• Publisher: Nintendo
  • Release Date: Apr 6, 2012
  • Summary: Xenoblade Chronicles throws you into a universe bursting with imagination. Take hold of an ancient sword that offers glimpses of the future, customise your characters extensively and discover a world where your relationships with others matter.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 58 out of 59
  2. Negative: 0 out of 59
  1. Apr 19, 2012
    100
    There's a lot more to recommend Xenoblade Chronicles. The dialogue, the humor, the artwork, the prophecy system, the music, the variety of environments, the character progression, the crafting system, the crazy quest density, the quest quality, the memorable characters, the collectibles, the secrets, and so on. This is a landmark achievement in the genre. As of its release, you can no longer talk about great RPGs, or maybe even great games, without also talking about Xenoblade Chronicles.
  2. 100
    Xenoblade Chronicles is such a huge, complex, and epic game that I can't possibly cover everything it offers in a single review. All I can say is that it has earned the first 5.0 score I've given, and I've had the honor to play quite a few excellent games for review.
  3. Apr 7, 2012
    65
    Many are calling this the Japanese RPG of this console generation-if not of all time-but it's simply got too many glaring warts for me to embrace the experience on that level. Instead, I see it as a deeply flawed, tantalizing glimpse of what the Japanese RPG can potentially become in the coming generation.

See all 59 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 53 out of 54
  2. Negative: 0 out of 54
  1. An amazing technical and creative achievement for the Wii. This game will blow your mind with its grand scale. Easily a candidate for one of the best JRPGs of all time! This game deserves an award for the music alone. Huge levels, interesting characters, over 450 quests, and at least 60+ hours of main story gameplay packed in this sucker. Expand
    • 18 of 25 users said yes
  2. 9
    A fantastic game. The environments are stunning even though the graphics are pretty awful even for Wii. The gameplay is interesting and will keep you occupied for a long time in its length. Expand
    • 6 of 6 users said yes
  3. Guys, I was really disappointed by this game and apparently I am completely alone. Maybe I bought into the hype/review scores too much, but I really wanted a meaty JRPG to drop some time into this summer, and it isn't this one. I've enjoyed the music, and the ability to switch on the Japanese audio track was an unexpected bonus. This is the end of the plus column for me. The following is what I wish someone had told me before I bought the game: The first thing you'll notice is that the graphics are terrible. Graphics certainly aren't everything, but these are so dated, blocky, and low res that it's actually distracting. The menu system is also a giant step back; you have to go through a bunch of layers to do basic things like make an equipment change. The battle system is fine, I guess, although the camera can have trouble picking the right height. I feel like I don't really have much to do once I initiate a battle with any one of the dozens of identical creatures milling about. The Eurodub is marginal, although the Japanese one is decent. And I'm still relatively early on in the game, but the characters are standard fare if you've played a bunch of these things and there's nothing compelling me forward. Ultimately, the game feels like it dropped through a time warp from the year 2000. Although I loved PSO Online and Final Fantasy X at the time, I expect more now -- and not only on a hardware level. Dragon Quest IX is a great game, and far more hardware-constrained than Xenoblade Chronicles. There have been so many lessons about character design, narrative, play control, and interface design that I thought had been learned over the past decade that just aren't put to use here. I'm sorry to poop all over a thing that people seem to love, and I don't downvote popular things just to prove how independent and edgy I am. It's because I dropped $50 on a game that I wanted to like, but have no interest in playing further. Obviously the development team put a lot of work into this, but it doesn't translate into something very fun for me, and at the end of the day, that's all I want from a game. That why I've given it a 5, and put a differing opinion out here. Expand
    • 2 of 5 users said yes

See all 54 User Reviews

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