XENOBLADE
CHRONICLES
MONOLITHSOFT'S LATEST BRAINCHILD HAS BEEN
EXCITING WII U FANS FOR A COUPLE OF YEARS NOW
- BUT DOES IT LIVE UP TO THE HYPE THE FIRST GAME
INSPIRED?
I
t's not often a game
generates enough hype
to create its own social
movement around. But
Operation Rainfall, the
2011 campaign for Nintendo to release the original Xenoblade Chronicles (alongside The Last
Story and Pandora's
28
Tower) in the NTSC regions can't be said to be
anything but impressive.
The original game in
this sci-fi RPG series officially has nothing to do
with this sequel, but there
are links to be found.
Both feature insanely expansive worlds, for example, and a semi-turn
based battle system most
reminiscent of that found
in Final Fantasy XII.
Unfortunately,
they
both suffer from a com-
XENOBLADE
CHRONICLES X
Developer: Monolithsoft
Publisher: Nintendo
Price: £38 (Amazon)
Platform: Wii U
mon problem, and it's
related to the size of the
world. Don't misunderstand - the scope of both
games is genuinely incredible and Xenoblade
Chronicles X really pushes the Wii U to its limits
in what the system can
achieve. Visually, the environment design could
belong to a PS4 or Xbox
One game with ease.
But in making it so
big in scale, they've
stretched a pretty meagre amount of content
almost to breaking point.
Even when travelling in a
Skell - the game's Gundam-esque exoskeletons
- the distance can pass
for minutes with nothing to hold interest other
than indentikit random
encounters.
To see the open world
sandbox idea done really well, look at one of
the recent Fallout games,
or Just Cause 2. They
both had big, beautiful
worlds, but realised in a
way Xenoblade doesn't
that a big beautiful world
won't engage for long if
it feels li