First Impressions: Xenoblade Chronicles

Thanks to Joystiq's guide on playing PAL games on an NTSC Wii, I'm about an hour in to Xenoblade Chronicles so far. Here are some initial impressions.

First, as much as I hate to say it, Xenoblade Chronicles looks great for a Wii game. I can understand why Nintendo is choosing not to release it stateside so far: Some of the textures look downright HIDEOUS. There's one sequence in a cutscene where your character looks out over a hillside, and the entire hillside is one very large, very stretched texture.

Maybe this isn't a problem for Japan or Europe. I don't know. I do know that gamers here are a finicky lot, and it'll be difficult for them to overlook things like textures and draw-in.

Now that that's out of the way, let me just say this: WOW. So far, each of the characters is interesting. The location is interesting. The mechanics of the game are easy to learn and yet appear to be very deep. The music is stellar.

We're only an hour in, so some things might get grating, like how the characters talk incessantly. We'll see. As of right now, though, I'm having a really good time.