To say this theme is
god-like is an understatement...
Getting serious Nightwish vibes actually...I like Nightwish...
I guess the music is a good place to start...Music in video games is something that at least I find to be very important, as it helps to enhanced the player's experience...This soundtrack is definitely one of the best that I've heard, I do love the soundtrack for X as well (I can't really think if I like this one or X better at the moment as they both have something to offer) From what it seems the soundtrack for XC2 is being done by the same folks who composed the soundtrack for this game which can only mean good things of course...
I don't think I've ever played such a heavy game as this, the story by miles blows X out of the water and I can see why people were pretty disappointed with it what they got from X...But by any standard this game is on a whole different level, most games don't bother going all out with the story and usually leave way too many holes or unanswered questions, or the game gets spread out between a few games to accommodate while here I am playing this single cartridge game on a Nintendo handheld...It's really quite impressive when you really think about it...
The game quite literally kept taking sharp turns and corners as there was plot twist after plot twist, with so many you'd think the story would just simply fall apart with so much going on, BUT on the contrary you can see how well thought out it was as everything just fell into place almost perfectly...Some amazing elements of foreshadowing and subtle hints that suggest something much bigger is happening while you're being lead upon another simpler path...until the game just about opens wide and swallows you whole...
The overall world taking place within a pair of titans locked in eternal conflict, one biological and the other mechanical with life flourishing on either one, really is quite the interesting concept...As a result there was an abundance of some very interesting environments, such as the Eryth Sea, The Fallen Arm, and the Bionis Interior...Prison Island proved to be quite the interesting final area, appears to someplace with quite a bit of history as it appears to be much more than just a simple prison once upon a time...
Then we take a nice stroll through space, no big deal...WAIT A SEC ARE THESE REAL PLANETS!?!? WAS THAT EARTH!?!?
As the creature enthusiast that I am, there was definitely a plentiful amount for me to take interest in...From whimiscal Bunnivs and Tirkins, to literal Dinosaurs, to a GAWDAMM DRAGON!!! As well as the 'Dino-beasts,' the Telethia, their purpose in this game has me very curious about Telethia the End-bringer from XCX and what it's purpose is supposed to be in that game...
Of course there's also the races within the world were also quite interesting, the Nopon are just great of course, the mystical yet rather tragic High Entia, and the Machina are especially interesting as they are purely biomechanical beings...I'm also curious about this race of giants, as we see in Zanza's first form on Prison Island...
Gameplay, honestly was probably the weakest part of the game, mainly because it was rather unrefined in comparison to XCX...Movement is rather clunky and jumping is almost useless most of the time...Not to mention the camera was a battle all on it's own (that's mostly on the rubber nub that we get with the N3DS moreso than the game itself, I'm not sure how it handles on the Wii)...Visions while quite useful most of the time, were VERY annoying after a long while...especially in tougher battles where I'm in the middle of doing something the vision pops up and distrupts what I'm doing...and I noticed at times I'm trying to activate an Art or command and nothing happens...Sometimes I keep pressing the damn button and it finally activates after the fifth attempt or so, which gets really annoying especially if I don't noticed it hasn't activated...I also don't get the hit(?) boxes I'm trying to maneuver around an enemy and there's just this invisible wall in my way, which is especially baffling against large flying enemies...Heck I was battling one of the flying whale Telethias and the damn thing just straight up pushed me right off a ledge....oh, ok then
X definitely made some big improvements with a lot of the Gameplay, such as sprinting, and I also liked how you can target specific body parts of your enemies which can make taking them out somewhat easier...However I much prefer Chain Attacks instead of Overdrive (still haven't a clue what I'm doing with that most of the time)...
With that said, the real-time combat system that Xenoblade introduced is truly a unique one with it's Arts...
In conclusion I can confidently say now that the Xenoblade series is easily one of my favourites video game series, having already played X and just finishing Chronicles, I very much look forward to Xenoblade 2 when it comes out for the Switch (hopefully with minimal delays)....I look forward to what the future holds for this series!
1 million push-ups/10
would play again