These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
YMMV: Xenoblade
And the Fandom Rejoiced: When the game was confirmed for a Western release. Both the European and the American releases are worth mentioning. The former since it meant that the game would have an English version when the possibilities of that happening looked bleak at best, and because a major JRPG got to be released in Europe before any other non-Japanese territory when they usually are left for last (and worse). The latter, because of all the effort that the fandom made to try to convince Nintendo of America to bring the game despite its low sales prospects, including the now legendary Operation Rainfall.
Awesome Music: We could easily say the entire soundtrack. But if we get specific:
Bad Export for You: The North American localization isn't bad, but it shows lack of effort. It's pretty much just the UK version. For some things in the game, such as voice acting, this is a good thing—another Baten Kaitos won't occur. However, the format of the date and British spellings of certain words weren't touched. Not bad in any way, just not much effort was put into minor things. It's much preferable to nothing.
In fact many reviewers have praised the British Voice Acting as it makes it stand out for the other JRP Gs.
It was either that or essentially wasting money to pay a localization team to go through the game's script and remove 'u's for basically no reason, especially considering that with all the British accents, you'd expect words to be spelled the British way.
Big Lipped Alligator Moment - Debateable, but Tyrea's sudden flight at the end of her sidequest comes off as a bit jarring, since it hasn't been mentioned, demonstrated or hinted at that High Entia's headwings serve as anything but decoration, they've got plenty of technology to render their ability to fly on their own mostly meaningless and the plot implies that they've been actively trying to mix their bloodline with the Homs for unrelated reasons which would also serve to breed this trait out as a side effect.
Actually one of the nameless NPCs in Alcamoth mentions that it's possible for a High Entia to fly using their headwings. But it requires a great amount of training and compares it to being able to wiggling ears.
Complete Monster - Zanza, who pretty much destroyed the ENTIRE UNIVERSE, and ended billions of lives, all for a science experiment. His reward for this was getting to become god and rule over the new universe he created. He then created a race devoted solely to keeping him alive and destroyed them when they evolved and attempted to expand beyond his world. He did this dozens of times, causing the apocalypse in order to keep himself alive. When his fellow scientist, also turned god, Meyneth got fed up with this and tried to get him to stop, he had a fight to the death with her which ended in a draw. Next he forced his spirit into Shulk and used him to reach the summit of the machine god and kill Egil. When Shulk refused to kill Egil, he simply had Dickson shoot him, then proceeded to reactivate Bionis and kill Egil, then kill Meyneth, take back his Monado, steal Meyneth's Monado, destroy the machine god, then force the High Entia to regress into Telethia; mindless, inhuman monsters. He finally gets what he deserves when he's killed and, as a result, the universe he created is replaced with one without him, but the number of deaths that have occured due to his actions and the war he set off leave a bittersweet feeling at the end of it.
Metal Face (otherwise known as Mumkhar) launched an attack on Colony 9 and killed a lot of people, Fiora included. Later, he taunts Shulk and the party endlessly about it simply to cheese them off. Did he have a good reason to do any of these vile things? Nope! He wasn't even asked to; he just did it because hated Dunban. That's right; he massacred almost an entire Colony because he was a Green-Eyed Monster against one guy.
DemonicSpiders/BonusBosses: Unique Monsters. They're always much stronger than the other nearby monsters. How much stronger depends on the monster.
Ear Worm: If you spent any time at all solving the Bionis' Leg quests, Gaur Plain will. not. leave. your. head. for. weeks.
8.8: The game got glowing reviews in all of the continents it was released in... with the glaring exception of EGM's"review." Keep in mind, this is the post-Magazine Decay EGM, so it wasn't widely reported.
And a positive example out of Game Stop, who apparently convinced Nintendo to sell Xenoblade from their stores.
Hate Dumb - Because of the situation listed just below, a lot of people seem to suddenly believe Europeans are lucky bastards that get all the good games and America is DOOMED. Of course, that nicely forgets how Europe suffers from No Export for You much worse than America has ever did, even to this date, and Xenoblade, Pandora's Tower and The Last Story are the exception, not the rule. In fact, as far the Xeno series goes, America still beats Europe 4 to 2!
With the announcement that Xenoblade is coming to America, they started quieting down about that game... then they started focusing on the latter two games.
Hype Aversion: To be expected, since the game is already being called the "Best JRPG of this generation," even being ranked among the likes of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII.
Internet Backdraft - The moment NOA said they may not bring the game to North America, specially after Nintendo of Europe confirmed they were going to bring it to the good Old Continent. The fact that reviews praised it as the best JRPG in an entire console generation didn't help either. The key word here though, is "may"...
"May" indeed. They have now confirmed that they "will" bring it over.
Like You Would Really Do It - Oh yeah game, like you would REALLY kill off the main female character and designated love interest an hour into the game, SPECIALLY after the MacGuffin let the protagonist see said death in a precognitive flash. Quit dragging out the Big Damn Heroes moment game. It's getting tiresome... Game get on with it... Game we KNOW...how these things...go... Holy shit! You actually killed her off! Brutally!
Memetic Mutation - Reyn's English battle quotes surely clicked with the internet.
"Now it's Reyn Time!"
"Man! What a bunch of jokers!"
Moral Event Horizon - At one point in the game, Zanza turns most of the High Entia into the Telethia, the mindless slaves who collect ether for Zanza.
As if slaughtering Egil and Meyneth, and then destroying the Mechonis, all within minutes of each other wasn't crossing the horizon already. Sure, Egil struck first, but damn.
Egil striking first doesn't even begin to justify the horrible things Zanza has done considering his entire reason for attacking Zanza is because of Zanza attempting to exterminate his people in the past.
Most Annoying Sound - Some of the battle quotes are repeated WAAAAAAAY too often.
The shattering-glass sound when you change the party's fate during a battle.
Now it's time for a Chain Attack!
Nightmare Fuel - Some areas are not fun to run through for those with arachnophobia.
The Mechon entirely.
Player Punch: After the High Entia get mutated into Telethia, if you look at your relationship chart, at least half of the High Entia people on there are greyed out, signifying Telethia mutation. Yep, those people you quested for, helped, and maybe even learned their connections? Gone.
Scrappy Mechanic - Debateable, but Spike damage tends to edge towards this: basically, anything that has Spike aura automatically does a set amount of damage to anyone who attacks them, and naturally due to the enemies' vastly higher HP, the fact they end up getting hit a lot more often than your characters, your limited sources of healing and thus the need to rely more on evasion to keep your party alive, this tends to work far too much to their advantage. There are ways to counter it, but they're either temporary or require you to sacrifice far too many gem slots to defend against it, and you have no clue on what enemy has such defenses before you see the purple numbers popping out of your characters. Furthermore, the spike damage defense gems don't work on Spikes that cause status effects, which you naturally have no access to.
The above is mitigated somewhat with high-level gems that make you almost immune to spike damage and ones that protect you from all status effects, but until you get sufficiently high-leveled variations of them, you're still going to be crippled severely by it. Not to mention the fact that the few skills that you can use to nullify spike damage rely on not only being able to hit the enemy, but to be able to build enough party gauge for a chain attack as well to make the effect stick.f
Shocking Swerve: Finding out that Zanza destroyed our universe in the ending, replacing it with the creation of Xenoblade's; he and Meyneth become the two gods, and Alvis is actually the computerthat kind of oversaw it all.
That One Area: Satorl Marsh. It's filled with bird enemies that are very aggressive and tend to dog you as you try to evade them, and unlike the wide open beauty of the Gaur Plain before it, is rather confined and dull-looking, at least during the daytime(during the nighttime...). It also contains an aggravating fetch quest where you have to collect stones, and they are placed in the strangest places, including one across a poisonous lake. Have fun!
That One Boss: Disciple Lorithia. Not only is she a Flunky Boss, but her flunkies will selfdestruct, and you're fighting on a tiny platform with ether surrounding it. Seeing how she's huge, she'll try to push you into it. It gets worse; she also has an unavoidable attack that will hit all party members for over 2000 damage. She has a ton of HP, and Shulk is useless for this fight. Melia is ideal, but her low HP means she's destroyed a few seconds into the battle. Oh, and at this point in the game, there's also really no place you can go to to get better armor, either.
The Scrappy: Riki has a habit of ruining dramatic scenes with his grating voice and childish concerns and speech patterns. For example, while the rest of the team mourns the loss of the High Entia's Emperor, Riki is more concerned with being hungry.
What makes this worse is that you can never tell when he's being serious or not. As he notices Melia is tired but hiding it on the Fallen Arm and so pretends to be fatigued so that they'll relax and she can get some rest. But we never get anything that suggests he was pretending to be hungry after the Empereor's death.
Riki exists for comic relief, and generally to keep the story from becoming too dark. That's not to say he isn't a character in his own right (caring for Melia, having seven children, etc.) You wouldn't want the rest of the party to become Squall Leonhearts, would you?
Visual Effects of Awesome: While the character models take a noticeable hit from this, the vast, thriving world you explore is well conceived design-wise and lavishly detailed, with its own ecosystem, weather effects and day/night cycle, with surprisingly good draw distance to boot. And this was all pulled off on an aging system that's only slightly more powerful than the original Xbox.
Notable examples include the Gaur Plain, a grassy field with huge cliffs and rock formations, and the Makna Forest, with a huge group of waterfalls that you can actually explore for yourself and filled with realistic flora and fauna.
What The Hell, Costuming Department? - A lot of people dislike most of the armors of the game so much that they refuse to put the characters anything but the standard outfits and maybe a one or two better-thought armors. Even if that means having worse stats. The worst offenders are the heavy armors, which are ridiculously bulky and over-ornamented.
Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: it's hard not to feel sympathetic for Egil, considering Zanza took over his friend's body and committed mass genocide on the Machina just so he could continue his vicious cycle of causing apocalypse to keep himself alive. Too bad that Egil's plan to kill Zanza would have resulted in the destruction of the Bionis, where Homs and other races live in.
Woolseyism: Although in British style. It was so good that the Edge Magazine gave Nintendo of Europe a special award for the best localisation of 2011. The other four translations were also really great.
