Every single week, I’ll be chronicling my first time playing through the Xenoblade Chronicles trilogy on Switch 2 in anticipation for Xenoblade Genesis.

This is Week 3 of my journey through the first Xenoblade Chronicles, last week, I just arrived in Makna forest & saw Melia for the first time! This video I end my journey on introducing the best character, Riki to the party!

Makna Forest & Frontier VIllage

I feel like a broken record in these videos, but Xenoblade Chronicles is such an incredibly fun game! I have loved my experience exploring these new areas, Makna Forest & Frontier Village. As I head further up the Bionis, it feels like I’m moving backwards in time when Homs didn’t exist.

Seeing these prehistoric monsters roaming the forest, monsters that were once tiny in the Bionis’ Leg are now these hulking gigantic monsters. It has been a tremendously cool experience! Also the vast size of the Makna Forest is insane. For the first hour of adventuring into Makna Forest, I didn’t realize I could just jump off the bridge! This entire fast rapids & crazy large waterfall was a place I could visit! And you’re telling me this was all on the Wii!! How cool!

I often feel like open world games lose out on these incredible vista & uniquely designed areas because the focus is much more on the quantity of capturing an environment rather than curating the perfect time & place of an environment. I’m curious if Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or 3 dip more into the open world aspect as the games expand onto more powerful hardware. Hopefully, they are able to captures these amazing locations!

I think Makna Forest might be my favorite area so far just because of the variety that it provides from the massive waterfall & long rope bridges to an endless pits & watering holes to this massive interconnecting wooden platforms! I have just loved exploring Makna Forest so much & then to learn that the massive tree that we see when we first entered Makna Forest is actually Frontier Village where all the Noppon live.

Frontier Village is so cool because they really gave us the entire height of that giant tree to climb. I love at the very top is this very serene pond too. Also I love that the Noppons call Melia, Bird Lady, which it is great to see that Melia is playable! I love Melia being this very snooty character, clearly royalty of some sort, princess most likely because Shulk has been having this vision about fighting for the Emperor & Melia is with him in that moment. It just kind of makes sense.

Melia

Also she has got to be a High Entia right? Her referring to us as Homs, the fact that she has the ability to injury a Telethia. She also mentioned that Telethia was caged at her homeland. Is all very fascinating! When I originally met Melia, I was thinking she might be a robot? Her outfit choices are very robot-like & her headgear cannot be removed, but as the Noppon began to call her “Bird Lady” & left the party to go to a place called the Diving Spot in Frontier Village. It made me think that she was going to fly off, but we don’t see any wings. So many underneath her hat are large wings for flight!

Also birds like to sit on top of the heads of statues & the High Entia are at the top of the Bionis head!? COINCIDENCE!? Also even after unlocking Melia, the meeting point in Dunban’s home is still ??? Is Fiora really coming back!?

Melia is a very difficult character to play as. I do not fully understand her gameplay so I don’t feel like I am being very effective in combat. Unfortunately, I also haven’t unlocked the combat trials for Melia yet so that will be my true test to learn to play her as I will spend however long it takes to S rank those trials. Even with Sharla, who is also difficult to use because of the gun heating mechanic, I still feel great & am having fun playing as her.

The GP races showed Melia as the 6th unlockable character, leaving the 5th slot empty. Also as I was exploring Makna Forest & was gathering weapons for a character who wasn’t Melia. I was baffled by who might be my next character. It made me hope for it to be a Noppon & once I got into Frontier Village & saw that I could already purchase skill books for a character I do not have. Whose skills sounded very much like something a Noppon would say. I was excited, but I was not ready for how amazing of an introduction Riki gets into this story!

Riki

Heropon Riki is so funny & amazing! I absolutely love him! Not only is his goal to pay off his debts, which is so perfect! I love that even the characters cannot believe that they will have to party up with this goofy Noppon. I also love the music that was playing during his introduction, I think it might be my favorite music track so far aside from the unique monster battle theme.

Also his combat trial took me around 3 – 4 hours to S rank. He was such a tough character to get right. Making the decisions of how to best debuff & enemy while also losing aggro enough to perform back attacks is incredibly difficult. I’m sure at some point, he will get a de-aggro skill like Shulk & Sharla have & I’m sure he pairs so well with an aggro Dunban or Reyn build. But wow, that combat trial was it difficult with a Shulk & Sharla team. Also what a wild choice to make Riki’s Topple ability not always trigger & for his sleep ability to sleep himself. This truly gives so much character to who Riki is. I freaking love it!

That being said, I’m now ready to tackle the world with Riki & I do not know how I will be able to decide on which characters will join the party especially as I try to gain affinities with them for the meeting points.

I do not see how this game can get worst because it just keeps getting better every time I make these videos. One last character who presented themselves was Alvis. I love Alvis. He isn’t the typical mysterious weirdo who only speaks in cryptic phrases.

No instead, he is like Shulk, that’s a Telethia & this is how to use the Monado. That fact that he so easily able to wielded the Monado & showed Shulk how to unlock a new power. Is the perfect level of mysterious to this character! Clearly, he knows about the history behind the Monado & the Bionis. He also doesn’t appear to be a Homs based on how he talks about Homs so maybe he is a High Entia? I’m not sure, but this story continues to get more & more interesting.

Please come back next week for more thoughts on Xenoblade Chronicles 1. At this rate, I feel like I will be able to beat this game before the release of Xenoblade Chronicles 2.