giantsazando

An average alien doing her things

  • She/Her

Hi! My name's Giant/Eris and I'm just some alien who crashed here.

I just really enjoy playing games, talking about them, and just being really positive about things. Like seriously there's so little I hate?

I hope in this bitch of an Earth, we can be friends >:3


Discord - Giantsazando#5221



Summer of Sequels Entry #27

I... I don't think a game has left me this conflicted as this. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a game of high highs, but excruciatingly low lows. A game that has a tonal whiplash between the two. While that leads to me feel that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is an interesting game, I can't say with confidence whether this game is good or not. It ultimately just leaves me confused.

I started up my semi-binge of the Xeno series because I loved the story of the Xenosaga Trilogy. I knew eventually I would have to play this game, and I've already been told that this game's story has issues, though I didn't know any specifics. That is to say, I understand now, and god. The story is rough. For the first half of the game, the story is tonally confused, trying to decide whether it wants to be a Lighthearted Romantic Comedy, or a Serious War story. And as I've mentioned earlier, it leads to a tonal whiplash that is ultimately disorienting. In addition to that, when it tries to be a comedy, its jokes either fall flat, or just make me uncomfortable. Because of this, I couldn't really care about certain characters, and I hated one that the game most likely didn't want me to. But what makes this all frustrating is that the game's story improves exponentially in the second half of the game. Chapters 7-10 are all amazing, especially its final chapter! And god, the villains in this game are absolutely amazing! But, it doesn't really feel like the game earned any of that. Why did it take it that long before the game's story got good? It took me between 25-30 hours to get to that point, I can't imagine for the life of me replaying this game and sitting through all of that again, just to get to the chapters that are good.

And I really dont like the game's tutorials. Sure, some of its tutorials are relatively helpful, but it feels like the game bombards me with them in the first 10 hours. I do appreciate a tutorial every once in a while, but I also like learning about things on my own, and with how there's no option to hide tutorials, I have to mash through them. At some point, they became a problem for me, as especially during combat tutorials, the pop ups interrupted the flow more than anything else. And this issue came up again when I played Torna, as a lot of the DLC's tutorials were near repeats of the original game's.

And I want to spend some time talking about Rex in particular because he's... odd. Rex feels like he belongs in a different game, and I'm saying that in particular about his model. It doesn't fit in with the rest of the game, especially when he's next to other characters. And with this primarily being an issue with only Rex really, it makes it that more jarring.

Before I move on to anything else, I think it important to talk about how I almost gave up on this game. Specifically, this occurred around the end of Chapter 4, and I was fighting the last boss of that chapter. When the game was supposed to start up a cutscene, it just never did, and the game was frozen. This lead me to have to close and reopen the game, meaning I had to do that entire dungeon over again, because I didn't think I'd need to frequently save. And god, it really sucked having to go through all of that again. And on top of that, this wasn't the only time the game crashed, and the only reason that first crash was as big of a setback as it was was because I started frequently saving because of it.

But I think what ultimately allowed me to get through the entire game was its combat. When the tutorials don't interrupt anything, the actual loop of combat is addictive as all hell. Each Blade has 3 artes you can use, and you can have and switch between 3 Blades in battle allows you to really adapt to any situation, while creating some great synergies. Especially since each Blade has a specific element type, you can then adapt to what elemental weakness your enemy may have. And god, the bosses are the pinnacle of the game's combat, and getting into the flow of the combat is amazing. I also like how you can upgrade the power of Artes with weapon points, though at the same time I feel enemies drop a very small amount of weapon points.

But... there's a bit of an issue connected to the game's combat, on top of the entire game as a whole. That of course being Xenoblade Chronicle 2's Gacha System. The Gacha System is specifically how you obtain Blades within the game, and you will need to use it in order to beat the game. And keep in mind, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a 50 hour single-player RPG, why does it have a Gacha System for something this integral to the game? To me if anything, something that could work better is a crafting-based system, based on items you find in the world and making a specific blade through that, but that's just me.

And the big issue with the Gacha System comes with Field Abilities. Specifically, each Blade can come with 1-3 Field Abilities, which can be used to interact with certain things in the game's environment. While most of these are optional, which is fine, there are some that are mandatory, and this is the problem. I remember one time in I believe Chapter 7, I needed 3 levels of Fire Mastery in order to burn a Web. At the time, I only had 2 levels of Fire Mastery, and the only option I really had was to grind out the Gacha System to get a Blade with a level of Fire Mastery in order to proceed. These Field Abilities really feel like artificial roadblocks, forcing me to do something boring in order to pad out the game's runtime. And keep in mind, it took me 50 hours to beat the game, why would it need padding? It just left me frustrated whenever I needed to get a specific field ability.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is an absolutely gorgeous game, but it is hell to navigate its world. The waypoint marker of the game is not easy to read, meaning when I try to follow it, it wont be a smooth journey. And overall the game's geometry makes it really hard to traverse sometimes, even though its setpieces are gorgeous. I remember getting so lost in Mor Ardain all the time during Chapter 4.

And with all of that, now I'm finally getting to Torna ~ The Golden Country, the DLC story added to Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Specifically, I rate it the same as Xenoblade 2 itself, however I have different issues with it than I do the base game. Much like Xenoblade 2, the flow of combat is super fun! Instead of switching between 3 blades in combat, you can switch between the Driver and Blade while in combat, each with unique movesets and elements. The synergy between the two is really fun, and I love how the switch attacks work because of it. In particular one that I loved using was using an arte that inflicted break, then using the switch attack, which inflicted topple. Yet again, it was just another addicting combat loop that I loved using. And Torna's story is a lot better cohesively than the original game's. However, I dont really care for how you have to raise the Community level to level 4 in order to beat the game, I just found it rather tedious, even though I think the Community feature is cool. I am glad though that I got through it, as I love how the Torna DLC ends.

I apologize for talking about Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for as long as I have here, it's really a game that doesn't deserve as many words as I've typed. But with a game that has left me this conflicted, I just find myself having a lot to say about it, for better or for worse. I don't think I hate this game, but I don't love it either. But even then, I appreciate having played a game like this, it's not often I've played a game that made me feel this conflicted.

Next Game: TBA


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in reply to @giantsazando's post:

xenoblade 2 was always kind of a weird one for me. i remember really loving it, but i played it in two big sessions that were years apart, and the second session was after i watched some videos breaking down the combat mechanics so i could play better (and have more fun). as a result i mostly forgot the bad parts but really got to maximize my enjoyment of the best parts of the game, which really did leave me loving the game a lot. kind of a weird way to play the game tho.