A New Take on RPG Design: A Xenoblade Chroncles analysis

XenoBlade Chroncles may be known as the game that almost didn't make it to the US. But it is also one of the best RPGs of the year thanks to its unique design.

Xenoblade Chronicles, the latest game from Monolith Soft has gotten a lot of press from last year. After its release in Japan and Europe, the game received high marks all around. When news got out that Nintendo wasn't planning on releasing it in the US, fan sites, game columns and petitions sprang up to get Nintendo to change their mind. Finally the game was released in the US in a limited run from both GameStop and Nintendo. Which leaves us with one question: Did it live up to the hype?

To make this analysis short... yes, yes it did. XenoBlade is not only a step in a new direction from standard JRPG design, but also from the usual story and character design. In many ways it feels like the designers took a long look at both JRPG and MMO design, saw what worked and what didn't and threw the rule book out.

Let's start with the story, the game takes place on top of two titans. A long time ago, these two titans were fighting a never ending battle for dominance, when they each landed a killing blow on the other at the same time. Many years after, life appeared on each titan, humanoid people on Bionis and robots called mechon on Mechonis. A war is going on between the two groups as the mechon invade and appear to consume the people of Bionis. The mechon are immune to all conventional weapons except for a magical sword called the Monado.

The main character in the game is Shulk, a boy who is researching the Monado after the last great battle between the two groups. When the mechon invade killing his best friend, he discovers that he's the one who can wield the sword effectively. While the game begins as a tale of revenge, the story grows as Shulk realizes that there is more to be done then just getting revenge for his friend's death. And the story continues from there with twists that I'm not going to spoil here.

The gameplay of Xenoblade in many ways feels like the next step up from Final Fantasy 12's design. Combat is entirely real time, as the player controls one member of their team while two other members provide backup. As in a MMO, enemies wander around the world either alone or in packs. Every party member has a basic auto attack and special moves called "arts", which are unique to each character.

For example Shulk has a lot of positional arts that do more damage or cause special effects if he is facing different parts of the enemy. You can only equip so many arts per character, forcing you to decide how to set everyone up.

To the game's credit, the party AI is smart about using arts. You won't have to worry about someone healing at the wrong time, or using a positional art at the wrong area. Advance maneuvers involve a three step way of knocking down enemies. First you have to inflict "break" status, then "topple" which stuns and finally "daze" that cancels any attacks the enemy has planned. Once again the AI knows to follow up each stat affect, with the correct one in the chain.

The big difference between Xenoblade and other RPGs is how so much of what could be considered "fluff" of the genre has been taken out. Your party automatically heals after every battle, even those that were knocked out; this also eliminates the need for recovery items. You can quick travel to any location once you've been there once along with landmarks within each area. Most quests auto-complete once you have met the conditions. While the game does feature a day/night cycle, players have control of the clock allowing them to easily switch between the two periods for exploring.

You can see at any time where you need to go for the main quest. One decision that is a god send is that any items from enemies that are required for quests can drop at anytime while fighting them. This means that you can effectively finish quests before you even found the quest giver. What makes this even better is how much content the designers put in to replace the filler portions of JRPG design.

Each area of the game has a relationship rating, which grows based on talking to named NPCS and completing quests there. Each time the rating goes up, new quests and items that can be acquired through trading are unlocked. This not only gives players a reason to explore cities, but also keeps areas from being just a onetime visit. Several areas also feature enemies way beyond the level range of the rest, allowing players to come back to fight them for new materials and gear.

Each character starts out with three skill trees unique to them. Completing battles earns skill points that will unlock the nodes on each tree. These skills provide a variety of buffs to the team mate, but that's not all for this mechanic. As party members fight together, their relationship with each other will grow, and teammates can share skills with other members. Each skill has a cost of affinity coins, forcing you to decide what skills should be shared, as you won't be able to give someone every skill available.

One other mechanic that players can delve into is gem crafting. After a story point, players can take crystals found off of resource points and enemy drops and refines them into gems. The gems themselves offer all kinds of bonuses, from resisting status affects to increasing damage. Said gems can be equipped to gear that has slots open. While this mechanic is more of a bonus for the main content, people looking at post game areas will find these gems to be invaluable.

Xenoblade Chronicles does a lot right, but it's not perfect and there are several annoyances that need to be mentioned. While the designers did much to cut down on filler content and clutter, there are a few areas that were missed that feel like oversights.

First is the UI itself. The player will have to go through multiple menus to accomplish basic tasks. To fully examine your team, there are three different menus the player must go into one at a time. First is the character menu for party formations and gear, then the skill menu for selecting skill trees and finally the arts screen for assigning and powering up arts. While the main quest is easy to follow, the designers did not work the same magic with side quests.

As mentioned, most quests auto complete once the player has fulfilled the conditions. However, quests involving named NPCs require the player to return and this is where the trouble starts. NPCs appear at specific areas of cities during a certain time of the day.

In order to find where the NPC is, first the player has to visit the quest menu and locate the correct quest that has the location closest to the NPC. Then the player has to visit the affinity chart which shows all the NPCs of each area, find the person on it to know when they are around. Finally they have to go there and try to find the person.

Not helping matters are that there is no way to distinguish quest givers on the affinity chart, requiring the player to go through the entire section to find the person, and if they forget the sometimes weird name, then it's back to step one. What makes this so much of an oversight is how important this is for getting the best gear and unlocking new skill trees. The player will never know what random quest chain could lead to the player unlocking new skills for a specific party member or a new weapon.

Another problem is the lack of a beastery or enemy record. There are a lot of items to be collected in the game, some from the areas themselves and some off of enemies. Many quests require items from specific enemies, however not every quest tells you what those enemies are or where they are located.

Compounding matters is that many enemies only appear at specific areas and times of the day. This makes Xenoblade a game that you cannot come back to in a few months and settle back into things. As I don't think it's possible to remember the locations and drops of every enemy in the game after that time has passed.

The last set of problems are more of a nitpick regarding the design itself. Xenoblade's combat leans more towards the MMO side of things compared to JRPG design and this could rub fans of the genre the wrong way. One example in particular is regarding level differences between the player and enemies. Like a MMO, the game color codes the enemy's status based on their threat level to the player. For example, blue means easy and red means not a chance. The larger the difference between the level, the larger the accuracy penalty is to the weaker group.

Realistically speaking, a player can fight an enemy up to five levels above their party. Anymore than that and the accuracy penalty against them can be too much to overcome. There are plenty of cases where the difference of one level can turn a fight from being impossible, to a cake walk. For fans that prefer tactics and skill to win the day, they may not like how much leveling is relied on.

Finally one area that I felt was underdeveloped was the concept of blocking enemy arts. As you play through the game, you'll eventually unlock the ability to receive warnings about enemy special attacks. However, the only defensive art that blocks attacks only blocks one kind of art and I had cases where it wasn't reliable. With all the characters available, I was hoping to see the defensive system expanded on, but it never grows beyond just the one special art.

These problems over the 100 + hours I spent playing Xenoblade Chronicles eventually are lost in the ether. Not only is Xenoblade Chronicles an amazing game for the Wii, but it's also an amazing RPG. The highest praise I can give it is that it definitely earns the title of "system seller". For RPG fans looking for a different take of the genre or just a really great game, Xenoblade Chronicles fits the bill. While the year is nowhere near finish, I can easily say that Xenoblade Chronicles has earned a spot on my "best of" list.

Josh Bycer

Reprinted from my blog: Mind's Eye