After successful stints with Fire Emblem and Zelda, Nintendo should consider giving Xenoblade the Warriors treatment next. The company has enjoyed plenty of success lending their franchise to Koei Tecmo and letting them become addicted button-mashers, and Monolith’s RPG series would benefit greatly from it.
With four games and plenty of memorable characters, fans would love to have them slash thousands of enemies onscreen. Plus, the real-time combat would feel refreshing, given how automated this franchise’s battles can feel.
Some fans have complained about the battle system of Xenoblade because players don’t have full control of the characters’ actions. Shulk and crew would attack automatically, though players can change their position and activate special attacks once their bars are filled. It’s not a bad system at all, but fans have mixed opinions about not controlling their regular attacks.
Putting these characters in a Warriors spinoff would finally change that, letting players control their regular slashes and ultimate attacks. It would also be fun taking down monsters and mechon with real-time actions, just so players can say that they can. Although Warriors games would make these enemies feel a bit weak, seeing a ton of them fly offscreen would give fans a feeling of doing something epic.
Because previous Xenoblade games have done time travel and alternate futures, it would fit a Warriors spinoff just fine. They would avoid some of the backlash Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity received, since it wasn’t a true prequel and ended up becoming an alternate timeline. Nintendo is actually fixing that with Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, which details what Zelda went through while Link was dealing with Tears of the Kingdom.
Variety would also be strong since these games differ quite a bit in terms of their settings. The first game is the most standard, albeit with evil Mechon robots. Meanwhile, the second game has weapons that are also busty women or animals, which is already different from the original. Chronicles X has mechs in it, so we can get giant robot action. Finally, Chronicles 3 had the largest party and multiple character classes to try, making each character feel different.
click to enlargeWe imagine Koei Tecmo will try to incorporate all of that into a coherent battle system where Xenoblade characters slash everything in sight.
Nintendo’s relationship with Koei Tecmo has been fruitful, as fans did enjoy all of the Fire Emblem and Zelda Warriors games. They did a great job of balancing fan service and fun gameplay, something that Monolith’s RPG series can do in spades. Fans wouldn’t complain, and detractors will finally give this series a chance; it would be a win-win situation for the series.
Xenoblade found new life on the Switch after almost not getting a North American release on the Wii. That success should continue on Switch 2, and doing so with a Warriors game spinoff would be great.
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