| bigtakilla said: Disagree with the review score a little, lol. Xenoblade Chronicles 10/10. There is nothing they could have done to make it any better on the Wii. |
I disagree, there are some things they could have done better that have nothing to do with hardware limitations.
However, if I was using a ten-point scale I would give the game a 10. On a 20-point scale I'd give it a 9.5.
Probably my biggest issue with the game is its weak boss battles. Most of them are very by-the-numbers. Only a few bosses introduce new or unique strategies to the battle system. Xenoblade's battle mechanics are great, but it's used extremely frequently, so it would have been great to shake up the structure a bit more. And there are way, way too many boss fights that you don't get to see through to completion. Even if I'm not going to 'kill' this boss character right now, it would feel much more satisfying to deplete his health to zero than for the fight to end once it gets down to 70%. That works a few times, but when they keep doing it over and over, it gets dull.
As it is, most of the boss fights are just regular fights against stronger opponents, and isn't that what unique monsters are for? This probably wouldn't stand out to me so much if the game didn't have a few freaking awesome boss fights like the first fight against Jade Face on the bridge, and the fight against Yaldabaoth in the Core.
In particular, the final act of the game (starting after the latter boss fight I mentioned above) brings nothing new. All through the game, they keep giving you new party members, arts, and abilities to deal with the stronger enemies which get progressively more complex -- for instance, shortly after the tutorial boss that teaches you the break/topple/daze combo, they start introducing enemies that are immune to break or topple. A while after that, you get access to party members and arts that can force enemies into a topple or daze state, bypassing the prerequisite status ailments for those conditions. Most of the game builds upon this arms race between the player's party and the enemies you fight, but the last several hours just... drop it. You gain access to some new skill trees, but most of them require fighting enemies much stronger than the final boss to unlock (not to mention the SP grind necessary to actually activate them), so you'll most likely have beaten the game long before you can use them, and all they do is make you more powerful. That doesn't add much strategy to your battles at all, because the enemies don't get any new toys to play with to counter your buffs. They just get bigger numbers.
It's just the difference between a 9.5 and a 10 to me.
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