Then I promptly broke it. In a lot of ways, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a bit of a slog. Main story quests are few and far between — and you’ll need to level up before attempting each one. So when you’re not aimlessly exploring (which, don’t get me wrong, is by far the most enjoyable part of the game), you’ll more often than not find yourself doing gathering/killing quests or simply grinding levels by massacring the local wildlife.
So as I halfheartedly killed my 10,000th velociraptor-like monster, only one thought kept me going: “At some point, they’re going to give me a mecha.”
I mean, they’d have to, right? You got a mecha in Xenogears and Xenoblade Chronicles X has one on the damned title screen.
And each and every time you go into New Los Angeles you’re guaranteed to pass by a mecha or two on the streets. It’d be cruel not to give me one. But four dozen hours in, I had yet to receive it.
Finally, after completing six of the twelve total story missions, I spoke with Van Damme (or “Commander Hulk Hogan” as I affectionately call him) who then gave me eight (needlessly time consuming) quests to earn my right to pilot a giant robot.
So after killing monsters with inferior weapons, gathering crystals from a lake at the arse end of nowhere, and making money by privatizing the internet (not a joke, I really had to do that), I was finally able to get my first mecha. And it was wonderful, you guys.
After equipping what I could from 55 hours of random mecha equipment drops that had just sat around gathering dust, I headed out into the desert to kick some giant monster arse. And sure, maybe my mecha was a little underwhelming in power (as I seemed to do more damage without it); but I was beating a hideous creature with a giant stun baton, so I didn’t really have any complaints.
Then, when I clicked the thumbstick to sprint, I discovered something wonderful. The mecha in Xenoblade X are transformable. The one you start with is basically the Garland from Megazone 23. In other words, the mecha is a giant, transforming motorcycle.
Thus, I began to cruise the desert in my sweet ride only to see a pillar of light on the horizon. It was one of the few internet hub points (i.e., quick travel points) I hadn’t been able to reach — as it is on a small island in the middle of a bottomless canyon. But of course, I figured now that I had a transformable mecha with booster jets, I could surely make the jump.
So I backed up, got a good running start, jumped while transforming back into a mecha, fired my booster jets and…
Yeah, I wasn’t even close.
When I loaded back to my last checkpoint, I discovered something unspeakably horrible. My mecha was broken — and I had no clue how to fix it or even if I could. (Xenoblade X isn’t terribly good at explaining the little things like: what to do if you drive your mecha into a bottomless ravine.)
It took me a good thirty minutes on the net to find out where in New L.A. to repair it. But to tell the truth, I’m not sure I should have bothered. I’ve got my eye on a newer model, you guys, and it’s a real beast.
I bet it can make the jump.
Xenoblade Chronicles X was released in Japan on April 29, 2015, for the Wii U. It will be released in the West sometime in 2015.
Comments
11 responses to “After 55 Hours Of Xenoblade X, I Finally Got My Mecha”
You need
jet pack unlocked via a kizuna quest done straight after chapter 9to get there.Also,
That vein requires level 5 mechanics, so no point trying yet anyway.Also: Skells come with insurance, (starts with 3 tickets), When your Skell is broken you get a quick time event pop up, if you perfect this, you will not lose a ticket.
You can retrieve your Skell for free (Console you face when you skip travel to the Blade Home) until you run out of tickets, in which case it then either costs a salvage ticket (option reward from daily union rewards for the team that gets first place), or something crazy like 300k+
And heres the thing: your team mates will always perfect escape, so they will never consume tickets while you get jumped or try take on enemies who end up face-rolling you. BUT, if the doll has 0 tickets left, you will still have to pay / salvage.
So my advice is that once you knock down to 1 ticket, give it to your NPCs to pilot from now on. Either that or take all the weapons/body parts off, sell the body, buy a new one and put back all your improved gear.
You’ll find the game exponentially speeds up once you’ve unlocked Skells as they are much more capable of smashing up enemies than you are on foot. So you can level from 30 to 50 in a matter of hours then 50 to 60 in the blink of an eye (provided you can pay for level 50 Skells as they cost 1.74 to 4.39 million).
Then your at the mercy of having to farm items and unlock schematics for level 60 stuff. THIS is what is time consuming in the grand scheme of things in Xenoblade X
Genuinely can’t wait for the game but will have to because need new TV & the english translated edition.
Any word yet on a Western release date?
Unfortunately no, but I’m really excited as well and have mine preorered. The soundtrack came in the mail today, so I’m immensely enjoying that right now!
I downloaded it (thinking it was the Xenoblade Chronicle OST) but it’s still awesome. the composer is currently one of best working in anime today (having penned the KILL la KILL & Andorah:Zero OSTs), so he brought great talent to the XCX OST.
Mechas! ( ´ ▽ ` )ノ
On another topic, was there any confirmation of receiving both the Japanese and English voiceovers for the Western release? (Like XC did)
I am pretty sure I will be getting this game. It just looks amazing. So much for the Wii U having no power…..
this game looks amazing holy shit – why isnt this on PC :~(
Probably because Nintendo own the developer, Monolithsoft.
My main concern when reading the article is that the games pacing may be off. I sunk 88 hours into Xenoblade on the Wii. (Much of that time was grinding out the ridiculous extra skills trees.) But the story missions weren’t too bad in that. A few extra quests in each area would usually be enough to take out the next boss monster.
Main story quests enemies drop down in level if you fail too many times. But I liked to over-prepare myself for them instead, challenge – not to let the game lower the enemy level.
But sometimes you’d still get mauled by an overed while fighting the quest enemies….
I didn’t have a problem with the pacing. Still enjoying it now, just got flooded with music rhythm games XD
My soundtrack copy came in the mail today. It’s so good! I recommend ordering a copy off CD Japan. They shipped it to me in Australia in 4 days (using Express shipping) for a very decent price. 4 and a half hours of amazing music!