I'll confess, I wasn't terribly excited for Xenoblade Chronicles at first. My experience with other "Xeno" titles (Xenogears, Xenosaga) could perhaps best be described as contemptuous. To me, those titles paraded the worst elements of Japanese role-playing games in front of a spotlight, gleefully showcasing the genre's biggest flaws to the world for excruciatingly painful stretches. Going into the nitty-gritty of why I find those games awful is another article entirely, but suffice it to say that another Xeno-game wasn't exactly high on my want-to-play list -- until I started hearing nothing but praise for Xenoblade from like-minded JRPG genre fans. Imagine my surprise at popping the disc into my Wii to discover a game nothing like Xenos past -- a game that, instead of stubbornly shoving the worst parts of JRPGs in your face, makes substantial advancements to the genre.