So I just finished a round of holiday shopping, and wanted to get my sis a Wii game for X-mas as it's the only current gen console she has at the moment.  Being that she likes RPGs, and with Xenoblade and Last Story being the only two real noteworthy Wii releases this year (and pretty much for the rest of the console's life, R.I.P., but that's another topic for another thread), I decided to pick one of these up for her.

Thought I could score either of them easily on good old Amazon, but was shocked to find that new copies of Xenoblade are going for $100, and Last Story isn't much better at $60-$70.  Looked all over but couldn't find them in any big box stores... luckily my local GameStop actually had a couple of new copies of both games in stock at normal price, so I grabbed Xenoblade figuring that if this game is now going for $100 online it's gotta be good.

My question is how do both games compare to one another and to other big RPGs like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts, which are mainly the type of RPGs she's played over the years?  I've heard good things about both, but being that I no longer have my Wii I was never really interested in picking up either of these and I had pretty much forgotten about them until now.  Should I go back and grab The Last Story too while I'm at it, or is Xenoblade pretty much where it's at as far as RPGs go on the Wii?

Xenoblade is all you need. Check the thread if you'd like, but it's a 100+ hour epic which does all the stuff the genre does right, and corrects stuff it did wrong. It's rammed with content and can give you far too much fun to be healthy. It's the game FF13 should have been.

Will go into details but it's nearly 4AM here :/

Make sure to buy her a classic controller either way. I think it's best to avoid wii controls whenever possible and of the three people I polled, that seems to be the general consensus. Also, Xenoblade, it has a higher metacritic and from what I have seen, betterish graphics(my eyes have a hard time comparing standard definition images).

Xenoblade Chronicles will sit in the top 5 all time RPG's for many RPG fans.

I've just started The Last Story so I can't comment much but it too is supposedly a pretty good RPG...just not Xenoblade good.

^^^ Yeah Xenoblade seemed more appealing to me too judging from what I've read and seen of it so far. Visuals look pretty good for a 3rd party Wii game I must say. Already have a Classic Controller thanks to my decent library of VC games, so I'll let her know to use that when playing.

And 100+ hours of game play is always a good thing.

How much did you pay for xenoblade?

Seems as though I've made the right choice, so now I can rest easy lol.

@ninetailschris... $50, which is normal MSRP for new Wii games in stores.  Still can't believe it's going for double that online.

hm....as a RPG i would say Xenoblade is better, bigger and more complex, The Last story is style over substance, it has very basic action based gameplay mechanics, but it looks fantastic and the characters and storytelling are pretty good, it also has a multiplayer mode (online also)

If she likes FF style games buy her Arc rise fantasia

Xenoblade was developed by Monolith Software which Nintendo purchased a few years ago so this is a 1st party game.

I haven't gotten around to The Last Story yet because I'm still chugging along in Xenoblade. Some 60 hours in and the ending isn't quite in sight. It's a terrific game.

^ I disagree with homer, I played most of it with a Wii Remote and Nunchuk and it works great. I tried the classic controller for a little bit, but I didn't like it as much. Using the Remote is a little harder to learn, takes a bit more practice, but I believe it's the better control scheme. The key is that the d-pad is on the right side, so you can use the d-pad and the left control stick at the same time, which for all intents and purposes is impossible with the classic controller. This comes in handy during battles, as the d-pad is used to select attacks, so you can move behind an enemy while selecting the appropriate back attack. It probably shaves a tiny amount of time off, but it just feels much more fluid than going back and forth between d-pad and analog stick to me.