Xenoblade Chronicles

Xenoblade Chronicles is one of the most ambitious games ever released on Wii, and also one that came within a hair's breadth of never reaching the West at all. The whole world stands on the bodies of two petrified giants who once fought each other and now form the continents people walk across. This idea isn't just window dressing: the map is genuinely built on the anatomy of those beings, and journeying from the feet all the way up to the head gives the game an unusual sense of direction and scale. The main hero obtains a sword that shows him fragments of the future, and both the story and the combat grow out of that.

The combat system runs in real time and with movement across the battlefield, but with cooldowns on individual abilities, so it feels more like an action-leaning take on a classic Japanese RPG. The trick is that the game shows an impending disaster before it lands, and the player has a few seconds to avert it, say by warning an ally or repositioning. The world is huge and open, full of freely roaming creatures of every level, meaning that even early on you can run into something immensely powerful and have to avoid it. There are hundreds of side quests, and a relationship system between characters unlocks further scenes and upgrades. Equipment can additionally be customized with gems the player crafts themselves, so even gathering materials has a point.

Technically the game forced compromises. Resolution is low and textures are rough in the distance, but the view over a vast landscape from a high vantage point still lands even today. The music is one of the main reasons people remember this title: an extensive soundtrack alternates orchestral motifs with rock and jazz pieces, and the themes for the day and night versions of the same place rank among the best in the genre. Critics received the game excellently, and the fan campaign for its Western release became legendary. Today Xenoblade Chronicles is the foundation of an entire franchise and one of the strongest arguments that Wii wasn't just a console for family game nights.