So there's lots of Xenoblade threads running around. Time for an official thread for impressions game discussion etc.
Whether you're a lucky resident of Europe or Australia, a North American who's decided to flip the bird to Nintendo and import, or even someone who simply wants to live vicariously through the experiences of others, this is the place you want to be!
See, that doesn't bother me that much (though I'd never do it). Neither does airplanes. It's being outside, and looking down from a high place with no barrier or anything (like standing on the roof of a building and looking over the edge, The Matrix style). I guess it's kind of a sub-category of a phobia of heights, but it absolutely terrifies me nonetheless.
From the moment Xenoblade/Monado was first revealed, I was fully expecting it to not come out in America. The decision to import it from Europe was easy for me.
So maybe I started the thread a little too early. Oh well. I promised impressions though. Sooooo...
*Attempts to get thread back on track*
Not much more to report, I've been utterly distracted running around town instead of progressing the main story. You like your RPG's with meat? This has meat aplenty. I've accepted something like 30 quests already. It's insane just how much stuff is crammed into this game. I don't know how anyone is supposed to keep track of it all.
It's also nice to see a lot of RPG conventions completely streamlined. You want to go to another location? Bring up your list and select it, you're there instantly. You die? Don't worry about having to replay an entire section and losing progress. You just restart from the last checkpoint and take another crack.
Oh and for fans of voice acting...plenty of it. All of it British. Gets a little repetitive in combat though.
Sometimes I don't like having too much meat in an RPG. I'm not really in the position nowadays where I can play games for hours and hours at a time. Dragon Quest IX was kind of "too much" so I ended up skipping most of the side quests and probably missing out.
I feel the same way, which is why I enjoyed FFXIII so much. However, I do prefer to own SOME really meaty RPG's just for that time where I really feel like sinking my teeth into a big adventure with tons of stuff to do.
Well I like meaty games a lot, but they have to like... be the right kind. I can't quite put it into words. But they still need to be quick and accessible. One of the tough things about trying to go back to Monster Hunter Tri is that you can spend too much time in menus and forging items and yada yada and then, if you only have an hour or so to sit down with the game, you have barely played the game.
Xenoblade sounds pretty quick and accessible though, from what I've read.
Still on the fence if I'm going to homebrew. Playing some other games right now though, so I'll just... keep waiting. I really don't see how Nintendo couldn't release in NA at this point. Why do they want people to hate them?
As for the spiders, I'm genuinely surprised people could get so freaked out over just a picture. I understand some single particular people having odd and extreme phobias, or rational phobias like heights and poisonous snakes, but spiders? It just baffles me how this completely irrational phobia is so incredibly widespread and extreme. There has to be some reason behind it. Maybe in old times, there was an outbreak of a highly poisonous spider that killed lots of people for hundreds of years, and its been ingrained in our brains to fear them by pure instinct?
I do have an on topic question for you guys who are too freaked to even look at pictures of spiders:
What if there is a spider boss in Xenoblade? What then?
For that matter, who do you deal with Gohma in Zelda games? Were you even able to watch the WiiU Zelda demo?
I don't see a reason to wait, honestly. You'll get the game earlier AND pay less than for a new release here. No taxes through zavvi.com! I can hardly believe it.
I had to pay $1.40-something extra for importing something, because of my bank's policy or something, but even considering that it was still less than a $50 Wii game would come out to in North America, counting tax.
Someone who has an extreme phobia might not be able to fight Gohma. I don't seem to have a problem with it because I can tell myself she is not real. I didn't really even have a problem with Shelob in LotR. I think the pictures are disturbing because they are things that exist in real life instead of a computer created monster.
@Zero I think part of it has to do with how much demand the game has outside of its country. I think there are some games which cost a lot to import from most places, but if you were to pick them up while in Japan for instance, it would be relatively easy to find a cheap copy.
But then if it dropped in price and most importers were still charging full price, one importer could drop the price and everyone would buy there. I'd think it would have to at least be somewhat connected to the price in the country it is coming from.
Whatever the case, I don't pay $50 for games, so... I'm going to wait and see what happens. Either it releases here eventually, or it drops in price in Europe eventually and well, I dunno... I'll have my girlfriend pick it up next time she is there (which is a lot...)
