yes, i played the 3ds version as my first xenoblade experience. the fuck are you gonna do about it?

xenoblade chronicles is one of the worst types of games - games that have this legendary status where people will swear up and down that it's perfect, and make long ass reviews in youtube comments about how it changed their life or they're super nostalgic for it. but despite its ultra hype legendary status, it kinda fucking sucks and gets ruined by stupid shit that fans are willing to look over.

this game makes me feel like i'm playing some shitty MMO where i have to grind for 3 hours on stupid fodder enemies before doing one thing of value. the way level scaling works and how enemies just a couple levels above you get stat modifiers and can just easily roll you is the single dumbest thing i've ever seen in an RPG. literally full stop, game is already ruined because of that. there is no worse feeling than grinding your ass off, doing sidequests and killing unique enemies (that more often than not, have stupid high time to kill compared to the exp they reward), finally killing one boss, then doing it all again when you get walled by another one an hour later.

in my experience (doing as many sidequests as i could, not running from every fight, etc) i somehow fell pretty far behind on the level curve, so i was doing this a lot. and now that this game is done, none of the story beats or characters are gonna stick with me - all i'm gonna remember is the moronic, repetitive grinding, searching for items with a 10% spawn rate or waiting for unique enemies to spawn. combine that with grinding for colony 6 resources, arts manuals, and more, why fucking bother??? i get that JRPGs usually have some degree of grinding and not all of those things are required to progress, but it still feels like shit.

story's pretty good, though. plenty of sick turns, worldbuilding is great, although a ton of characters feel like they get shafted in the latter half of the game. i'm pretty amazed that i don't really hate any of the party members though, even after sitting through HEROPON BREATH MAKE MONSTA SHAKE for 80 hours.

i didn't really enjoy putting together builds/teams, unfortunately. it may just be cause i'm a dumbass, but this feels like one of those games where it always feels like you're playing it wrong. every team you end up with feels just a little weird, you're constantly questioning whether you've got the right summons on melia, triple-checking which gems you have... i didn't really find any part of combat fun, even if i thought auto-healing between battles was a really smart addition.

most of the time, with games like this that people hold in such high regard that i unfortunately can't bring myself to like, i usually feel kind of bad about it. like i missed out on a really great experience because combat/something else didn't click with me. but with xenoblade, i don't really feel that way. enjoy your single player FFXIV i guess, im not gonna judge you for it

having been fucked off from finishing this ever since the end of episode 4 basically cemented "none of your choices have ever nor will ever matter", the most positive thing i can say about this episode is that it was semi-neat that your choice in vault hunters was limited by your choices made throughout the game. but then it loses all immediate value once you realize that your choice in party members doesn't actually matter and just slightly changes a cutscene. boooooooo.

what is there to say about this that i didn't already beat like a dead horse in prior reviews. illusion of choice, all moments with emotional sincerity get deflated with unfunny marvelshit quips, mediocre structured/choreographed action, bad graphics for a PS4 game, etc. etc. but what baffles me most is that there was a huge community that liked this game. pardon my french, but what the fuck is here worth celebrating? at least with something like the walking dead, it was new, and it had the momentum of choices seemingly mattering (until we slowly discovered they didn't). tftb doesn't even hide the artifice and it feels like it's going through the motions. i just don't get how i'm supposed to feel passionate about this. i dislike this, but not even that much. i'm apathetic to it. isn't that one of the worst possible things a story can evoke: apathy?