Xenoblade Chronicles 3D is a port of the Wii version exclusively for the New Nintendo 3DS. It is only playable on the New Nintendo 3DS since it requires the extra power to run the game and even then, it has some compromises. The most noticeable thing right away is the terrible resolution. The cutscenes look fine but during battles or just exploring the environments where there's a lot of detail, especially in towns, it looks fuzzy and there are jagged edges everywhere. You can't see the details of character models and sometimes even the menu text can be hard to read. You get used to it though and the sheer scale of the environments will astound you. Xenoblade Chronicles is a JRPG but it does away with a lot of the traditional aspects of the genre. For one thing, environments are absolutely huge and enemies roam the environment.
The environments are so large that it seems such a waste that the story only takes place on a tiny portion of each map. You're left (and encouraged) to spend hours reaching the furthest corners of each map, searching for secrets and seeing all there is to see. What's good is that most enemies in the first half of the game don't actively search the party out to attack; they will leave you alone unless you want to engage. Interestingly, right from the beginning of the game, powerful monsters who are more than ten times your current level will be casually walking around. You will need to come back at a later time when you're much stronger in order to even hope of defeating these high levelled monsters, and every time you pass them, you hope to yourself that they don't notice you...
The other awesome thing is that chances are if you see something in the distance such as a faraway cliff, you can reach it. The draw distance is extremely impressive and it really amazes you how they managed to fit a game of such scope into the 3DS. Fast travel is instantly unlocked which is a boon considering how big the maps are. The freedom that the game offers you by allowing you to go back to previous environments instantly and scour the rest of the secrets cannot be understated. The battle system is interesting and while it may seem passive at first, it will become engaging and battles will involve the player frantically being aware of what's happening and deal with it accordingly. Xenoblade Chronicles has a three character party and you will only control one, with AI controlling the other two.
The characters auto-attack, the player's input is which skills to use, and when to use them. These skills can be healing abilities, special attacks, buffs or debuffs. Using a skill will cause it to enter cooldown where it is not usable for a certain amount of time. During the battle, you will also move your character around to position them best, such as behind an enemy and then unleashing a skill which does extra damage from behind. One of the most unique aspects of the battle system is that the main character, Shulk, can see into the future. During a battle, the screen will transition to show you the special attack an enemy is going to use which normally means it'll do huge damage or KO one of your characters. It gives you time via a countdown ranging from 4 seconds to 12 seconds to try and preempt the attack.
The fact that the future-seeing ability is wrapped into the battle system ties in nicely to the story element although it breaks the flow of the battle when you're suddenly thrown into the cutscene in the midst of an intense battle. It does get even more annoying during the later parts of the game when you're battling high levelled enemies and these cutscenes just keep popping up. Due to the smaller screen, it can be hard to tell what's happening on screen. You characters' status and HP bars are on the bottom screen which makes it easier to neglect and not realize how low on health you are int he head of a battle. Also when a lot of enemies crowd around you, it gets confusing on where your target is since enemies' HP bars cover up the whole screen.
Other than the characters' status information and the mini-map, the game doesn't use the second screen for anything else, not even touch controls, which is fine since it was never developed natively for the 3DS anyway. Despite the low resolution and smaller screens, the game runs wonderfully well, and the only glitches on the latest patch are the rare loss of dialogue and music. The glitch is annoying but at least you can save anywhere and reload the game to solve the problem. Each character is fairly unique in their abilities which allows for different play styles with your party. You can opt for a powerhouse focusing on high power with no healers to get through enemies before they can hurt you too much, or play it safe with a healer, attacker and tank but with the downside of battles dragging on longer.
Thankfully, any characters not in your party still get a decent amount of experience points so they never fall behind in terms of levels, and you can always switch your party strategy at any time with no downsides. Characters level up through finding new areas, obtaining Achievements and of course, defeating monsters. Experience points are scaled down when your level is much higher than enemies though so grinding is never that efficient unless you keep moving forward. You can purchase equipment for your characters and their appearances change in accordance with what gear they are currently equipped with. You can craft gems and attack them to equipment to give more stat boosts and allowing them even more versatility with those characters. There is a day/night cycle which can seem unnecessary but it does change how the environments look.
Furthermore, between the day and night, the types of enemies may also change, with some fields having more dangerous monsters prowling around during the night which makes the map feel different between the two times. In towns, different NPCs will turn up at different times of the day. The NPCs are the ones providing the characters with quests, and Xenoblade Chronicles has no shortage of quests for your to complete. It is not expected for the player to complete them all, most of them are fetch quests and the game is designed to allow you to complete whichever quests you want. You don't need to return to the NPCs to complete the quests, it's automatically completed once your fulfil the conditions.
Xenoblade Chronicles takes place in a world with an endless sea and a boundless sky. It begins depicting how amongst this nothingness two titanic gods, called Bionis and Mechonis are fighting each other. As they fatally damage each other, they stay deadlocked in their final poses and life springs up upon their bodies. Then it skips to the war between the inhabitants of the Mechonis against the Bionis. The Mechons want to kill every life on the Bionis. We are soon introduced to the main character Shulk, along with his childhood friends, Fiora, Reyn and Dunban. The story starts off being predictable enough but soon there'll be a few twists. There is a massive story twist mid-game but it is kind of ruined by a lot of foreshadowing. Nevertheless, Shulk ends up travelling through the Bionis to stop the Mechons from slaughtering everyone.
The story gives reason for epic boss battles and cutscenes. Although there are the occasional boring boss battles or cutscenes, still, when it works, the atmosphere and adrenaline is fantastic. The music helps immensely in getting the player into the spirit of things, as some of the battle tracks really get you going and enjoying the flow of the battle or making a lot of the scenes heart wrenching. As great as the story is and the gameplay, Xenoblade Chronicles may seem to drag on towards the end but the game is so epic in scope and is so fun to play that you don't want it to end anyway. The final boss though can be a bith cheap with their summoning of additional enemies and frequent powerful attacks. Considering that towards the last part of the game, enemies quickly out-level you unless you stay in an area and grind for a while, it's annoying and frustrating if you are not close to Level 80 (Level 76 is the minimum level required and even then, you will struggle a lot).
It's very frustrating when the final boss just triumphs over you for not good reason at the end of the game and it doesn't help that you pass the point of no return and cannot grind efficiently unless you reload a previous save. Once you do defeat the final boss, the ending was a massive surprise. It wraps up all of the loose ends and packs an emotional punch (although the rest of the game does as well to be fair). Considering the amount of cutscenes the game has, the ending/epilogue felt surprisingly short. Maybe after playing all these hours, you can't believe you have finally reached the end and you don't want to say goodbye to the characters just yet. The amazing music during the last scenes manages to give you even more feels.
On the whole, Xenoblade Chronicles will take around 55 to 60 hours to finish, highly dependent on if you do some level grinding, sidequests and the amount of exploration. The New Game Plus option lets you carry over certain things including your level which will make the game a breeze, allowing you to enjoy the story again without the stress of levelling up. If not, you can reload your last save (hopefully you made one before the point of no return) and continue fighting superbosses and maxing your characters' levels. Overall, Xenoblade chronicles 3D is a huge technical achievement and is one of the best JRPG and one of the best game ever made. It is so much fun and naturally sucks you in with the unique premise, engaging story, engrossing music, huge expansive environments that you can explore at your leisure and fun combat.
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