Jumpin said:
I disagree with Xenoblade having anything on any of the other games. There wasn't a good balance between story and gameplay, as neither were particularly good in Xenoblade compared to the prior games. First and foremost, Xenoblade was weak on story compared to all other games in the Xeno franchise. It was a huge decline from Xenosaga, and no where near the level of Xenogears excellence. Story is the most important element in RPGs, especially in the Xeno games, where they were known for being the best of the best when it came to story. But you don't need to compromise on gameplay to have a great story, Xenogears did both fantastically, much better than Xenoblade. gameplaywise, the world of Xenoblade was oversized for what there was to actually do in it. The difficulty balance was also wonky, and so you have to grind or do boring side-fetch-quests starting at around Colony 6 mines, and you had to navigate that oversized world, even with warping it was annoying and time consuming. So I disagree that the pacing was any better than most of the other games. Xenosaga episode 2, 3, and Xenogears all had much better pacing (and that includes disk 2). Xenosaga 1 is the only one that really had worse pacing as it didn't integrate story and interaction very well, and many of the locations were needlessly oversized and took too long to navigate, much like Xenoblade. Due to the grinding and boring side quests of Xenoblade, I didn't find the gameplay to be in any way superior to the other games. It had a neat battle system, which is superior to other similar games, but spamming abilities while running around enemies gets monotonous after a time, for me it was around Makna Forest that I tired of it. The slicker battle systems of all the other games were better. Even at their worst, at least I don't have to worry about always having to run around to the backs and sides of enemies while trying to set up topples EVERY SINGLE TIME. That said, it's still better than other recent RPGs that implement action stuff just to make every battle a actiony chore, but Xenoblade still has that shit on it. It would be better if you could just tell your characters what to do, rather than control them to do it after you mastered it 35 hours earlier. Also, every town except frontier Village and Hidden Village were uninteresting and annoying to navigate. One good thing about Xenoblade that I felt was top notch, was that it was one of the few games I've played where I really enjoyed the voice acting. The Mechons were particularly entertaining. Xenosaga's sucked in comparison. That is aside the points you mentioned though. the most disappointing part of Xenoblade was that it had zero connection or commonalities to the other games aside from little furry creatures (Nopon). Xenoblade X at least can be conceivably connected to Xenosaga and especially Xenogears due to it following almost the same plot trajectory as the back stories of those games. |
I usually rank Xenogears above Xenoblade, but Xenogears is not without its flaws. For starters, the game was pieced together quite oddly and doesn't feel complete, mostly because of the second-disc being a set of monologues. Additionally the controls and camera lead to poor platforming that becomes especially frustrating, and increasingly so on multiple playthroughs. Couple that with a bad random encounter system, in which you can time a jump correctly and then get thrown into a random encounter and you are left very frustrated, especially in dungeons like the Tower of Babel. I'd also say that Xenogears's combat system got quite repetitive, but I think the characters and combos were evenly spaced to make that not too much of a problem. Xenogears as a package is more appealing to me than Xenoblade, but Xenoblade has fewer flaws. Most people call Xenogears a flawed masterpiece, I can agree with that.
Xenosaga on the otherhand, was really nothing compared to Xenogears or Xenoblade, even. Xenosaga had a complicated story to its detriment, while Xenogears embraced the complexity of its story. The cutscenes were long and drawn out - again - to its detriment. The second game was especially long, tedious, and drawn-out, with nothing really happening plot-wise. The physics system was cool, but that was more of a novelty. The story, upon its completion was intriguing, and the Xenogears connections were nice, but as you played it - it just wasn't as fun, and the story while interesting in hindsight took too long to pick up, wheras Xenogears kept you on the edge from the very start. I could have imagined Episodes IV-VI being the highlight of the Xenosaga series, but unfortunately we did not get them.
Xenoblade on the otherhand does a few things better than even Xenogears. Exploration is much more focused and fun. Immersion was also much more spot on. I truly felt like I was traveling on a giant being. Interactions with NPCs were more rewarding. The story while less complex and grand, was at the very least self-contained, and still had a lot of depth (Gnostic mythology.) The pacing of said story felt professional and not pieced together, and the cutscenes/gameplay time ratio was much more balanced. I disagree that story is the most important element of an RPG. It is important, but not any more than atmosphere, immersion, and gameplay. Otherwise we would read a book.
If you were spamming abilities in Xenoblade then you were not understanding how the battle system works. Spamming abilities will get you aggro (off your tank) and you'll die. Usually you let auto-attack work its magic until you properly time a skill. I'd take the option of "boring" side-quests over no/few side-quests to be honest. Especially since they are optional. Your issue seems to be that it isn't turnbased, but I think the various Xenosaga battle systems were a downgrade from Xenogears precisely because they were less action-oriented and mostly bland.
I think having no baggage is Xenoblade's biggest merit. The Xenosaga series suffered from being in the shadow of Xenogears, a masterpiece, when they were just decent. Xenoblade took a new direction while maintaining the strong Kabbalist/Gnostic themes, as well as the science-fiction setting.
