Launch Station: Xenoblade Chronicles

It has taken close the two years, but Xenoblade Chronicles has finally reached the shores of North America.  For hardcore Wii owners, Xenoblade has been on the radar for a couple years now.  Released originally in Japan then Europe, Nintendo originally had no plans of bringing Xenoblade to North America as they thought gamers would not buy it.  They were wrong as a whole lot of hardcore Wii gamers banded together to create an online petition known as Operation Rainfall to bring Xenoblade Chronicles along with  The Last Story and Pandora's Tower, three high-caliber Wii RPGs, to North America.  At first, it did not look like Nintendo would ever bring these games over to our shores, but with a little help from Gamestop Nintendo decided to bring Monolith Soft's huge RPG over the pond in exchange to making Xenoblade exclusively available at Gamestop in the US and EB Games in Canada.  With Xenoblade Chronicles on store shelves and Last Story coming this June, it is time for hardcore Wii gamers to put their money where there mouth is and buy Xenoblade Chronicles.  I did.

In the beginning, there were two titans, Mechonis and Bionis, engaged in an eternal battle.  These two titans fought until their lifeless bodies remained.  As time went on, life flourished on Bionis with a race of Human known as Homs while a race of Machines known as Mechon came to inhabit Mechonis.  Much like the titans they live upon, the Homs and Mechons are locked in a seemingly endless war with one another.  After the prologue, you take control of the main protagonist, Shulk.  Shulk lives in Colony 9, which is located at the foot of Bionis.  When Colony 9 is attacked by the Mechon, Shulk obtains the Monado, the legendary energy blade thought to be the sword Bionis used eons ago, in order to fend off the Mechon threat.  The attack on Colony 9 launches Shulk and friends into a grand adventure across the two titans to delve into the conflict between Homs and Mechons and uncover the secrets of the Monado blade.  Unlike most RPGs, Xenoblade Chronicles puts an emphasis on exploration and a real-time battle system than on the story.  Right from the beginning of the game, the majority of the world is open for you to explore, complete side quests, discover secret items and uncover hidden areas.  The scope of Xenoblade's world is comparable to that of a MMORPG.  Xenoblade Chronicles institutes a real-time battle system where the player controls one character while the rest of the party is controlled by the computer.  You are able to switch between characters on the fly and you can manually activate special attacks known as Arts, which replace the RPG trope of magic attacks.  Unlike magic attacks in other games, Arts do not use up a character's mana as there is no such thing in Xenoblade instead they will need to recharge once used.  Arts can be modified out of battle using the Battle Palette.  Xenoblade's battles have a couple of other features such as the Aggro Ring and Vision system.  Each character has an aggro ring.  The bigger the ring around a character, the more enemies will focus their attacks on that one character, which frees other characters up to attack enemies from the side or the rear for more damage.  Finally, the Vision system allows Shulk to see glimpses at enemies' future attacks such as warning Shulk about a fatal attack against a fellow party member.  You can then use this knowledge of the possible future to brace yourself to react to it or prevent it from even happening.

There are so many features in Xenoblade Chronicles that I could fill pages, but I know you guys and gals do not have all day.  Personally, I have been looking forward to Xenoblade Chronicles for quite sometime considering how barren the RPG scene has been on the Wii.  For all those who insisted Nintendo to bring Xenoblade over to our shores, like I said in the intro, time to put your money where your mouth is.  If you do not support Xenoblade Chronicles now, Nintendo may not be so inclined to bring games like Xenoblade over to North America in the future.