ManBeast and the Game Xenoblade Chronicles

“Oh noes!!1!”, I hear you cry, amidst a spray of Mountain Dew and Cheetos, “What are you doing Port, playing on the Wii?”, to which I just have to point out, I only like the good games on it, and not the majority of the garbage and drivel they churn out. Which brings me to my game of the moment: <see the title of the bloody article!>

This game was released late last year and surprisingly enough it managed to get a proper European release so instead of traditional bad English dubs we expect from our JRPGs, we get awesomely delicious cockney accents and sentences that…wait for it… make sense!

It’s all we’ve ever wanted. Although now I feel as though I’ve been somewhat spoilt by this and I’m just going to be asking too much in the future.

Combat is a little bit odd at first; you have your traditional lock onto enemies, target cycling, etc. But you don’t actually control attacking, rather just the skills or “Arts” as they’re called. Auto-attacks happen simply by moving the character you’re currently controlling into range of the enemy.

Healing is relatively straight-forward but what’s really interesting, is reviving fallen characters. Provided you have enough charge in the chain/party meter, you simply move next to the character and activate them. Same goes for cleansing some status effects; you basically go over and pull them out of it.

Another new feature is a sort of Battle Tension; it has five states from very low through to very high and when tension is running high your characters attack faster and more accurately, and have a higher chance of critical hits. Conversely the opposite is true if characters have low tension.

This adds an element of frenzy to combat, rewarding you for fighting faster and harder making combat fast-paced and exciting and a nice change from traditional JRPG turn-based strategy.

The game has a tried and true day-night cycle system, with harder monsters and better loot at nighttime, but the main clincher is, you get TWO different and horribly catchy music tracks instead of just one per zone. Dear God, it’s like the Ducktales theme all over again…

The last point I’d just like to mention is the amazing story line. The game keeps throwing up massive plot twists and developments, so many that even M. Night   Shyamalan himself would be going “O.o!” I don’t want to say too much about it because it simply is amazing and worth playing to experience it firsthand.

All I’m saying is that while it may start a little bit slow, picks up amazingly quickly and doesn’t slow down on the pace. And you get this…

Verdict

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Overall, Xenoblade Chronicles has an epic story-line, heaps better than half the movies I’ve seen and features a traditional epic rpg music score (That changes between day and night!). The combat is fresh, fast paced and exciting and brings a new twist to the genre.

Alright, that’s all from me for this one. Get this game, play it – it’s mindblowingly amazing. Yes, mindblowingly IS a word. I just made it up then.

ManBeast out!

For more ManBeast and the Game take a look at Dark Souls or Metal Gear Solid 3. Follow MrPort on Twitter.