| Hynad said:
What it does, is takes many things that worked well and were greatly appreciated in other games of its genre and bring them all together in an extremely well crafted package. |
I think the difference here is how you and I define "reinvented." I don't define it as, "doing something entirely new." That is reserved for the word "invented" without the prefix "re." And that would mean Xenoblade would have created a new sub-genre/genre. I use the term "reinvented" as "to take something done priorly and change it so much that it seems new." (1) Xenoblade did that with its open-world gameplay. The games you mentioned went about their semi-open worlds differently from how Xenoblade had. Their worlds were segmented and seamed. Xenoblade's was much less segmented and seamed, or at least apparently it wasn't. If somebody says, I like Xenoblade what is another game like it? I can't honestly tell them that there is a JRPG like it. It is unique in its vastness and detail. No JRPG had as an entensive and detailed 1:1 (mono scale) world as Xenoblade's. Hence, it did something new within the JRPG genre in that its world was a seamless package. This has now become a standard for JRPG's.
And before you mention my extreme bias for Xenoblade again, I just want to say that Xenoblade isn't even in my top five JRPG's (although it might be in my top ten.)
(1) Meriam-Webster definitions of reinvent.
1: to make as if for the first time something already invented <reinvent the wheel>
