An Overzealous Fan Floods Game Reviewers With “Tips” on Reviewing Xenoblade X Remastered

“Big fan of the portal. I am sharing some heads up for reviewers with the upcoming release of Xenoblade X definitive edition, hope you don’t mind!

Remember to update the game, version 1.0.1 is already out, for instance. And they may release another one when they make the online mode available.

The game is not a spin-off, never was, never was called as such by the developers. Was never a black sheep either, its critical reception is higher than 2 and torna, and its user reception is as high as 1 definitive edition.

Also, careful with strong statements such as has no connection with the rest of the franchise. This does not match what said by developers in interviews around the time of 1 definitive edition. Instead, just say “you don’t need to play other games to play and understand this one”, which can also be said for each entry in the blade franchise, and is a more future proof statement.

On the game, please remember to check the options menu, there may be options there to customize the battle UI to make it even more clear. For instance, the Soul voice text bubbles.

On visuals, even the original game is quite above all Pokemon games on switch. Journalists went very soft with the embarrassing state of Pokemon Scarlet/Violet. One would hope that XDE, which is considerably more impressive in every conceivable way, won’t be nitpicked for small/irrelevant things, while most things in Pokemon gets a pass. Also, even Zelda BOTW/TOTK use very basic textures, more basic than all 4 Xenoblade games, and the Zeldas also use A LOT of fog to hide things, yet those things were not picked upon by most reviewers, so it would come to reason that small nitpicks like some pop in due to the weak Switch hardware won’t happen on XDE reviews.

For performance, it is worth to remember that Zelda BOTW (which is also a Wii U game) and TOTK have several instances of very noticeable frame drops, from kakariko village, deku tree, launching enemies with two-hand sword, and going a bit over the top on crafting. If journalists mostly ignored these problems in Zelda, they won’t mind any minor potential rare drops in DE, for consistency, right?

Certain objects not having collision detection is a design choice, as it makes it much more practical to move around a giant mech without destroying or getting stuck on everything in a game where our goal is to help rebuild humanity, not break the things humanity made. Sometimes, realism is not the best design.

Also, Switch games should be judged only on what the Switch hardware can do, NOT, on what PC or PS5 hardware or any other hypothetical hardware can.

And since I mentioned Zelda, let’s talk about the silent avatar. Not all modern games put voices in the avatars, journalists are fine with Zelda and Baldur gates 3 doing silent avatar, so it comes to reason one should be fine with a silent avatar in DE as well.

On Story and open world structure, remember that in Zelda TOTK, if you do the tear of the dragon sidequest early you basically breaks the story, because then you are forced to watch characters making a bunch of dump questions or statements regarding Princess Zelda, and cannot do anything about because link, who is supposed to be you in the world, is not given an option to tell them what he/we already figured out eons ago, and yet many journalists call that game an open world masterpiece. TOTK story is also full of inconsistencies regarding the events of BOTW, its direct prequel. Yet many fully ignored that. So I very much hope that, for consistency sake, I will not see some journalists making a big deal of the Avatar in X not having much agency in the (main) story or about story quality. Would be big double standards, after all.

Furthermore, most Fromsoftware games that reviewers love to praise to the heavens and back demands the player to search themselves for the story, whether by NPCs dialogues, environment or item descriptions, otherwise there is almost no story to be seen, so one you expect that Xenoblade X also requiring player to engage themselves with the world, NPCs and sidequests (normal and affinity missions specifically) is not a problem at all, on contrary, it is a great feature, right?

Even if the 4 first chapters have a lot of tutorials, one can simply fast skip through them and read them later or practice on the battle simulator in the barracks. Furthermore, even in the first chapters the player can still simply get out the in the world and fight and explore to their hearts desired. The ratio of gameplay to text/cutscene is entirely in the players hand, literally a non-issue.

Also, the avatar in X is effectively the Point of View character, but not the main character of the story, that, is clearly Elma. And that is FINE. There is no hard rules that says that the PoV char also has to be the main character. And if one, for some reason, needs to feel like the main character of the story, simply put Elma as the leader in the menu and play as her, done, simple as that. The avatar has a lot of weight however on the sidequests (normal and affinity missions), which is also story, regardless of not being mandatory, and are a big part of the experience. They are the best in the franchise, with loads of sidequest chains that enrich the world.

On the online mode, it serves its purpose well, an efficient way to farm reward tickets to create better gears, and to feel like you are not exactly alone on Mira, humanity is working together. It is not the focus however, the game never intended to be a monster hunter.

On X being “too different” from the other Xenoblade, please, please be careful with hyperboles. While yes, it is different, it is not THAT different, we had entries in the Zelda series that are less alike between each other than that, and most of you don’t make a big deal out of it. Not to say then of Final Fantasy where the games can vary widely. So again, not a huge deal.”