The clothed pool episode, huh? Subversive.

Good line.

Oh hey it’s that shot from every cute girl OP.

Just a good visual really.

Even better visual.

Oh this is a good fuckin expression.

Why do Japanese girls always bathe in such viscous looking water?

This is a really good show.

Yeah.

And going back?

Nobody talks about it. Im excited and scared all at the same time. For about a year, I've had a foot in both worlds. But next week, I go back to school and to work. I go back to being a full time student.

And today I'm twenty three.... But last time I checked I was 21. Treatment does that. Being on the sidelines for so long, it was so easy to forget that life was still happening. And I do not know what to make of it. When I relapsed two years ago, the things I was stressing about was school and work.... It was in treatment that the focus switched to trauma.

So going back... It's a little scary. What if things go wrong? Those are my worries.

But I'm also excited. Things might just go right.

But being 23 feels like a slap in the face. Not because I'm getting older... Whatever... But more because it feels like time was lost. Where was 22?.... Or 21. But I'd rather wake up one day and realize I'm 23 than wake up and realize I'm 45. There is still plenty of time left to live, at least there will be now, now that I'm taking care of myself.

So when the crisis is over, and the panic is subdued, what then? Spent so lonh in crisis, it's weird to return to life. But it's time. And I mean.. I've been out of treatment for a few months now, but I also haven't had any responsibilities, and all of those come back next week. Studying, school, a part time job.

Mike Nied | January 9, 2020 12:38 am

2019 is well and over (good riddance), but we’re still working on a handful of year-end lists. And next up is best music videos. From Katy Perry’s puppy-themed “Small Talk” to Normani’s ’00s-referencing and genuinely iconic “Motivation,” it was a pretty great year for visual content. So I took on the task of pulling together what stood out for me. That includes offerings from several of pop’s biggest divas and must-sees from a crop of rising stars. Don’t fret too much over the ranking; everything on this list is exceptional. That being said see what made the cut below then let us know if you agree.

43. “Two Of Us” – Louis Tomlinson

This one is a tearjerker. Louis Tomlinson helps an 83-year-old named Richard check a couple items off his bucket list in his heartwarming “Two Of Us” video.

Also on the list:

19. “Lights Up” – Harry Styles

Harry Styles launched his Fine Line era with the surprise release of “Lights Up.” And while the song itself is excellent, the video (which sees him sweat-soaked in a sea of bodies and serving fabulous fashion) is even better.

55. “Satisfaction” – ZAYN

"Last One Standing"

Hehe... wlw elves....

One quick thing to contextualise this review – I have played X to completion before, around 4 years ago or something, probably. I didn’t do quite as much as I did on this playthrough but I did the main story and a good chunk of affinity missions so like, I was more experienced with this game than I was going into 1 and 2, for both of which I was basically playing blind.

Anyway yeah, let’s uh, start. So one thing about having played the game before that affected this playthrough is the fact that I already knew how to play the game. And because of that, lots of common issues people run into with this game? Didn’t really affect me. Is the game worse than 1 and 2 at teaching you? Maybe? I don’t even remember being taught though, it’s been that long. Certainly the game’s probably the hardest to get into of the 3 just because the sheer number of MMO-esque systems constantly going on, and it’s not like the tiny fonts for every single UI element in the game make dealing with those any easier. And then speaking of ease, is this game the hardest of the three Xenoblade games? Uh, maybe? The way it approaches story and affinity missions, and particularly how the final chapter is handled, can make it way easier to lock yourself in situations that should feel unwinnable, but then if you know what to do then like, shit’s pretty chill, and really satisfying.

Yeah so I mean basically, the game’s maybe the hardest to get into, but I don’t really know that for sure since I didn’t really need to try to get into it. And like, I gave 2 shit for taking ages to become fun, and I don’t want to give X a free pass if it does the same thing, but again, I don’t remember if it does. That’s the problem with the “review 2 games you’ve never played before and 1 game you have” approach I guess. Oh well, reviews are subjective no matter what anyone says and my own personal experience and bias is going to influence it all irregardless. Anyway I feel like X’s probably easier to grasp the basics of than 2 anyway, I certainly remember having more fun with the combat in this game earlier than I did the combat in 2, so uh, that’s a thing.

And to talk about that combat, and just get into actual fucking gameplay at last, X’s combat feels amazing. There’s such a massive amount of customisation in the combat, and for the like, what, 12 weapons the game gives you? Basically every art available for all of them is fun and flashy and they’re mostly all pretty useful and easy to understand, and the added benefits of secondary cooldowns increase the depth a good amount. Maybe not a good amount actually, lots of the time it’s just “lower damage now or bigger damage later?” but even just having the choice is nice. And then that goes even further with Overdrive which is its own insanely fun thing increasing the speed of combat and the power you have dramatically, it’s so fucking satisfying pulling off a good Overdrive and then just shredding enemy health bars, and then fuck, when that massive total damage banner fills up the screen, it’s just a pure dopamine rush, through and through. I also really love soul voices – tying healing to them keeps you on your toes since you can’t just wait for Sharla or Nia to heal you for free, instead now you’re constantly paying attention to whatever arts are free of cooldown and treating your HP like it actually matters. Same with TP, party gauge is so easy to build up in the other 2 games that you never really need to worry if you’re killed since an ally can probably revive you, but in X you actually need to work for a revive, and yeah you can tell your party members to keep their TP up but then they’re losing out on valuable TP arts and god the risk reward system there is so fun. It’s also great returning to a combat system where not only can you move and autoattack, but even jump around while autoattacking, and hey switching between ranged and melee weapons to optimise your damage and TP buildup between cooldowns is another really neat thing that keeps you invested in battles. Overall I’d just call it my favourite combat system in the series, really. It’s so fast and flashy and satisfying and customisable and everything about the combat is just designed to keep you invested in every single battle, it’s fucking great.

Uhhhhhh a few sentences ago I mentioned moving and jumping. That’s a good excuse to segue into movement. So X is the one Xenoblade game where running and jumping around doesn’t suck! Because you run fast, and you jump high. Thank god! But that means nothing if there’s not a world worth moving around in, so now we get to talk about what a lot of the main appeal of X is – that open world. Mira is quite possibly the best open world I’ve ever seen in a video game. It’s just so fucking gigantic and packed with completely unique locales and like, I’m not gonna say “oh there’s so much to do around every corner”, because pretty much all you can do is combat and questing. But like, those are both fun in this game, so even if you tend to approach areas in the same ways, I think it’s still fun. Certainly beats the first game’s vast open areas with basically nothing actually interesting about them. X is just so full of cool places with cool enemies and cool movement challenges, and I think it also helps the game a lot that Mira feels like a very real place. The environments don’t have any obvious “videogame” things, they’re completely immersive, with their own diverse wildlife and weather and just general ecosystems. It’s really incredible.

The world also feels very alive in that if you’re just traversing around? There are no loading screens. You can exit the main hub city of NLA, traverse the entire planet, spelunk in some caves, maybe take a swim in lava, and just do all of that without ever being interrupted by any sort of loading screen. There’s loading for fast travel, obviously, as well as for the blade barracks, but otherwise the game’s entirely ready to let you approach everything without ever being stopped, and that’s great.

And I think what sells the open world the most is that it is bar none the most open open world game I know. The invisible walls preventing you from going too far are way out in the ocean or way up in the sky to where you wouldn’t really want to go there anyway. In terms of landmasses, you can go literally everywhere in the entire game. And that’s great, really. The world is truly your oyster.

Now for what it’s worth, you can’t go literally everywhere straight away. Some cliffs do end up being completely insurmountable on foot. But that’s where skells come in. Xenoblade X has fucking mechs, baby! Technically this game was my first proper mecha media lol. Yeah so skells just add to the movement even more by being these fucking Transformers-esque mechs that can turn into basically fucking cars to further increase movement speed and the verticality you can get with their increased jump heights. They’re similarly fun to control as the ground movement and also the different skell modules have like different builds so their vehicle forms all handle differently and like, they’re not all as fun to control as each other, but I don think that’s still a cool and immersive detail to add to the game. And then later down the line, your skells get the ability to fucking fly, and it’s then that the world truly opens up to you, because now, hell yeah, you can actually just go everywhere on the fucking planet, and it’s incredible. I do sorta wish skell flight didn’t replace the skell jump, since the flight can take a bit to get off and back on the ground in places where a single jump would’ve sufficed, but that’s sorta nitpicky anyway. Skells are great to move around in is the point.

But what about combat? Because fuck yeah baby, this Xenoblade game may have the best ground combat, but that still wasn’t enough for Monolith because they decided to give us fucking mech combat! And uh, it’s honestly not that great. Skell cooldowns are just fucking, way way way too slow to justify how little damage much of them do, even while in Overdrive. And they lack secondary cooldowns too so you can’t even take advantage of those. What ends up feeling like the best thing to do in skell combat is use every art you have for what damage that does do, and hope that you enter this like cockpit view that refreshes your cooldowns, and I don’t know what prompts that to happen anyway so uh, skell combat’s just less fun than ground combat. The actual best thing to do in skell combat is use the one like, super ultra-god weapon that you’ll be able to equip to just do fucking gigantic damage at the start of the battle, maybe even take down a tough appendage (haven’t mentioned those so far but they’re also great, functionally just give you like mini objectives in the middle of battles that can disable enemy attacks in the process, super sick) and then just ditch the skell and finish it off on the ground. Unfortunate that skell combat’s not great, it’s actually the weakest combat system in the Xenoblade games I’d say, but again, basic skell movement’s still really good and the ground combat’s my favourite so, it’s no biggie.

One pro I’ll give skell combat that transitions into my next point is that it’s at least built in such a way where when you get a skell, it sorta feels like you’re evening the odds against the world a little bit. Technically ground combat can actually do much more damage and crazy shit at an optimal level, but when you first get a skell, its frame alone is enough to blow back smaller enemies, and being in a cool mech that can fly around does end up making you feel more in the league of the game’s larger enemies. And yeah, that next point, the enemies. Xenoblade X continues the Xenoblade trend of ridiculously high level giant enemies just sorta being scattered around areas. But I honestly think it’s at its most potent in X for two reasons. First is that you’ll be revisiting these areas a lot more, so that fuck off god dinosaur just feels like it has a more massive presence. And the second reason happens to be their massive presences! There is absolutely no shortage of enemies in X that fucking dwarf literally everything from the other two games. The largest enemies you can expect to see in 1 and 2 are the size of like, fairly large buildings. X meanwhile will basically throw fucking cruise ships at you, that fuck off god dinosaur I mentioned earlier is like 4 times larger than anything from the other games and it’s fucking incredible. The scale of this world and its inhabitants is so incredible and they come together so nicely to make you, the player, feel like you’re standing up against impossible odds.

That’s the key narrative of this game, really. Survival. Earth’s fucked, we landed on Mira, and now we need to carve a place into this new planet so the last remnants of humanity don’t end up completely extinct. And I think the incredible designs of the world and enemies sell you on how alien and inhospitable this place should be, and yet, there’s a chance that we can make it. Helping that even further is the fact that humans don’t end up being the only aliens here, we get tons of completely different races with different cultures, values, religions, and the game’s great for bringing them together, reconciling their differences, and just having the most intense anti-racism theme ever. Because hey - humans, chipmunk-esque lizards that adore pizza, a race of hiveminded bugs that split in half on death, furries, and even more - everyone can all live together in relative peace and harmony, because at the end of the day, we all need to survive, yeah? It’s great, really.

Now how a fair chunk of these aliens end up with you is through the game’s various sidequests, so let’s talk about those. X has easily the best sidequests in the Xenoblade games. The objectives often aren’t much different than what they’d be for the other 2 games, but sidequests generally have more steps to them, as well as much, much more meaningful and rewarding narratives, that generally lead into questlines of their own that’ll end up coming together with other questlines in really cool and sick ways. Maybe you’ll help people set up a water plant, and then later that water plant will get absolutely fucked up from some alien parasite thing. But if you’ve allied with the bug people from earlier, they’ll help you make some mechs that push the questline with this water plant even further. The quests are constantly crossing over with one another and having actual consequences on the world and on gameplay. The writing for most of the questlines is also generally fun enough to make you care about whatever minor characters are involved, so now the several life and death choices you’re given in every quest matter. Sidequests in Xenoblade X are just fun and rewarding rather than being a tedious checklist, plain and simple. X is a game where you see a sidequest and you’re excited, and that’s not something either of the other games have going for them.

Now, for all this talk about X doing this, that and the next thing better than 1 and 2, is there anything it’s worse at? Yeah, and quite fortunately we were already talking about narrative anyway, so let’s naturally transition into talking about X’s story. The story in Xenoblade X is mostly told in the game’s main story missions, duh, and there are only 12 of those, all being maybe an hour or so each? And the only real praise any of the narrative elements of those get is that they’re often surface level cool. The voice acting’s great, and whenever the game decides cutscenes should have direction rather than being freecam, it’ll generally pull off cool action, and the designs of most of the things you encounter in the story are pretty cool. And also the fights are great, you fight a fucking colossal flying fortress at one point and it’s super sick. But in terms of the actual narrative, it’s this weird “show don’t tell” nightmare. And I say that because the game chooses to both show nothing, and also tell nothing. It’ll constantly build up or randomly drop these twists out of nowhere, and just act like there’s loads of well thought out lore and backstory and shit, but we never get any of it. Some mysterious black skell that fought against the alien invasion in Earth? Yeah he’ll get mentioned a couple of times and that’s that. The Ganglion are a small time crime organisation working for some way larger Federation? Yeah maybe if we say that that’s a thing then it’ll be a cool twist and nothing else. The entire main objective of the game is to recover this lifehold thing but when we get there it’s missing whatever data thing it needs to keep humans alive or something. THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT THIS PLANET YO. The main story’s fun to do but nothing about any of it actually makes a lick of sense or is well thought out at all, they’ll constantly just have one-off characters to basically be a monster of the week in this story chapter (even though there are only 12 story chapters? Do better game) and then once they’re gone, that’s them I guess. It just lacks uh, everything that makes the other two games’ stories appealing, but sure it’s X it’s a spinoff it doesn’t need to be like them. But its own story is pretty ass too. It’s such a shame that the main narrative is as trash as it is, because in terms of setting and theme it’s so damn good! But the main stuff the game asks you to do doesn’t capitalise on that at all.

Now if it’s a Xenoblade game, you also want good characters, and X is weird on that front. The main party that’s required for all story missions is your own custom character, Elma, and Lin. Lin’s an okay character, scared child that’s able to push herself to help in things much larger than she is, whatever, it’s a trope but it works. She’s just dragged down by being tied to Tatsu – this game’s nopon comic relief who’s completely insufferable – the pair have one joke and it’s completely unfunny but they repeat it constantly. Elma’s character meanwhile is basically just that she’s this ultra competent military lady who’s still nice I guess. And also later an alien. There’s so little depth or personality there and she really doesn’t hold a candle to Shulk or Rex. I think her very nice waifu-y design is the sole thing carrying her popularity. There are a few other characters that partake in the main story but the only one who really matters for the main story is Lao. He’s a guy who got super jaded about his family not being saved when Earth got fucked, so he betrays humanity and then acts like the dumbest, hammiest traitor ever. He’s okay but like, still about as generic as Lin is. A not that interesting trope played completely straight. Again, what popularity he does have is probs carried by his design, and also people love Matt Mercer so?

So yeah, weak main story, pretty weak main cast, I’ve already talked about sidequests a lot though so let’s talk about what’s effectively a fusion of those two – the affinity missions. Like the other 2 games, you have affinity among party members, or rather only among your customisable character and all the other party members. You can get affinity in all the same ways as the rest, heart-to-hearts still exist (their existence is very poorly communicated tho tbh) and past all those, you can get special story quests with all of the game’s like, I think 18 other party members? That’s super sick! These quests are fully voice acted and have all their own logical progress requirements to do them, and the bulk of them do a great job at expanding on whatever respective characters are involved. Lin and Elma fare tragically poorly in their heart-to-hearts and affinity missions, with their characterisation not really going beyond what it is for the main story, but for basically everyone else these are great and really fun ways to get to know these characters, and basically every party member beyond those main ones is either already a good character or becomes a good character once you’ve done enough of their heart-to-hearts or affinity missions. Plus it just helps expand on the world a lot, you feel much more at home in NLA if you’ve surrounded yourself with all of these friends. There’s not quite as much unique dialogue among whatever party configurations as there is for the other 2 games, but it does exist and hey that’s pretty cool.

Affinity missions are just an overall fun way for the game to build its characters quite nicely, and while they don’t really save the main story or anything, they’re generally good enough stories in their own right, coupled with the numerous amazing sidequests I’ve already mentioned, to where if you are going to go into X expecting a great story, you should definitely be doing the sidestuff, because the main narrative’s not gonna deliver. The game’s also just a lot more about the gameplay and exploration anyway. Do sidestuff is the point.

One thing about affinity missions I’m not really that fond of though is how they rarely ever connect two actual characters. In 1 and 2, heart to hearts were always between 2 or more characters in ways that would let you get to know everyone involved. But for X, the bulk of affinity missions and every heart to heart will be between the character whose thing you’re doing, and your customisable character. And unfortunately, your custom character really can’t have much of a personality. Most of the choices you’re given in sidequests have consequences, but for affinity missions and heart-to-hearts you basically just have “confirm or deny” or “action or inaction” but they never really matter. In being a custom character you can’t really develop a proper relationship with any of the characters. They feel like friends, sure, but that’s it. And I like having a custom character, I get to play as a sexy cute girl, I don’t want that compromised. But I think if there were more affinity missions that were like, oh go out and take Doug and Celica on a mission, that could help the world feel more interconnected. Oh well.

Since I mentioned cute sexy girl, this is a Xenoblade game. So uh, yeah. If you’ve got everyone in default gear, the armours all look fine. Some story villains are alien girls and the camera will really let you know they have asses, so the fanservice is hard to avoid there. If you want to get into the game’s fashion gear options though, it’s really easy to go about sexualising nearly everyone. And that’s great! Both the male and female character models in this game are pretty hot and the game lets you capitalise on that with many armour sets that are totally obviously fanservicey sexualised shit, but honestly the bulk of them don’t look stupid enough for it to be a problem. And also the game’s never gonna be as serious as the other two is tone-wise so who cares if you’re running around in a microbikini? Dude I’m super cool with the sexualisation here. Also because it’s more sci-fi than fantasy and the planet you came from is just, uh, Earth, there’s lots of super casual clothes like jeans and jumpers or hoodies and shit and they all look great. More skirts would’ve been nice but you can’t win them all I guess. I do wish this game’s fashion operated on XBDE logic where you don’t need to keep it in your inventory forever to use it, but oh well. Yeah models look nice, game’s hot, I’m not really about censorship in games so uncensor Lin, but then I was just gonna shove her in a cute school uniform anyway so I don’t really care that I can’t put her in super skimpy clothes.

And then uh, the last thing I really want to talk about is the music. Anyone who tells you Xenoblade X has a bad or inconsistent soundtrack? Yeah cut them out of your life. That’s complete bullshit. You don’t need that negativity in your life, and neither do I. X’s soundtrack is literally banger after banger after banger, the bangers never stop, even when it’s more mellow night time music for whatever luscious area you’re looking at, you’re still listening to bangers. Somehow every song in this game can completely fit the area and time and just be really different from one another while all still being bangers. Hiroyuki Sawano you legend. I don’t like the skell songs actually, but everything else claps fucking hard. Black Tar especially is the best battle song in the series no question. I never want to finish fights when I’m playing X because I don’t want to stop listening to it.

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