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StarTopic Xeno Series Community |ST|

They also actually bothered marketing it. I recall walking into stores and finding out they released two Tales of games without much of anything known. It's very different from the PS3 days how they've handled Arise.
 
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It's amazing that both Square and Bandai-Namco just kind of sit on the IP doing bugger all with it when the Blade series has been doing so well. In the case of both they could easily just throw in a marketing blurb about the origins of the Xeno series, but alas...
They have done more than bugger all with Xenogears though. Like people say Square Enix doesn't do anything with Xenogears and pretends it doesn't exist, but that isn't true.


The only thing they haven't done is get Xenogears a more recent release than the PSN release for PS3 and PSP. This isn't unique to Xenogears though. Square Enix has struggled to make a lot of their PS1 library available on current consoles like Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Dragon Quest 7. They're only just now getting around to Chrono Cross. They're going at a slow pace and it's possible the unfinished state of disc 2 makes the prospect of a remaster difficult.

Regarding Xenosaga, I don't really like how people dunk on Harada for his statements regarding Namco's marketing research thinking it would be non-profitable. It's sad that's the case and I would love the series to be easily available and in HD, but I feel we should be grateful Harada for thinking of Xenosaga at all. He threw a bone at the series and made an effort for the fans to pitch a remaster and push for it when he had nothing to do with the original development of the series. Direct your ire to the Namco sales department who did the research or whatever, not Harada. Maybe it will change as Xenoblade continues to do well, It's possible the Xenosaga remaster research was done before Xenoblade 2 hit 2 million sales.
 
I used to be quite frustrated with the old game situations' as well but I've cooled off with time. These aren't easy games to remaster, especially when the original team doesn't work for you anymore. They have A LOT of wrinkles that could and should be ironed out, these games deserve to be the best version of themselves and I'm not sure most people would be happy with just slapping an HD filter on them and calling it a day.

For example, for Xenogears alone you would have to fix "a few" things:

-The big elephant in the room: the legendary disc 2. One of the biggest potential boons for a Xenogears rerelease would be restoring at least some of the cut content that could not make it into the game, kinda like SaGa Frontier Remastered did.

-CERO. If you tried to release Xenogears as is without making any changes I guarantee you it would get instantly slapped with a Z rating (for adults only). I'm pretty sure it would get that just from the amount of blood in the anime cutscenes alone, CERO is very strict with these things. Lots of things would have to be modified to maintain a more reasonable rating for a JRPG. I'm no expert on the matter but I think the only reason they got away with releasing it on the PS3 store with no changes was because of a special clause they have for old games from before CERO existed (like Policenauts). But if they made a remaster they would have to introduce modifications, some of them not easy at all.

-Voice acting. Absolutely unacceptable for modern standards. Would have to be completely redone. More money invested.

-Battle system. One opinion I've heard more than once is that one of the most positive things about disc 2 is that you didn't have to fight as often. Let's face it, Xenogears' battle system is quite bland. Arguably unfinished too, no doubt another victim of its troubled development. Why does the game have an elemental system in place that almost never matters? Why are combos only truly useful in like 2-3 battles in the whole game? Why does Fei unlock a deathblow at level EIGHTY? Why are there so many underwhelming skills not worth using? Why does half your party not get access to elemental deathblows? What's the point of old deathblows once you unlock stronger ones? etc, etc

I'm not going to list the Xenosaga games as well but they have their own share of issues (I think maybe Xenosaga 3 could get away with it, genuinely solid game imo). As frustrating as it is you have to accept that rereleasing these games is no easy task. I still have faith that it will happen someday and the only thing you can do until then is to continue showing and voicing your support.
 
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Square Enix has definitely done more to port/remaster their PS1 RPGs in recent years outside of Chrono Cross. I don't know if they'll get around to Xenogears with the extra hurdles it might face, but I don't see them stopping anytime soon.
 
I think we’ll get a Xenoblade after they figure out how to remaster games using the hybrid 2D/3D approach. Probably after we get the rumored FF Tactics remaster.
 
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I only just started Xenosaga 3 over the weekend (just finished the first big ES segment with the full party), and man, this game is already a huge step up from both of its predecessors. And not just on a mechanical and presentation level, but also a technical one. In the first two you're always painfully aware of the optical medium the game is being played off of, but they really optimized it to minimize load times for this one. Standard encounters start almost instantly instead of waiting for the character models to load in one by one and it's definitely got some sort of preemptive loading going on to keep map transitions relatively snappy.

Also HaKox is very silly, but also surprisingly fun.
 
-Battle system. One opinion I've heard more than once is that one of the most positive things about disc 2 is that you didn't have to fight as often. Let's face it, Xenogears' battle system is quite bland. Arguably unfinished too, no doubt another victim of its troubled development. Why does the game have an elemental system in place that almost never matters? Why are combos only truly useful in like 2-3 battles in the whole game? Why does Fei unlock a deathblow at level EIGHTY? Why are there so many underwhelming skills not worth using? Why does half your party not get access to elemental deathblows? What's the point of old deathblows once you unlock stronger ones? etc, etc
I agree with a lot of your post. Xenogears and the first two Xenosagas have rough edges all over the place that makes them hard to sell to new audiences without some major improvements.

Something else I feel gets ignored by the people who tend to beat the "Harada's a dummy for not seeing Xenoblade's success" drum is how different of a game Xenosaga is to Xenoblade. I think the people who see Xenoblade sells well = Xenosaga will sell well, are just thinking of Takahashi's storystelling as the central appeal to these games, but I'd argue this is only the more hardcore of Xenoblade fans - a niche of a niche. A lot of Xenoblade's success comes from the expansive worlds to explore and interestingly designed terrains. Xenosaga on the other hand is more of a corridor-focused dungeon crawler. There's nothing wrong with that, it's a completely valid way to design an RPG, but it's very different from what makes Xenoblade appealing.

I'm not so sure about the specific part of your post I quoted though. I agree with every criticism of the combat you described. I don't really like Xenogears combat at all myself. I think people like how different attacks are tied to the push of a face button making it feel more actiony, but the attacks aren't really meaningfully different. If you use three triangles or one X, it's really about the same thing. Three basic attacks with the only variance being damage output to accuracy ratio doesn't excite me. Most the combat comes down to either spamming deathblows or learning deathblows, neither of which are interesting.

However, I think an important part of game preservation is not changing mechanics in a fundamental way. You always run the risk of upsetting the game's biggest fans and plenty of people love gears's combat even if I don't get it. Monolith themselves thought this was important when they remastered the first Xenoblade. Xenoblade 1 has my personal favorite RPG battle system and yet even I would say it could use improvements. But, Monolith thought it was important to keep as much of the original vision intact. There are only three notable mechanic changes: they fixed the max damage glitch, changed how Riki works as a shooter in gem crafting, and changed at what point damage is calculated during an art's animation. The latter is the biggest change as it makes positional attacks more challenging (and I'm curious if it carries over to xb3), yet how many of you noticed it?
 
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I'm not so sure about the specific part of your post I quoted though. I agree with every criticism of the combat you described. I don't really like Xenogears combat at all myself. I think people like how different attacks are tied to the push of a face button making it feel more actiony, but the attacks aren't really meaningfully different. If However, I think an important part of game preservation is not changing mechanics in a fundamental way. You always run the risk of upsetting the game's biggest fans and plenty of people love gears's combat even if I don't get it. Monolith themselves thought this was important when the remastered the first Xenoblade. Xenoblade 1 has my personal favorite RPG battle system and yet I even I would say it could use improvements. But, Monolith thought it was important to keep as much of the original vision intact. There are only three notable mechanic changes: they fixed the max damage glitch, changed how Riki works as a shooter in gem crafting, and changed at what point damage is calculated during an art's animation. The latter is the biggest change as it makes positional attacks more challenging (and I'm curious if it carries over to xb3), yet how many of you noticed it?
I don't think you would completely need to revamp the battle system to make it more engaging. Several points I listed I strongly suspect simply came about as a result of them running out of time to properly balance the game. For example what I commented about the elemental system largely not mattering. Simply adding more elemental resistances/weakness to more battles in the game would go a long way in making the battle system feel more engaging (and elemental attacks less pointless). Fei doesn't need to wait until level 80 to unlock Yamikei. And I can't imagine people complaining about equating the number of deathblows, that's simply adding a little bit more content.
Xenoblade 1 is far better balanced than Xenogears so of course there was much less urgency to change anything about the battle system (Sharla is still lightyears ahead of Rico)

Regarding success and viability, I don't think many people actually expect "Xenoblade sells millions = older Xeno games will sell millions too". Rather I think the point is that the fame and success of Xenoblade and Monolith give potential remasters a level of baseline success and safety that they wouldn't have had, say, a decade ago. The number of people who would check the games out because the direct narrator or whoever told them that it's from the creators of Xenoblade wouldn't number in the millions, but they would probably be enough to make a remaster project worth considering.
 
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In the month since Xenoblade 3's announcment, I was compelled to do a new playthrough of Definitive Edition and just finished tonight. Since some other poster's were writing a little about playing gears and saga for the first time, I thought I might write a few thoughts on my replay of Xenoblade 1.

Really loved going through the game again, reliving the story, and just spending time inside this world, even if my last playthrough wasn't that long ago (when DE came out). The first game is viewed as simpler than X and 2 often with some derision about that. But something that stands out to me about 1's combat is how all the arts have this bespoke feeling. Almost every art does something different and interesting enough, there's actually not a whole lot of repeat arts. The positional arts in this game don't just deal more damage for hitting the position, but sometimes inflict status effects instead so the need to be get in position is more utility than damage (slit edge lowers defense, air slash slows, bitey bitey's bleed effect will last longer). This is something not even X or 2 do. Maybe I'm wrong, but skimming through X's arts on the wiki, the rifle art Assault Breaker is the only positional that inflicts a status as the positional bonus (most X positionals are either damage boost or TP generation).

Another I thought was interesting was Riki's You Can Do It. It's a healing art that requires you to position to get the most out of it. It heals in a frontal arc so you have to line up to hit all allies similar to Robo's healing line tech in Chrono Trigger. No other Xenoblade game had a positional heal. It also heals more for each debuff on the receiving ally. A lot of 1's arts have multiple interesting little effects on them like that. X and 2 added a lot of complexity and gave the combat a better since of pacing and build up, and that's good, but 2 felt like it lost that foundation of making the art's themselves interesting. It made them more cookie cutter. I would like to see that complexity and have more resources to manage but with the first game's philosophy of designing abilities, X is a better mix but has some other things that turn me off (I really don't like secondary cooldown or overdrive).

I don't care for how tightly situational the Monado arts are though. Some are interesting enough that they could fit into a regular rotation like Eater but the fact they all use up the talent gauge, there's little point in using them unless they're necessary. If I just want damage, why not use Buster instead and never use Eater unless I'm actually trying to get rid of buffs. I also think enemy talent arts being their own "element" and Monado Shield should not have been mechanics.

You do need to regularly mix up the party to get the most out of the combat. Dealing with visions without Shulk is pretty fun and hectic and you really get to take advantage of the warning system and use neat stuff like auto-revive auras and reflect. I tried to keep affinity evenly spread between all party members so that encouraged me to try out some weird party compositions. Still, I ended up using Shulk, Dunban, and Seven as my main team with Mela, Riki, and Dunban as my backup treasure hunting party and flying monster slayers.

The first game's greatest downfall is how lacking the customization is compared to X and 2, this is something the other games just blow 1 out of the water with. The customizations options that are present are fun to mess with though. I have one problem: skill linking is more fun as a concept than how it actually is. There are too many locks on skill linking! You need enough affinity coins, high enough affinity, and you have to arbitrarily match the shape of the skill. That's too many locks and the shape-matching is just stupid, that should not have been a thing. Some characters just don't have the shape you need at all for no reason. I do like how unique monsters directly contribute to the character-building systems though with affinity coins.

Anyways, I'm probably going to start a new playthrough of Xenoblade 2. It'll be a fresh new game, not plus. I would actually really love to hear some suggestions on how to handle this playthrough from anyone on here. I'm debating how much DLC to use. Should I go with no DLC at all? Should I completely indulge in DLC right from the start, get a bunch of money, crystals, and use Crossette and Corvin as early as possible? Should I gradually accept DLC when it seems like it won't make me overpowered and put a ban on Crossette and Corvin until the post game? I love all three Xenoblade games, but 2 is the one I may be the least crazy about, I'm curious to see if my feelings change during this revisit.
 
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They have done more than bugger all with Xenogears though. Like people say Square Enix doesn't do anything with Xenogears and pretends it doesn't exist, but that isn't true.


The only thing they haven't done is get Xenogears a more recent release than the PSN release for PS3 and PSP. This isn't unique to Xenogears though. Square Enix has struggled to make a lot of their PS1 library available on current consoles like Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Dragon Quest 7. They're only just now getting around to Chrono Cross. They're going at a slow pace and it's possible the unfinished state of disc 2 makes the prospect of a remaster difficult.

Regarding Xenosaga, I don't really like how people dunk on Harada for his statements regarding Namco's marketing research thinking it would be non-profitable. It's sad that's the case and I would love the series to be easily available and in HD, but I feel we should be grateful Harada for thinking of Xenosaga at all. He threw a bone at the series and made an effort for the fans to pitch a remaster and push for it when he had nothing to do with the original development of the series. Direct your ire to the Namco sales department who did the research or whatever, not Harada. Maybe it will change as Xenoblade continues to do well, It's possible the Xenosaga remaster research was done before Xenoblade 2 hit 2 million sales.

Ironically despite being a mostly 3D game I think the future of Xenogears might be a HD2D remake.
 
Ironically despite being a mostly 3D game I think the future of Xenogears might be a HD2D remake.
Xenogears was kinda an HD-2D game already, being 2D sprites in a 3D environment. That'd actually work really well.
 
Ironically despite being a mostly 3D game I think the future of Xenogears might be a HD2D remake.
I'm not sure exactly what 2D-HD would mean for Xenogears. As chocolate_supra said, the game is already a mix of pixel art characters in polygonal environments. The way playstation games did it (not just Xenogears, but Grandia and Breath of Fire 3&4 and probably some others) is fairly different from Asano's HD-2D though.

The current HD-2D games maintain a blocky tiled look with pixel art styled textures while ps1 rpgs built normal 3D environments to the best of their ability with the hardware. Asano's games also have a diorama look that's more like Paper Mario games. You can really see this difference in the Dragon Quest 3 trailer when they show a part of the Tower of Najima. The original DQ3 has maze-like dungeon design, but in the remake's trailer, the floor is a straightforward corridor with all the doors on the back wall more like a Paper Mario level. That wouldn't work with Xenogears's full rotational camera. I like the look of Asano's games but going for the tiled diorama look specifically for Xenogears would feel like a downgrade.

All they really need to do is have the 3D elements rendered in HD like the Grandia remaster did. I wouldn't even bother making new textures since high res textures could clash with the pixel art. UI aside, Xenogears's visuals and aesthetic has aged pretty well and I think there's an increasing amount of nostalgia for fifth-gen aesthetics. I've seen some indie/hobbyist stuff aiming for ps1 or n64 looks recently.

For example, last year, Kyle Bosman hosted a game jam, I watched the stream of Kyle playing all the entries. Someone submitted an RPG with an attempt at the Xenogears/Grandia style but in 720p and both Kyle and the chat liked the look a lot. So I really don't see the need to change up the visuals of Xenogears with Asano in charge for a potential remaster. Just render it in HD, it holds up.
 
I started playing Xenogears for the first time this month and I can confirm that the visuals do hold up really well. It’s much prettier than games like Final Fantasy VII. The 3D backgrounds + pixel art models was a really good choice. The environments are full of charm even if they lack some detail.

One of the main things to do if they do remake it is add a map. I still haven’t gotten to the infamous disc 2, so I can’t comment on that.

Do you people think this will be remade? Will Square greenlight it? Would Takahashi be involved and make it a collab with Nintendo/Monolith Soft?
 
I started playing Xenogears for the first time this month and I can confirm that the visuals do hold up really well. It’s much prettier than games like Final Fantasy VII. The 3D backgrounds + pixel art models was a really good choice. The environments are full of charm even if they lack some detail.

One of the main things to do if they do remake it is add a map. I still haven’t gotten to the infamous disc 2, so I can’t comment on that.

Do you people think this will be remade? Will Square greenlight it? Would Takahashi be involved and make it a collab with Nintendo/Monolith Soft?
A xenogears remake isn't happening unless nintendo somehow gets or cares to get the rights to gears. We'll only see re-releases/ports (I'm surprised it hasn't been ported more tbh).
 
Xenogears port at this point might not ever happen as well. It feels like just like Metal Gear to Konami, SE just don't know what to do with the game without Takahashi. With how active SE is at porting old games, a port would have happened much earlier. License and guest characters are probably the best we will get for Gears. Might be the same for Saga.
 
Why are we comparing Xenogears to Metal Gear? Square Enix actually acknowledges Xenogears.

The only thing stopping a remake is someone not giving a shit. We're getting a Live A Live remake because Asano gave a shit
 
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I wonder if there is any issue with the preservation of the anime parts or with CERO due to the extreme amounts of blood.
 
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Live A Live remake director Takashi Tokita is also the original game's director. In recent interview, he said they push the remake happened after saw the potential from HD-2D.
I doubt there's someone at square enix willing to push an xeongears project like what Takashi Tokita did for Live A Live.
 
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To be fair there wasn't anyone left to push for Actraiser or Chrono Cross of all things either (yes, I understand they were much lower effort but still) and someone has to care enough to keep selling me all these robot figures (NOT RENMAZUO THOUGH)
 
So I just finished Xenosaga Episode 3. That was definitely the best of the 3 games, by a very wide margin. It's unfortunate that it sort of ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but who knows, with the extensive cameos in Xenoblade, maybe they'll eventually directly allude to what happens there.

Unfortunately, it appears that the copy I got was scratched enough to interfere with cutscene playback a bit, but fortunately only 2 completely stalled, and I just found them on YouTube.
 
now that I watched it, his video oversells Monolith's influence, attributing them to BotW to Elden Ring, Genshin Impact, and Pokemon Legends.
He says "their creative lineage began with Xenoblade", which in my opinion is not giving credit where it isn't due, and not discounting those works' innovations and success. He's just pointing out a perceived trail of inspiration.
 
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So I just finished Xenosaga Episode 3. That was definitely the best of the 3 games, by a very wide margin. It's unfortunate that it sort of ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but who knows, with the extensive cameos in Xenoblade, maybe they'll eventually directly allude to what happens there.

Unfortunately, it appears that the copy I got was scratched enough to interfere with cutscene playback a bit, but fortunately only 2 completely stalled, and I just found them on YouTube.
XS3 concluded the arc of the characters, 4-6 were supposed to focus on different ones IIRC. It's very doubtful saga content will be in blade outside of surface level references.
 
XS3 concluded the arc of the characters, 4-6 were supposed to focus on different ones IIRC. It's very doubtful saga content will be in blade outside of surface level references.
I'm not expecting anything super detailed, but what ultimately happened to KOS-MOS and the fate of the universe as a whole definitely seem potentially on the table depending on the direction things go in Xenoblade.
 
So I just finished Xenosaga Episode 3. That was definitely the best of the 3 games, by a very wide margin. It's unfortunate that it sort of ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but who knows, with the extensive cameos in Xenoblade, maybe they'll eventually directly allude to what happens there.

Unfortunately, it appears that the copy I got was scratched enough to interfere with cutscene playback a bit, but fortunately only 2 completely stalled, and I just found them on YouTube.
Glad you enjoyed it! Episode 3's my favorite, and one of my favorite turn-based games in general. Like Zeal543, I also felt the characters' stories were complete. Like Shion's story was definitely done. But there was apparently some old interview with Takahashi where he said KOS-MOS and chaos were meant to appear in every episode so those two would have gone on. Most fan theories I've seen go along the lines that the original six episode plan was comprised of three arcs each taking two games with Shion's arc being the first one but development problems caused it to stretch into three games, while the second arc would've been a new cast on Lost Jerusalem where KOS-MOS arrives. Of course, those are just fan theories, but I do sort of agree. Had there been an episode 4, a new cast with only KOS-MOS and chaos carrying over makes sense to me.

Speaking of KOS-MOS, I managed to pull her in my current replay of Xenoblade 2. Once Zeke joined my party, I accepted all the DLC core crystals and figured I'd pull them all on Zeke to get him caught up with the others and KOS-MOS was the first rare I got on him. I've never gotten her while still doing the story, last time I grinded legendaries cores on Cloud Sea King before pulling her. Only problem is, I don't really know how to use Zeke in a party lol.
 
Glad you enjoyed it! Episode 3's my favorite, and one of my favorite turn-based games in general. Like Zeal543, I also felt the characters' stories were complete. Like Shion's story was definitely done. But there was apparently some old interview with Takahashi where he said KOS-MOS and chaos were meant to appear in every episode so those two would have gone on. Most fan theories I've seen go along the lines that the original six episode plan was comprised of three arcs each taking two games with Shion's arc being the first one but development problems caused it to stretch into three games, while the second arc would've been a new cast on Lost Jerusalem where KOS-MOS arrives. Of course, those are just fan theories, but I do sort of agree. Had there been an episode 4, a new cast with only KOS-MOS and chaos carrying over makes sense to me.

Speaking of KOS-MOS, I managed to pull her in my current replay of Xenoblade 2. Once Zeke joined my party, I accepted all the DLC core crystals and figured I'd pull them all on Zeke to get him caught up with the others and KOS-MOS was the first rare I got on him. I've never gotten her while still doing the story, last time I grinded legendaries cores on Cloud Sea King before pulling her. Only problem is, I don't really know how to use Zeke in a party lol.
The cliffhanger comment was really more about the world than the characters (obvious exceptions aside), since, while the characters have completed their arcs, the main crisis they're trying to solve hasn't been averted, just pushed back for a while so that a proper solution can be searched for.

On a similar note, I think if they decided to have a Xenosaga character show up for real and not just be a blade or something, it would probably be KOS-MOS and/or chaos. Abel and Nephilim could logically show up as well, but I get the impression that Nintendo's lawyers are probably less willing to sign off on that than Namco's (for those not aware, their designs are barely changed versions of Fei and Elly from Xenogears).
 
Xenoblade reference spotted in Lego Star Wars




Edit: This line was intentionally added by one of the devs when they realized Adam Howden was doing some voicework for the game.

Edit 2:

FPljJ8KXMA03qet


FPloLZOXMAU33ou
 
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This is pretty neat. DE has its own version of stale reference manipulation now, so you equip any equipment to any character. That game already has a similar glitch for arts.
 
now that I watched it, his video oversells Monolith's influence, attributing them to BotW to Elden Ring, Genshin Impact, and Pokemon Legends.

Haven't watched, but two of those makes sense they worked on botw and I heard legends.

I don't see anything from genshin impact though, beyond the very very surface level cosmetic (perhaps? I mean it's not that strong of a similarity to botw), which is the least of what monolithsoft brought to the table concerning world design.

Haven't played Elden ring.

I do personally feel an interesting case of trying, and failing to emulate/incorporate monolithsofts functional visual design style was Ubisofts Phoenix Rising.

Seems to me they gave up and just added a viewmode that put an icon on everything that's constantly being occluded by their less visually functional environment design.
 
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Today marks the 7 year anniversary for the Japanese release of Xenoblade X. I hope we get to revisit planet Mira before the 10 year anniversary.

 
Female avatar
Joker voice
Bunny costume
Ridicolous make up
Mastermind class

Yep, it's 7 years of solo-ing every superboss by hitting them like a truck with infinite overdrive
 
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Today marks the 7 year anniversary for the Japanese release of Xenoblade X. I hope we get to revisit planet Mira before the 10 year anniversary.



X had such an amazing opening.

Followed by a terrible intro, cause the whole time they were explaining blade stuff, you just wanted to get back to the taste you got from the opening.
 
If you ever wanted to understand what the song names in X mean, here's a nice video that was posted on reddit explaining them.
 
Playthrough of Xenoblade 1 is finished, and now I'm just stuck on what Shulk said right at the end in regards to meeting the people of the future.

I need to do Future Connected again, just to catch anymore little glimpses xD
 


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