Xenoblade Chronicles: Future Connected
Future Connected acts as an epilogue to the original Xenoblade Chronicles, but focuses on bringing closure to Melia's study, which was easily the most tragic of the main cast. The focus on Melia led to some creative decisions that, frankly, I loved! The most obvious of which is the playable party of characters. Instead of reintroducing the whole cast of the original game and finding some way to explain what each of them has been doing between games, your party consists only of Shulk, Melia, and Riki's children, Nene and Kino. Nene and Kino act almost identically to Reyn and Sharla, respectively, but they don't require much backstory, which may act to pull the focus away from Melia, since they were newly created for this game and the player has no established connection to them. The freedom that the dev team had to create the nopons' personalities from scratch allowed them to complement Melia and her character's needs nicely. I actually loved the kiddos so much that they ended up being my two favorite nopons in the whole series! Their stories are both adorable and heartwarming, while still feeling familiarly human. However, you could unknowingly pass all of that by if you don't pay attention to the "Quiet Time" locations scattered across the map.
Replacing "Heart to Hearts" from the main game, thanks to the lack of affinity charts in this short experience, Quiet Times are fully-voiced cutscenes of characterizing dialog between the party members. They aren't necessary to the story, but they do make the characters and their relationships feel a lot more real and important. While these, along with the sidequests, are not required to beat the game, they add so much personality that the whole experience feels incomplete without them. I'm always a sidequest fiend in Xenoblade games, so it was no question that I would complete them all here too, but for people who don't prioritize side content in the same way, I can see how Future Connected might feel a little empty. Don't get me wrong, the main story itself is pretty enjoyable, but even that depends on characters that were really only fleshed out in sidequests from the main game. This is what made me realize that Future Connected was designed for invested fans of the Xenoblade series, not for casual enjoyers. Without a personal dedication to experience everything that each game has to offer, one's experience with Future Connected may feel hollow.
Ultimately, it is far beyond me to try and gatekeep any video game. If you are a casual Xenoblade enjoyer and you want to play Future Connected, then please do! I would just encourage you to enter the game with the understanding that your experience may feel incomplete if you missed certain sidequests in the original Xenoblade Chronicles, or if you don't intend to do all of the sidequests and Quiet Times in this one. In that sense, Future Connected requires a degree of dedication you don't usually see for games this small. However, if you're willing to commit yourself to playing it right, there's a lot to get out of the experience.
