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TruckOSaurus said:
Only up to Ether Mines here (doing all side quests I can) but I'll say that the story is leap and bounds better than XCX. Shulk, Reyn and Sharla are much more engaging than whoever (actually can't remember anyone) from XCX. |
If the main part of the game you like is the story, I highly recommend Xenogears which is a much more plot focused game than Xenoblade.
In fact, the story of Xenoblade Chronicles is a actually cut and paste of certain plot threads from Xenogears reimagined to fit the context of the worlds of Bionis and Mechonis. It was mostly stripped down and used for the purpose of navigating players through the world and gameplay, while Xenogears is more the opposite approach with the world existing to introduce the story, characters, and history of Takahashi’s world.
While the game doesn’t feature anything like colony 6, or a massive side quest system, the main story and side stories are far more fleshed out, with far more development toward: characters, factions, nations, politics, cultures, and history. The setting is more urbanized, with more cities and much more of the game taking place within the cities, and you have things like a hub (sand ship, which is kind of like an airship from other RPGs, except larger). While Xenoblade has some conspiracy angles, Xenogears takes it to levels that might be unparalleled in the video game industry: it’s kind of a mash-up of things along the lines of Cold War politics, various science fiction plots, Gnostic religions, and even quantum mechanics. Villains are also a much bigger deal in Xenogears, with most having considerably more complex motivations and more developed back stories.
It’s an older game, so feels like an RPG of its time in terms of gameplay: but its narrative driven story is the Holy Grail of RPG plots and the masterpiece of Tetsuya Takahashi’s lifework.
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