Game review: Xenoblade Chronicles X is the definition of a time suck
It’s impossible to imagine what it would mean to complete this game, and the process of playing it alternates between frustrating and bewildering
Monolith Soft
Many video games prey on time. They can devour days and weeks, transfixing a player with mathematical experimentation – deducing which weapon, armour or character delivers optimal performance.
On these terms, Xenoblade Chronicles X (available only for the Nintendo Wii U) is an apex predator, a game that turns the simplest problems into a parade of time-consuming complications. Giving one’s self over to its endless permutations can make it seem as if time has both stopped dead and begun to accelerate beyond control. If you’re looking to lose yourself here is a game that, for better and for worse, will show you the way.
Xenoblade Chronicles X was developed by design legend Tetsuya Takahashi, who began his career working on the Final Fantasy series before forming his own company in the late 1990s. Xenoblade follows a group of humans attempting to colonise an alien planet after Earth is destroyed in the crossfire between two warring alien races. Technically, the characters are all android replicas of their human counterparts who are lying in cryostasis in the “lifecore” of a crashed ship. Nevertheless, it falls to these humanoids to both tame the alien planet, called Mira, and recover the “lifecore” before its reserve energy runs out.