Meant to have this topic up last week when I completed the Xenoblade Chronicles 1 definitive edition (the base game, not the playable epilogue) however sheer fucking laziness prevented that. This won't be one of my "reviews" becuase of the gap between me completing it and me putting this entry up instead I'll just list off the stuff I did and didn't like with explanations as to why. Also there's a picture of one of my other Skyrim characters in the spoiler at the bottom.

So Xenoblade.

Things I liked:

• The music is really good, with each area having a pair of fitting themes, one for the daytime and one for the nighttime. I'm a big advocate of having fitting music for different moods or areas and Xenoblade certainly delivers this.
• I also like all the characters in your main party, they all have their quircks and balance eachother out really well. Shulk specifically is also a pretty good protagonist as he's filled with doubts and concerns.
• The story is also pretty good, even if it does just start out as a bog standard revenge plot however the writers did a good job at throwing a spanner into the particular plan later on.
• Back to characters for a minute (sort of,) the game actually managed to subvert my expectations (in a good way) when it comes to Riki. I initially dismissed him as a joke character with a joke skillset but he's surprisingly nuanced, capable of reading situations well and act accordingly, although with a degree of obsuficating stupidity (something Dunban sees through,) as well as his kit being loaded with debuff skills (he has 4 Damage over time skills) and a heal that gets stronger the more debuffs inflicted on the opponent to the point it's the best heal in the game.
• There's incentives to not only do all the side quests in a given area but also talk to all the named NPCs as the higher your rating (out of 5) is in a given area the more quests you can unlock and these quests can give good money, good gear, good exp or even unlock a skill tree for a character.
• There's also incentives to improve the party's affinity with each other as they can get access to useful skills from eachother's skill trees (for example Shulk can get a skill that increases his physical damage from Reyn) making each character fairly versatile.

Things I disliked

• The combat system is fairly clunky, all your available skills are on an MMO-esque skill bar and it can take a while to get the skill you want which can make hectic battles a bit more challenging.
• There's a pretty OP debuff in the game called Arts seal (which seals your battle skills) and I can see why it got removed in Xenoblade 2 as it pretty much cripples your ability to do anything. Worse when you get hit with that and paralysis which stops auto attacks.
• The Colony 6 reconstruction, this is a side thing to rebuild a town that gets destroyed. It's a massive grind fest with some of the items needed having fairly low drop rates. You can buy rarer items from the Nopon Archsage but you can't do this until practically the end of the game.

So yeah overall I enjoyed the game, and I'm probably forgetting stuff in each section but it's still a solid game and has me wanting more Xenoblade so hopefully X gets a remaster as well.

Image here;