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.
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