SubiyaCryolite said:
sc94597 said:
You say that as if the predecessor got "universal acclaim", it didn't. IGN UK(9/10) and Gamespot (8/10) called its story cliche and the side-quests boring at points. This Kotaku reviewer said that he shouldn't have trusted the internet hype with regards to Xenoblade Chronicles. Xenoblade Chronicles got its highest reviews from smaller sites like: "Quarter To Three", "Vandal Online", "Spazio Games", etc. I can see the same thing happening with Xenoblade Chronicles X. To expect a high number of 70's based off one Kotaku review and Amazon.JP reviews is ridiculous. We might as well start using Metacritic's user scores to tell us the quality of our games.
Any game that has a meta above 90 is listed as having "universal acclaim". That's what I'm referring to personally, scoring above 90 means a lot of 9.5s and 10s.
As for the story, that is the least part we can trust importers with. The Japanese gamers say the the story is fine, while the people who just import with very little knowledge of japanese are the ones describing how the story is worst. I've seen some major spoilers with regards to the story, and unless the execution is horrible (which seems odd considering how Famitsu's complaint was too many cutscenes) then I expect a high amount of story and a good story at that (considering the spoilers of plot twists.) If anything from what has been described by the developer and players its story is on the level of Xenosaga/Xenogears much more than Xenoblade's was. Which did, indeed, have execution problems, but also had more complex and more themes involved.
I don't think its fair to assume that every importer doesn't "get" the story just because its in Japanese. I'm sure some of them have to be fluent or at the very least good enough to watch anime without subs. Also, the main character has been described as being a husk or bystander in most cutcenes so that wont change in the English dub
All of the arguments presented in this thread against Xenoblade Chronicles X were also founde im by reviewers with regard to Xenoblade Chronicles, and despite that the game got high reviews.
Thats a fair and valid point but remember that was in 2011 and this is 2015. My original point was how will people react to this game in the current market and by current standards. For example, Far Cry 4 was "more of the same with a different setting and less character" and it scored lower as a result.
Your Amazon.JP argument is silly, because the site as a whole underrates games by a significant amount, the Japanese site especially.
They didnt underestimate the 1st Xenoblade and the UK store is pretty spot on actually
A linear 10 point drop on Amazon.JP won't directly translate to a 10 point drop in Western review scores.
Of course, but the main point of that was to show that so far its tracking behind its predecessor, 540 vs 490 votes. So either new features werent received positively or it simply doesnt hold the same appeal.
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You can't ignore the actual content of the review though, because that is what you are using for your argument. They gave the game some negatives, and still gave it scores in the 80's and 90's. The same probably will happen with Xenoblade X, especially since it is a much more hyped game and reviewers tend to inflate their review scores based on hype.
Well I found with this reviewer in particular that he didn't even finish the main story (he says so) before writing his review. Every Xeno game's story comes together into a package at the end, so that is a big no-no. But Tachikoma, a native Japanese speaker, did give this critique with regards to import reviews earlier. She said that it seems as if they are using google-translate or have poor Japanese skills in their reviews. When you say main character, you are referring to Elma, correct? From what I gather, the story of this game is much less about her even. A major event happens to a side-character and a revelation is made about the world of Mira and the humans in NLA. The story is about Mira and its inhabitants as a whole.
Yet when the game re-released on 3DS it got an 86 metacritic, despite the 3DS version being worse technically. So we do know how people will react to the game today. A little bit less enthusiastically than they did in 2011, but still considerably well. With a new experience, unless something is worse (which nothing seems to be) I can't see them giving a score less than Xenoblade 3D.
They did underate it, even if slightly - probably because it was a niche game at the time, the equivalent Amazon. JP score is 88%. The game scored a 92% on GameRankings and Metacritic. Similarly, The Witcher 3 has an average review score equivalent to 83% on Amazon.JP and in the West its score is a 93%. Xenoblade Chronicles 3D has an average score on Amazon.JP equivalent to 79% and in the West it has an average of 86%. So how much of a change the 73% makes is really hard to predict. Japanese audiences and Western audiences are truly diferent in their tastes, and it is obvious that this game is trying to entice western audiences.
Or it is just not the entirely new experience that Xenoblade Chronicles was. I expect there to be a drop, but not a ten point drop. Somewhere between 85% and 90 %. Western reviewers will probably be much more receptive to the changes, such as the open-world story pacing (side quests -> main event -> side quests -> main event and the mixture of quest types (from the sounds of it the side-quests have been improved over XBC) and the online component.
