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.