Gamestop's inventory of pre-owned Xenoblade Chronicles copies seemed to inflate overnight on August 10, when the game showed up at previously dry retail locations and online for $90 a pop. Xenoblade is a famously hard-to-find Wii role-playing game that was sold only via Nintendo and Gamestop on first printing, and until now it seemed retail stock teetered on nonexistence.
We contacted Gamestop when Xenoblade was resurrected last week, and today the company issued a response:
"Gamestop regularly receives feedback from our PowerUp members regarding old titles they would like us to bring back, such as vintage games like Xenoblade Chronicles. We were recently able to source a limited number of copies of this title to carry in our stores and online.
"In fact, we have sourced several more vintage titles that will be hitting stores in the coming months, including Metroid Prime Trilogy.
"As always, our pricing for these games is competitive and is based on current market value driven by supply and demand. PowerUp Pro members always receive a 10 percent discount and earn PUR points on pre-owned purchases."
There's no word on the source of Gamestop's fresh copies. Nintendo has yet to respond to our requests for clarification, regarding whether this is a reprint or simply a surprising windfall of pre-owned games. Really, all of this comes down to one, simple question: How much is five stars worth to you?
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Anyone have this glitch happen to them? I haven't heard of many issues with the game at all, but now you know to be weary of at least one!
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. If you want to know where Xenoblade Chronicles came from, you need only look toward two sources. There's Monster Hunter, which is the inspiration for seemingly every modern JRPG from Dragon Quest IX to more blatant knockoffs like God Eater. And there are MMORPGs, which have come to exercise a great deal of influence over Japanese gaming culture as a whole.
Xenoblade Chronicles, and Monster Hunter too, are like this for a reason. Work and school start early and end late in Japan, and any time at home is usually either devoted to the family, or sleeping. Many gamers have migrated to manga cafes, which have been dominated by MMORPGs like Lineage for about a decade now. MMOs have in turn influenced loot-centric cooperative handheld games like Monster Hunter, which serve as the other alternative for busy students and salarymen.
This trend presents a dilemma for Japanese developers. Japan simply can't get enough Monster Hunter and its ilk, which is all the more reason for developers to keep cranking them out. Global audiences, however, have been slow to embrace co-op RPGs. That's where Xenoblade Chronicles comes in - an RPG with all the trappings of an MMO or a Monster Hunter, but wrapped in a traditional, single-player JRPG.
The Pros
Easily among the best looking Wii games out there
Unparalleled, massive environments create a living, breathing world
Spectacular value…even a barebones run should take a minimum of sixty hours
Soundtrack is diverse, varied, and beautiful
The Cons
The final third of the game's environments fall off in quality, beauty, and exploration
Sidequests are largely uninspired and trivial
Many aspects of the game's underlying systems are poorly explained
Xenoblade Chronicles is available for rent on Gamefly, a reader informs Joystiq. We checked and, sure enough, it's there. "But it's supposed to be exclusive to the Nintendo Store and GameStop!" you say. To that ... well, we don't really have a snappy retort because we're just as flummoxed as everyone else. It seems being able to rent the game has created an exception, compared to the game's purchase availability
Regardless, if you don't feel like paying a premium to try out the excellent RPG, and you happen to have a GameFly account, give it a rent. As of this writing, Xenoblade Chronicles is listed as "available now."
THE GOOD: A huge, imaginative world with scores of subtlety to explore; excellent voice work with an all-British cast
THE BAD: Tons of unimaginative filler; brain-dead party AI; dull MMO game mechanics.
THE UGLY: Why do RPG developers insist on placing the least-interesting 15 hours of the experience at the beginning of the game?
...a charming cast of characters that interact constantly, a uniquely designed and fascinating setting, forward-thinking gameplay systems that combine the best of East and West, and the exhilarating feeling that comes from taking part in an adventure that feels truly epic. Xenoblade more than atones for the sins of its fathers and shouldn't be missed by anyone who appreciates role-playing games of any shade.
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.
Xenoblade Chronicles executive director Tetsuya Takahashi should probably have a lot to say given his latest project's tumultuous journey to worldwide launch, but his extremely concise interview answers to us indicate otherwise. When we asked Takahashi how Xenoblade Chronicles' development scaled comparatively with past projects, he simply told us, "There's no doubt that the scale of this project was large compared to past projects." O ... okay then!
He got a bit more verbose on other subjects, however. How different is the NA/EU version of Xenoblade Chronicles from the original Japanese release last year, for instance? "We made some minor bug adjustments and revised some of the written content for localization. There were also some places where we made minor adjustments to the game balance, but none of the changes resulted in significant differences from the original (Japanese) version," Takahashi said.
Takahashi also spoke to his approach to development of modern RPGs. "I like Western game design a lot, so there were places where I referred to it without thinking about it." But that's not to say Xenoblade Chronicles is a product of a Japanese dev looking solely at Western design philosophy. "Xenoblade is not just influenced by Western game design; it has also undeniably inherited the DNA of Japanese RPGs." Find out for yourself just how that plays out when Xenoblade Chronicles arrives on US retail shelves tomorrow.
This is a game for the many people who just want to dive into their televisions and get lost in the bridges and waterfalls of a wonderful world. And it's a world worth exploring. I just wish you could explore it as somebody else.
