Xenoblade Chronicles 3D: Hate at first sight

 

I'm royally pissed off right now. And also crestfallen. So that is the quality of the New 3ds exclusives? This is what I bought the system for? Naaah, okay: I'm exaggerating for the sake of drama. I bought a New 3ds as a backup system, not solely to play Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, and I certainly don't regret having bought that New 3ds. Xenoblade Chronicles, on the other hand... Jeez, I curse the instant I opened my wallet to purchase that game.

I've had instant love affairs with so many great games in the last years that I somehow forgot that the opposite could also happen. Yet Xenoblade Chronicles shoved that unpleasant reality in my face, and I hate it all the more for that. Not that there was a lot of room to squeeze more hate, mind you: I don't remember having ever loathed a game that much upon the first minutes of playing it. Right now, thinking of XC makes me feel nauseous. I kid you not.

Of course, I won't stop at saying that I hate that game's guts. I will elaborate and get the whole thing out of my chest, lest these bilious feelings fester inside my soul. Be off with them! Here's an exhaustive litany of all the things that aggravated, antagonized and infuriated me during my hour spent playing XC. (Yes, my hour. I couldn't stand more of it.)

—The sheer ugliness of the game offends my retinas. The fact that the graphics are blurry and look like a giant pixelated mash is already insulting enough, but that rampant ugliness is worsened by the total absence of any discernable aesthetics. XC is just your dreary, tedious, run-of-the-mill attempt at photorealism, with washed-out colours and blonky character models devoid of any charm. I like my games to showcase a modicum of graphic stylization, and XC sadly shows nothing else than a total lack of inspiration in that department.

—The little I've seen of XC is already way too messy and complicated for my taste and comfort. There are way too many actions to execute and data to keep track of in battles, way too many items, way too much of everything. I fought only a couple of battles and yet XC threw at me a mountain of items and just as many tutorials. Have you ever heard of that thing called learning curve, game? And let's not even talk about those useless hindrances such as needing to readjust the camera or to lock on an enemy before being able to fight them. Why can't I just stomp over them like in good ol' Dragon Quest IX, damnit? The worse part is that this overwhelming complexity seems to have been shoved into the game just for the sake of it. But just like throwing tons of yummy ingredients into a pot is not enough to make a delicious soup, throwing tons of gameplay elements into a game is not enough to make said game compelling. Far from ravishing or impressing me, this sprawling, milling mass of gameplay mechanics left me overwhelmed and nauseated.

—Likewise, the sheer scale of the game world is just too enormous for my taste. Since I've been playing on portable systems for most of my gaming life, I'm used to game worlds that are much more compact and somewhat easier to embrace and assess, and the scales at work in XC seriously disorient me. I'm also not too fond of having to cover such humongous distances just to go anywhere. It took me literally five minutes of running through grassy areas to rally the first town in the game, and that's five minutes I could have employed to do something much more interesting. As much as I enjoy taking a five-minute walk to the grocery store in real life, I really don't want to see this kind of experience emulated in a video game. And just like the overabundance of gameplay mechanics, the enormity of the game world seems to have been implemented just because, probably with the secret intention of flabbergasting players and reviewers alike. Wooo, look at our huge game world!! You've never seen something that big, have you? Well, bigger is not always better, especially when your big game world looks fugly. I'm definitely not impressed, game.

—The little I've seen of the story left me rolling my eyes and facepalming myself. Yeah, I know that the story of XC is widely said to be stellar; but honestly, I have a very hard time believing that a story starting with two guys bantering before single-handedly taking down an army of mechas with a super-powerful mythical sword will be anything else than a milling mass of J-RPG clichés and platitudes, no matter how many references to Nietzsche and Jung are thrown into the mix. Also, I hate stories that pit humans against mechas. And given that hardly anything happened in one hour except for a couple of vapid dialogues, I can also tell that the pacing of XC is much too sluggish for my taste. The mere idea of spending seventy or more hours playing that snooze fest makes me shudder with horror.

—Last but certainly not least, the battle system is a pathetic joke. I'm still seething when thinking of it, seriously. I started frothing at the mouth and spitting in disbelief when I realized that the cursed game was handholding and patronizing to the point of triggering hits without my input when I got close to enemies. Colour me outraged and appalled. How fun can it be to butcher foes if said butchering is not the direct result of my generous button-mashing? This is like the worst of two worlds put together in one fighting system, as you have to suffer both the hectic and somewhat taxing pace of real-time fighting and the lack of direct input of turn-based fighting. There are also way too many moves to choose from on the fly for my taste; I like my real-time fighting to be a simple and streamlined affair, not some kind of multi-tasking test. The constant babbling and interjecting of the characters during fighting made focusing even harder, and I wished I could just shut them off. I've read that this fighting system makes room for an amazing amount of strategizing, and maybe it does later on; but in these early stages, I just found it messy, scattered and totally unfulfilling.

I've painted a very bleak picture so far, and you may wonder if there was really nothing in that game that appealed to me. Well, there was actually something: I was very fond of the British voice acting. However, I'm not going to suffer that game solely for the pleasure of hearing British accents. I was half-thinking of watching a playthrough, but I'm not sure I want to waste 70 hours or more of my life doing that, especially since I could clear one or two better games instead. So I'll probably leave it at that and try to forget that bitter gaming failure. I've already started, in fact: I've been playing a brand-new game for a couple of hours, and said game is so excellent that XC is as good as lost in the sands of time. More on that soon! As for my pitiful experience with XC, it taught me at least one important thing: don't believe the hype! Just because 97% of players and reviewers praise a game doesn't automatically mean that I will like it. (Heck, the opposite has happened often enough!) And also: be wary of home console ports, especially the ones bragging about their huge open world. Bigger is not always better, indeed, and I'd rather stick with the small-scale cosiness of portable gaming worlds. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!

  

12 comments:

Sieg 24 September 2015 at 12:18

Xenoblade Chronicles: considered by many the best RPG to ever grace the world. Although, honestly, I thought it was a pretty overall "meh" and boring game. Either Wii owners inflated the game's quality or I (and you) am missing something here.
Even worse with this rushed and poor port of the Wii game. The game looks a lot better on the Wii, believe me, but that obviously doesn't save the game.

By the way, kind of unrelated but, since you've mentioned DQIX, did you play DQ V or VI on the DS? Which one you think it's better? I'm thinking about playing one classic turn-based RPG on my DS and DQ fills all requirements.

Isleif 24 September 2015 at 14:32

So I'm not the only one who was left unimpressed... That game is vastly overrated, if you ask me. Maybe we are indeed missing something, but maybe the Wii was so starved of RPGs that this one was welcome like the messiah. And if I remember well, open worlds in games were all the rage at the time, right?

Unfortunately, I yet have to play both DQ V and VI, so I won't be much help! Sorry! ^^

Sieg 24 September 2015 at 15:03

I think that's indeed the case. Xenoblade, The Last Story and Pandora's Tower were the only saving grace in terms of RPGs on the Wii. And even them (barring Pandora's Tower) were overall meh games. They're not bad but they're not good either. Xenoblade is probably the weakest from the bunch but for some reason it became an hit while the other were quickly forgotten.

Unfortunately, open-worlds are STILL the rage. People seem to prefer huge worlds devoid of noteworthy things instead of a compact world (as you said) with personality and being fun to explore. I guess people forget that being huge doesn't equal being fun or memorable or even good.

Oh, ok then. Thanks anyway though!

Isleif 24 September 2015 at 16:59

Indeed; I remembered Nintendo bragging zealously about the fact that the much-fabled new Zelda entry for the WiiU would have an open world. *sigh* I fervently hope that this trend will fade away before portable systems become able to accommodate open worlds without breaking a sweat!

 

Kumiko 24 September 2015 at 16:53

You're not alone, I've played this game on my Wii and couldn't get past the first 3 hours of it. It looks a lot better on the Wii, but the gameplay is just as messy as you describe. I personally think the only reason this game got so much praise because the Wii was so starved for RPGs. Although it's kind of unfair that Fragile Dreams, a much more beautiful and enjoyable game, did not get near as much praise.

And I hear you on the open world thing, I despise open worlds. Even more than I despise the endless corridors of FF13. At least in that scenario I know where to go and it doesn't feel like I'm wasting time (and you could actually find a fair amount of treasure). I hate feeling like I'm wasting my life exploring a huge map only to find nothing. It's even worse with western RPGs, because the goals can be vague at times and you get so many sidequests you don't even know what you should do and what you should skip. No Skryrim for me, nu-huh, I'd rather take any run-of-the-mill JRPG. Even good open world JRPGs like Dragon's Dogma, which has an absolutely amazing battle system, I cannot play. It's just too...overwhelming I guess.

And it's so sad that big, empty and bland open worlds are still all the rage. Even with non-linear games, I much prefer compact maps with lots of things that spawn in them, like Digimon World 1 and Digimon Re:Digitize. One more reason to love portable gaming all the more. Either the system cannot handle them very well, or, since many developers for the systems have a much lower budget than triple AAA games, they simply can't afford to implement it. And also because most of the games for these systems are of Japanese origin (hello beloved PS Vita) and it seems like open worlds are not the most popular thing there.

At least it makes people like me feel like they are not obligated to buy a New 3DS. If it's anything like the DSI it won't have many exclusives anyways, since other games cannot afford to lose a lot of the 3DS audience.

Isleif 24 September 2015 at 17:18

Honestly, if open worlds were to become the norm in portable gaming just like they have in home console and computer gaming, I would probably stop buying new systems and retreat into retro gaming entirely. I hope it will not come to this, though! It may be just a phase, like so many gaming trends before it.

I also think that there will only be a handful of exclusive New 3ds games, and I'd wager that they will be mostly Gamecube or Wii ports. I'm quite curious to see the next exclusive in line... If there is one, that is!

Kumiko 24 September 2015 at 18:03

Well, there will always be studios that will never be able to afford implementing open world, so I don't think new systems will be deplete of our favourite genres. Plus, retro is a fad too, thankfully. It's just going to be a little more prevalent with the bigger studios, and lots of tittles will most likely be ports of console and PC games.

Sieg 24 September 2015 at 17:15

The problem lies in implementing an open-world just because. There's no real reason other than "hey, it's cool! Open-worldness sells!". For instance, despite the XIII being full of corridors up until 80% of the game, there's was a reason for the that. It was a design choice to tell a story better (even though the pacing and writing was subpar).

Open-world offers only hours of "exploration" devoid of any worthwhile rewards. It just like Isleif said, of the 70 hours it takes to finish Xenoblade around one third of that time is walking around. I mean, sure it's nice to look at the landscape and whatnot but it gets old fast, specially if you only what to move on or clear some sidequests.

The New 3DS doesn't offer much and, like the DSi, Nintendo pretty much just wants to squeeze some money before launching the next portable. Xenoblade just happenned to be the best "bait" Nintendo had for the western market since no one in Japan cares about it.

Isleif 24 September 2015 at 17:29

The whole "open world" concept is just as boring as photorealism, if you ask me. I really don't see the point of trying to replicate reality in video games when you have the possibility of offering a totally different vision. If I want to gaze at beautiful landscapes, I will not pick up Xenoblade or any other open world game, but rather take a mountain trip. I want video games to show me stylized worlds, not a downgraded version of the world I already know.

Sieg 24 September 2015 at 17:39

"The whole "open world" concept is just as boring as photorealism"
This. So much this. You can be so creative with today's technology why bother replicating reality?
That's why I love "unrealistic", colorful and abstract-ish level and world design, like in NiGHTS into Dreams, Sonic, Folklore or Final Fantasy (some), among others.

Kumiko 24 September 2015 at 17:57

The thing is, photorealism doesn't have to be bad, it's just that game developers tend to lump photorealism with "brown and somber" and that's just not true. There's plenty of colour and beauty in the real world, but you just don't see it in games that often. It's like game developers have never seen a field of flowers, a tropical deciduous forest or even bright daylight for that matter.

Plus, having realistic graphics shouldn't mean having to give up some fantasy designs. FF15 looks photo realistic but it still kept the anime designs for the characters. Ultimately it's just another facet of laziness. "We give you photorealism, so we don't have to bother making anything interesting. We give you open world, so we don't actually have to bother filling it with anything worthwhile".

Isleif 24 September 2015 at 20:07

True, photorealism would be much more palatable if vivid colours were used more generously. Or if they were used at all!

To be honest, the little I've seen of FFXV creeps me out. That game is just way too photorealistic for my taste, while at the same time not being quite akin to reality... A case of uncanny valley, I guess. It doesn't really matter, since there is virtually no chance I'd play that game!