Xenoblade chronicles
Xenoblade is the latest game from the people (but not the companies) behind Xenogears & Xenosaga. You can see the similarities, although the game is its own beast, and is not set in the same universe as either of those games.
Story & setting
Xenoblade takes place on a world consisting (as far as we know at least) of endless oceans. The only land consists of two gigantic titans, who stand frozen in place, locked in their final moment of life. The two titans are the Bionis (where biological life exists) and the mechonis (where mechanical life exists). As the game starts, people from the two titans are at war with each other. In fact, the game starts right in the middle of a battle, the turning point, where the people of bionis finally manages to beat back the attackers. This section works as a bit of a tutorial, and a rather well crafted one I might add.
Skip ahead a year, and the world is a far more peaceful place. No mechons have been seen for a while, and the people of bionis are rebuilding what was destroyed during the war. Of course, peace was never meant to last, and after the main character and his two friends have been properly introduced, the mechons attack again, and you just barely managed to beat them back, with the help of a very special sword, the Monado, the only man portable weapon that can reliably hurt mechons. After this, the main character and his friend sets out to avenge all those who died during the conflict.
Sadly the story is rather predictable. It follows the same basic structure as Xenogears, Final Fantasy 6, 7, 8, Tales of symphonia and so on, with the plot twist being placed at almost exactly the same point in the story, and being of a similar nature. Really, if you have played one of those games (or any of the other countless JRPGs out there, I guess), then you will see the plot twist from a mile away. In fact it is not only the big plot twist that is incredibly predictable, but most parts of the plot will go down roughly as their counterparts did in the other games mentioned above.
Gameplay
Gameplay feels like a mix between a WRPG & a JRPG. Combat is in real time, and there are no random encounters. You have several skills to use during combat, all of which are places in a bar at the bottom of the screen, and which you can use while they are not on cooldown. The different characters all have their own skills, and most have far more than fits into the skillbar, so you have to choose combinations that works with the party as a whole. You can only have 3 active characters at any one time, but there are of course more, all with their own strengths & drawbacks. Each skill is also leveled up individually, with talent points, and there is a regular level system in there as well.
The challenge was rather low, though knowing JRPGs, that was probably a good thing. Grind was kept at a minimum, and at only one point in the game did I have to grind a bit (near the end).
The game balance was a bit odd at points though. There were a few more powerful enemies in each region (think of them as elite mobs), and while they were for the most part easy enough, I found a few which had incredibly overpowered attacks. At one point I found an enemy that could wipe my entire party (even though they outleveled it) in a single unavoidable attack, yet the actual boss that was nearby, which had a higher level than my party, was a cakewalk and dealt less damage with its basic attacks than the "elite mob" did.
Sound & graphics
The sound does overall hold a rather high quality, with fitting music, decent enough sound effects, and rather good voice acting (which is distinctly British). Voice acting is often a problem with JRPGs in my experience, and this game has the best voice acting of any JRPG that I have played. It was not perfect though, and at points it did sound like someone was reading a script.
The graphics in this game is interesting. The art style is quite good (though not outstanding), and nothing looks bad. Textures don't look all that good though, as they obviously have a rather low resolution. Still, it is amazing how much they managed to push out of the Wii's hardware. There are some huge areas in this game, with things going on all over the place (water, moving trees & grass, creatures, insects flying around and so on), and yet the performance is very good. It was only when there were several enemies in combat, and some used some rather graphically intense attacks that the framerate dropped enough for it to be distracting. Still, had this game been released for a more powerful system (like the PC), it would have looked even better.
Overall the game was still good, but at 55h, it managed to overstay its welcome. There was simply not enough variety in the gameplay for it to stay fresh for 55h. 55h is by the way the time it takes to finish the game if you do roughly half the side quests, but only a handful of the side activities, and ignore all the more time consuming side aspects (like rebuilding a certain town). I guess you could easily add another 20-30h if you want to be a completionist. That is not something that interests me though. I guess JRPG lovers will like this game, as it breaths a breeze of fresh air into the genre, while still staying true to many of the sub-genre conventions. WRPG fanatics might still enjoy it as well, as it is different enough from most other JRPGs. Don't go out of your way trying to get the game though, it is good, but not outstanding.