a lake. Two of Rikki's children have been stowing away and you rescue them from some Volffs. Kino and Nena. There they find an army encampment of High Entia that point them to a camp of civilians with a lot of different races... did Alcamoth disappear after Zansa's battle? Cause, why is there Machina here? Anyway, they have fled the capital since it was taken over by the fog king, a monster of fog that came out of a rift in the sky. Where does the rift comes from? No answer.  You get there and saves a High Entia kid you met in the first game that is doing research in order to turn the Tellethia back into High Entia. He works together with Tyrea, Melia's step-sister that tried to kill her in the first game. Meanwhile you also look all around the Bionis Shoulder to find the Nopon archeology team that got lost there and is your stand-in for the team attack. Probably the best side quest in the game. I want a whole game with the Nopons after this. Didn't think I would ever say that, but replaying the game just shows that you have merchants, mercenaries, archeologies, inventors and cold bloodied drug smugglers... yes, Bana makes an appearance. It ends with you uniting the military and civilians to give you time to fight the Fog King with a special built Monado and you defeat it and return to Colony 9 with the survivors and then restores the capital and have a coronation for Melia.

It's a bit of fun. Apparently it was an area they took away for time constraints. We got some new battle music and I really liked it. The story is interesting in the beginning and seeing some of the characters from the first game and seeing what they are up to are fun and Melia and Tyrea setting their differences aside are great. The Fog King though... is a bit of a disappointment. I thought we were gonna see the other side of the rift, like connecting the game further with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or even Xenoblade Chronicles X. 15 hours, a bit grinding in the end until I realised you could always put in casual Mode since I was rather done with the game. I got to level 76 (started at 60) and there was only one quest left, a battle with a level 80 dragon or a mini-boss level 77 lizard that insta-kills me instantly before I took the easy path.

Overall, still likes the game. Maybe prefer XCX over it with more mystery and exploration. In X you could look at a mountain and climb it, a bit of the same feeling like in Breath of the Wild, but here it is more like corridors. Still, great game. Playing it again also makes one think about certain aspects, for example how the Bionis soul is represented by a man and the Mechonis is a woman. Not only is the man the titan of life, what we usually attributed to female gods like Gaia, Venus, Freya and so on, he's also emotional and irrational which we used to (well, at least some used to, many still does) describe woman overall and kept them out of power. Meyneth is rational, a machine and is the good god in comparison giving life a chance. It's a bit subversion off clichés. Its anti-god message is hammered in at the end and really lifts free will as the greatest thing of all living. Also, the games main quest for the first 1/2 is a revenge plot where the heroes goes out to exterminate a whole race. And really, is Shulk really the leader in the beginning? Reyn is the more cliched hero from older games and is pushing the plot (although he is stupid and hotheaded like Garet in Golden Sun and Garet was clearly not a leader), and Dunban when he joins is the natural leader that shows the way. But the longer the game goes on Shulk grows to the leader that they look too. Probably helps that he can see the future so what he says is probably the right thing anyway. Also, Dickson is really fun observing how he affects the story and where it goes, and his 70's hippie outfit is amazing.

I bet he ha the metal soundtrack on some mp3-player in the satchel.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

The sequel... that is the third game in the series?

144 hours. It took me 144 to finish the main story. I could have done it some 10 hours earlier, but the game threw me for a loop when I was at level 77 and the last boss at 70. So since he killed me at full health with one attack I grinded to level 86... and got my ass handed to me again. So I looked it up and it is of course a puzzle boss where you have to use the special chain attack. Which I got the hang of around hour 100, thank god for that, otherwise this fight would have been horrible. But other than that, it was good.

So story is that you play as Rex, a kid salvager that gets hired by this group of drivers to get a ship in the cloud sea. A driver is someone controlling a blade which enhances attacks and is personified weapon pretty much. While on the ship you find a sealed blade which turns out to be the aegis, a legendary blade that came from the top of the world tree that the great hero Addam used 500 years ago to defeat Malos the evil blade bent on world destruction. The battle destroyed two of the great titans which is what the people of the worlds live on. Rex opens the seal and is killed by Jin, one of his employers and apparently they are Torna, a terrorist organisation that hunts for blades, named after one of the fallen titans. As he died Rex appears at a place called Elysium together with a red-haired girl named Pyra, the same girl that was the aegis. She will bring him back to life if he promises to take her to Elysium in the real world, since this seems to be a dream state from her memories. He comes to life, save Pyra from Torna and escapes on his "grandfather" titan together with the gormotti girl Nia and her blade Dromarch who couldn't stand Tornas bloodshed and defected. They end up on Gormott which is occupied by the Mor Ardainian empire that looks for land due to their titan slowly dying, which causes frictions with the kingdom of Uraya. Meanwhile Indol, a Vatican like organisation, tries to balance them. In Gormott they are hunted by the imperial soldiers and the Grand Inquisitor Morag, older sister to the boy emperor, who later joins them together with the nopon inventor Tora that created the artificial blade Poppi. The last member is Zeke, prince of Tantal, an isoloationist nation. Their goal is to reach Elysium through the World Tree.

Look at the view!

Now, the gameplay is pretty much the same as the other Xenoblades, but with the blades system. Blades have different weapons that you can switch around mostly like you want. Most blades are the same different rotaation of character models, but there are unique once you can get, either by random chance or through story/side-quest. Good and bad, I like when it happens and in theory can make every playthrough uniqe depending on which blades you get since you mostly will use the special once if you can since it's more important to level them up. And that's the problem since certain quest you need the right amount of skills that only the special blades have, and it gets annoying when you need to grind for them to get them. Especially when the bonding scene takes forever (until they apparently patch it away in a week, which is to late for me). Good music when you get them as well. Most music is rather good, and I got the soundtrack with the special edition.

Love the package, but it's huge!

Now, the story is basically get to the finish line. At a point near the end I actually didn't know who the bad guy was. Not that there were candidates, but I understood all their decisions. Torna is led by Jin and Malos, Jin being a flesh eater (cannibal blade) who ate his driver as the last act as she was dying to not be returned to the core crystal and loose the memory of her as Torna was being destroyed by Indol led by Amalthus. Malos is the aegis Amalthus stole from the architect that is the god of this universe and share Amalthus lust to destroy the world, but the reason Amalthus believes that is because his mother was killed as she protected him from slavers (?). So Malos isn't really responsible for his actions since he is influenced by Amalthus. I feel sorry for them. You get to see the other Torna members as outcast since they are flesh eaters and shuned by society and even though they instigate conflicts and destruction, I can't fault them. The world is shitty. And don't get me started on the political subtext. Indol houses a refugee camp from the conflicts around Alrest (mostly between Mor Ardain and Uraya that is getting closer to war), but at the same time Indol is the ones supplying core crystals to the nations and registers every owner perpetuating the cycle of conflict. And therefore easies their conscious with providing the camp, but complaining that it defiles the square they set up. Was someone saying the refugee crisis of 2015 and onward? It's f***ing brilliant! It's clearly the western world taking in the refugees and still selling weapons to the waring nations of the world and it furthers conflict between those living near the refugees camp in the western world. Now, it's a bit more complicated in the real world, but a short summery it works brilliantly.

This tipped me of he wasn't the nicest pope

In the end you fall below the cloud sea and sees the destroyed landscape of a modern city and climbs the world tree which is really a space elevator to a satellite in space which explains the aegis ability to conjure laser blast from up high. And here was probably the most interesting twist I ever encountered. And it's because it's the same twist as from the first game. Not the kind, but the same exact twist. We get a flashback to the war that destroyed the world below the cloud sea up in the satellite that tries to be the last line of defence, but two scientist argues over some artefact. It's Klaus and Galeia, the people that became the two titans in the first game. The twist is that this is a post-apocalyptic earth, but Xenoblade 1 took place in a splintered timeline which is connected through a black hole that eats half of the Architects body, the architect being Klaus, the bad guy from the first game that feels the end of his evil side as Shulk and the others at this very moment have arrived to kill him, killing both, and he accept this due to the remorse of causing all this. My mind is blown. It doesn't make a lick of sense for someone that haven't played the first game, but for me and other that played it's huge. And he isn't even a boss, the final boss is Malos in a giant mech that is about to destroy all of Alrest. You blew him up and then of course the satellite is falling apart. Rex and the others escape with an escape pod, but Pyra tricked them to it since she had to stay behind to destroy the world tree so it doesn't crush all of Alrest. But of course she returns at the end like some magical Disney movie. And I'm alright with that.

I don't know why, but I actually prefer X over this. And I felt more invested in the story for a longer time in the original. Don't get me wrong, it's a good game and when the shit hits the fan at the end it's really good, but it felt like it took to long to turn from a run of the mill good vs evil story. The Torna bits should have come long before I feel. Well, better wait for the DLC story content.

Xenoblade Chronicles X

More than meets the eye

The awaited sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles (which I loved when I got into it) and I was gonna skip this game due to not feeling it. Giant mech-suits? Earth humans on a foreign planet and no sign of the Monado or any other Xenoblade connection than the nopon? But then I fell in the Bayonetta trap of thinking, is the game gonna be hard as hell to get in the future? Maybe and since it's a JRPG why not give it a chance? 150+ hours later after the main story is over I can say it was a really fun and interesting game. And I still have much to do before I might say I'm oversaturated with this game, but since I write this the week before the newest Zelda and Nintendo console is upon us I might just have one week left until my focus is shifted away from this and I'm glad I finished the main game at least. Although it isn't that reassuring when the game ends with "this game never truly ends!".

Somethings evil watching over you, coming down from the sky above, and there's nothing you can do!

Game starts in space as the White Whale, a ship sent from earth is fighting for its survival as one of the last remnants of earth that was destroyed by the Ganglions, an alien race/crime syndicate (?). Mechs fly across the space as they fight the enemy, but still the ship comes crashing down splintering across several parts of the planet Mira and the main hull makes an emergency landing and from that wreckage New LA is formed, populated by the crew of the white whale and other survivors the rescue teams can find. That was 3 months earlier. The real game starts when colonel Elma rescues you from a stasis pod that was thrown out during the emergency landing and contains your customised body  (male or female and don't worry, you can change later after the right side quests). You suffers of course from amnesia and are brought back to the city and pretty much enlisted into one of the 8 different divisions of BLADE, the main military force/engineer corps/resource scavenger that enables the city to exist. So you join Team Elma and pretty much take in Lin Lee Koo, a mechanic/engineer specialist at 16 years old to round up the power trio of the game with pretty much a rotating fourth member. So out and explore, avoid the dangerous wild life and explore this foreign planet. Main mission is to find the Lifehold core which contains 20 millions humans in stasis and through that resurrect the human race.

You got the touch! You got the power!

During the course you will find other aliens that are friendly like the nopon and Ma-Nons or dangerous like the Ganglions that still hunts you. You will also help alien races under the thumb of the ganglions like the Prone (the main fighter alien), Z... I can't write out their names, but they are pretty much sanitising the world around them, Wrothians the cat-aliens and the Orphes, some bug like Vulcan like race. You have five main continents to explore and it's huge especially in the beginning as you run around and if you are skilled enough can find a completely new area by scaling a mountain way before you are supposed to and pretty much die by running right into the first enemy you didn't see. And death is pretty much a slap on the wrist. Just back to the last landmark, exp intact together with everything else. As the original Xenoblade, it push for exploration and maybe even just run past enemies to reach a new landmark to get even further. As I praised the old game for this growth in levels I see it happily back here. And speaking of, one of my complaints was item management that forced me to constantly sell stuff to get new stuff. Haven't had this problem here. Weapons, armours, skell-armor, skell-weapons and different types of items are divided with 999 slots for each. Thank god! Another problem I had was the damn item rewards spawned from monsters that you needed to progress Colony 6 and they solved a similar issues here... by being able to use reward tickets to buy the items directly. Reward tickets you get by doing squad missions that appear randomly and is connected to the online functions of this game. So you get them as long as someone is doing them and everyone can help finishing the missions. It's really nice and is a good way to handle it... but when the online functionality disappears or when no one is playing it's just back to grinding.

Metroplex looks a bit different from Earth 2005.

So the story pretty much starts when you are sent to rescue Nelson and his team, a character never mentioned before that's gone missing and you have to find them. Turns out they have been killed by the Prone that shows no mercy and just wants to fight. After the battle you find the nopon Tatsu that will be the comic relief in the game as he is constantly being threatened to be turned to lunch for the humans... now, while they are funny, I wonder why humans would like to eat a talking person? And don't say it is a joke, I saw how Lin put him in a stew and put spices on him. Still, after that you get to Oblivia where you try to save the Ma-Non from the Prone, but during the final fight against the Prone skells (skells are pretty much these giant mechs that can fly and turn to cars... transformers basically) Tatsu ends up in the line of fire, your avatar runs up and pushes him out of the way and gets hit by the blast sending him/her of. And the first twist of the game is shown. The humans aren't humans, but mimeosomes, a robot avatar that is controlled from the stasis pods of the humans in the lifehold. We know this now since my arm was blasted of gushing with robotic fluids as my character screams in shock until Lin sedates you and brings you back to NLA. They hand wave it as my character having amnesia, which is a fair assumption and you can explain the cycle of death and rebirth as well as jumping and running over across a whole mountain. And another plot point is announced since the lifehold gets a new meaning. Everyone that dies in the game can be reborn by awaken the body in the lifehold. And the core is running out of power and if it dies everyone dies, all of humanity. And they display it on the tower in the middle of the city. Talking about a doomsday clock.

Need a hand?

Next episodes are a bit here and there. One mission is to retrieve an ancient skell that the Ganglions tries to get, the next to defend the city from an invasion by the ganglions that wants to take it back. During these missions you start to suspect there is a traitor in your ranks. You blow up a warship, break up the Ganglions hold on the wrothians and your suspicions are correct when Lao, another BLADE that helped you and even joined you at times, steals the prototype skell and takes it to the ganglions together with the data on where the core is hidden. After tracking him to the stronghold of the ganglions on the furthest continent you defeat Lao and forces him to surrender and give back the data. His reason is the way the 20 million people were selected for the colonisation project. He was forced to leave wife and child behind while the rich and well-connected got a free pass. Only the crew was handpicked for their skills, you know, like every sci-fi escape from earth story ever. Anyway, with the coordinates for the core you head out to sea with a squadron of skells piloted by the different playable characters and Team Elma acts as the strike team together with... I believe the original characters since I think the other characters were originally dlc characters for the japanese... but I'm not sure (looking it up it was the DLC characters to give them some extra lines for the finale). Entering the core forces the leader of the ganglions, Lexxar to use the ancient skell, the vita, and strike through the shield and fight agains your characters. And here I had to restart and grind first for levels to reach 59, 56, 56, 55 on the team I had and then to get credits to get lvl 50 skells. Took me a whole day, but then the battle could start. first phase no skell destroyed, second phase one skell lost and another plot twist is revealed. There is no cryochamber for the bodies since everything been digitalised into the cores super computer. The plan was to create new bodies with the genetic material in the core that can instagrowth and transfer over the conscious from the computers into the bodies. But Lexxar isn't finished and starts to hit the computer with some green lightning bolts which activates the defence mechanisms. It begins to create chimeras. And you got to fight 10 of them. And yet another skell bites the dust. Meanwhile Lexxar is skewered by Lao that have arrived at the scene and they fall into the genetic fluid all around them, which binds Lao and Lexxars DNA together and forms a giant demonic looking chimera. And now my skell gets busted. And the thing is I was a class lvl 1 at the time on the bottom ladder with a raygun and knife as the weapons I had. And the knife was the better weapon. So too recap, I'm running around fighting the end boss with a knife... and I F***ING BEAT HIM!!! WITH A KNIFE!!! BEST GAME EVER!!!

I'm getting Resident Evil Revelations flashbacks

It dies and the system restarts saving the human race. And another plot twist is unfolded and that it was one person actually put in stasis in the ship, which I half-guessed as a clichéd sic-fi plot. I thought it was the leader of NLA, but it turns out it was Elma... that also was an alien explaining some comments from the Ganglions about the technological leap mankind had done. Celebration and end credits showing civilian life for the BLADES in service after their victory in NLA and then a post-credit scene. Elma and Yelv (one of the playable characters) together with some other BLADES are looking through the Lifehold in search of the main data centre... which I thought was in the computer we fought the end boss in, but apparently I was wrong. And it turns out that the room is flooded and been so since the White Whale crashed on Mira, meaning the mimeosomes should be dead  already. The leaders of NLA wonders what this means and cut to a shore where Lao in a new mimeosome body is approached by a shadow and then wakes up. Now I gotta find the super-secret real ending that continues the story.

I really like this game when you get past the tutorial. And the growth of your character is amazing although that the amnesia is never addressed or that we even can't find the original body is kinda disappointing, but it is Elma's story in reality as she is the one pushing the plot forward. Great music. It looks fantastic and it has interesting themes. The mimeosomes gives a really interesting religious view on this, since it feels like they go for the day of judgement when the dead shall awaken. That means that death really has no consequences. And they address this in game with different cults and suicidal people appearing that can't grasp this very idea. In the end we have a small snippet of the clone dilemma if saving the 20 million by cloning and transferring the digital conscious, is it the same person? As standard we have xenophobia, revenge and so on. Getting the skell and then later the flight module is amazing as you soar through the air to a cheesy love song or rides past the enemies in your morphed car. Maybe there is to many playable characters to keep track on, but the biggest problem is that I don't always know where they are cause I need to see them at their physical place and the map doesn't have an indicator where that is (why couldn't there face have been there instead of the golden shield like every other area?) or even yet, in the menu active members actually list every playable character and switch them in and out instead for me having to hunt them down in the wrong time slot where they are out wandering NLA and sometimes that is a permanent functions until I find them. And I should probably mention that you can't new game + it either, sadly. Especially since actions can have consequences on people dying and so on. But the scope of the game makes it so I won't replay it that much (maybe if they rerelease it in the future on another Nintendo consoles). All in all a good game.

Update: So I checked up on the ending to see if there was something else beyond this and... nothing. Just do quest and grind for things to enhance your equipments for the skell. And my interest fell to zero, especially when Zelda: Breath of the Wild happened. And now I'm really curious for Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

So is it a sequel to 1 or X?

Xenoblade Chronicles

 

The other must have JRPG for the Wii and compared to the Last Story's 30-40 hours game this one clocked in on 120 hours when finished. Really, I dreaded the playtime when I checked on it before starting cause how can a story keep you interested for so long, playing roughly 10 per day? Somehow it did. It start out with a prologue at the last line of defence for the humans... I mean homs as the Mechonis is advancing. The only one standing in their way is Dunban, the warrior who wields the Monado. In a final attempt he and his friends Dickson and Mumkhar push the Mechonis back so the other homs can retreat, sadly Mumkhar betrays them and gets himself killed. As a final act Dunban unleashes the Monados full power ending the war, but leaves himself crippled. One year later and we are introduced to Shulk, scientist studying the Monado and Reyn and Fiora in their home Colony 9. Fiora is the obvious love interest and Dunbans younger sister who nurse him back from the burns he received by the Monado. Well, we can't have a story without conflict so the Mechonis appears which forces Shulk to wield the Monado and this grants him the power to see the future, but at the same time a new type of Mechonis appears, those with faces. They slaughter and captures several homs, one being Fiora and this starts the quest for revenge. Later on we end up with a sniper/healer chick Sharla, magician High Entian (angelic elfs) Melia, Nopon heropon Ricki and Dunban.

And now for the spoilers, of course Fiora survives, as one of the faced mechon, but with the coinciouse of the Mechonis (the titan home world of all mechanical life, compared to the Bionis biological life) as she tries to stop the machina leader for destroying the Bionis. The twist is that he seek revenge for what the Bionis did all those millennia ago and prevent further conflict as the concioise of the Bionis, Zanza, will destroy all life to regain his form. Pretty standard stuff. Gods fighting  and it's not the obvious enemy that are the long term threat. The rather fresh twist was the walkway toward the final boss and we are in space near Saturn, then Jupiter, then Mars and finally near our moon. Beat the boss and the twist is revealed, the world is a post-apocalyptic universe where a human experiment by the scientist taking the form as gods, eradicating our world. Not new, but rather fresh.

Other than that this game is a huge and epic sci-fi story that aren't like any other JRPG. You can level up by killing anything you see, but that isn't recommended. Rather go out and explore as every new location grants you exp or do loads of quest, it even pays enough so I never had trouble with money, accumulating 6-7 million without problem. It actually felt more like a DnD session than just kill to level up. The bad things on the other hand is the micromanagement of equipment and collectibles and the like. First of you are limited to how many different things you can take with you meaning I have to sell or throw away certain thing that I might need in quests or to rebuild Colony 6 with, but I threw that away 10 hours ago since I didn't know I needed it. They try to fix this by giving you vision of the future of certain things and that is a small nudge in the right direction, but somehow when I threw an ingredient I have 10 of, as soon the quest is given I can't even find 1 after 2 hours searching. Cheating computer bastard. Also switching equipment is a hazzle since you can on certain armors equip crystals to enhance different thing, but if you want to keep those crystals you must equip them one by one again. Did I mention you must do this for 7 characters? Apparently they are doing a spiritual successor for the Wii U so I hope they fix that.

Update 2014-08-30: Nintendo also announced a port for the New 3DS so hopefully they fixed that. I'm also interested in seeing the game in 3D since I will probably look amazing. Hopefully I have a job so I can afford it by that time.