Genre: Action RPG
Developer: Monolith Soft
Publisher: Nintendo

Xenoblade Chronicles X utilizes what appears to be a custom engine, evidently written to allow for incredible geometry draw-in distance. The game's myriad outdoor scenes are straight out of science fiction paintings, with crags and floating islands as far as the eye can see. Character art direction is flat out bizarre, with most of the characters looking like they have Down syndrome. Many of the game's monsters are cool looking, but lack the real-world connection in their design of competing series, such as the Monster Hunter titles.

The music in this game can be categorized into three types: instrumental, Jpop, and... er, "Japanese"? The songs from the first category-- such as the barracks tune-- work pretty well. The Jpop songs are the kinds one might hear in the intro to a run-of-the-mill anime series-- and they are a total chore. The third kind are simply bizarre; a battle song with a guy rapping? An action scene with Auto-Tune vocals? And that's not even mentioning the day time town song. The music is interesting for about the first half hour, but beyond that... the game does have solid voice acting, while most of the sound effects are lifted from canned SFX CDs-- this reviewer even recognized a monster sound that was also used in the 3DO's "Slayer" back in 1994!

Xenoblade Chronicles X is a game of big numbers: 400 square miles to explore; a staggering 84 equipment slots to manage, and that's not even counting reserve characters; no fewer than two dozen different mechanical systems to learn; and a story that can easily take triple digit hours to complete. Yet large numbers don't always add up to a big number, and the game's mechanics are revealed to the player in fits and starts-- sometimes too quickly, other times far too slowly. The game tries to be everything to everyone-- but a more focused design, and leaving half of the mechanics on the cutting room floor, would have made for a more cohesive, less tiresome outcome.

This game has a lot going for it-- incredible scenic vistas, and an interesting fusion of many different games, from Monster Hunter to Final Fantasy XIII to Destiny. Unfortunately, like seemingly every game today the writers abuse their captive audience with obnoxious, ham-fisted, adolescent attempts at social commentary, utilizing every single anime and JRPG trope ever, while simultaneously leaning far too much on Skinner box psychological tricks, combined with artificial time inflation techniques. Xenoblade Chronicles X is far from a bad game, but is just a bit too emblematic for comfort of the bad design habits and present-day fads of today's video game industry.