## Description
In 2054, Earth is caught in the midst of a war between two alien factions. To
escape the planet’s destruction, humanity builds massive Ark Ships and flies
off in search of new planets to colonize. The game follows an American ship,
the White Whale, as its people settle on the planet Mira and establish both
the city of New Los Angeles and the military organization BLADE. The player
starts the game as a fully customizable human character, who is awakened from
cryogenic sleep by a woman named Elma and recruited as BLADE’s newest member.
The two of them are joined by several other characters, human and alien alike,
as they attempt to survive Mira’s natural environments, learn more about the
planet, and recover the Lifehold that houses the stasis pods of the majority
of Earth’s survivors. Along the way they encounter the Ganglion, one of the
alien factions that destroyed Earth, who are discovered to hold a genocidal
hatred toward humans and are planning to drive the survivors to extinction.
This game is an action RPG, and a spiritual sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles.
The battle system is largely similar to the one in that game; battles are
fought in real time, and players have access to both automatic attacks and
stronger skills called Battle Arts. A mechanic called Soul Voice can grant
effects such as healing or buffs when successfully activated, and a technique
called Overdrive can provide even more powerful buffs for a limited time.
Mechs called Skells can be piloted and used for both exploration and combat,
though they run on a limited fuel source and can be expensive to maintain. The
planet Mira is an enormous open world, and Skells can be used to reach
otherwise-inaccessible parts of it.
Online features allow players to join squads of up to 32 members. Upon
starting a play session, the player may choose to be randomly assigned to a
squad or join one with friends registered to their Wii U console. Squad
members can work together to exterminate monsters and collect items in
asynchronous group missions, as well as recruit computer-controlled versions
of one another as temporary party members. Smaller groups of up to four may
also take on a timed battle against a Global Nemesis if one is active; these
bosses have extremely high amounts of HP, and it is up to the community to
work together over several days to defeat them.
XenobladeX