After many hours of riding around in mech suits and exploring the vast planet Mira, the massive scale of Xenoblade Chronicles X

see deal Xenoblade Chronicles X (for Nintendo Wii U) $19.99 on Gamestop

Xenoblade Chronicles X is a harrowing and unpredictable survival story of humanity getting caught in the crossfire of a galactic war. It kept me interested despite some jarringly inconsistent delivery. Most cutscenes exhibit big-budget, anime-inspired flair with great results, while others are poorly animated and limply voiced in-engine conversations that fall completely flat. The muddled presentation makes important moments feel bland, with low production value that robs emotional scenes of any dramatic weight. The script itself is well localized and the individual story chapters felt like condensed episodes of an anime, so it’s disappointing it’s not put to better use. Loading

Much like Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii, this gorgeous alien world is very open and full of lively creatures. You can run on foot to four of its five visually distinct, monster-filled continents right from the start, giving you lots of options. Noctilum's lush, sparkling jungle is a stark contrast to the dusty, mountain-filled landscape of Oblivia, and neither resembles the green plains of Primordia.

When I got my boots on the ground and explored, the enemy variety of planet Mira was immediately impressive. Roaming packs of creatures of a variety of different strengths and levels spawn everywhere, and they make the alien planet feel crowded with things to fight. The large bestiary of different enemy sizes and species made me feel like I was constantly finding new foes to fight, even as far as 50 hours into the campaign.

It’s disappointing that creatures rarely interact with each other as kin or prey, though. Sometimes you’ll see packs of Fleet Evello, creatures that look like alien turkeys, migrate around a small sector together, or spot tiger-like Grex grazing in the sun, but they’re never trying to eat each other as you might expect. Mira is a hostile world for us players, but the lack of a simulated or even faked food chain often made it felt like I was exploring a large zoo at feeding time, and I’m the only food item on the menu.

The city of New Los Angeles also suffers from this populated-but-lifeless feeling. Passing cars clip through your party if you run through them, and few people acknowledge your presence. Refugee earthlings don’t really make an impression, it seems. The overall sense of place is weakened further by a bad soundtrack that tries to be upbeat, but just sounds like noise instead.

Survival of the Fittest

Combat is what really hooked me into this RPG for the long haul. You only directly control one character in your four-person party, and you can easily switch between ranged and melee weapons, but but I found the energetic mix of real-time basic attacks and cooldown abilities highly engaging because of the way my AI-controlled teammates coordinated with me. Whenever you perform a move to topple an enemy, your computer-driven comrades seize the opportunity and pummel it into dust. At the same time, their attacks trigger opportunities for you to use complementary abilities to maximize damage and restore health. The system encouraged me to try different moves, making a cool-looking variety of moves more powerful than settling into a repeating pattern of spamming the same attacks over and over. Loading

Developing my avatar’s strengths was also a fun and flexible experience because Xenoblade gave me three main classes and 12 subclasses to choose from. Each one feels bigger and better than the last, and the choice affects the weapons and unique special moves, called Arts, that you use in combat. The melee-focused Duelist uses a mix of up-close, DPS-focused attacks and defensive bonuses to present a balanced subclass to start with. On the other hand, Full Metal Jaguar is subclass that focuses on more offensive abilities, with buffs to boost accuracy and evasion. Xenoblade encourages you to try different classes, and even though you’re technically starting over each time you do, you unlock moves faster at higher levels. That kept me happily developing at a good pace.

“ Out in the wilderness, Xenoblade Chronicles X presents seemingly endless reasons to fight and wander the planet.

Out in the wilderness, Xenoblade Chronicles X presents seemingly endless reasons to fight and wander the planet. The mere act of exploring rewards you with valuable experience points, lots of collectible loot, and waypoints that double as dispensaries for precious minerals and fast-travel markers. But not all quests are created equal. The best ones send you out on hunts for troublesome boss-like enemies called tyrants, where tough fights and powerful loot await. The worst ones send you on annoying, directionless fetch quests to hunt down randomly placed collectibles.

Big Game

The opening hours of this roughly 60-hour game can feel overwhelming, since there's so much to learn. But eventually, Xenoblade’s separate parts fold together into an elaborate resource system. As in nearly every RPG, the loop has you using loot to develop new weapons and gear that give you more tools to keep fighting tougher enemies, but here I found it extra rewarding because of the pace of progression. Combined with gear that randomly drops from battles, I always felt like I was growing constantly.

However, Xenoblade’s inventory management system can’t keep up with all of the items it showers you with lots of items that look or sound similar. The 13 different item categories that bundles them together by type. I felt bombarded by heaps of loot that I couldn’t sort by stat values. Loading

There’s a big prize to motivate you to deal with it, though: about 30 hours in, I built up enough wealth to develop and maintain hulking robot suits, called Skells. These powerful and expensive tools can transform into a vehicle form and are fully customizable, with 10 slots for powerful items like sabers, missile launchers, and other oversized weapons.

When I climbed in, Xenoblade’s sense of scale shifted dynamically, and suddenly I was doing battle against the much larger, more intimidating foes on Mira. A towering muscular ape-like creature called a Juvenile Simius, which appeared unconquerable on foot, was suddenly something I could go toe-to-toe with.

That long buildup of time-to-Skell flies by, except when you hit the tedious eight-part quest required to unlock the Skell license. It’s an dull and annoying prerequisite, especially after a lengthy preamble. Thankfully, it's a one-time ordeal. Loading

Skells feel enormously powerful, but they don’t turn the rest of the campaign into easy street. It’s impressive that Xenoblade is able to so smoothly ramp up its challenges to match your wildly escalating power for such a long campaign. My advancements felt like leaps and bounds forward, but the monsters in my path never just laid down and let me walk all over them. The only drawback to Skells is that they’re an expensive investment, with high replacement costs if they’re destroyed in the later missions of the campaign.