YMMV / Xenoblade Chronicles 1

aka: Xenoblade

This page contains unmarked spoilers for Xenoblade Chronicles 1, Future Connected, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. You Have Been Warned.

All Games | Xenoblade Chronicles 1 | Xenoblade Chronicles X | Xenoblade Chronicles 2 | Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country | Xenoblade Chronicles 3 | Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed

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#-E

• Accidental Innuendo: Metal Face is known as Black Face in Japanese. While that name probably sounded cool to the Japanese developers, they probably never realized that name would carry far more negative connotations outside of Japan.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Dickson. Did he truly never care about Shulk and only took care of him so he could rear up a good vessel for Zanza? Or did he start to feel some affection for his adopted son?
  • There's also the matter regarding his death: Did he really shoo Shulk away out of a desire to deny him satisfaction from seeing him die, or was he trying to spare him the pain of watching his surrogate father die in front of him?
  • The reveal that Shulk was a vessel for Zanza brings into question how much control he had over his emotions when starting his Roaring Rampage of Revenge quest against the Mechon. Many fans suspect Shulk's struggle to restrain himself from delivering the finishing blow to Egil wasn't the first time Zanza tried to manipulate him.
• Animation Age Ghetto: Being a non-realistic PEGI 12/ESRB T-rated game on a console usually given flak for its lack of mature entries has caused some to overlook it. Curiously enough, its spiritual predecessor Xenosaga also was on the receiving end of similar complaints.
• Anti-Climax Boss: If you complete all sidequests before facing the Final Boss Zanza (which makes sense to do, as there's no Playable Epilogue where you could complete these quests after the finale), he becomes this. At that point your party is so overpowered you can easily defeat him by just standing in place and spamming your Arts, no strategy needed.
• Award Snub: The lack of any nominations for Definitive Edition at the Game Awards 2020 caught quite a bit of flack from fans of the series. Of note is the exclusion of a nomination for the soundtrack, which many viewed as ignoring the effort that was put into rerecording the music for the rerelease. See Fandom Rivalry for more details.
• Awesome Art:
  • For a Wii game, the game's appearance holds up well even with games released on the HD duo and PC, thanks to the highly detailed art direction.
  • The Nintendo Switch remaster goes even further, adding even more detail in areas where the Wii release was rough in (such as some environment textures) and revamping the character models to be much cleaner and more expressive, approximately a hybrid between the style of the original game and Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
• Awesome Bosses:
  • The conclusion of the Red Pollen Orbs sidequest is a boss fight against the Nopon Bana, also known as "Bana the Betrayer". Said boss is genuinely difficult as he is only four levels below Zanza's and has attacks that can devastate the party all while Tragic Decision (a song that only plays for plot-critical bosses) is playing in the background. The quest also ends with Bana's punishment being him forced to on the wheels of the pollen factory.
  • When the party reaches the control room of Mechonis, Egil reveals he is now controlling Mechonis and you must fight him and his mech Yaldaboath. When he takes a certain amount of damage, he activates three Energy Devices. If these aren't destroyed before the bar runs out in 2 minutes, the Mechonis will inflict infinite damage on the Bionis, killing everyone on there and resulting in a definite Game Over. You will be desperate to bring down your foe to save the entire world. The emotions in this are truly wonderful as at the end of the battle, Shulk and Egil are able to make peace and understand each other's point of view. Everything seems to work out at last. But then Shulk gets shot by Dickson...
  • Speaking of Dickson, after his betrayal in Mechonis core in order to realise Zanza, the battle with him on Prison Island in the endgame is no pushover either and a fair challenge to overcome spanning two phases and plenty of hard-hitting attacks to keep you on your feet.
  • Zanza, the game's Final Boss, is an amazing climax to the game's story fighting the god who made life hell on Bionis and Mechonis and constantly creating and destroying the world in an endless cycle to preserve his existence. The fight is self pays off because Zanza is a three-phased boss fight with a great challenge, fantastic music, and a climactic end when he meets his maker at the receiving end of Shulk's own Monado.
  • Avalanche Abaasy is the most powerful enemy in the entire game. And it's a freaking dragon. The fight is extremely challenging and is also a Final-Exam Boss of sorts, requiring the party to have maxed-out Debuff Resistance to avoid its Instant Death spike while forcing well-timed uses of defensive techniques (Shulk's Monado Arts work best).
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Riki was divisive for several years after the game first came out, before Character Perception Evolution took place after the sequels. There are those who don't enjoy his character, given his habit of ruining dramatic scenes with his grating voice, childish concerns and speech patterns (as well as the fact that a lot of his Character Development come from Heart-to-hearts, which are optional whereas everyone, even Reyn and Sharla, speak in and get Character Focus during the main story). There are others who find him absolutely hilarious and enjoy the fact that he is both comic relief and also a character with depth in his own right from said heart-to-hearts.
  • While Fiora returning as an 11th-Hour Ranger at all was once regarded as a pleasant surprise, she's become a lot more controversial in the wake of the second game and its own Base-Breaking Character female leads, as well as Melia's increased role throughout the trilogy. Her detractors accuse her of being a Flat Character and Satellite Love Interest who has no personality other than her love for Shulk, and whose continued survival actively ruins the plot and Melia's character. Meanwhile her supporters argue that despite her reduced screentime she's still got more depth and characterization than detractors give her credit for, never does anything unpleasant enough to justify the active antipathy for her, and claim that a lot of the hatred for her is rooted in bad-faith Die for Our Ship or Fandom Rivalry bashing.
• Broken Base: While many Xenoblade Chronicles 2 players were delighted to see Shulk and Fiora as DLC Guest Fighters in that game, opinions were split for some time on the fact that Definitive Edition didn't return the favour and include any explicit crossovers with Alrest in the Time Attack battles or Future Connected, only including a helpful but mundane Old Save Bonus of 100,000 G.^note The bonus also served as a Brick Joke for the beginning of 2, but the reference is easy to miss. Some (particularly those who disliked 2) were glad to see the new content distance itself as far as possible from the polarizing sequel, while others saw it as a missed opportunity, hoping for content such as a non-canon Pyra/Mythra or Malos superboss in Time Attack or more explicit connections to Alrest in Future Connected. The most likely explanation for this was that any "crossover" content between the two worlds was being saved for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and especially its expansion Future Redeemed, and that even considering the existence of the Land of Challenge, any content related to 2 added to DE would have both made the timeline more confusing and decreased the impact of 3's concept of the two worlds merging; in hindsight, most fans agree that it was a better idea not to do so.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • One of the things added to the remake was Casual Mode, following the lead of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Which can be toggled on or off at any time. Facing a particularly tough enemy who keeps wiping the floor with you? Just set the game to casual mode and watch as you slaughter them.
  • One challenge in Time Attack Mode, "He of the Metal Face", pits the player against a high-leveled Metal Face. Since Time Attack missions can be done at any time, this gives Fiora the opportunity to face off the faced mechon who almost killed her.
  • Speaking of Metal Face, watching him finally get what's coming to him, in a very similar way to how he nearly killed Fiora no less, is bound to make anyone smile.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • The revelation that Metal Face is really Mumkhar may not be so shocking given the fact that they both use a very unconventional weapon, have the same battle posture, and have a similar voice. Many note that they immediately knew that Metal Face was Mumkhar the second they saw Metal Face.
  • The revelation that Faced Mechon have Homs inside them may not be too surprising, considering early on the game went out of its way to show that the Monado can't harm Homs. The above example doesn't exactly help this any, either.
  • Following the obvious nature of Metal Face and the way Fiora is scooped up by a Mechon after the fight, her return is more "Finally!" than "Wham!"
  • Dickson's reveal to be Evil All Along would probably feel like more of a shock if nearly every cutscene featuring him didn't go out of its way to make him look and act as suspicious as possible. The same goes for Lorithia. Both also double as Obvious Judases.
  • Gael'gar's antagonistic role in Future Connected makes almost no effort to be covered up. This even applies to the very moment he's introduced, as his design is oddly different from other High Entia. Not helping things even further is his eerily amicable demeanor towards Melia and his Eyes Always Shut trait makes him look more suspicious.
• Character Perception Evolution:
  • When the game first came out Riki was a Base-Breaking Character with a significant hatedom who saw him as a selfish, irritating Joke Character and even compared him unflatteringly to infamous Xenogears' Scrappy Chu-Chu. However, over time Riki's Hidden Depths, which were missed by many early players due to being hidden away in optional content compared to the rest of the cast, became much more well-known among the general fanbase and his most controversial scenes were reevaluated more positively in light of them as Obfuscating Stupidity. Likewise, as players' understanding of the metagame evolved Riki's surprising, even Game-Breaker-level usefulness became better recognized. In addition, later games proved to have even more controversial Nopon representatives in Tatsu and Tora, making the issues fans took with Riki come off as quaint by comparison. Future Connected further fleshed out the most well-received aspects of Riki's character, putting the final nail in the coffin of negativity towards Riki to the point that nowadays he's one of the most beloved characters in the franchise. Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed sealed the deal even more with its reveal that Riku, its base game's even more beloved Nopon companion and arguably the most popular Nopon in the series, is one of Riki's children.
  • Melia was always a well-liked character with a great character arc, but used to fall flat compared to Fiora as her role wasn't as prominent and she often got the short end of the stick compared to her, particularly with her feelings towards Shulk (hence the "Poor Melia" meme). Fiora's role as a Guest Fighter in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 reinforced the idea that she was a more important and impressive character than Melia. Come Future Connected and Xenoblade Chronicles 3, however, and Melia has become more popular than ever with her character growth in those games showcasing how important she's become to the overall saga and setting, arguably surpassing Fiora in popularity. Her Ms. Fanservice design as an adult in XC3 has only helped matters, with many people finding her to be the most attractive female character from this game's world as a result and also loving her new role as The High Queen who, despite her role as a monarch, didn't initially want such a position of leadership and also helps the XC3 protagonists overthrow the authoritarian status quo of their world. This has also motivated more people to play as her and explore her further when returning to XC1 after playing through XC3, as she is a notoriously Difficult, but Awesome character that also suffers in the hands of the AI.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Many players stick with the early game Damager, Healer, Tank setup with Shulk as the damager, Sharla as the healer, and either Dunban or Reyn as the tank because of how easy it is to learn playing with the team. Shulk protects the team with Vision, Dunban or Reyn protect Shulk, while Sharla keeps the team healthy. Unfortunately, this can cause problems later on as Sharla (and Reyn prior to Definitive Edition) tends to fall behind in terms of utility.
• Complete Monster:
  • Zanza, the god of Bionis, is the mastermind behind the game's plot and a monstrous excuse of a deity whose insatiable pride ruins countless lives in an effort to prolong his own. Zanza became a cruel monster who repeatedly exterminated all life on Bionis through the Telethia whenever they drifted away from him, even possessing the noble giant Arglas and managing to destroy Agniratha in his attempt to destroy the rival goddess Meyneth alongside all Mechonis. Living on in the Monado after he was sealed away, Zanza murders a young Shulk and the expedition team who discover the Monado before reviving the boy and using him as a host for years. In the final act of the game, Zanza has Shulk killed again by his disciple Dickson to take form once again, transforms the High Entia into Telethia to repeat the extermination of Bionis all over again, and murders both Meyneth and Egil before destroying Mechonis, dismissing everything and everyone as mere bacteria and food to sustain his own cruel existence. Even in spite of all of his hollow justifications for the perpetual cycle of misery he has created, Zanza is revealed at heart to be nothing more than the definition of megalomania and endless arrogance, disgusting almost every single being who knows of his true evil.
  • Originally a slimy, cowardly weasel of a man, Mumkhar ends up becoming something far worse entirely. After smugly leaving his close friends Dunban and Dickson to die on the battlefield, he is captured by the robotic Mechon and turned into one of their own, and willingly betrays his people by throwing in his lot with the Mechon and aiding them in their conquest. Going by the name of Metal Face, he leads a squad of Mechon in an attack on Colony 9, slaughters scores of people, and personally murders Dunban's sister Fiora, all out of hatred, envy, and spite towards the man, and gleefully brags about it to Shulk, her Love Interest. Later on, he leads an assault on Eryth Sea, which ends with him killing Sorean, the emperor of the High Entia. After his final defeat at the hands of Shulk and company, he doesn't hesitate to try to murder them all after they decide to spare his life. Fueled entirely by spite and cruelty, Metal Face cements his status as one of the party's most hated enemies.
• Cult Classic: Initially, it was this; it's a hardcore game on the Wii and it only had a very limited run exclusively through Gamestop in America. Despite this, it's considered one of the best Eastern RPGs of its generation. It's because of this status that it would later get two ports, one to the 3DS and one to the Nintendo Switch - though thanks to the sequels and the Switch remaster, it has managed to shed this status over time.
• Demonic Spider:
  • The Unique Monsters. They're always much stronger than the other nearby monsters, and some of them tend to pop up as the player is fighting other weaker monsters.
  • Fortress Unit Mechon. They can be a challenge even to parties high above their level and have two moves that can easily kill the whole party at once. They also have gigantic health pools to melt through.
  • Taken to extreme heights at the Eryth Sea, where even exploring the islands and coastlines will get you killed for sticking your neck out wrong by an entire horde of level 80+ monsters that you just happen to run across while attempting to fill your item collection. Makes coming back through the areas much later, appropriately leveled, extremely satisfying.
  • Telethia. They have the ability to basically No-Sell almost everything you throw at them. Just another reason why Shulk is essentially a requirement, as he's the only one who has any way of reliably shutting them down, despite Melia's AI actually being rather smart with Mind Blast.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Shulk is generally regarded by many fans to be on the autism spectrum due to his intense and sometimes singleminded fixation with machinery and engineering, which is interpreted as a kind of special interest. His introductory scene has him be so focused on his research and the scientific applications of Mechon armor to the point that he easily misses monsters hiding under it, which Reyn calls him out on, and he has a knack for being Innocently Insensitive, with other characters pointing out his Skewed Priorities, Literal-Minded behavior, and general lack of social awareness at in the main story and in Heart-to-Hearts. Other fans interpret his seeming lack of tasting ability, which has also been interpreted as foreshadowing for his being Dead All Along, as a sign he experiences sensory issues, which are extremely common in autistic people.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • Sword Valley. Even if you went out of your way to complete every single sidequest possible up to that point, the enemies levels will still likely be higher than your own. In addition, you get introduced to the Boss in Mook Clothing Fortress Units, which will kill you if you try to take them on in a direct fight. Additionally, the game gets more spam happy when it comes to enemy units, to where it's not impossible to end up fighting five to six enemies at the same time. Also, if you want to go through it without having Shulk in your party twenty four seven, you'll be forced to downgrade to weapons that are weaker than the ones you already have and have only one slot, but can damage Mechon without Monado Enchant. While all this makes sense considering you're storming one of the enemies strongholds, it's still likely to catch many first time players off guard.
  • Everything after the events of Mechonis Core also turns the game's difficulty into overdrive; most of the new sidequests available are catered towards endgame levels, making it difficult for those wanting to prepare themselves for the story-based fights ahead, themselves considerably more difficult than what came before.
• Disappointing Last Level: While the game is considered to be excellent, there are those that consider that the game takes a dive in quality starting from the Mechonis Core. While the Wham Episode when Zanza reveals himself rises the quality of the story back, there's still flak from some regarding quality of the level design, since there are very few new areas and most of those aren't nearly as exciting as earlier parts of the game, coupled with some backtracking.
• Dry Docked Ship: A lot of fans interpret Dunban's strong attachment to Dickson and/or Mumkhar as having been motivated by them havng been more than just war buddies in the past, due to Dunban's Confirmed Bachelor status throughout the game and the fact that he trusted either of them so intensely despite the fact that both men, especially Mumkhar, showed such blatant signs of being Obviously Evil.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Kallian is a royal who actually does things akin to the Lords of Fire Emblem, and he's well remembered for his scenes at Mechonis Core and after the fight with Lorithia.
    Reyn: That's one cool prince.
  • Xord, thanks to being a hilariously hammy and memorable Starter Villain with his memorable, repetitive quotes and exaggerated Cockney accent. He even became a Recurring Element of sorts, with both of the numbered sequels featuring a similar comically hammy Fat Bastard villain in the early chapters.
    Xord: I've been ge'in' 'ungry!
    Xord: Oi think a floi bi' me!
  • Colonel Vangarre, the Large Ham Drill Sergeant Nasty who instantly won players over with his memorable introduction scene and over-the-top voice, both of which caused him to become a Fountain of Memes with a prominent presence in Xenoblade YouTube Poops, where his quotes are remixed to make him look like even more of a lunatic. For example:
    Vangarre: Crashing the mobile house into artillery?! How long have you been in the force?!^note Originally "artillery" and "house" were the other way around.
    Defence Force Soldier: 40 seconds?
    Vangarre: I don't want any excuses!
    Defence Force Soldier: 44 seconds?
  • The unnamed Nopon child in Frontier Village who proclaims "Heropon Riki bestest!" has also become a meme favourite thanks to YouTube Poops, where they have gained the Fan Nickname of "Bestest" and are depicted as a Memetic Badass.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • The Fog King in Future Connected has spawned all kinds of theories as to what its true nature, due to its completely mysterious origins (all that's known is that it comes from another dimension), its sharing traits with the Gnosis from Xenosaga, and because its model is a recycled Infernal Guldo from Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
  • One of the montage images from the end of Future Connected shows Fiora upset over being left out of Shulk and Melia's adventures, which led to some speculation that she was jealous of Melia and that the Official Couple of Shulk/Fiora was being sunk in order to pair Shulk up with Melia. The sequels would make it abundantly clear that was not the case, as it's stated that Shulk and Fiora got married and had at least one child together, and that Melia and Fiora continued to remain close.
• Event-Obscuring Camera: When using the Wiimote + Nunchuk and in combat, the camera will always face you toward your target. This becomes a big issue when fighting Giant Mooks or trying to speed through narrow spaces. Using the Classic Controller allows you to control the camera manually, but you still have to deal with Event-Obscuring Camera in small, confined spaces.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • The forces of Mechon and especially the Faced Mechon in general are extremely cool. Egil, the leader rides on Yaldabaoth, a massive, golden behemoth of a Mechon that is the strongest ever built. Egil himself is an interesting villain with a charismatic personality, tragic past and humble, if extreme goals. Metal Face/Mumkhar, as much as you hate him, is also pretty cool with his bright-red Wolverine claws and ability to fly, and is an iconic villain with his sadistic personality. Bronze Face/Xord wields a massive hammer while Jade Face/Gadolt retains his sniper rifle skills of his past as a Homs. Even Fiora/Meyneth gets this when controlling Face Nemesis.
  • Zanza, the true Big Bad, is a despicable deity who plans to exterminate all life in Bionis and recreate it for more power. Yet his golden robes, Telethia wings and the fact that he wields both Monados makes him even cooler than Egil.
  • Dickson, despite being revealed as The Dragon to Zanza only in the last few hours of the game, is pretty badass villain nevertheless. His human self is like a mix between Hulk Hogan and Willie Nelson who wields a Gunblade like Sabre, a large blade that doubles as a shotgun. His giant self is a hulking beast with tribal tattoos and a massive blade that can be used as cannon, as well as a hammer.

F-I

• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Bringing up Melia's side of the controversial love triangle and treating her like an Unrequited Tragic Maiden still torn up over Shulk or The Mourning After is a quick way to piss Melia fans off, since the game makes it abundantly clear (albeit in an easy-to-miss Heart-to-Heart) that she's matured out of her crush by the end of the game and that her attachment to him is firmly deeply-respected Platonic Life-Partners in Future Connected onward. For that matter, acting like Fiora or Melia resent each other because of the love triangle is another way to piss off fans of either character since the game makes it very clear they deeply respect each other as friends, to the point of Fiora giving Melia her explicit permission to date Shulk if something happens to her, and to the point that Melia is briefly enraged at Shulk when she mistakenly believes he's been neglecting his girlfriend in in the Monado Archives short story explaining how Fiora got her body back.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With Final Fantasy XII, due to similar battle systems and a similar overworld structure. Fans of either game regularly argue that their game is the other game "done right".
  • Also with Final Fantasy XIII, due to coming out at around the same time yet having very different takes on exploration. Players who criticised XIII for being too heavy on No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom would often praise Xenoblade for going out of its way to avoid that with its Wide-Open Sandbox structure. It's plot about humans going up against gods defying fate and given special powers is also akin to Final Fantasy XIII, which was release a few months prior to the Japanese version of Xenoblade. The Console Wars are also at play, since Final Fantasy XIII released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, while Xenoblade is a Nintendo exclusive. Many Nintendo fans argue that FF13 represents everything wrong with the former two consoles by emphasizing high-quality visuals over gameplay.
  • A rather nasty one developed with Persona 5 in 2020. Initially, it started out in between the releases of Persona 5 Royal and Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, where fans would be arguing over which game was the better JRPG, though that calmed down for several months. However, after it was revealed that Persona 5 Royal was nominated for Best RPG at the Game Awards while Xenoblade wasn't, tensions immediately flared back up due to the bitterness of Xenoblade fans upset over not receiving recognition, with fans of both sides ragging on the other side. It could also be seen as an extension of the Console Wars, as Persona games mainly favor PlayStation platforms, while Xenoblade is outright owned by Nintendo.
• Fandom-Specific Plot: The most common plots revolve around Shulk re-creating the world in the climax. Either he made a major mistake, or gave in to Zanza, or just following directly from the ending and discovering a few oddities that weren't immediately obvious.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Naked Dunban" for the common strategy of combining the effects of Dunban's Spiritual Awakening and Inner Peace skills with Melia's Unadorned Beauty to make him a very potent dodge tank when armourless.
  • "Duncan" began circulating for Dunban after a notorious review by IGN of Definitive Edition which initially pronounced his name that way (as well as pronouncing Reyn as "Rain").
  • The seventh party member is often referred to as "7th" or "Seven" by fans to avoid spoiling that Fiora is revived as a Face Mechon and eventually rejoins the party. It also doubles as a Shout-Out to another blonde female cyborg, Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager.
  • "The Fucking", a Lady Mondegreen for the Fog King from Future Connected because of how the name sounds when spoken quickly in a South English accent.
  • Wiinoblade, for the original Wii release version of the game.
• Faux Symbolism: Mostly averted given the thick symbolism of the "series" history, but they just couldn't leave it alone completely: A character does get crucified once for no real reason.
• First Installment Wins: Although fans continue to argue about which Xenoblade game is the best, quite a number of players feel that the first game is generally better on account of the sequels having a number of contested elements, despite each of the sequels also having their own unique strengths and attributes when compared to XC1.
• Fountain of Memes: Due to just how often the characters shout quotes during battle, all seven party members are full of memetic material. Of them all, Reyn is the most memetic, mostly his "Now It's Reyn Time!" catchphrase, and Shulk's "I'm Really Feeling It!" line.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • The game has managed to attract the attention of fans of the older Final Fantasy games, as well as fans of other JRPGs from that era, such as Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Secret of Mana. Many of them who otherwise dislike the more recent installments in the Final Fantasy franchise have ended up liking the Xenoblade Chronicles games far more, with some claiming that they're what Final Fantasy XII and XIII should've been. This is strengthened by the fact that Monolith Soft was founded by former Square employees who started their careers working on said older games.
  • There's a bit of this with the NieR: Automata fandom due to both games having an attractive female robot as one of the main protagonists (and main protagonist in Nier's case) with Xenoblade having Mecha Fiora and Vanea while Nier Automata has 2B. There's even memes about it
• Game-Breaker: See here.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The game apparently sold more in America, a country that it wasn't even meant to be exported to at first, than both Europe & Japan (and was only carried by a single retailer on top of that). Regardless, the game (and the Xenoblade franchise in general) is very popular in the UK where it was dubbed, due to authentic British localisations for Japanese and other foreign games being such a rarity and many players in the country actually getting to see their dialects represented.
  • Reyn as a character is mostly overlooked by the Japanese fandom, but is a huge breakout character in the West due to the English dub and script making him stand out a lot more to the point that he's a Fountain of Memes.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Heavier flying enemies are flat-out immune to Topple, requiring some out-of-the-box strategies to take them down swiftly.
  • Nebulas. They have a surprisingly high defense, which means they take a while to kill unless you have a lot of levels on them, they tend to use arts that inflict Topple, Daze or Sleep, and when low on health, may explode and inflict damage on your entire party. Adding insult to injury, if they die this way, you don't get any loot, EXP, AP or SP from the encounter, so all the hard work of taking them down comes up to nothing. Thankfully, they're at least not aggressive if you don't use ether arts near them.
• Goddamned Boss: The fight with Tyrea at the end of the High Entia Tomb. Since she's a sentient being of Bionis, Shulk's Monado does Scratch Damage to her, but if you don't bring Shulk to the fight you have no good way of dealing with her Telethia ally's Soul Read aura. And since Shulk's most reliable at using Purge while controlling him, the choice is between which is more annoying: constantly missing due to Soul Read, or sitting back while Shulk's attacks plink off Tyrea.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Mumkhar saying Mechonis suits him just fine becomes darkly hypocritical during Project X Zone 2 where he wants power from Ouma's 101 Embryo Project to destroy both Bionis and Mechonis from the outside when the two Titans are combined.
    • This also describes Future Connected from the game's Definitive Edition, in which the world Zanza formerly ruled over is starting to collide with Alrest, the world Klaus formerly ruled over, which Malos tried to destroy only to be stopped by Rex and his companions.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2 makes some aspects of the original game a lot more painful on a second playthrough.
    • Zanza, the irredeemable Big Bad responsible for multiple genocides and a complete psychopath that everyone loves to defeat. Nothing could make him sympathetic, right? Wrong. The finale of 2 reveals that, despite his megalomaniacal personality, at the start of it all Klaus really did want to help people, but with the separation of Klaus and Zanza, all Zanza had left was Klaus' god complex without his reason to want to become a god, namely to end the suffering of humanity, which retroactively also makes his actions in this game even more disturbing. What's worse, Klaus sees everything that Zanza does, and likely contributed to his Death Seeker status no matter how much he atoned for his actions, Zanza was just performing them over again without a shred of remorse. Both got the power of a god, just like they wanted, but only one realised how wrong they were.
    • Zanza sees Meyneth as nothing more than an imposter challenging his rule, killing her as soon as he had the chance. Even in the flashback to Zanza and Meyneth as Klaus and Galea, he throws her to the ground like she's little more than trash. Come 2, and we see Klaus and Galea in a warmer and respectful fashion, listening to her and calmly explaining his actions to her, and when he is close to death, voices the hope that he may be worthy to see her again in the afterlife, likely knowing that at this point his other self has killed her. Likewise, Meyneth believes she's trying to call out to Klaus himself and wake him up from this stupor of power, when really, Zanza is not the man she used to know as Galea. The man she knew and cared about stayed behind in their old universe, forcefully bearing witness to the consequences of his actions. Klaus can hear her, but he's incapable of saying anything to her.
  • Alvis' proclamation at the end that "all life will walk towards the future, hand in hand" becomes this once Xenoblade Chronicles 3 comes along and shows that while this does eventually come to pass, it only happens after centuries of war and strife courtesy of Z and Moebius. Double so after Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed, where Alvis' reincarnation as Ontos, Alpha, ends up being the Big Bad who decides that all life on Aionios is beyond saving (save for the people of the City) as a result of the Forever War between Keves and Agnus. It's slightly mitigated in that Alvis' conscience is given separate life as A, but even then Alpha is the one who keeps Alvis' physical appearance, so there is a sadness that comes with fighting a formerly-friendly face who now stands in opposition to the world.
    • The Future Redeemed DLC reveals more specifically that Shulk's request to Alvis to grant every person on Bionis (and Alrest) the right to decide how the future should proceed is what gave rise to the main conflict of 3, since it was interpreted in a very Literal Genie way. Shulk's efforts to democratize the future inadvertently empowered people with selfish and hateful visions just as equally as those who wanted a better one, allowing the Collective Unconscious of the two worlds to create Z and cause the conflict between the former (Moebius) and the latter (Ouroboros) until the latter were able to defeat or convince enough members of the former to reach a forward-thinking consensus that healed the worlds.
      Shulk: I won't decide. The future should be decided by each and every person in the world. And so, what I... No, what we wish for is...
    • Likewise, Future Redeemed reveals that Shulk essentially constructed Origin off of Alvis' remains, and that, while more benign and altruistic in his motivations, Shulk accidentally became a Generation Xerox of Klaus/Zanza who created a repeat of the events of 1 on Aionios. However, unlike Klaus/Zanza, who respectively became a Straw Nihilist and a tyrannical dictator respectively, it also overlaps with Heartwarming in Hindsight, as Shulk instead became a Cool Old Guy who takes an active effort to mentor the later generations, course-correct, and make sacrifices for their sake, resulting in a much better outcome. It seems that Meyneth's own sacrifice was not in vain, and that Shulk and friends maintained her philosophy after her death.
  • Egil spent millennia waging a Forever War against the Bionis, only to renounce his ways at the end of his life and go out fighting with a Heroic Sacrifice against Zanza in hopes of a better future for life on both the Bionis and the Mechonis. And yet in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, it's shown that the people he sacrificed his life for ended up being forced into another endless war by Z and Moebius.
  • In a similar vein, Fiora's wish that, "every day could be like this, always," from the start of the game takes on a whole new meaning once Z starts soliloquizing about the Endless Now.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • After all of the crap Shulk and Fiora went through over the course of the game, in part to keep each other safe, Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed shows they eventually got married and became parents, with their son Nikol being a protagonist alongside his dad.
  • The otherwise-aloof Alvis forming an Odd Friendship with Shulk becomes a lot more heartwarming in the context of Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed where Alvis' memories from the time spent together with Shulk were strong enough to overcome the memory wipe that typically occurs when a Blade returns to its Core Crystal and reconstitute into a new body with personhood who does remember the events of 1.
  • Melia's relationship with Fiora is testy at first due to Melia's jealousy towards her for being the girlfriend of Melia's crush Shulk, but Fiora is able to look past this to strike up a close friendship with Melia, for whom maturing out of this attitude is a significant part of her character development. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 reveals that Fiora has become deeply dear to Melia, and that it was partially through Melia's will that Fiora was allowed to incarnate within Aionios instead of remaining dormant like most other adults, taking the form of its central Sword of Plot Advancement Lucky Seven. Despite their initial rough start, Melia now cherishes Fiora to the point that she has arguably become one of if not the most beloved people in her life.
• High-Tier Scrappy: Player-controlled Shulk, by virtue of being too good in a Boring, but Practical sense while being mandatory for most high-level challenges. The Monado gives him access to many useful abilities, including some that none of the other characters have (e.g. he's the only reliable defense against area attacks with Monado Shield and Monado Armour, and Monado Purge is the only reliable way of removing Spike or other active Auras). That many bosses and Unique monsters typically require use of the Monado to be taken down effectively doesn't help anyone who would like to use someone besides Shulk in your small 3 man party.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Zanza hammily declares "BEHOLD, THE TRUE FORM OF A UNITED WORLD!" during the final boss fight. A decade later, this would accurately describe Xenoblade Chronicles 3's setting of Aionios, as it is a combination of the worlds of Xenoblade 1 and 2.
  • In the original Wii release, Alvis wore a necklace with a key on it. The final boss theme of Xenoblade Chronicles X, whose connections to this game are unclear, is titled "The Key We've Lost", resulting in many Epileptic Trees about how the title is a reference of some kind to Alvis. Definitive Edition remake updates Alvis' design to replace his key with a Zohar-shaped Core Crystal, leading to many jokes about how the key that was lost really was referring to his old necklace.
  • As mentioned under Suspiciously Similar Song, many fans noticed that the leitmotif for Deus Expy Zanza sounds just like Xenosaga's Godsibb, which played against an even more blatant Deus Expy named Omega Metempsychosis. In Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed, the final boss theme is a remix of Zanza, and takes on a form that heavily resembles Deus and Omega Metempsychosis, coming full circle.
• Ho Yay:
  • Alvis is a mysterious, somewhat flamboyant silver-haired Bishounen with No Sense of Personal Space and a keen interest in Shulk, introduced to him ]]Girl of My Dreams through a dream]], and whose first meeting with him involves getting up close and personal to Shulk to the point of grabbing his shoulder and his Monado in a suggestive way, which has often been interpreted as a sign of him being Ambiguously Gay and a possible reference to Kaworu Nagisa's homoerotic interest in Shinji. Definitive Edition would retcon Alvis into being a Trinity Processor just like the Aegises from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, with Shulk effectively becoming his Driver. Given that 2 frequently depicts Driver/Blade relationships as romantic in nature, with its main love story being between the Aegis Pyra and her Driver, who is introduced to her the same way Shulk was to Alvis, given that Torna reveals that Mythra foresaw Rex (who is also explicitly her love interest) becoming a savior in a vision the same way that Alvis foresaw Shulk (even though Zanza claimed credit for it). 3 later reveals that Ontos is a being of Purely Aesthetic Gender who directly attributes A/Alvis's relationship with Shulk to developing a conscience and love for humanity, and whatever intimacy Shulk shares with A is specifically attributed to his fondness towarrds Alvis, so it's even easier in hindsight to see the growing bond between Shulk and Alvis as having romantic subtext to it.
  • While never portrayed as anything further than a strong Interspecies Friendship, many fans nevertheless view the Tragic Bromance between Egil and Arglas as having romantic subtext due to their heavy and deliberate inspiration from Lacan and Sophia, two characters who explicitly were in love with each other. In both cases, the death of the latter causes the former to snap and turn from a hero to a Well-Intentioned Extremist seeking revenge against the true Big Bad of the world via genocidal methods.
  • Melia and Tyrea in Future Connected. Although they started as sworn enemies in the base game, the process of overcoming their initial antagonism by overcoming various traumas until they vow to form a Lady and Knight dynamic is seen by fans as following the typical enemies-to-lovers progression. It helps that Melia points out that the bond the two of them share is not a sisterly one, despite how easily it could've since both are Kallian's half-sisters.
• Hype Aversion: To be expected. The game is often called the "Best JRPG of its generation", even being ranked among the likes of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VII, but this formiddable reputation, combined with its daunting length (the main campaign requiring a minimum of 60 hours even in Definitive Edition, and 100% completion can take upward of 100 hours) scares off as many prospective players as it entices.
• Iconic Character, Forgotten Title: Many people only know or heard of Shulk after his announcement in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, although this was alleviated somewhat with the release of the sequels and Definitive Edition.
• I Knew It!:
  • There was a theory that the Mechon that saved Juju and Otharon from the Telethia when Shulk and the party is going up against Dickson was actually Xord, due to sharing the same voice actor, though some were unsure that this was the case due to Xord exploding. The Monado Archives confirms that it was actually Xord.◊
  • As people completed Xenoblade Chronicles 2, there was an immediate suspect for where the dimensionally-lost Ontos core ended up. Definitive Edition confirmed this by changing Alvis' keyring necklace into what is clearly a dark red Aegis Core crystal, and Future Redeemed locked it down by making it a central plot point.
• Improved Second Attempt:
  • After Fei Fong Wong and especially Shion Uzuki proved to be Base Breaking Characters in their respective games, Word of God was that Shulk (who composites many traits from both of them) was written with the intent of remaining more consistently likeable throughout the entirety of the plot. General consensus is that they succeeded, as Shulk is the most consistently well-liked and least divisive^note With the possible exception of Elma, who some regard as the true main character of Xenoblade Chronicles X over its Featureless Protagonist Cross/Rook out of all the protagonists in the Xeno franchise.
  • While it took a bit of time for him to reach that status, opinions on Riki shifted from initially being perceived as the return of the widely-hated Chu-Chu to being seen as Chu-Chu, but done right. It helps that while he's also comic relief, he's actually quite useful in combat, and that he has much more in the way of Hidden Depths and genuine heartfelt moments than Chu-Chu does, while not being nearly as tonally dissonant or creepy as her.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Dunban is crippled, forced to watch his sister's apparent death, and both his wartime allies were secretly against him. Yet he refuses to succumb to despair, declaring in one of his battle cries that he chooses to fight no matter how adverse the odds are or how cruel the world can be.
  • Melia, in the short time that we know her, loses her four guards, her father, her brother, and half of her entire species, is the target of multiple attempted assassinations, falls in love with a Homs and there seems to be some reciprocation until said Homs' formerly-dead girlfriend turns up and she's pretty much forgotten about by him, and then she has to watch him be shot in the back and nearly die because he was part of some larger plot to free Zanza from his imprisonment. She takes it all with a Stiff Upper Lip and soldiers on.
  • Fiora is murdered by Metal Face, has her body converted into a Face Unit, is used as a host by Lady Meyneth (who it turns out is actually perfectly fine splitting time with her once she finds out Fiora remembers herself), finds out she has a limited time to live, and also gets to watch her love get shot in the back and almost die in front of her. Despite all of this, she puts on a brave face and keeps going. However, it's implied at several moments and in a few Heart-To-Hearts, that she's being a Stepford Smiler instead of a genuine one.
• It Was His Sled: Fiora dies relatively early into the game, but gets rebuilt as Mecha-Fiora. Thanks to her involvement as the latter in Shulk's Final Smash and her alliance with KOS-MOS in Project X Zone 2, as well as having a Spirit Battle for both of her forms, it's not really a twist anymore.

L-R

• LGBT Fanbase:
  • Melia is incredibly popular with lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender women. Her elegant Silk Hiding Steel femininity, outfit that resembles the colors of the trans flag, and backstory of facing societal discrimination over her appearance to the point of having to hide away and conceal her true self under a fake persona and (literal) mask until she finds more accepting friends willing to help her challenge her culture to become more tolerant are traits that resonate with queer women of many kinds. In addition, despite being on the wrong side of a love triangle with Fiora, the two like and get along very well with each other, to the point that many fans believe they have as much or more chemistry together than with Shulk. This continues into Xenoblade Chronicles 3 with its anti-capitalist and anti-authority themes,^note more extreme forms of capitalism seek to suppress LGBTQIA+ identities, as that game shows how Melia has grown into a true leader for her people (complete with a grown-up Ms. Fanservice design that many such fans find attractive) and helps the heroes overthrow the status quo that has been appropriating her image to advance their own agenda of suppressing free will and expression.
  • Alvis is also popular with queer fans due to his androgynous appearance and behavior, his ambiguously romantic interest in Shulk, and implications of being outside the gender binary which received a lot of further ammunition in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 until it was eventually confirmed in Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed.
• Low-Tier Letdown: In typical franchise fashion:
  • Sharla, because the game's mechanics make healing less valuable than in many other JRPGs. The fact that she is very lacking in combat arts, combined with the inability to use her Cooldown Talent Art in Chain Attacks, makes it difficult to perform lengthy Chain Links with her. However, this isn't to say that she's a detriment to the party; it's more that everyone else is just that good. If anything, needing her to win non-boss/uniques much higher levelled than you is a sign that your party is under-levelled or under-optimised.
    • You can, in Definitive Edition when set up for physical damage, spam her single red art over and over, but she still has all of her other issues.
  • NPC Melia, mostly because of her Artificial Stupidity. Her AI's main shortcoming is the fact that she focuses on acting as a melee combatant despite being the least durable character in the game, yet her break-topple combo is never properly utilised. The AI also tends to use her actual primary attacks, the Summons, for their passive buffs instead, causing her to just stand there uselessly if she isn't trying to whack enemies with her staff during Auto-Attack. While she is still useful for her ability to rack up multipliers during chain attacks, and putting her in the party with Reyn or Dunban does make her more effective (as they will keep the heat off of her for a bit) it's not as effective as if the player controls her.
  • NPC Shulk is hated almost as much as NPC Melia for similar reasons. The AI isn't the best at positional attacks and has a nasty tendency to waste his Talent Gauge unnecessarily, such as spamming Monado Enchant against Mechon when the entire party already has Anti-Mechon weapons equipped, making it difficult to counter visions when they arise. Which doesn't sound too bad, except he has a nasty habit of using Battle Soul repeatedly to fuel his frivolous use of the Monado, meaning it's common to see Shulk drop from full health to red in a few seconds without the enemy even needing to get an attack in. And unlike Dunban, Shulk doesn't have any Arts to replace it with. It is possible to de-equip Battle Soul (press 2/+ - Nunchuck and Switch control scheme, respectively - in the Art Menu) but this is the only time such an ability is even useful.
• Love to Hate:
  • Metal Face/Mumkhar is a sadistic, megalomaniac Dirty Coward of a person who is devoid of anything resembling good even before he was transformed into a faced mechon. However, his hammy delivery on his lines and how unapologetically slimy he is, he is often regarded as one of the highlights of the game. Then again, his Japanese voice is Norio Wakamoto himself.
  • Zanza is such a colossally amoral bastard who freely admits most of the things he does are For the Evulz that going after him feels immensely satisfying, and the reveals and plot twists surrounding him are generally agreed to be awesome, so he's pretty well-liked in this regard too.
  • Lorithia is painted as a villain from her first appearance, but seems to side with the heroes when the chips are down and the Bionis alliance comes together. Then, it's revealed that she's one of the Trinity alongside Dickson and Alvis, she survives her initial apparent demise, and then engages in some Squicky liplocking with Kallian's Telethia. It also doesn't help that she's That One Boss.
• Magnificent Bastard: Egil is a Machina, the leader of the Mechon army, creator of the Faced Mechon, and the mastermind behind their invasion of Bionis. Egil was once friends with Arglas from Bionis with whom he discussed the idea of leaving the world of Bionis and Mechonis in search of new worlds, and of peace and coexistence. However, when Arglas was possessed by Zanza and laid waste to Mechonis, Egil swore revenge and, when both titans were put to sleep, began attacking Bionis hoping to wipe out as much life as possible on the titan so that, when Zanza returned, he would be more vulnerable to kill. Once Shulk learns of his past and confronts him in Mechonis Core, Shulk offers a chance to let go of revenge and change the world together. But thanks to Zanza's timely resurrection, Egil instead gives his life so the heroes can escape, placing his hopes they can kill the evil god without resorting to the extremes he went to.
• Memetic Badass:
  • The Territorial Rotbart, a Unique Monster in the Gaur Plain who has become synonymous with being one-shotted in the early game, to the point where they brought him back for the sequel, along with expies in XCX and XC3 and an apparent child in Future Redeemed.
  • Similarly, Despotic Arsene, one of the endgame superbosses, is infamous for being a harmless-looking little Bunnia that can pulverise the party in seconds and for being stronger than the Final Boss, a literal Physical God. Many people have made comparisons to the Killer Rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and it got a Spiritual Successor in Chickenheart Dagmara from the sequel.
  • Bana, the Arc Villain of the late-game "Find the Kingpin!" sidequest^{Sidequest Spoilers} Not only is he the only Nopon fought as an enemy, but he's higher level than Egil was at his strongest, and both fights are scored to "Tragic Decision," which in Bana's case makes for some hugely Played for Laughs Soundtrack Dissonance. Some fans have run with this, giving Bana some of Egil's lines ("Hom-hom blade... not cut deep enough!") and playing him up as the real villain of the game. Like Rotbart, the developers have noticed Bana's infamy, which resulted in another Bana being a recurring villain in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (who became remembered for his comical hamminess) and the original 'pon himself returning for another round in Future Connected and in the XC2 Challenge Battle "This Year's Heropon"... in the same game as Alrest's Bana.
  • Despite being a Memetic Loser, Juju is this in a very ironic sense, with many fans claiming he has the power of a god and is actually the legendary "Jujuonis".
• Memetic Loser:
  • Juju, for being such a pathetic character that does nothing useful (except for constructing a tower out of Rainbow Slugs).
  • While Gael'gar was intended to be hated as opposed to a purely accidental Scrappy, it's considered to have worked a little too well due to a combination of both the deliberately unlikeable traits and his being considered a shallow, poorly-written character who is booted from the story in a very awkward and underwhelming fashion. As a result he's become exaggerated into being seen as one of the franchise's biggest losers, with any comparison between him and another character being seen as a grave insult to them.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Zanza's attack on Agniratha thousands of years before the start of the game counts, but his modern day equivalent would be killing Meyneth and sinking Prison Island into the Bionis Head, raising the ether levels which turns the High Entia into Telethia.
  • Lorithia turning Kallian and all his men into Telethia, then her and Dickson gloating about it certainly counts as one for the both of them.
  • Dickson crossed the horizon when he killed Shulk by literally shooting him in the back, right when he and Egil were about to make peace.
  • Metal Face rampaging through Colony 9 and killing Fiora, something that he uses to taunt Shulk and Dunban for the rest of the game.
  • Gael'gar is a sick Ax-Crazy racist who despises pureblooded High Entia and constantly stalks Melia, who he views as the saviour of their race due to being half-Homs like him, but he really takes a turn for the worse when he sabotages Teelan's Telethia research by blowing up his laboratory, and when he thinkes he killed Melia with the bombs, he proclaims himself as the new Emperor and tries to murder Teelan outright with his sword.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The shattering-glass sound when you change the party's fate during a battle.
  • Now it's time for a Chain Attack!
  • The fanfare that plays when first encountering a secret area.
  • Loritihia's death scream when you finally beat her.
• Narm:
  • When we find out that Sorean really isn't going to make it, Melia starts crying. It would normally be extremely sad... except it's during a "simple" cutscene, meaning we hear her crying, while we watch her emotionless, eyes-wide-open face.
  • One of Shulk's stock responses to getting damaged is a bloodcurdling scream that sounds like he's in extreme pain. It's actually quite well-delivered and convincing, which only makes it that much more unintentionally hilarious when he does it in response to light damage from weaker enemies.
  • One particularly neat feature is that the game will sometimes flashback to what happened earlier, and it remembers what your characters had equipped. In particular, Fiora's apparent death scene receives a flashback and it might show her with a goofy outfit, utterly killing the seriousness of the scene.
  • The "geyser" in Jakt Geyser's name is pronounced "geezer", which can cause uncontrollable fits of giggling in any non-Briton players (and even some Britons). Even better is that Tora uses the actual term "geezer" in the sequel... in banter with Shulk himself no less!
• Once Original, Now Common: On its release, the game received stellar praise across the board, became an immediate Sacred Cow with Nintendo and JRPG fans, and a Kotaku review of it infamously attracted tons of hate for giving the game a middle-of-the-road 7. These days, however, while it still has a big fanbase and is generally well-regarded, it's no longer universally beloved, especially among JRPG fans. The game's "faux MMO" stylings tend to be much more contentious among new modern players, with some players really enjoying the skill/cooldown-with-auto-attack-based combat while others find it too limited. Similarly, the massive number of Fetch Quests was praised as a great incentive to explore that makes for pleasant grinding and for providing lots of content with many quality-of-life features uncommon at the time, but nowadays a lot more people tend to view it as way too much meaningless filler that still requires a guide to get everything. Putting the capstone on things is that the sequels are generally regarded as having deeper battle systems and sidequests, meaning that the original's gameplay ends up looking somewhat quaint in comparison.
• One True Threesome:
  • Due to both girls having feelings for Shulk, as well as sharing decent chemistry with each other, there are fans who ship Shulk with both Melia and Fiora, or ship Fiora and Melia with each other. The interpretation of the three as a polycule with Fiora at the center became increasingly popular after Xenoblade Chronicles 3 since it's revealed that Lucky Seven was created by Fiora's will and body as well as Melia's "heart" resonating with Origin, and Fiora is stated to be dear to Melia.
  • With the release of the Definitive Edition remake it became a lot more popular to ship Shulk with both Fiora and Alvis, since Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and its DLC paralleling explicitly romantic scenes for its main characters to certain key scenes between Shulk and Alvis. The events of Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed emphasizing the close personal bond between Shulk (who married Fiora in between the events of the game) and Alvis, now in a new body, gave that ship a further boost in popularity.
• Paranoia Fuel: Territorial Rothbart, when you first enter Gaur Plains. Having that giant Level 81 sucker just wandering around when you're barely around Level 20 will have you spending about half those first few fights making sure he's nowhere around when you begin. And suddenly having the otherwise-awesome "You Will Know Our Names" start up out of nowhere is Nightmare Fuel in its own right.
• Polished Port: The 3DS port is an impressive technical marvel which manages to retain as much of the game as possible, and aside from the lower visuals is basically the same experience but portable. It also streamlines some of the game's tedious elements and makes gameplay smoother. Prior to the Switch rerelease, some even considered it superior to the Wii version.
• Questionable Casting: Some fans of the English dub aren't fans of the Japanese voice track, not because the actors are bad per se but because of some very strange casting choices - like Norio Wakamoto, Japan's undisputed King of Large Hams and villains, being cast as the Smug Snake Mumkhar.
• Remade and Improved: The Definitive Edition Switch remake implements a lot of quality-of-life changes addressing player complaints about the original game, such as a more streamlined equipment UI, listing when Arts conditional effects will activate, being able to directly view available NPC trade items from the menu, and making it more obvious which enemies have a Spike aura on them. The quest UI was changed to highlight when specific monsters appear. Various forms of gear, ether gems, monster parts and collectibles can be purchased with Noponstones acquired from the Land of Challenge, reducing the headache-inducing searches for said items. On a side note, it also buffs fan-favourite Reyn, originally seen as a Crutch Character, to become one of the best characters in the game all throughout.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: After Tatsu from Xenoblade Chronicles X and Tora from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 proved to be even more divisive or outright despised, quite a few players who originally did not like Riki publicly announced that they miss him and revaluated his character in light of the newer games. Several of the Quiet Moments in Future Connected have Riki's children reflect on his good parenting skills, further pulling him out to the point that negative opinions on Riki are rare nowadays.
• Retroactive Recognition: For fans of Doctor Who, if they play with the English dub, they'll be surprised to find out Melia is played by Jenna Coleman, the original Wii release being before she got the role of Clara. (Conversely, her Role Reprise in Definitive Edition, released after both the end of that role and another big gig as the star of Victoria, qualifies as Celebrity Voice Actor.)

S-Z

• Sacred Cow: Xenoblade Chronicles was this since launch, garnering tons of hype for its uniqueness and localization woes (with Operation Rainfall spearheading the effort to bring it to North America). The first game is viewed by some as being essentially untouchable and the best game not just in the series (Xenoblade or just Xeno in general), but among the genre, setting a very high bar for later Xenoblade games (for better or for worse).
• Salvaged Story:
  • In the main game, the subplot involving Yumea, Tyrea, and the Bionite Order is pretty much dropped after the assassination attempt on Melia. There's an optional late-game sidequest which reveals the ultimate fate of Yumea, but it still leaves several things unresolved, especially regarding Tyrea and her motivations. Future Connected adds a resolution to this plot by making Tyrea a major supporting character, fleshing out her character and her history with Yumea and the Bionite Order.
  • A common reaction towards the main game was that the severe Trauma Conga Line Melia went through towards the end felt a little too gratuitous, with "poor Melia" even becoming a meme. Even Tetsuya Takahashi half-jokingly admitted that it got a bit much, describing Future Connected as having been developed because the staff felt bad for Melia. Sure enough, a lot of the story is dedicated to showcasing her taking on the difficulties of uniting the remaining survivors, making her less of a Clingy Jealous Girl towards Shulk, and giving her a new set of friends and allies to support her in her new life, ultimately ending her story on a much happier note with her coronation.
• The Scrappy:
  • Juju is disliked by some for his child-like stupidity and impulsiveness getting him into trouble, and for requesting extremely rare items to rebuild Colony 6. He has a fanbase that paints him as a Memetic Badass of godlike power known as the "Jujuonis", but they only do so out of irony.
  • Not only is Lorithia a Hate Sink for her in-universe heinous acts, but she has the winning combination of being a Hate Sink and a shallow villain with poorly-developed motivations. This pushes her beyond Love to Hate territory and makes her a widely-loathed character both for her actions and for her lack of compelling characterization, with many people considering her one of the worst villains in the game. Adding to this, she's infamous for being That One Boss, punctuating her fight with repeated cries of "You'll pay for your insolence!" to Memetic Mutation levels. Explanation here.
  • Just like Lorithia, Gael'gar of Future Connected is a villain designed to be hated yet hated for all the wrong reasons, mostly because he's an underwritten and uncompelling character that's shoved aside from the story as soon as it's convenient, and has no redeeming or interesting traits to offset his negative ones (racism and general creepiness). Many people consider him one of the worst villains in the entire Xeno series, even more than such wonderful figures as Kevin Winnicot, Muimui, Consul U, Consul R, and Lorithia herself.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Enemies that have Spike aura automatically deal a set amount of damage whenever they are attacked, forcing the player to juggle between healing and defensive arts after every few attacks. There are ways to counter it, but they're either temporary or require far too many gem slots to be effective. And although the Definitive Edition marks the portraits of enemies that have Spike aura, in previous releases it was impossible to tell an enemy had it until the player actually engaged in battle.
  • On the topic of auras, there's the amount of highly specific gem specializations in the game made to counter those auras. This can quickly become obnoxious, as ultimately it just results in a lot of needless gem shuffling to reorganise your builds just to take down that one specific enemy, then reshuffling back to your build after it's done, in addition to taking up inventory space just in case you need it for an enemy with that specific aura.
  • Ether Cylinders from gem crafting. In theory, they're a nice way to re-use gem components if you fail to get them over 100% during crafting, and could even be used to distill a single effect so that you can focus on it with Strong flames on the next run. Unfortunately, high-affinity party members can push a desired quality over 100%, turning what would've been an awesome cylinder into an underpowered gem.
  • Enemy arts that trigger visions become this towards the end of the game. When initially introduced, they're a neat and unique spin on standard combat that forces you to think strategically and know your team in-depth in order to counter. However, late game bosses tend to spam these arts constantly, and too often they'll fire up a new one the instant the previous one is finished. Not to mention, while Visions of the Future is not a bad song on its own, it overrides the battle theme until the end of the fight which can be especially frustrating if the track in question is You Will Know Our Name.
  • Building up Affinity. High affinity between party members increases Chain Attack damage, unlocks Heart-to-Heart cutscenes, grants access to more sidequests and is necessary to get additional skill trees. Unfortunately, the most effective way to gain affinity is by using different combinations of characters in battle, leading to obscene amounts of grinding, or by spamming collectible item gifts, which can run out and requires a serious amount of Guide Dang It! to maximise effects.
  • Sharla's Talent Art, "Cool Off". Other characters either have a Talent Art that acts like an extra bonus art, or one that is central to their unique game mechanics, like Shulk or Melia. Sharla's on the other hand is a meter that fills as you use her arts, and when it's full she is automatically forced to cool off her rifle and unable to do anything else for a brief time. If it's active during a chain attack, she'll be skipped over entirely (Ironically, given she's a Low-Tier Letdown in general and lacks synergy during chain attacks, this can actually be a good thing in some scenarios). Technically, it does effect her damage and healing abilities, and provide slight self-healing while active, but these benefits are too negligible to save it.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: While the ultimate canon pairing of Shulk/Fiora is generally accepted, a lot of people think Shulk & Melia ultimately had more chemistry and was more touching. Certain scenes in the game do not help. It also doesn't help that Melia basically ends up alone compared to Shulk and Fiora. Though Melia doesn't seem to mind it much, that just comes off to the Shulk/Melia shippers as the writers clumsily Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends. Sharla pushes this in-universe before backing off.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Despite their lack of overt story interactions, Melia/Dunban has a sizeable following due to the two having great rapport in their Heart-to-Hearts, being seen as the most mature members of the party and thus having a lot of compatibility. It does help that the two are the most popular characters in the game and aren't obviously taken at the end of the game.
• Shocking Moments: Everything in the story from the Mechonis Core and onward. Once you start to see Mechonis attack Bionis, including in Yaldabaoth's fight where you have two minutes to stop a Vision of it destroying Bionis, it just gives the player an idea of what's really at stake at this point. And then, Zanza is revealed, as well as the true natures of Dickson, Alvis, and the fate of the High Entia, kicks the story into absolute holy shit mode.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: A player can reasonably spend 5 hours doing sidequests before even leaving the first town. The in-game tutorial even outright encourages it at one point, telling you to "come back to Colony 6 during breaks in the story."
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The visual effects on the remaster are quite nice, giving all sorts of detail to everything... until you reach Frontier Village and you notice that the Nopon's mouths do not move when they are speaking to you, whereas Riki is using the infamous "Pixel mouth". You wouldn't have paid much attention on the rather blurry character models of the Wii or on the compressed screen of the 3DS, but when you're on an HD switch?
  • Relatively minor, but after beating Future Connected on the Definitive Edition, Kino and Nene are added to the NG+ title screen. However, both are vertically stacked above Riki, doing the same animations as him, despite not being on the same solid ground; it generally looks like they're moving on thin air, rather than Riki's (or Nene's) head. All in all though, many people either don't mind, or just find it cute enough that they don't care.
• Strawman Has a Point: Dunban is portrayed as wrong for trying to kill Mumkhar, with Shulk portrayed as right for stopping him, on the grounds that Mumkhar is a Homs. In his argument, Shulk compares Mumkhar to Fiora, who has also been turned into a Face Mechon. However, while the storyline indicates that Fiora has been brainwashed (the truth is that she's actually been possessed), Mumkhar is clearly acting of his own free will. More importantly, at the time of the argument, Mumkhar is actively trying to kill the party, so killing him would be a justified act of self-defense.
• Subbing Versus Dubbing: The English dub is very well done, to the point that many fans actually prefer it to the original Japanese, especially since the British accents add a lot of uniqueness and charm and avert the usual I Am Very British associated with sci-fi and fantasy works acted or voiced in the UK, instead spanning a variety of real Southern Englander accents for the cast (much with like the Dark Souls series, which shares some voice actors with the Xenoblade games). Dunban is a prominent example, as his English voice is beloved for his gallant Large Ham tendencies, but his Japanese voice on the other hand is considered unfitting and even outright annoying during battles. However, others consider the dub Narmy, particularly due to the heavy British accents that can sound over-the-top to players outside of Europe and Australia,^note largely because North American audiences associate British accents less with Science Fantasy such as Xenoblade and more with High Fantasy such as Dark Souls and Baldur's Gate, and Riki's English voice is often cited as more annoying than the intended "cute", and its gruffness spoiling the reveal that he's really 40 years old.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Some fans have noted that Face, one of the tracks in the game, draws some similarities to Champa's Leitmotif from Dragon Ball Super.
  • Zanza the Divine sounds a lot like Xenosaga's Godsibb. It's generally perceived as a deliberate copyright-safe Mythology Gag given both play during fights against the resident Expy of Deus from Xenogears.
• That One Attack: Attacks that hit the entire party, especially early in the game. Until you are halfway done with the game, there are not many ways to protect the party from them, as most defensive arts only affect one person at a time. The worst of the bunch is Titan Stamp, which is used by the Fortress-type Mechon units and can deal up to 5000 damage in a single hit, easily OHKOing Shulk, Sharla and Melia.
• That One Boss:
  • Bronze Face/Xord. When you fight him at the bottom of the reactor in Colony 6, he is immune to status effects, except ones triggered during a chain attack. The problem is that by this point in the game it is extremely unlikely that you have the means to build up the Talent Gauge quickly, and the entire fight effectively becomes a Luck-Based Mission as you fight the Mooks that he spawns and hope that your party lands enough crits to build up the gauge quickly.
  • Tyrea and Solidum Telethia. Since Tyrea is a High Entia, Shulk's Monado will bounce off her, which would normally encourage the player to bench him for this fight. Unfortunately, the Telethia pretty much enforces him to be used, as its dodge Aura can only be reliably dispelled with Monado Purge. And even that may be prevented by Tyrea, who can drain the talent gauge. The duo is no slouch in offence either, as they have a devastating Predation (force topple) to Flying Bee (double damage to toppled) combination.
  • Mumkhar in Sword Valley. The opposing group is comprised of three large enemies, which can cover the camera and prevent the player from positioning the party properly. Also, they all have attacks that inflict the Poison status, and Mumkhar himself can force Daze on everyone.
  • The 2nd fight with Jade Face/Gadolt. He keeps his using his more powerful arts constantly, which includes Laser Bullet, an attack that hits everyone in the entire party and can only be stopped by a leveled up Monado Armour... If you obtained that art in the first place.
  • The fight against Yaldabaoth/Egil at Mechonis Core starts out relatively easy... until you get to his second phase. At this point, Shulk gets a vision of Egil about to destroy the Bionis, giving you two minutes to stop it. The problem? Egil's entire moveset is designed to stall you out. He can inflict Arts Seal and Paralysis to keep you from attacking, but the real threat is his ability to summon Mechon. He can summon in two variants, neither of which are weak. Don't take them out, and you'll be swimming in Mechon in no time. Take time to pick them off, and you'll likely not have enough time to stop the Bionis' destruction.
  • Disciple Lorithia. The arena you face her in contains four large pools of ether, which do constant damage if you stand in them. Because she's so large, she will try to push you into the ether, and the AI is not programmed to walk out on its own, so the player will be forced to halt all attacks just to recall the AI partners out of the ether. Lorithia has a ton of HP and all of her attacks are Ether-based, which makes evasion and Shulk's Monado arts useless. Many of her attacks inflict crippling status effects, such as Daze, Topple, Confuse, and Art Seal. She will also dispel debuffs and apply Debuff Immunity on herself. Finally, she's a Flunky Boss, and her minions will quadruple her defense as long as they're active, will constantly tag the player with arts that lower ether defense, and will self-destruct after a while. And all the while, she will scream "You'll pay for your insolence!" with every other attack.
  • In Future Connected, the Fog King will have you begging for mercy. After a manageable first phase it enters the second phase, and starts using Mist Press, that topples the entire party for a whopping 15 seconds, opening them for other high-damage attacks. On top of that, it will summon minions AND dispel debuff, making them useless once again. Good luck.
• That One Level:
  • 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 (but it's another story 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.
  • Alcamoth. Huge and with very few landmarks to teleport from, navigating the place is a massive pain. You have a limited amount of time to do most of them if you want 100% Completion. And you need to go back there post-Mechonis Core for some more sidequests, and you have no access to landmarks at that time.
  • Colony 6's Ether Mine. It's a rather dull-looking underground area (that comes up in the story just after another, less annoying underground area), filled with Mechon that, at this point in the game, only Shulk can damage without Monado Enchant or a Topple effect. It's not actually that big, but falling damage will force you to go around the rim of the central pit several times before you can reach the bottom safely.
  • The Bionis interior. Thankfully it's short, because the place is full of narrow pathways where you get attacked by Drakos Telethia that can knock you off, causing you to fall into the ether and die, and they fly so you can't do the same to them. In addition, there's a level jump from the fight against Yaldabaoth and it's capped off by the fight against Lorithia.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Ingredients for a Brew in Frontier Village is a side quest with two outcomes. However, there are two problems. If you have all the ingredients for one of the options, you are locked on that path without any choice of backing out. The other problem is that Walnut Grapes, the ingredient for the "bad option" (both NPC-relationship and reward-wise) are incredibly common on Bionis' Leg in comparison to Bitter Kiwis being rare in Makna Forest (and they don't become available for trade until Central Bionis reaches three-star affinity). This means it's incredibly likely that you'll have at least the four Walnut Grapes needed for the bad option before you even accept the quest, forcing you to either get rid of some of those Walnut Grapes before it starts or Save Scum if you were blindsided.^note This is slightly remedied in the 3DS version. If you have the required amounts of both Bitter Kiwis and Walnut Grapes when you accept the quest, the game will lock you on the more favorable Bitter Kiwi route.
  • Challenge 2 in Frontier Village, which asks you to kill Breezy Zolos, is surprisingly difficult if you do it as soon as you're able. Zolos will probably be on an equal level to yours, and is probably the first sidequest mark you'll fight who has a Spike aura, meaning you take damage every time you hit it. Not only that, but the area it appears in also happens to be prowled by a Level 98 gigantic T-Rex enemy who's all too willing to join the fight if he gets too close. Luring is key here, as is strategic fighting.
  • Challenge 1 in Alcamoth. On the surface, it doesn't seem so bad. Swim to the Secluded Island, just south of Alcamoth in the Eryth Sea, maybe dodge some high-level enemies on the shore, and kill a Pagul-type enemy called "Proper Bandaz". But it turns out it can only be killed during a Shooting Star Shower, which has a lower likelihood than rain or a clear night. Get ready to spend several minutes advancing time forward one hour, bit by bit, until you start seeing the golden sparkles. Thankfully, the enemy isn't too hard, so the main nuisance is getting the Shooting Star Shower to occur.
  • Building Colony 6's housing to level 2 requires a Fossil Monkey, which only drops in the Makna Forest. It has a seven percent spawn rate and only spawns in specific locations that are hard to find or dangerous to get to. You'll have to roam the forest so many times doing so and even though you need a single one, it feels like it takes forever since you have to go good distances to get to the spawn areas. The good news is that, unlike the other notorious ingredients on this page, this can be traded for from a character in Frontier Village who doesn't move to Colony 6 (Puko at Kyn Shopping Street, and only requiring two starts of affinity for Frontier Village).
  • Reconstructing Colony 6's "Special" to Level 4. It requires 2 Rainbow Slugs, possibly the single rarest collectible in the game. They only spawn at certain times in certain areas on the Fallen Arm, and if you know the right time/location there's still only about a 10% chance the collectible will be a Rainbow Slug. And fans all over the internet still aren't 100% sure what the right times are, the only definite is they have to be at night. And you need two of them plus an extra one for your Collectapaedia if you're looking for 100% Completion in that area too. Hope you like running around and around the same area for hours! This wouldn't be so bad were it not for the fact that one potential resident requires this upgrade to move there!
  • Building Colony 6's "Nature" to Level 3 is also a pain in the ass for the same reasons as Special's Level 4; finding 2 Ice Cabbages in Valak Mountain is just as difficult as finding the Rainbow Slugs. It's usually available only at night, and nobody's more sure than that. Only one NPC can offer it for trade, and he only trades it after an event near the end of the game. He can also be migrated to Colony 6, in which case he'll never be able to trade it to begin with. And yet another potential resident requires this upgrade to move there.
  • This is repeated with Colony 6's "Nature Level 5" requirements, which require two Black Liver Beans found in the Bionis Interior after its awakening, an item just as rare as Ice Cabbages and Rainbow Slugs. Once more, another potential resident requires this upgrade to move there.
  • Getting Colony 6's special to level one isn't as bad, but still annoying. You need to a Light Rain Element that is only dropped by the Aqua Nebulas the Bionis Leg. Not too bad. Oh, the drop only occurs during a thunderstorm, which is a royal pain in the ass because you have NO CONTROL OVER WEATHER EFFECTS, and if you change time on the clock, it doesn't bother telling you what the weather is so you have to go on it from guesswork. Even then, it's VERY rare for the Aqua Nebula to drop the item, and you kill them all, you have to wait for them to respawn and then get another thunderstorm going. It can be traded via overtrade from a character at the Refugee Camp...but of course said character will immediately move to Colony 6 once reconstruction begins, so his trade offers change after that. (However, there is a way to cheese it: completing the events at the Ether Mine forces a thunderstorm in Bionis' Leg and Colony 6, so you can get it then, plus Challenge 1 from Bionis' Leg, whose mark also requires a thunderstorm to spawn.)
  • Getting to Know Dorothy. This quest is only available post-Mechonis Core, where the items needed for this quest are located in the middle of a Telethia-infested city. Hope you prepared, or are a high enough level to tackle this one! Unsurprisingly, most people pick Minnie to be the better candidate in this series of quests.
  • Many of the fifth skill trees for characters are locked behind high reputations (requring you to do lots of sidequests), high level enemies or high level bosses, all of whom are stronger than the end boss of the game. Sharla in particular requires you to reconstruct Colony 6, invite NPCs, do a ton of sidequests there to raise your reputation, and find and invite the specific NPCs to unlock it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Sharla's early-game arc when Shulk's party have to make their way through Colony 6 leaves a dangling thread that is only resolved much later, but until then she's just tagging along with the rest of the cast, with her few relevant moments being playing Shipper on Deck for the more fleshed-out Melia. Though the game hints at a romance between her and Reyn, such dynamic is not fleshed out either.
  • A similar case happens to Melia after her Makna Forest to Prison Island arc wraps up, and she goes on to continue the journey with Shulk's party to see more of the world. Throughout the second half of the game, Melia's basically just tagging along with the group to the point of hardly receiving any dialogue or important scenes. It also doesn't help that the dangling plotline concerning Yumea and Tyrea being at odds with her only gets resolved in a late-game Side Quest. She does get some moments with her older brother, Kallian, in the latter half of the story where he leaves the future of the High Entia to her before he dies, but it's mostly just repeating an arc Melia already went through with Emperor Sorean wishing for Melia to become the future hope of their people. At the very least, she gets to be the main character of Future Connected due to the developers choosing to take advantage of her Breakout Character status amongst the fanbase, and returns as one half of the Big Good and Greater-Scope Paragon duo in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, where she plays a major role in the backstory and final battle.
  • First Consort Yumea sets up a potentially interesting conspiracy plotline once Shulk and the gang arrive in Alcamoth. However, after her daughter, Tyrea's, failed attempt to kill Melia, Yumea and her storyline end up completely dropping Out of Focus from the main storyline to the point that it only gets resolution in a Side Quest involving Yumea being turned into a Telethia that needed to be killed off. The result is Yumea's story being brought to an abrupt end before it ever got the chance to truly delve into her character.
  • Part of Lorithia's scrappy status comes from just how underutilized and shallow of a character she comes off compared to Zanza's other two disciples, who are much more fleshed out with bigger roles in the story.
  • Gaelgar in Future Connected is a big example of this, with him being shown as the only villain aside from the Fog King in the game, and one of the first characters you meet. However there's no development and an absurd lack of motivations on the character while his last appearance is a completely optional sidequest chain, which has put many people off. Many outright prefer if he would have been the actual main villain of Future Connected instead of the Fog King and the Arch-Enemy to Melia.
  • Speaking of the Fog King, the main reason many fans would have preferred for Gaelgar to be the Big Bad of Future Connected is because the Fog King is about as Generic Doomsday Villain as they come. Nothing about the Fog King as a character is ever truly delved into. It's just there because there needed to be something to fight.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Alcamoth conspiracy plotline that has First Consort Yumea attempting to kill Princess Melia before the latter is named the Emperor's successor is quite underdeveloped. The storyline just suddenly comes to a halt after Tyrea's failed attempt to assassinate Melia in the High Entia Tomb, which results in very little being delved into regarding Yumea and Tyrea's mother-daughter relationship, along with not getting to see much of the zealous Bionite Order that serves Yumea from the shadows. The wrap up to Yumea's story in a later chapter isn't even a part of the main questline.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Despite their vast improvements in detail and technical quality, some fans dislike the new character models in the Definitive Edition for having a more generic anime look (best exemplified with the larger eyes), losing the more unique art style of the original, as well as a palette that is much more saturated and bright to a point that some fans find unnatural, particularly where characters who had darker complexions in the original are concerned. Much of this conflict usually comes from those that did not take kindly to its direct sequel's own character designs, either.
  • While most of the remastered soundtrack has been positively received, some tracks have been criticised for the changes made that results in them being seen as worse than the original version of the song. Engage the Enemy and the final bosses theme have been criticised because of changes like new vocals that overshadow the music, or how the overal tone has been changed, causing the song to lose the impact it had. As several songs on the OST were left unchanged from the original, some have expressed a belief that the original tracks are preferable.
  • Overlapping with a mild case of So Bad, It Was Better, the pathfinding for AI party members doesn't suffer from nearly as much hilarious Artificial Stupidity as it used to, and Valek Mountain's ice physics were toned-down to be less ridiculous. (While you still build up speed quickly, you'll no longer launch yourself halfway down the mountain with a single jump) Some fans of the original miss both of these.
• Tough Act to Follow:
  • The original Xenoblade is often considered one of the Seventh Generation's most underrated games and one of the best JRPGs of all time, so inevitably later games in the Xenoblade series have been compared, favorably or not, to the original despite Nintendo putting more promotion behind them.
  • Future Connected was a clear attempt to give Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition its own extra story similar to Torna - The Golden Country for its sequel. While well-received overall, many fans attest that Future Connected doesn't quite live up to Torna as it doesn't flesh out the game's universe and characters as much, is much shorter,^note Torna is comparable in length to a shorter standalone RPG and also has extensive replay value and largely offers a watered-down version of the main game's battle mechanics instead of reimagining and streamlining them.
  • Likewise, Time Attack in Definitive Edition is considered inferior to its inspiration, XC2's Challenge Battles, mostly due to the lack of crossover content from other Xenoblade games and the general lack of challenge, along with the fact that most of the battles are simple Boss Rushes against largely unchanged (sometimes weaker) enemies from the main story and Future Connected. However, Future Connected and Time Attack are included with their base game for free, whereas Torna and Challenge Battle Mode are paid DLC, so it isn't a one-to-one comparison.
• 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. As one reviewer noted, the 3DS port is arguably the best-looking game on the system, despite its graphical quality being far inferior to the original Wii version.
• WTH, Costuming Department?: A lot of people dislike most of the armours of the game so much that they refuse to put the characters anything but the standard outfits and maybe one or two better-thought armours. Even if that means having worse stats. The worst offenders are the heavy armours, which are ridiculously bulky and over-ornamented. Also Stripperific with Sharla and Mecha Fiora, even to the point of Fetish Retardant. A lot of people were pleased when it turned out the Definitive Edition added the option to replace the appearance of armour with different ones like in Xenoblade Chronicles X.
• The Woobie:
  • Even with all of what the rest of the main cast has to endure, Melia gets hit hardest and most often. It begins even before Shulk's team meets her: Her best/closest/only friends and bodyguards are killed while on a mission to destroy a Telethia, her stepmother tries to have her assassinated, her father is killed before her eyes, one of her advisers turns traitor, and a good number of her people- including her brother and stepmother- are turned into Telethia. So to summarise, by the end of the game, her whole family is dead, only a tiny fraction of her people are still alive, and she knows that she's lost out to Fiora when it comes to winning Shulk's affections. She definitely got the rawest deal out of all the party members. And despite all this, she keeps her chin up and resolves to continue shouldering on.
  • Shulk doesn't get off too much better. He lost someone very dear to him near the beginning, Fiora. He's also an orphan who was taken in and raised as a son by The Dragon. Not to mention he constantly suffers through both his friends who have lost many comrades and carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders since only he can wield the Monado after Dunban is crippled. Later on, it turns out he was a puppet for the Big Bad and is shot in the back and killed by Dickson, the one man who was like a father to him. He's brought back to life, but damn. The Big Bad proceeds to attempt to destroy the entire world because he's god and he can do what he wants. Shulk finally ends up making everything right in the end by wishing for a world without gods.
• Woolseyism:
  • A specific example with the surnames of the High Entia royal family. In Japan their last names are simply Melia, Sorean, and Kallian Ancient, whereas the English translation gives them the much more regal-sounding Antiqua.
  • Subtle, but effective example with regards to the Unique Monster theme. In the original Japanese, the title directly translates to "Those Who Are Given a Name." In English? "You Will Know Our Names", a title that not only gets that point across, but implies that one way or another, either the monsters or the party members are going to leave a lasting impression. It's also a good title to mark an awesome fight in Super Smash Bros..
  • The Faced Mechon in the original Japanese version follow a naming theme based on the color of their armor with Brown Face (also known as Xord), Silver Face, Green Face, and Gold Face. However, the very first one encountered was known as Black Face, which wouldn't be acceptable in English for obvious reasons. So for the English release, they simply turned it into a similar naming theme based on metals and minerals so that Silver and Gold Face could keep their names, while Brown Face became Bronze Face (which also fit with his blacksmith aesthetic and past occupation), Green Face became Jade Face, and Black Face became simply Metal Face.
  • When the party first arrives on Valak Mountain, Reyn mentions wanting "a hot cup of Dickson's homebrew" to deal with the cold. This line is fairly popular within the fandom for the extra bit of characterization it provides to Reyn and Dickson, as well its memetic value with YouTube Poop makers over its potential for Accidental Innuendo. However this line only exists in the English script; the original Japanese line is a fairly generic and much less memorable complaint about the cold.
  • Shulk and Reyn's memetic exchange of "To you!" "To me!" during Gem Crafting is a Chuckle Vision reference that was added in localisation, and became more well-known than the original show outside the UK. Shulk even reminisces about the line in Future Redeemed when repairing the Ether Furnace.

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