@-JKR-

I saw that that was the supposed point of your blog. It's also easy to see you obscured your own message when you talked about whining, about self-deserving babies, about spoiled little kids.

You could have excluded that part and your final paragraph would have been stronger.

Instead, what people see isn't what you claim you wanted them to see. They only see the irony of someone who clearly hasn't gotten over the whole thing and who can't help to take potshots at people, telling others they should stop acting like little kids and "get over it".

@Guillaume

Well yes, it's a personal blog so excluding my feelings would make me... I dunno, the Wall Street Journal or something. I'm not running a newspaper here.

And I disagree that it would make the final paragraph stronger. Perhaps it would make it stronger for the people who had been doing the whining. The extremists I talked about who, frankly, just wanted any reason to badmouth Nintendo and would get behind any cause like that, with no intention of buying the game. But really, I don't care about those people. Those people are not going to buy the game no matter what I say. So yeah, I called them out on it. Which, again, doesn't make any sort of difference because they weren't going to heed the call anyway. That would be the personal part of the personal blog, expressing my displeasure of their previous and future actions.

It's like volunteering at the soup kitchen to hook up with a girl who happens to also volunteer there and then quitting. They're doing it for the wrong reasons and are hurting other people in the process.

Okay, well you've ground your axe, right in the faces of the people you wanted to hear it. Hope it felt as good as you hoped.

@Guillaume

I don't understand "ground your axe" what does that mean?

@Renjaku
I see.

@-JKR- though I agreed with your article, it come off as kind of harsh. But I do agree, Nintendo will never do this type of release again if this game does not sell. Me? I am not buying an American copy, I already imported a euro copy and I am not giving them my money again. If Nintendo had just been honest and Said "yes. We will release this game, just not in 2011." I would have waited to buy it because at least I knew it was coming. But what happened was Nintendo said "we have no plans to release this game in north America." because of this I had to import because I feared it would never release here and I scrambled to import so I did not have to pay hundreds of dollars for it on eBay a few years down the line.
I really do think NOA shot themselves in the foot with this game. A lot of those euro sales were imports and I doubt most of them will double dip.

If you guys want to continue talking about that article or similar stuff, I rather you take it to the Xenoblade NA release thread. It's still on the front page after all.

@-JKR-
In the case of Xenoblade, making money off the release is not the only advantage to releasing the game in the West. Monolith are one of the best studios Nintendo have that cater to traditional gamers. They make great hardcore games of a size and scope you typically only see on other platforms. They are also hard at work on a Wii U RPG that will most likely be the spiritual successor to Xenoblade, and the Wii U is targeted to get back some of the traditional gamer audience they lost with the Wii.

The exposure the game will get in preparation for their next title will be worth it alone. A small financial hit right now is more than worth it if Monolith can be established during the Wii U's time as Nintendo's Japanese Bethesda. Everything is in motion for this to happen, but it will help if at least a small but vocal group in the west can champion the game and company.

Having played the game, it is indeed awesome, and I will recommend to anyone and everyone that they play Monolith's next game. I am now part of their marketing, and so are all the other gamers and journos who played the game.

I have all the intentions of jumping into this game for a few more hours but I had to clean stuff. I graduate college next week today I had that weird moment where I went through my bookshelf that had everything from my four years of college on it and just packed it up for storage. It's a weird feeling looking at all of that stuff that played a part in where I'm at now... I listened to xenoblade music while doing it and it felt epic.

Holy crap, you can mega heat crystals in gem crafting.

@-JKR- My early guess is: probably has not doomed us. You're right that people need to put their money where their mouth is, but early indications from Gamestop employees bode well for the preorders. I'm not sure how they calculate this, but Gamestop has it as most anticipated for the Wii. I hope NOA/Nintendo are smart enough to realize that a limited release with (I'm assuming) little to no advertising isn't going to make nearly as many sales as a full release would have, but if not well, what could we do about that? We can't stop them from being totally irrational.

Whatever the case, I still believe that online pressure definitely helped influence Nintendo's decision here.

@Zero

I'll let them know my thoughts, in the survey I'll inevitably do, that it was a smart move to bring it over and try to reaffirm their action of a stateside release.

Just fought Gadolt for the second time. Man, did he give me problems. Up until now I've relying heavily on Sharla for her healing while slowly wearing the enemy down. After failing many times with this tactic I switched to Shulk, Reyn and Dunban and focused on getting chain attacks to topple and daze. Kept them for the battles against Egil, and pretty much breezed through them. Who needs healing when the enemy can't even attack you?

I'm having some trouble - some advice would be much appreciated.

I believe the boss's name is Master Hobart. I'm on prison island for the 2nd time and am chasing Dickson. I can get him down to half his life just fine, but then he starts using level 7 attacks that kill my guys in 1 hit. The tough way would be to just raise levels - I'm 71, and he's 78. But is there any other tactics I can use? He's very resistant to physical attacks, and break rarely works on him during a chain attack let alone during the normal battle. I've been using a character with agility or high HPs to hold his agro, but once he starts using level 7 attacks the whole thing goes to hell.

I switched to Reyn/Shulk/Dunban briefly while Sharla was unavailable. I was impressed how they suppressed. But I like looking at Sharla.


@achhibbar If you can't avoid dying, maybe the revive ability some characters have would help. There are skills and gems that boost the amount of HP they revive with too.

Usually I have to be within five levels of an enemy to have a shot at beating them. I haven't faced that boss yet so I don't know.

@Renjaku
Thanks for the tips, might just have to bite the bullet and level up,

I personally find the TITS character design a bit ridiculous (side armor for the boobies, but leave the middle of chest uncovered), but it was responsible for the funniest moment in the game. About character 7, when Fiora first comes back, she's a robot from the neck down and talks about how the Mechons gave her a brand new body. Yet give her some new armor and mercifully it appears that the Mechons have altered everything apart from her tits. Some things are just universally appreciated.

I knew cultural anthropologists were wrong. Everyone likes boobs.

@Renjaku

You got a FAQ somewhere? I really have trouble wrapping my head around the crafting.

Zero said:

@-JKR- My early guess is: probably has not doomed us. You're right that people need to put their money where their mouth is, but early indications from Gamestop employees bode well for the preorders.

I dunno, that's not what's going around right now...

Too bad I imported this game already.