¡Ayuda por una edición coleccionista Europea de #XenobladeChroniclesDE para todos!
Como ayudar:
-Comenta en twitter con #OperationRaindrop
-Firma la petición http://chng.it/cvSfHHTN
-Llama a #Nintendo América al 1-800-255-3700 para cambiar la edición Americana
-Compartir.
We’re finally here, and I’m ready to review what is probably the most famous and celebrated of the three Operation Rainfall games, Xenoblade Chronicles. Ever since the game’s release, word-of-mouth has spread and the game’s apparently been enough of a hit to get its main protagonist Shulk into Smash Bros. as a playable fighter, and we’ve got a spiritual sequel landing in Japan soon, Xenoblade Chronicles X. Without further delay, let’s not lose our heads and find out if I’m really…feeling this game. (Sorry, I had to!) Uh…it’s…Reyn Review Time?
In contrast to The Last Story, a game that cuts out a lot of fluff and offers a condensed JRPG experience, Xenoblade Chronicles is perhaps the most expansive JRPG out there. It’s at least in the top five. Countless areas to explore, enemies to fight, and story to uncover, only the truly dedicated (and insane) will be able to see all that this game has to offer. I stuck mostly to the critical path, only breaking off from the story to explore elsewhere a few times, and it took me about seventy hours to get to the end credits, but a full playthrough will EASILY last players well past 100 hours. Players that want as much bang for their buck as possible will definitely get their money’s worth with this game, but I suppose I can do a better job of explaining this massive content, eh?
The world of Xenoblade is perhaps the most interesting part, at least to me. In a world that seems to be nothing but vast ocean, two gigantic beings came into existence and were locked into endless battle; the Bionis and the Mechonis.
Eventually, the titans laid still and new life sprung up on their bodies. On Bionis, several beings roam the giant’s surface, such as the human-like Homs that our story centers on. The Homs are constantly besieged by the denizens of Mechonis, murderous machines known as Mechon. At the Battle of Sword Valley, a Homs by the name of Dunban makes one final stand against the Mechon, laying waste to them with the Monado, a strange blade that damages Mechon easily, whereas most conventional weapons barely scratch them. The Homs win and for a time peace reigns, however, one year passes and the Mechon appear again, stronger than ever. Attacking Colony 9, Dunban’s home, we then see a young Homs engineer, Shulk, take up the Monado, wielding it better than Dunban ever could. Though the Mechon are once again repelled, the Homs do not escape unscathed and Shulk swears revenge, traveling all across Bionis to track the Mechon down and destroy them all.
As Shulk and his growing team of allies traverse this world, he learns of the powers housed deep within the Monado, the most useful being the ability to see visions of the future. Much of the story deals with Shulk wondering if he can truly change the future he sees, or if he is bound by fate. Now, the story has a rather simple setup, but it gets MUCH more complicated than that, and the growing cast of characters and interesting settings create a very well-crafted tale. There’s honestly enough content in here for a trilogy if games, but rather than stretch the story out over several games, Monolith Soft instead delivers a very complete, context rich adventure that goes about as far with its story and themes as they really could go. I liked it, basically.
Of course, most JRPGs are heavy on story, but Xenoblade in general is also a very gameplay rich beast, so I’ll do my best to touch on as many systems in the game as I can, but it won’t be easy. Seriously, Xenoblade’s systems have systems! It’s the most RPG RPG I’ve ever seen and at first glance it’s all VERY overwhelming, but to the game’s credit it introduces things somewhat slowly. You’re given ample time to learn everything, and while the game can get challenging, it seems to take into account that players have a lot to juggle right out of the gate and restrains itself in the early portions.
An open-world epic of a game, there are many, many, MANY places to travel to in Xenoblade. I said Bionis is a colossal titan, and this game sets out to prove it. From the grassy mountains on the Bionis Leg...
...to the gorgeous Eryth Sea found near the head...
...half the allure of continuing on for me was seeing where the game would take me next. One thing that keeps the frustration that might come from navigating such massive areas down is a helpful fast travel system. As you explore, you’ll find Landmarks that you can instantly warp to from anywhere else in the game, aside from certain story sections that require you to finish a given section before freedom is returned to you. You get quite a bit of experience for finding new areas, so by all means explore to your heart’s content! Just…be mindful that there are some areas crawling with enemies that you won’t be likely to defeat until much, MUCH later into the game. I suppose this is set up the way it is to keep players from straying TOO far off the beaten path, but…it does kind of undermine your freedom, I find. I TRY to explore, but when I’m level 20 and there are level 90 enemies EVERYWHERE the world suddenly feels a lot smaller. Even with fast travel though, traveling throughout the world can get a little tedious. I just wish you jumped a little higher or ran a tad faster. Taking fall damage also forces you to go the long way a lot of the time, which isn’t a MAJOR problem, but it did cut down on the fun for me a bit.
You’ll come across various towns and other areas through the game littered with NPCs. These NPCs will often have sidequests for you. LOTS of sidequests. It is NO exaggeration to say that you can easily blow five hours just doing the quests in the first town before you even kick off the main plot. Many of the quests are simple; kill five of this monster, or collect three of this item. Thankfully for a lot of these you don’t have to return to the quest giver and will just get your reward right after you fulfill conditions, which is nice. These quests are often given right when you enter an area too, so you’ll likely be able to do them on your way to the next important story area. That said, the quests DO get more engaging and even help in world building if you press on. You can gain affinity with NPCs through completing sidequests, and raising affinity up to certain points will unlock more and more sidequests. I appreciate just how much content there is, but at least personally, it was too much. You have to keep track of an NPC’s given location on the map and what time of day they’re out, but the game DOES let you just change the time of day at will and you can always look up the NPC to see when they’re active, which cuts down on a LOT of frustration. However, I also kinda have a problem with being given a TON of really brainless quests BEFORE I can do more interesting ones. I’m the type of player that would rather have twenty really nice, deep sidequests over 120 item farming, “simple” ones. I feel like I missed out on a TON of the game by avoiding them, but it was my choice and people that LOVE doing stuff like that will likely be in heaven with this game.
The battle system of Xenoblade is something I DO have to talk about in-depth though, I find, as it’s really quite interesting. With a team of three, you get into battles with all kinds of monsters in real-time, though it often feels like a hybrid of a real-time RPG and a turn-based one. Now, you’re free to move around in battle and are always in control of your party’s leader, while the AI controls your allies (pretty competently at that!), but you’ll find your regular “auto-attacks” don’t do much damage and aren’t too flashy. They are complemented by Arts, your special attacks or spells of the game. Rather than give you an MP gauge to worry about, instead Arts have a cooldown on them before you can use them again. The stronger the Art, the longer you’ll often have to wait, so you can think of the cooldown as a “turn” in a sense. Arts in the game are varied; some are more support oriented, or have bonus conditions that can let them do an additional effect or do more damage. Shulk’s Backslash, for one, does MUCH more damage when he attacks from behind. To that end, knowing what your Arts do, and when or where to strike is crucial. Auto-Attacks might not be as helpful as Arts, but they DO gradually fill up your Talent Gauge and when that is full, you gain access to a Talent Art, something unique to that character. For Shulk, he gains access to the Monado and its various support-based Arts, while his friend Reyn taunts the enemy and has their attention focus on him and away from Reyn’s allies. Of course, that’s just the beginning.
There are two “pillars” of combat in Xenoblade: status effects and teamwork. Unlike just about every other RPG, status effects in this game are awesome, with very few enemies outright immune to most statuses. You have your standard buffs or debuffs, alongside damage-over-time statuses like Bleed, Chill, Poison, etc. (which all stack, BTW), but there are three more important ones: Break, Topple, and Daze. Inflicting Break on an enemy does just that; there’s nothing special about Break by itself, but once an enemy is under Break, you can Topple them. Toppling an enemy makes them fall flat on their ass, completely helpless for a time. Daze then extends this helpless period. If you set up your team correctly, then at higher levels you can just keep most enemies from standing for most of the battle. It sounds game breaking and at times it is, but you have to EARN it, by and large. Now, teamwork is probably even more important. Every party member in Xenoblade has their own Arts and their own playstyle, and you’ll do well to play them correctly. Reyn is a tank, and specializes in drawing enemy attention to himself, letting him take the hits that most of his allies can’t. Dunban is a glass cannon, hitting hard but not taking hits so well, while Sharla is more of a support fighter, with rather poor offensive options, but very useful in a pinch. And so it goes. Picking team members that work well together is encouraged…though honestly the game seems VERY designed around Shulk, so while you CAN take him out of the party, most of the time I wouldn’t recommend it.
Then there’s the Team Gauge to worry about. As you attack, the gauge slowly fills and once it has done so, you can initiate a Chain Attack. This freezes the enemy in place, allowing you to “chain” various Arts together. It’s often easier to get an enemy Toppled in a Chain Attack, but you can also just use the same types of Arts together to build a damage multiplier. Talent Arts can act as wild cards in Chain Attacks too, allowing for some pretty interesting combinations. Mastering Chain Attacks is essential, but there’s still more!
Having high affinity with team members can help your team fight more effectively (raised by fighting together or doing sidequests together, mostly), but Tension is even more important. Think of Tension like your team’s morale; the higher it is, the better they fight, but let it fall too low and they won’t be able to hit the broad side of a barn. Thankfully, raising a team mate’s Tension back to normal levels is as simple as walking over and pressing the B button. You can also help team mates recover from certain statuses like Topple or Daze by doing the same. Now, there are often little quick time events whenever a strong attack is landed or perhaps when an ally misses, and if you pull off the button press, you can either raise Tension or prevent it from lowering. Keeping Tension high is a pretty high priority, but there’s still one more BIG mechanic to juggle on top of all of this: the visions given to you by the Monado.
Shulk’s visions aren’t just there for story reasons; they’re a major battle mechanic as well. Whether Shulk is in the party or not, occasionally the player can receive visions of devastating enemy attacks and get some time to change that future. Time is short, but you can warn your allies of the vision and instruct them to use a given Art to help change that future (though that’ll take some of your Team Gauge), or you can change it yourself. It’s a helpful mechanic, to be sure…but it’s not perfect. For one, sometimes you just don’t GET a vision even when it seems like you should, though it wasn’t a constant problem. However, during the early portions of the game I noticed another problem; you often can’t change that future. It’s not until later when you get more party members and more Arts to play around with that you have all of the tools you need to change the future. One other issue comes from the fact that a brief “slowdown” effect is applied whenever the future changes, which is cool…at first. Now, it gets annoying later on and can even negatively impact your performance. Just as an example, if Reyn is going to suffer a heavy attack in a vision, if, say, Shulk gets the enemy’s attention, then the vision slightly changes, but the slowdown occurs anyway, despite the attack still going through. BUT then Reyn taunts the enemy and gets their attention AGAIN, so the slowdown occurs AGAIN. This can go on and on. I’d rather the effect didn’t occur at all, because it can mess with your inputs. Better hope you can still land a QTE and keep your Tension high! It’s really more of an annoyance than a problem though, and it wasn’t incredibly common, but when it did happen, it was a bit aggravating.
Whew…I know that’s a lot to take in, but there is still WAY more to this game…that said, that’s something people can honestly discover on their own. I think I touched on the most important mechanics, and I hope I’ve established that there is a lot of complexity to the game, even if I don’t touch on every little thing. Truth is, it WAS very overwhelming at first, but I gradually got used to things. There is a bit of a learning curve, but the game is pretty fair and allows for you to make some mistakes. Death isn’t even that much of a penalty, just sending you back to the last Landmark you passed, but you keep any EXP, money and items you obtained. Coming from someone who doesn’t play a LOT of RPGs and is often very turned off of seemingly needless complexity, I do enjoy the game immensely, but I can understand that it’ll be a bit too much for a large portion of players. What I’m trying to say here is that if I can do it, then you can too! Don’t feel like you have to sit and crunch numbers and remember a TON of complex stuff all at once. It comes to you in time and you’ll find it’s not so scary, promise.
With ALL of this being said, I have a few miscellaneous nitpicks. I mentioned the somewhat slow going of being on-foot, super high level enemies discouraging some exploration and the slowdown thing with the visions, but I didn’t mention the inventory headaches much, did I? To be fair, for a game with SO MANY DROPS from enemies and other collectibles, you get a LOT of inventory space, but they could have done better when it comes to navigating it. If, for example, you’re selling old armor, you have to select each piece and sell it one at a time. If you haven’t been diligent with all this and have quite a lot of old, outdated armor with you, you might be there for a while. Would it have been so hard to let you select several things to sell at once? When in shops, you can’t buy and immediately equip armor for a given character, which just seems archaic. You eventually get seven party members to manage, with armor for your head, arms, chest, legs and shoes. If you can’t remember what you bought for Dunban versus what you bought for Sharla…well, your only option is to shop for one member, back out, equip everything, then get back into the shop and go to the next party member. Imagine doing this seven times. Yeah, not fun. Then there’s Arts Manuals. You gain Art Points every time you gain EXP, which you use to level up Arts…to a point. You’ll eventually hit a wall and won’t be able to upgrade Arts anymore, until you find a corresponding Arts Manual that’ll let you level it up past that point. At first, you can find the things in shops, but after a while you’ll only be able to find them as rare enemy drops. It’s an artificial barrier and if your luck is bad enough, some characters can be fairly hampered by it.
Nitpicks aside, Xenoblade is right to get the praise it deserves. It offers a vast, compelling world to explore, a very deep, complex story, paired with many interesting mechanics and systems with a unique battle system on top of it all. Is everything perfect? Of course not, but in the grand scheme of things, these are all just minor problems or annoyances, with nothing that took me out of the game or left me with a bad taste in my mouth. For a Wii game, the visuals are astounding; sure, it’s not HD, but the art direction is superb and I’d say it’ll hold up for quite a while. The soundtrack is fantastic, perfectly fitting and contains some of the best songs I’ve heard from a game in quite some time. The various battle themes fit any given battle’s tone and Gaur Plain’s theme fills me with a sense of adventure, giving me a desire to explore every nook and cranny. I’d say everything fits together to create a very…complete experience.
I wouldn’t consider myself a seasoned RPG fan, or even a huge fan of the genre in general. They often require too much time to complete, or I tend to dislike their battle systems, but I can’t say that for Xenoblade. I mean, I put over 70 hours into the thing, so I guess it made a good impression, right? Closing out this Operation Rainfall Event, I’m glad I was able to find and play all three games from this movement and I count them among some of the better games I’ve ever played, especially on the Wii. The efforts of the Operation Rainfall movement shouldn’t be ignored; they stand for people getting to experience games that might otherwise be passed over. Sure, you can debate just how much influence the movement had over these games getting localized, but I’d say they had at least SOME effect on things. Had things gone a different way, we might not have gotten Shulk in Smash 4 and Monolith Soft might not get a chance to expand on the gameplay system of Xenoblade with Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Wii U. X releases in a few days in Japan, and I eagerly await more news of the game’s localization. X looks to be a vast improvement over Xenoblade Chronicles and if I gave the better part of a month to THIS game, I can only imagine how much I’ll be sucked into X.
Thank you all for following along with this event, and I apologize for the slight delay with this final review. I plan on doing…SOMETHING similar in May, but due to how things are going at home, I’m really not sure if it’ll all come together. Look forward to it, though! Until next time!
We begin this month’s event with what is probably the least known of the three games that are the faces of the Operation Rainfall movement: Pandora’s Tower. It’s also perhaps the strangest one of the mix, being a blend of your typical action-adventure game with a bit of a dating simulator thrown in. It’s time to find out just how far you’re willing to go to make a relationship work.
Aeron and Elena are star-crossed lovers if ever there were any, each living in a country at war with the other but deeply in love. One day Elena is shown to have gained a terrifying curse, one that transformers her into a hideous monster. If left unchecked, she’ll lose herself, and Aeron has few options. In enters Mavda, an extremely mysterious old woman who apparently has a solution. She takes the couple to “The Scar,” a gigantic chasm containing a structure with thirteen towers housed in the center of The Scar, held in place by massive chains. If Aeron enters these towers and finds the Masters dwelling within he need only defeat them and bring back a piece of their flesh, and if Elena eats flesh from all of the Masters, the curse will be lifted. So begins Aeron’s journey; a disturbing, increasingly dire journey to save the woman he loves.
The story of Pandora’s Tower is filled with intrigue and that’s primarily what kept me going forward. I was really curious to learn more about this world and ultimately see what would happen next. Along the way, you learn more about The Scar and how it came into being, as well as learn the truth about the curse that Elena bears. While I found the overall story quite compelling…I really can’t say the same thing about the characters.
Elena is…nice, and I certainly came to feel for her plight, but I wouldn’t call her interesting. As far as this game’s dating sim elements go, that mostly just boils down to giving her gifts and talking to her a lot, which slowly (and I mean SLOWLY) raises her overall affection for you. Unlike most dating sims (at least with what little I know of the genre), there really is no “wooing” or dating; Elena and Aeron clearly have a history together and the game is really about showing how much they care for one another, not about going on dates and scoring a partner. Also…aren’t you normally given choices in a dating sim? Elena is all you get and if you’re not feeling her…well, talking to her becomes less about finding her interesting and more about trying to get the max affection and the best ending. I’m just saying, in any other dating sim Elena would be the Yamato Nadeshiko archetype that I’d ignore in favor of almost anyone else. Aeron himself is only a step away from being a blank slate, almost a completely silent protagonist. It’s a shame that the overarching story is quite interesting, but the characters, when viewed apart from that, are so dull.
Of course, this is also a much more meaty game than most dating sims, with perhaps slightly more than half of it being a blend of your typical action-adventure game and an action RPG. As Aeron explores the towers, he’ll encounter all kinds of monsters and puzzles. He begins the game with a simple sword, and later on he can gain a pair of daggers that boost his overall speed, at the expense of power, as well as a scythe that is the inverse of the daggers. Scattered throughout the towers Aeron can find various materials that can go towards upgrading his equipment and buying gifts for Elena. He can only equip so much at once though, utilizing a grid for anything he can have on hand. Combat is interesting, mostly restricted to hammering the one attack button and dodging incoming attacks. Holding the button down at various intervals and releasing with specific timing, however, grants special combo attacks. It takes some time to get used to this combat, but it ultimately felt good. As you level your weapons up you can extend your attacks as well, and it all has a good flow.
Aeron is also armed with one other weapon: the Orichalos Chain. Forged by Mavda and containing a strand of Elena’s hair, this is both a symbol of the love between Elena and Aeron, but also his most valuable tool in his journey. The chain works using the Wii Remote’s pointer control and all and all, it works very well. You aim your reticule at a given target and Aeron fires one part of the chain off like a grappling hook. This aids him in exploring the towers, as well as in combat.
Aeron can bind targets with the chain, rip weapons out of their hands and even link two enemies together with the chain, attacking one and having the chain transfer damage over to the other…somehow. The Orichalos Chain is also primarily how Aeron rips off pieces of Master flesh to give to Elena. Once he binds something with his chain, pulling back charges up a gauge and once that’s full, a quick flick of the Wii Remote results in a satisfying end to most battles, but of course enemies won’t make it easy. Overall, the chain’s sheer versatility stood out to me as yet another creative way to utilize the Wii’s motion sensing controller.
Traversing the towers reminded me of Zelda, and that’s not a bad thing. The towers all have a set theme, off of the Chinese elements. So, in addition to the standard water and fire and whatnot, there’s also wood and metal thrown in too. Of course, that’s only the half of it. The game has quite the motif of light and dark, and as such there are two towers for every element, with the “darker” version typically much more difficult. Some towers manage to feel fairly fresh, but a large portion of these later towers feel like retreads. If you didn’t quite enjoy one tower’s gimmick (like…THE WATER ONE?!), you likely won’t enjoy doing it a second time. Thankfully, the Masters you fight at the end of a given tower are always unique and a highlight of the game.
Now, as you explore the towers, you can’t just go at your own pace. From the moment Aeron leaves the makeshift home Elena and him stay for the bulk of their journey, the clock is ticking. Elena will slowly begin to turn back into a beast unless she is given flesh from the monsters you fight. While stronger monsters give better pieces of flesh to eat, they rarely fill more than half of the “clock” that signals Elena’s transformation. You simply NEED the Master flesh and are merely delaying the inevitable with anything else. The longer you hold off returning to Elena, the worse her transformation gets and it will begin to negatively impact her affection for you. For roughly half of that “clock,” Elena won’t begin to transform, but once you get past the halfway point…things aren’t pretty.
(That’s not even CLOSE to her full beast form BTW)
If you ever dilly-dally enough to have the clock nearly run out and THEN get back to Elena….let’s just say it’s a sight so gruesome I never wanted it to happen again. For the most part the game facilitates frequently leaving the towers to return back to Elena, and you’ll unlock shortcuts as you explore, so you’ll be back to where you left off without too much time lost Now, the game slowly ups the ante when it comes to getting to the Masters, as you’ll have to destroy chains that keep the door to the Masters shut, and those chains will become more numerous and more difficult to find in later towers. Still, I found I made decent progress in my treks and while I didn’t find having to break off my adventure constantly to be annoying, I do see how others could see it as a pain.
Aside from the main cast being somewhat dull to me, the only other real problems I have with the game are relatively minor. Your equipment can be damaged (but never broken) randomly when hit with strong attacks, and the effects of that equipment are then limited. You can pay to get it repaired, but it’s really not worth it. Honestly, this happens so often that I found the RPG mechanics lose a lot of use. Why go to the trouble with trying to bolster stats when you’ll inevitably have the equipment break? Half the towers being rehashes is a bit of a sore point, even if they’re all well put together. You’ve just seen it all before. There’s one last issue that seems to really only affect the North American version of the game. As the final two towers are unlocked, occasionally the game…will just crash if you try to get into them. There ARE ways to work around this, but it still becomes an annoyance right at the very end of the game.
While not flawless (and what game IS?!), Pandora’s Tower is a game I’m glad to have played and it greatly increases the quality of my library of Wii games. It took a LONG time to bring this title over to Europe and North America, but overall I’d say it was worth it. Maybe the dating sim elements weren’t quite as strong as they could be, and that progression blocking bug is bad, but it’s still a fine action game in its own right…and it’s usage of a whip in 3D could teach Castlevania a thing or two! We’re off to a good start with this Operation Rainfall Event, and next week we’ll take on a title with an interesting development team and even more interesting similarities to a revered RPG franchise. Join me next time when I take a look at The Last Story.
Traded in some of my old xbox games for some Nintendo swag. From left to right The Last Story, Xenoblade, and Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate for the Wii U. #xseed #operationrainfall #monsterhunter3g
