About a year and a half ago, in January 2024, I made what would prove to be a fateful decision; I bought Xenoblade Chronicles for the Nintendo Wii. At the time, I’d only had my Wii for a few weeks and wanted to add a meaty game that would last me a long time to my library. Xenoblade had been on my radar for a while as a title I’d watched a few Let’s Play videos of and even tried on my 3DS, so I figured I may as well give it a play, especially since the disc was only $20. 112 hours and 17 months later, Xenoblade Chronicles has become easily my favorite game of all time.
To start, the first thing that struck me was just how beautiful and huge all the areas are. The game is entirely set on two titans called the “Bionis” and “Mechonis,” and the area designs take full advantage of the concept. Each location is set on a specific body part of one of them, with their traits corresponding to how they’re positioned. For instance, one of the Bionis’ legs is mostly flat with a slight upward angle, so the corresponding location is a lush plain that slowly climbs upward as you travel from the leg to the thigh. Meanwhile, the right arm is mostly shielded from the sun, so the corresponding Valak Mountain is a freezing tundra. It really helps create the sense that the game takes place in a real place that operates under realistic logic, which is further emphasized by the sheer scale of everything. The biggest locations take a full 20 minutes to run (run, not walk) across and are absolutely jam packed with secret locations, quests, and enemies to fight. Even the towns feel extremely fleshed out, with them all feeling full-scale and having dozens of NPCs to interact with. These aren’t just generic JRPG towns and areas either, they all have unique theming and cultures that feel creative.
But what’s the point of a good world without a quality story to go with it? Luckily, Xenoblade absolutely delivers on that front, and it was by far my favorite part of the game. At first, it’s just Shulk and Reyn trying to avenge Fiora’s death, then Sharla enters the picture as we discover that the Mechon have larger plans, then we find out about the High Entia and get entangled in their succession issues, and so on and so forth until the party literally defeats god at the end. It sounds a bit silly when I put it like that, but the pacing is so good that everything feels completely natural while playing, with plot threads seamlessly leading into each other. This is aided by the stellar cutscenes, which are able to make even straightforward exposition scenes intensely engaging with their amazing voice acting and shot composition. Finally, the twists are the frosting that completes the cake, I admittedly got a few spoilers while looking up unrelated info; but the majority completely blindsided me and totally reframed previous events. The biggest one was Dickson turning out to be evil, I literally gasped at my TV after he shot Shulk, at the time I couldn’t believe that an ally I’d spent 80+ hours with was actually evil, but it made sense when I looked back at his actions and previous cutscenes. In general, it was just such an amazing journey, I’d frequently speculate about what was going to happen next during my playthrough, and even thoug certain aspects didn’t play out exactly like I expected, the game still maintained momentum from the beginning right to the end in my opinion.
Now for the actual gameplay, y’know, the reason it’s called a “game” instead of a “movie.” To be honest,this was my least favorite aspect of Xenoblade, though it’s still pretty good. The battling system works on a real time basis, with the player controlling 1 of 3 party members and using “arts” in-between automatic attacks to deal damage or inflict various other effects. You level up by gaining EXP, and can level specific arts with “AP” you get from battles as well. It’s fairly strategic, with many arts dealing extra damage if they’re used at certain spots (eg: from the side or back) and other elements like gems and skills allowing you to customize your approach, but I found the game overly hard at many points. There were frequent difficulty spikes where I had to spend hours grinding (wish I could’ve paid for my insolence with cash instead of by killing Gogols for 5+ hours), and the game punishes you very harshly for being even a few levels below an enemy. On the overworld side of things, the quests straight up suck. The vast majority of them are MMO-style “kill X enemy(s) / find X item(s),” and I regret spending so much time on them, especially since the majority only give out money. At least I always had the best gear available, because I was absolutely loaded by the end.
It honestly feels super weird to finally be done with Xenoblade Chronicles, its been such a big part of my life for the past year+. I’d play for a few hours every so often when I had some free time, speculate and talk about the plot with others, get frustrated and have to look up how to beat the good majority of bosses because I was constantly getting stuck, and generally got super immersed in the world. It really felt like I was personally trekking bit by bit across the Bionis / Mechonis and experiencing all the twists and turns right alongside Shulk and co, which is something I don’t think I’ve ever experienced in a game before. Overall, Xenoblade was truly a once-in-a-lifetime game for me, and if you’re reading this and haven’t played it, I implore you to at least give it a try. I’m certainly glad I did.