In 2054, Earth is caught in the midst of a war between two alien factions. To escape the planet’s destruction, humanity builds massive Ark Ships and flies off in search of new planets to colonize. The game follows an American ship, the White Whale, as its people settle on the planet Mira and establish both the city of New Los Angeles and the military organization BLADE. The player starts the game as a fully customizable human character, who is awakened from cryogenic sleep by a woman named Elma and recruited as BLADE’s newest member. The two of them are joined by several other characters, human and alien alike, as they attempt to survive Mira’s natural environments, learn more about the planet, and recover the Lifehold that houses the stasis pods of the majority of Earth’s survivors. Along the way they encounter the Ganglion, one of the alien factions that destroyed Earth, who are discovered to hold a genocidal hatred toward humans and are planning to drive the survivors to extinction.
This game is an action RPG, and a spiritual sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles. The battle system is largely similar to the one in that game; battles are fought in real time, and players have access to both automatic attacks and stronger skills called Battle Arts. A mechanic called Soul Voice can grant effects such as healing or buffs when successfully activated, and a technique called Overdrive can provide even more powerful buffs for a limited time.
Mechs called Skells can be piloted and used for both exploration and combat, though they run on a limited fuel source and can be expensive to maintain. The planet Mira is an enormous open world, and Skells can be used to reach otherwise-inaccessible parts of it.
Online features allow players to join squads of up to 32 members. Upon starting a play session, the player may choose to be randomly assigned to a squad or join one with friends registered to their Wii U console. Squad members can work together to exterminate monsters and collect items in asynchronous group missions, as well as recruit computer-controlled versions of one another as temporary party members. Smaller groups of up to four may also take on a timed battle against a Global Nemesis if one is active; these bosses have extremely high amounts of HP, and it is up to the community to work together over several days to defeat them.