![xenoblade chronicles x world map xenoblade chronicles x world map](http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/media/33094/1/35.jpg)
Characters have two weapons: a manual weapon like a sword or daggers, and a gun. Arts-special physical and magical attacks that can be used to knock enemies to the ground and cast protective shields around party members-make a return. The prospect of exploring this beautiful, broken world left behind from Xenoblade Chronicles is both a sad and exciting one.īack on the ground, combat in X is the same as it was in Xenoblade Chronicles. The Ball lets you see everything from huge monsters lurking around the next bend in the road to the shadows of cities in the distance. But the Navigation Ball is more than an important tool it's an excellent way to see for yourself just how large the world of Xenoblade Chronicles X is. You can rotate and tilt the camera in any direction, which is extremely useful when trying to maneuver your party out of a maze of canyons. The range over which you can look is incredible. And by "large swath" I mean your characters are left as tiny specks in the center, barely visible. Essentially it's a camera that you shoot straight into the air for a bird's eye view of a large swath of your surroundings. But the most useful tool in your explorer's arsenal is the Navigation Ball. The GamePad map displays a tiny arrow that shows where you are in the world and which direction you're facing, which is helpful. If you are killed in battle anytime after unlocking this checkpoint and before unlocking a new one, you'll be sent back to it. Most of these icons indicate the presence of checkpoints, which are unlocked by "discovering" new areas and setting down a beacon. Rather than your typical geographical layout, the map is laid out as a honeycomb of diamonds, with an icon in each diamond displaying important landmarks. The Wii U GamePad displays a world map of sorts, with a few strange tweaks. X's navigation system is something else entirely. In Xenoblade Chronicles, navigation depended largely on your ability to follow a simple map with a directional arrow in the corner of the screen. Scattered among the grass and shrubs are items to collect, treasures to discover, and tiny new details that add to the masterful visual world-building on the part of developer Monolith Soft. There's never a dull moment, either in the five or so minutes it will take you to run from one area to another, you'll have to tiptoe by resting monsters and go head-to-head with others that seek you out directly. You can move freely around the map, selecting side quests and battling roaming monsters at your leisure as you pursue the main plot in bits and pieces. Xenoblade Chronicles X's open world is a welcome experience for those tired of the rigid hallway formulas favored by many role-playing games in the past decade. And on top of these islands you can stare out into the distance, picking out more shadowed valleys and enticing crags, with titanic buildings shrouded in mist sitting tantalizingly on the horizon. Giant islands being held in the sky by sloping pillars of rock can be surmounting by carefully running up the center of one pillar. It's more like jumping upwards repeatedly than climbing, but it is what it is. You can't scale a sheer rock face, but if you find a craggier area or a grassy slope to climb, you can get to the top. To my delight, you absolutely can climb up anything you see. I didn't think I could make it up most of these organic structures of stone and earth, but I was going to try.īy clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's
#Xenoblade chronicles x world map series
My demo began in a series of valleys nestled among large craggy hills, with sides made up of steep rock faces at an unforgivingly sharp angle.
![xenoblade chronicles x world map xenoblade chronicles x world map](https://i1.wp.com/thementalattic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/xenobladexworld-2.jpg)
You can run to and through all of them, she said, and can climb up and over pretty much any structure you see.
![xenoblade chronicles x world map xenoblade chronicles x world map](https://ryuz4ki57inenglish.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/snipe-a.jpg)
But this time around, that lush world is just a little bit lusher and more massive so massive, in fact, that it takes a significant amount of time to run between checkpoints.ĭuring a recent hands-on session with X-which launches in Japan this month but won't be out in North America until later this year-a PR representative for Nintendo told me that I could walk literally anywhere within the game's five continents. Like its predecessor, 2010's Xenoblade Chronicles, your ragtag band of heroes is plunked down into a lush world rich with jewel-toned foliage and glittering structures of rock and metal. Xenoblade Chronicles X is unbelievably big.