So, XCX is not the Wii U 95+ savior some people here tried to sell us for months. Big deal.

84 is a good score, especially if the game really has the issues told by others in this thread. It will change nothing IMO : it's the only new Wii U release for the end of the year, interested people will buy it, the broad audience won't. A 94 MC wouldn't change that.

84 is an excellent score.

EDIT: I was mistaken. Sorry.

Yeah, that's the only thing one can get from that quote. ¬_¬

"[...]hiding its beautiful world beneath overly complicated and under-explained systems that just don't add enough. "

That part, you didn't understand it or conveniently chose to ignore it.

I didn't ignore it. I din't say the game is perfect.

Did you read this review? Did you see how much he complains about the HUD?

It seems that you ignore the fact that the reviewer is complaining about nothing.

EDIT: You're right. My bad. He knows the existance of the HUD Options.

Can't you just stop to care about silly review scores? They mean absolutely nothing. You can't fit the qualities of a game let alone the mass appeal into a double-digit number. It's simply not possible. Just play the game and if you like it, good. Why do we need a score to verify that games are fun? Seriously, why?

Not to nitpick too much but Xenoblade Chronicles did not "save" JRPGs. The genre's standing in the industry has not shifted one iota since before or after Xenoblade Chronicles release. I'm not trashing the game but let's not use romantic language like "it saved JRPGS". It barely sold a million units. It may have performed very well critically but 95% of gamers have never heard of the game or played it. What would actually save JRPGs would be an amazing title from one of Square's three big franchises, something we've not seen in almost a decade.

If you're saying it saved JRPGs from a critical sense, that makes a bit more sense but I'd still point to games like Ni No Kuni and Lost Odyssey that came out around the same time as Xenoblade and were extremely well received and good advertisements for JRPGs. But I still think that kind hasn't arrived yet.

Without having played Xenoblade but wanting to and wishing I had the means to, I think a world that is too big is totally a valid argument even though the OP mocks the reviewers for saying so. He/she can mock me too. The narrative can suffer when there are way too many side quests and the player can simply burn out on the game before they've reached the ending. There are some players who play JRPGs and they're more into the story and others are more into the grind. I am of the former. This is a pretty common and I don't know why this type of criticsm comes as a shock to the OP. In my personal experience the best RPGS I've played were around 40 hours long and told well crafted stories with the story telling unfolding evenly over the course of the 40 hours. That's just me. Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger are perfect examples.

I had the impression that a lot of Nintendo fans defended that graphics on WiiU is very close to PS4 and plenty satisfying, so why do complain about reviewers not liking the game graphics or comparing to PS4?

And if you think they don't take points for framerate, resolution or effects in their evaluation them you should provide their declaration of ignoring it, because they have to evaluate the package. Just because the versions on PS4, X1 and PC are evaluated only one of them and the grades seem similar isn't proof.

Read the reviews the general consense includes nothing of the points you mentioned...

The story is not weak or unimportant but more mature and not that epic as in other mainstream RPGs (no chosen hero that should save the world).

The soundtrack got many praise, many reviewers called it the best game soundtrack of 2015.

The sidequest are not "shallow". There are different type of side quest and they are often story ridden.

The only general complaint of some reviewers is the fact that X is very big and has no hand holding. These are valid complaints, because most games today don't want to challenge the player, they are straight forward. They only want to entertain the player, like a transformers movie. So some players would surely be overhelmed by a game such as Xenoblade X.

X can be as deep as you want. There are many, many strategies to play this game and none of these is forced onto you. Thats surely to much for some mainstream players.

And by the way. Metacritics still not included many of 9s and 10s rating from publications like eurogamer or Jim sterling.