This may seem a bit odd to you, dear American readers, but the European release of Monolith Software’s Xenoblade Chronicles is a thoroughly weird and unsettling experience for me.
Allow me to elaborate. I’m a long-time importer of American and Japanese games. Starting in the good old days of the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis, as you American folks refer to the system), importing was always the way to go. Sometimes import games were cheaper than official releases; sometimes they came many months earlier; and most often the games I imported never made their way to Europe at all. The list is long — at first, I imported mainly shooters like Musha Aleste, Gleylancer, and Thunder Force III. Later I took an interest in RPGs like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Final Fantasy Tactics, Lunar, and many, many more — none of which were ever released in Europe.
