XCX was definitely a love-hate thing for me. Unlike some of the above commenters, I found the story seriously lacking, and in particular playing an avatar who never says a thing during cut scenes but won't shut up during battle was a huge step down from playing as Shulk/Reyn/Riki/etc. in the first Xenoblade. And while it's huge relative to most other games, these five "continents" put together add up to about the real-life size of Martha's Vineyard, a small island off the coast of Massachusetts that I used to circumnavigate on a bicycle in a single day and get back in time for the last ferry home. "Continents", in this case, is a pretty bald marketing-ism to me rather than an accurate description of those five little islands.
Then there's the play style. Love the Skells, but really hate that my reward for building party tension is now to speed things up with Overdrive (which I found all but useless in Skells, okay on foot) rather than executing a turn-based chain attack with enemies not getting a turn. Between that and Fallout 4's vanilla VATS no longer working as a pause screen, my wife and I were really lamenting the death of carefully thought-out strategic moments amid the fog of war. (FO4 is her game, and since she's a member of the PCMR, she's since modded VATS to be proper again. No such luck for me in the foreseeable future, I guess.)
Oh yeah, and I'll take British voice actors over American ones every single time, and if that weren't enough, hearing Clara from Doctor Who every time Melia showed up in the first one made it impossible for XCX's actors to live up to that experience. Sorry, Treehouse crew. (At least I got my Adam Howden fix in battle.)
Yet I probably put in 300-400 hours into Xenoblade, while my playtime on XCX registers north of 4,000 hours. A lot of that was me leaving the Wii U on overnight either out of forgetfulness or deliberate miranium/gold farming, but even so, there's no doubt I spent much more than 400 hours on Mira. Part of it is due to the "multiplayer where you never have to talk to other players" mode that it sticks you with by default; I loathe multiplayer games, but being able to do online missions with my own party to farm rare materials (and contribute to my division's likelihood of getting a daily Skell salvage ticket) was too tempting to ignore. I even ended up buying a replacement Wii U gamepad on ebay when the wireless on my original one died, such was my XCX addiction.
I finally left Mira behind in early October, with 99.87% map completion. I was going for 100%, but no matter how I tricked myself out, I couldn't kill Telethia the Endbringer before it wiped my party and sent me back home to salvage our Skells. The urge to return there has already returned, but nowhere near as strong as the urge to revisit Bionis (I'd just finished my third Xenoblade playthrough, on the New 3DS after playing it previously on the Wii and then Dolphin, before XCX's release). But I'm still frustrated at not hitting 100%, and there were unplayed Zelda games to get through before the Switch comes out, so I switched things up with Guacamelee: STCE and am now halfway through A Link Between Worlds.
Long story short, XCX was more addictive and was certainly worth whatever I paid for my collector's edition preorder, but XC was far more enjoyable for me.
I look forward to the Monolith touch on Zelda: BOTW, already apparent from some of the crafting stuff I could see in the trailers released so far. But if they were going to continue a Xeno story for the first time, I'd rather it be Shulk and Fiora's than that of an unnamed protagonist and a seemingly sentient planet without a lot to say.
Finally someone in the press mentions this. I was devastated the first weekend I played it, getting an eyestrain headache almost immediately and having to give up after a couple hours before trying again the next day on the gamepad. The lack of sound controls is frustrating too, but I can't think of any Nintendo game that lets you turn down the music. I mainly play it muted for that reason, especially in NLA where I have my "choice" of imitation hair metal during the day and imitation alt-hip-hop at night. And the tracks with vocals, especially during battles... ugh.
On the bright side, now my wife can play Fallout 4 (which has surprisingly enormous text, almost as though they actually tested it on TV/couch setups) on the 46" TV while I play XCX on the gamepad right next to her. But I would have loved to actually play this game in HD. (Sitting closer isn't an option. Our couch is 9 feet away from the screen and the TV is placed such that even sitting on the floor right in front of it like we did in the '80s would be uncomfortable for someone a third of our age, never mind our arthritic bodies.)
I assume that Monolith Soft, and most reviewers, playtested this on large computer monitors a foot or two away from their eyes, but it stuns me that Nintendo never got any pushback about it during QA. Unfortunately, NoA seems like they're not really into doing the right thing anymore, so I guess the first time I'll be able to really see this game in all its glory is when the cemu guys get it going someday and someone comes up with a bigger text (or better font) mod.
The game is amazing even in 480p on a 6" screen, though. I've started over twice and am still 16 hours into my current playthrough. Just wish I could play it as intended.
thewiirocks: That's awesome, I made a Ballblazer demo myself about 10 years ago (referenced earlier in the thread) but it's great to see someone has surpassed it.
AdamTierneyWF: I really liked the concept of FadeOut but never got around to playing it when it was being discussed on [stella]. I'll have to pick up the final product and give it a try. Good to know that the concept evolved into what seems to be a great modern game, because so few 2600 concepts made it that far.
As someone who's done a good bit of 2600 programming and was active on the Stella mailing list (but doesn't have time to visit a web forum like AtariAge regularly), it's nice to see coders for modern systems trying to at least replicate the look of a 2600 game.... but there are at least three things in that screenshot that would not be possible on the VCS, mainly the number of color changes of the playfield.
Also, I found it a little insulting when wiiware-world informed me that my email domain doesn't exist when I went to sign up just now, since I get about 1100 emails a day to the address I gave. I had to use my fallback Yahoo account, which I check once every 6 to 8 weeks. You guys need better DNS or something.
Comments 4
Re: Feature: Xenoblade Chronicles X - One Year Later
XCX was definitely a love-hate thing for me. Unlike some of the above commenters, I found the story seriously lacking, and in particular playing an avatar who never says a thing during cut scenes but won't shut up during battle was a huge step down from playing as Shulk/Reyn/Riki/etc. in the first Xenoblade. And while it's huge relative to most other games, these five "continents" put together add up to about the real-life size of Martha's Vineyard, a small island off the coast of Massachusetts that I used to circumnavigate on a bicycle in a single day and get back in time for the last ferry home. "Continents", in this case, is a pretty bald marketing-ism to me rather than an accurate description of those five little islands.
Then there's the play style. Love the Skells, but really hate that my reward for building party tension is now to speed things up with Overdrive (which I found all but useless in Skells, okay on foot) rather than executing a turn-based chain attack with enemies not getting a turn. Between that and Fallout 4's vanilla VATS no longer working as a pause screen, my wife and I were really lamenting the death of carefully thought-out strategic moments amid the fog of war. (FO4 is her game, and since she's a member of the PCMR, she's since modded VATS to be proper again. No such luck for me in the foreseeable future, I guess.)
Oh yeah, and I'll take British voice actors over American ones every single time, and if that weren't enough, hearing Clara from Doctor Who every time Melia showed up in the first one made it impossible for XCX's actors to live up to that experience. Sorry, Treehouse crew. (At least I got my Adam Howden fix in battle.)
Yet I probably put in 300-400 hours into Xenoblade, while my playtime on XCX registers north of 4,000 hours. A lot of that was me leaving the Wii U on overnight either out of forgetfulness or deliberate miranium/gold farming, but even so, there's no doubt I spent much more than 400 hours on Mira. Part of it is due to the "multiplayer where you never have to talk to other players" mode that it sticks you with by default; I loathe multiplayer games, but being able to do online missions with my own party to farm rare materials (and contribute to my division's likelihood of getting a daily Skell salvage ticket) was too tempting to ignore. I even ended up buying a replacement Wii U gamepad on ebay when the wireless on my original one died, such was my XCX addiction.
I finally left Mira behind in early October, with 99.87% map completion. I was going for 100%, but no matter how I tricked myself out, I couldn't kill Telethia the Endbringer before it wiped my party and sent me back home to salvage our Skells. The urge to return there has already returned, but nowhere near as strong as the urge to revisit Bionis (I'd just finished my third Xenoblade playthrough, on the New 3DS after playing it previously on the Wii and then Dolphin, before XCX's release). But I'm still frustrated at not hitting 100%, and there were unplayed Zelda games to get through before the Switch comes out, so I switched things up with Guacamelee: STCE and am now halfway through A Link Between Worlds.
Long story short, XCX was more addictive and was certainly worth whatever I paid for my collector's edition preorder, but XC was far more enjoyable for me.
I look forward to the Monolith touch on Zelda: BOTW, already apparent from some of the crafting stuff I could see in the trailers released so far. But if they were going to continue a Xeno story for the first time, I'd rather it be Shulk and Fiora's than that of an unnamed protagonist and a seemingly sentient planet without a lot to say.
Re: Editorial: Xenoblade Chronicles X Has Tiny Text - Time for an Update?
Finally someone in the press mentions this. I was devastated the first weekend I played it, getting an eyestrain headache almost immediately and having to give up after a couple hours before trying again the next day on the gamepad. The lack of sound controls is frustrating too, but I can't think of any Nintendo game that lets you turn down the music. I mainly play it muted for that reason, especially in NLA where I have my "choice" of imitation hair metal during the day and imitation alt-hip-hop at night. And the tracks with vocals, especially during battles... ugh.
On the bright side, now my wife can play Fallout 4 (which has surprisingly enormous text, almost as though they actually tested it on TV/couch setups) on the 46" TV while I play XCX on the gamepad right next to her. But I would have loved to actually play this game in HD. (Sitting closer isn't an option. Our couch is 9 feet away from the screen and the TV is placed such that even sitting on the floor right in front of it like we did in the '80s would be uncomfortable for someone a third of our age, never mind our arthritic bodies.)
I assume that Monolith Soft, and most reviewers, playtested this on large computer monitors a foot or two away from their eyes, but it stuns me that Nintendo never got any pushback about it during QA. Unfortunately, NoA seems like they're not really into doing the right thing anymore, so I guess the first time I'll be able to really see this game in all its glory is when the cemu guys get it going someday and someone comes up with a bigger text (or better font) mod.
The game is amazing even in 480p on a 6" screen, though. I've started over twice and am still 16 hours into my current playthrough. Just wish I could play it as intended.
Re: Atari 2600 Version of LIT?
thewiirocks: That's awesome, I made a Ballblazer demo myself about 10 years ago (referenced earlier in the thread) but it's great to see someone has surpassed it.
AdamTierneyWF: I really liked the concept of FadeOut but never got around to playing it when it was being discussed on [stella]. I'll have to pick up the final product and give it a try. Good to know that the concept evolved into what seems to be a great modern game, because so few 2600 concepts made it that far.
Re: Atari 2600 Version of LIT?
As someone who's done a good bit of 2600 programming and was active on the Stella mailing list (but doesn't have time to visit a web forum like AtariAge regularly), it's nice to see coders for modern systems trying to at least replicate the look of a 2600 game.... but there are at least three things in that screenshot that would not be possible on the VCS, mainly the number of color changes of the playfield.
Also, I found it a little insulting when wiiware-world informed me that my email domain doesn't exist when I went to sign up just now, since I get about 1100 emails a day to the address I gave. I had to use my fallback Yahoo account, which I check once every 6 to 8 weeks. You guys need better DNS or something.