A quick glance at a few reviews of Xenoblade Chronicles will tell you at least one resounding thing: this is a great game. Very helpful, I know. While the title is an homage to the sometimes-revered Xeno series of games, I’m setting that aside for now on the basis that it may or may not have anything to do with the series besides sporting a similar title (also, minor detail, I’ve not played the Xeno series, so it would be difficult to draw conclusions anyways). In addition, nearly everything I’ve seen about the game references the fact that it is a JRPG (never mind that I managed to make the exceptional cognitive leap in determining that it is a role-playing game from Japan without the internet’s help), which has almost become a genre unto itself. This is as good a time as any to talk about what this means to me and what it might mean to you, since I can’t help but feel I was partially raised on the likes of Final Fantasy (at around the age of 6 or 7 I had three copies of the original NES game because it could store only one save file per cartridge… and, embarrassingly enough, I lost one copy under my bed). Continue reading →