I had originally ignored Xenoblade Chronicles when it came out over a decade ago on the Nintendo Wii. It was Pyra and Mythra on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate that gave me any motivation to start the series. But they actually starred in the second game, as Shulk is the star of the original. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to boot up the old Nintendo Wii to play it. Nintendo released an enhanced port with extra stuff on it for the Nintendo Switch.
Like many JRPGs, Xenoblade Chronicles is set in a grim world of death and destruction. Evil robots cause massacres all over the place, and apparently the only thing that can stop them is this funny sword called the Monado.
Your main protagonist is Shulk but you also have other characters that will join your party. The first two are his childhood friends and then you get new and powerful allies to join your party as the story progresses.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the story. Some of the characters are very likable, and there are moments that feel like an interesting Japanese anime. But for the most part, I was relatively bored by what was going on.
The battle system isn’t a turn-based classic JRPG like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest. Instead it’s an action RPG where your two allies mostly battle via CPU and you tell your main character what to do with commands that happen somewhat in order.
The battle system is simple at first but it gets pretty darn complicated later. What gets most complicated is against the terrible robot enemies and these weird spirit things.
The boss battles aren’t as tough as I expected. There was only one and that was actually near the beginning that made me want to tear my hair out, because they wanted to force me to use the special moves that are too complicated and too stupid for their own good.
Though I titled the blog post Things I Hate, I don’t actually hate Xenoblade Chronicles, I was just disappointed by it. I’ve actually never liked any of the Final Fantasy games and like the Final Fantasy games, I got about maybe halfway through but I was so bored overall that I couldn’t bother to finish the whole thing. Which bums me out because I really wanted to play the second game, and I don’t expect to have a different experience with it, especially as it fetches a high price online.
Neko Random 