Xenoblade Chronicles has plenty of standout features. It has wonderful characters to invest in as the game progresses, combat that ties heavily in party dynamics, and a story with plenty of deeper meaning strewn about. But perhaps the most impactful feature is its world, two giants that form the land you travel.
Its areas are striking, being both natural-looking in many areas, interwoven with the realization that you are indeed walking on the body of a living, though currently dormant, being. As a result, areas both normal and surreal have odd qualities to them. And though all of them are beautiful, some showcase the nature of the world more dramatically than others.
8 Bionis' Interior
First encountered quite a bit into the game, Bionis' Interior is perhaps the first location to have you fully contend with the fact that the Bionis is a true living thing. Here, you're surrounded by what looks to be blood cells floating about, the nervous system weaving all around you, and a great pit of acid below.
Its colours can be sickly at first glance, very unlike the world outside. But this is what life to the Bionis looks like. Greens, yellows, reds, and pinks, all mixed to create the scenario of life atop it. It's the quite literal beating heart of the Bionis, and you're walking amongst its veins puts the game's size into perspective.
7 Fallen Arm
Though first visited quite late in the game, the Fallen Arm can actually be seen much earlier while looking down from Colony 6. It is known to exist from the battle between the Bionis and Mechonis eons ago, though perhaps not with the variety of life that it has. It's a striking place.
When you first arrive, it can be daunting to look up and see both the Mechonis and Bionis towering above you. Then you realize the whole map is just the arm, enough to form a wholly unique ecosystem. It's a small tropical beach, filled with both mechanical and organic life. And the view from the highest digit? Breathtaking.
6 Bionis' Leg
For anyone who has played the game, it's obvious from the get-go that the journey takes place across the Bionis' body, starting here at the leg. But you probably know it better as Gaur Plains, that iconic location shown off in just about every promo shot for the game. The vast, rolling fields with impossible overhanging cliffs.
It's the most iconic location, but one of the most beautiful too. It's a joyous place to explore during the day with its upbeat music, but when night comes round, the music calms with it, the stars becoming your primary companion. It's a gigantic area filled with so much variety of caves, cliffs, and everything else, and sums up the game pretty well.
5 Sword Valley
Sword Valley is a beautiful area, though in a way somewhat different from others. While much of the Bionis is home to vast ecosystems of organic life and all the habitats in which they dwell, Sword Valley is quite literally a valley along the sword of the Mechonis, filled with factories.
It's the harsh juxtaposition. Sword Valley is the intersecting point between the Bionis and Mechonis, and about the only place on Mechonis resembling anything not metal. It's a dead, arid place, sand the only land between the vast factories and walls. It's a melancholic beauty, an attempt at natural life that withered and failed.
4 Eryth Sea
Another major location of the game is Eryth Sea, located by the Bionis' neck, though it can be seen from Makna Falls by looking up. Eryth Sea is gorgeous, a bright sea of shimmering water and white sand beaches dotted about its various coves, with plentiful floating islands and cities hovering above.
Eryth Sea is a beauty to behold, both from sea level and while looking down on it from the islands above. But it is also one of many locations that feel dramatically different at night. Here, when the sky dims, shooting stars may grace the sky illuminating your journey across the sea. It's part of what makes the Bionis feel like a living thing.
3 Valak Mountain
The final location before stepping foot onto the Mechonis, Valak Mountain is home to plenty of story and slippery ice slopes one comes to expect from areas like this. And though Valak Mountain can feel like a typical icy location at first, visiting at night gives a dramatically different feel.
Though in the day it can seem almost too bright to handle, especially when snowstorms get involved, the night is a different beast. Dotted throughout the mountain are ice crystals that shimmer and glow at night, shooting beams of light into the sky and coating the whole area in a warm glow. It's a completely different vibe from the day.
2 Makna Forest
Makna Forest is an area that instantly just feels hot. Just so warm and tropical, which makes sense. They call it a forest but it is very clearly a rainforest. But one of the first sights you are greeted with is the Great Makna Falls. And Xenoblade, reveling in its absurd scale, lets you climb to the highest and jump right into the falls.
Deeper in, the forest is much more oppressive, suffering from heatwaves, and the denseness of the trees makes it harder to see ahead. There are caves littered about and small watering holes. It's one of the rare areas where the sky isn't always visible, making Makna Forest feel even more dangerous at night.
1 Satorl Marsh
Satorl March, located along the lower back of the Bionis, is just astoundingly gorgeous. It's one of those areas in gaming that's so striking you have to pause a minute to take it in. Thing is, Satorl March is still a nice, though a tad more expected, place during the day, a dreary marsh filled with an ominous, washed-out looking fog.
But the night is completely different. That dreary, beige marsh has turned into a bioluminescent light show, a location much livelier than any that has come before, and any after too. It's just inspiring, enough even for the characters to remark on it. Frankly, it's not really an area you'll want to visit during the day anymore.