Xenoblade Chronicles X

Xenoblade Chronicles X is the largest game ever released for Wii U, and also one of the most ambitious open worlds of its entire generation. After Earth's destruction, a human ark crash-lands on the planet Mira, and the survivors found the city of New Los Angeles. Your character, whom you create yourself, joins the exploration force BLADE, tasked with mapping the planet's continents, finding the lost pieces of the ship, and deciding how humanity should relate to the native civilizations and to the warring alien fleets fighting over the planet.

The world is split into five enormous regions, all open from the very start and not gated by character level. You can therefore wander into a valley full of hundred-meter monsters right from the beginning. Combat runs in real time with automatic attacks and a set of skills on cooldowns, complemented by a system for cheering on your teammates at the right moment. Roughly halfway through the game, you obtain a Skell, a giant robotic mech that transforms, turns into a vehicle, and later even flies, opening up the whole world for a third time. There are hundreds of side quests, and many of them tell stories about the difficult coexistence of species within the city.

Technically, the achievement feels almost unbelievable on Wii U hardware: a seamless world with no loading, enormous draw distances, and dense detail, though at the cost of simpler textures and occasional pop-in at range. The music departs significantly from the rest of the series, mixing electronica, rock, and sung tracks, and it's highly divisive. Reception was very good, with reservations about the sheer amount of text and a story that remains more of a backdrop for exploration. The game remains one of the strongest reasons to pull the console out of the closet, and for a long time it was its one true home. Anyone who loves exploration for its own sake will find dozens of hours of discovery here that aren't replicated anywhere else.