2050 and wheelbarrows. Earth, which found itself in the middle of a colossal conflict between two alien races, is now just a big cloud of dust in space. Of humanity, only a few thousand survivors remain, those whose huge ships were lucky enough to pass through xenos lines of fire, before drifting out into the cosmos. You are one of those lucky little ones. And since you really have your ass lined with noodles, The White Whale (that's the name of your flying liner) crashed, after two years adrift, on a planet viable for the human species: Mira. All while dropping without too much trouble the life module integrated into the ship, in which the city of New Los Angeles has developed. You will therefore quickly find yourself enlisted in the BLADE, the force of exploration, combat, maintenance of order and management of the pancake batter formed by the survivors on Mira. Because the rock on which you fell is pretty but completely unknown, even hostile. Your primary role as a member of BLADE will therefore be to play the scouts for New LA. You will therefore go on an adventure with your team, in the wilderness, just to map all that a little.CONQUISTADOR NEW WAVE
And hop, we stop here because we have already arrived at one of the very essential strengths of this Xenoblade Chronicles X: its great freedom of action, its gigantic, virgin, wild world and this exhilarating feeling of being a pioneer in the immensity of space. It sounds a little too much, but at the same time, there is really that in the experience offered by Monolith, and this firstly thanks to the quality of its artistic direction. You only have to poke the tip of your nose out of the cocoon of New LA to let out an "Oooooh" of admiration. Admittedly, the five continents of Mira have not all benefited from the same dose of inspiration or attention to detail; the hilly Primordia and the Avatar-like jungle of Noctilum outweigh the desert Oblivia and Sylvalum, but the whole thing still leaves you speechless. It's colorful, exotic, lively, full of panoramas (and I love panoramas), nooks, passes, unsuspected caves, lakes, small creeks... Discovery is a real pleasure, and we rock regularly in contemplation. The day/night cycle is coherent and offers very beautiful lighting while thunderstorms and sandstorms enliven the landscape. The Wii U meanwhile proves that it can do much better than what was asked of it until then, by offering a unified, seamless open-world. If the clipping is aggressive and if the textures sting the eyes a little up close, the machine still manages to accompany the DA of Monolith with dignity.OPEN-AIR ZOO
And that's good, because you're going to see the country. As we told you earlier, one of the essential missions of BLADE agents is to explore Mira. Its five continents are divided into a multitude of small hexagonal areas on the GamePad mini-map. Some contain a specific artifact, others are inhabited by an alpha monster, while the last, more important, will welcome your research probes. Each probe is a crucial relay which, in addition to serving as an anchor point for fast travel, will also allow you to accumulate resources, to buy and develop your equipment. Exploration therefore becomes an issue of progression in addition to being a fun activity. However, it will not be without danger. Xenoblade Chronicles X is one of those action-RPGs in which native creatures roam freely on the map. Some are harmless, others will not hesitate to pounce on you if they see or hear you. Some will be at your fingertips, others will execute you in one fell swoop. All this is indicated of course, and you will sometimes (often) have to avoid too hard or useless fights to continue your progress. On this subject, we admit that we did not find any logic in the enemy detection system, which goes from very permissive to very punitive, without really knowing why…EVEN AT FOUR, WE FEEL VERY ALONE
And this inevitably leads us to … the fight. This Wii U opus also takes more or less the combat system of Xenoblade Chronicles. The attacks are therefore carried out automatically, like in an MMO, and you manually trigger different special moves, the Arts, which recharge over time, more or less quickly. The goal is to combine the right attacks together, while placing yourself in the right place and aiming for the opponent's hotspot in order to do maximum damage. We target the limbs in order to weaken the enemy offensives, we try to make him fall and chain him while he is on the ground, we try to pass behind his back, we keep the most relevant Art to drop him at the right time. In short, despite the happy mess on the screen, it's rather tactical...until the management of the partners comes to get involved. Or don't get involved instead, because it's literally impossible to set up gambits for your team. At most, you'll be able to select their Arts and give direction to how they fight through your battle cries in battle. But in fact, friends do a little what they want when they want. They're part of the war effort, that's undeniable, but don't count on them to perk you up if the health gauge begins to slowly empty. To do this, you will need to launch your own Healing Arts or succeed in QTEs linked to critical hits inflicted on the enemy.PADDING
However, despite the choice that will be asked of you at the start of the game, a BLADE agent is much more than a simple explorer and you will quickly find yourself accepting a whole host of missions to help the community. A whole bunch of relatively dull missions for that matter. It must be understood that Xenoblade Chronicles X is literally undermined by a problem of rhythm and artificial filling. Each chapter of the main story imposes minimum conditions on you before being launched; understand that between each interesting mission, you will have to type a whole bunch of quests that are much less interesting. Result: the adventure takes forever to really get started (with a ton of elements to integrate in the first hours of play), the rhythm takes a serious hit in the lanterns and the scenario tapers... Even the quests say d'Entente, centered on one of the many secondary characters who will be able to integrate your team, only manage to arouse a vague interest. The whole game actually suffers from mediocre writing and above all from non-existent staging, which make all the dialogue sequences look like endless moments where pieces of J-Pop appear without warning in the middle of the successful soundtrack of the game. Besides, how to be really taken in the remarks of characters with such a bad design?!For about 35 hours of play, you will walk around the sets of Eden de Mira.
And when we talk about endless moments, difficult not to mention the Skells, the famous Mechas of the game, which attract the barge on the cover. Because the guys at Monolith are smart: to really appreciate something, you first have to know how much it's missing. For about 35 hours of play, you will therefore walk around the sets of Eden de Mira (which does not help the game's rhythm problem, which multiplies the round trips) before finally being able to have access to a first model of Skell...non-flying. OK, it already jumps really high, but you will still have to wait ten or even fifteen hours to finally criss-cross the sky aboard the bazaar. It's too much, even if it's wanted. And yet, we are surprised to appreciate this renewed power, this feeling of speed, the possibility of reaching inaccessible places reviving the interest of the game at a critical moment. Xenoblade Chronicles X is worth it just for that and for the change in scale of the fights. A unique experience, which is slightly tinged with annoyance by archaisms that are difficult to bear in the long run. Thus, if your mech is destroyed on the battlefield, you will have to return to the barracks to pay for the repairs and recover it. When we know that a monster of a level much higher than ours can enter the battlefield at any time, and kick our ass while we're focused on another opponent, it kinda freaks out. . In the same style, we note the absence of classification in the inventories or the need to pick up a team member on his usual spot, in the heart of New LA to be able to recruit him for a mission.
