Figured this would be a good place to ask, has anyone played Xenoblade Chronicles? They just released the Definitive Edition that’s getting some rave reviews. I like open world, I like mechs, but I don’t know much outside of that about this game.
Anyone play it or the original and can give some thoughts?
I really liked Chronicles X. It's very different from all the other Xenoblade games, as it's tied to earth/our future, and it's more sci-fi than sci-fi fantasy.
The set up for X is my fav of the bunch, as it has earth being attacked/decimated, and various cities send out ark ships that become cities once it finds a habitable planet. The one in the game's focus is called New L.A.
I don't know if you played any of the Xenoblade games, but Monolith Soft are technical wizards with the scale of the worlds they create without loading screens, namely on underpowered Nintendo systems. Apparently they made this look and run better while cutting the file size in half. I'd like to see what they could do with some serious horsepower.
The main story (slow burn) and the party members quests are good to excellent, but a lot of quests you're forced to do can be pretty meh. They are as MMO-ish as the gameplay can be. I hear they added timed inputs into the combat here, so that should make it more engaging. I don't recall it having that in the original X release.
As impressive as the scale of the world and enemy sizes are, the catch is that there's not a lot going on in it outside the impressive city (impressive at the time). This has been the case in all Xenoblade games, as none of them have many loading screens.
There's still lots of secrets to find and exploration is really fun/fluid. Your speed is decent and you can leap pretty far and from great heights. Eventually you get some mechs that let you fly around. The game really starts to pick up at that point.
I was looking at some reviews and it holds a steady 30 FPS. Like Xenoblade Chronicles (first game) on the WiiU, X was a jaggy mess and the character model faces were a bit rough, but better than the OG. They improved both aspects for the OG with the Switch release. While it looks like X improved everything as well, the character models didn't get a makeover here.
What sets this apart from the other Xeno games, is that we get to create out character and customize the home base. it also evolves as we progress through the story. It's also less narrative focused. That's a good and bad thing. You'll rarely have gameplay interrupted by long stretches of cut scenes, which also makes the story less engaging.