Zachary Lewis

There are many words that come to mind when I think of Xenoblade Chronicles, none of them good. Probably one of the most phoned-in and uninspired games I've ever encountered, Xenoblade feels like a game designed more to tick off boxes in a checklist than actually entertain. The characters are all stock JRPG tropes (the naive hero, the girlfriend, the wise teacher, the best bud, etc) but fails to develop them beyond that. The only unique thing about any of them is the British voice cast, and while they do a good job, it's not enough to overcome the lackluster writing. Speaking of writing, the plot of the game is stereotypical JRPG fare, to the point that you'll see everything coming hours before it happens if you've had even the slightest experience with the genre. The game's ham-handed style of storytelling also ensures there's never any suspense, as it will spoil many of its reveals outright, sometimes up 40 hours before they even happen, repeatedly beating you over the head with them for that entire time to make sure you remember that it has already spoiled it, and then expecting you to somehow be surprised anyway. If you're paying any amount of attention, you'll know how the story ends and how it gets there long before the halfway point. You'd think that with as little effort that went into the story, the gameplay must be good at least, right? There you'd be wrong too. Xenoblade Chronicles is an open-world game that somehow missed the point that open-worlds are typically filled with content. The world is vast, but largely empty. The only ways you can interact with it is by walking on it, or killing the random creatures that roam it with the awful combat system (which I'll get to later). Sidequests are numerous, but repetitive, consisting of a small text box blurb where you will be asked to either kill so many of a certain creature, or roam aimlessly until you've picked up so many of a certain item (always one of those two, creativity is a thing Xenoblade perpetually struggles with). Many of these quests don't even offer rewards worth the time it takes to do them, offering only money which is largely worthless thanks to the loot drop system. The combat is a dull MMO inspired affair where the game auto-attacks while you select skills from a cooldown menu (for one character, the other two members of your party are controlled by AI that are dumb as bricks). The game is poorly balanced though, an issue it tries to fix by scaling enemy stats to your level to control your progress, but all this really accomplishes is to make the game a slog as you're forced to grind for the only stat that matters: your level. At a difference of 5 levels higher, the game gives foes such a massive agility boost that fighting them is an exercise in futility as your every attack will miss, but if they're only 4 levels higher, combat becomes an utter cakewalk. I found that even in late game dungeons you could simply initiate combat and set the controller down and watch as the AI auto-attacked its way to victory. Simply put, Xenoblade Chronicles is one of the most mind-numbingly dull games I have ever encountered. Perhaps if you liked the endless grind of MMOs like World of Warcraft and just wished you didn't have to interact with other people to break up the monotony, Xenoblade might be for you. If you actually expect entertainment from your games, you'd be better off looking elsewhere.