I first learned of Xenoblade Chronicles back when a youtuber I love, Chuggaaconroy, played it for his channel years ago. Then in 2018, I finally got to play it, for the New 3DS. But that was 5 years ago, and I'm literally an entirely different person than I was back then. And especially since I played through all of Xenosaga, and I have both Xenoblade 2 and 3, I thought It'd be a good idea to replay through this game proper. And god, this game is still as good as I remember it being. This time I chose to play the Wii version, just out of personal preference.
The story is absolutely amazing. It might not be my favorite Xeno story, but like. It's easily one of the best. I don't like spoiling things about games in my media thread posts, and Xenoblade Chronicles is one of those games where a lot of what I love about the story is spoilers, so I'll keep quiet on it. But the themes and ideas conveyed are really good. I also love the character writing and dynamics shown off here. I may regret saying these words here, but no Xeno game so far has had bad character writing. I also have to praise the voice acting the game has. The voices really put so much life into these characters, and there's so much raw emotion behind them too. It's outstanding.
The combat is also really damn good. Going back to this game after finishing the Xenosaga Trilogy, it's a bit weird to believe that this spawned from a turn-based rpg. But I really love Xenoblade's combat. I don't entirely know how to describe it, but all of these systems and mechanics that I have to keep focus on, it's really fun. It keeps me focused, and in harder battles, it makes them tense and really thrilling. And how much customization there is, I absolutely love it.
I had a couple hiccups here and there. One specific boss, some late game grinding, but those are but a microcosm of the amount of content this game holds. In fact, I feel like I only really played a small portion of what this game actually has, so many things I just sorta ignored, and I do kinda feel bad about that. But even then, I love Xenoblade Chronicles, it is a masterpiece of an RPG.
