Just a heads up this review is free of story spoilers and other major spoilers related to characters and side quests. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 where to start.
This game is incredible, it is just about everything I wanted from a new Xenoblade and we'll get to that just about everything a little later on.
We have so much to cover and I've even had to amend an entire section of this review. So let's dive straight in with the important bits. I enjoyed the story being told in xenoblade chronicles - more than any other in the series. I liked the characters more I liked the narrative more and I liked the pacing more.
The story is just as dark and serious as. You've come to expect from Takahashi. But it also delves quite successfully into some light-hearted fun and humor which I feel is pulled off excellently in previous games.
You find throughout XC2 are genuinely funny and don't seem out of place the overarching narrative plays out damn near perfectly as you progress with the main story if you like seemingly unnecessary detours.
Read more Why I am Exciting The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword HD
You are just going to have to make them yourself which is part of the beauty the pacing is spot-on. It doesn't feel like other games, where you may be ignoring a potentially world-ending event to help a farmer collect five boar skins.
But the option is there to take a tangent and pile tens of hours into meaningful side stories and content at any time.
So xenoblade chronicles - gives you options and those options make it damn near impossible to tell you just how big this game is.
Because what for some may be an 80-hour game. There will be others for whom. It's a 250 hour game, this is the part of the review. I had reserved to complain about all the minor annoyances.
I had with the UI and menu system. They were minor
individually. They certainly added up to something above a minor annoyance at
times. You will notice that I am using the past tense here.
Why? because update one point one point zero was pushed to the eShop a few hours prior to launch and that update fixed almost entirely everything I was going to complain about.
I should talk about the things that annoyed me prior to the update. Because it's probably not going to be anything you will experience since the patches already live.
But suffice it to say that the screen you used to manage blades sorting options and character screens have all been significantly enhanced to mitigate the exact problems.
I have with them before things like the blade screen defaulting unintuitive lis to sorting blades chronologically. Every time you opened it whereas now you're sorting preferences are saved. So I no longer have to press the minus key and scroll down to the most useful sort by rarity option.
The update also added an event theater to the main menu which I felt was something that was sorely missed in such a story-driven game. Especially one where you can skip cutscenes.
You can play main story cutscenes, some major side quests cutscenes, and even rare blade summoning cutscenes from the event theater which is definitely a welcome feature.
There is one little thing, I have to talk about here. It might just be my muscle memory causing the problem. But since I'm still confronted with it every play session.
Read more Is This A Hyrule Warriors Age Of Calamity That You Have Picked Up?
It's worth mentioning for some reason the X button which is in the same spot as the triangle button on PlayStation consoles is hard set to only open the fast travel map you have to press the + button to bring up the main menu.
Which you use for managing literally everything, but my brain is so hardwired to pressing that X or triangle button to bring up the menu that 8 times out of 10.
When I want to open the menu. Which you'll be doing a lot. I open the fast travel map which then requires me to eggs at that and reopen what I wanted to.
There is no remapping feature right now and it's an odd choice since three of the directional buttons are essentially unused left right and up on the d-pad or directional buttons.
Nothing except to bring up an infographic screen of the controller and the control scheme which is essentially useless.
After you've played the game for more than five hours, I would have much preferred the main menu be set to X with the fast travel map bound to one of the directional buttons.
But that really is one of my biggest concerns and it just goes to show how good this game is when my biggest problem is a button mapping nitpick okay.
So there is one other problem I have, and I still haven't
warmed to some of the voice acting while Rex has grown on me.
Despite his voice over artists having a few problems with portraying certain emotions like anger, I borderline hate knives voice work. The voice just doesn't match the character.
The voice rarely ever matches the animations or emotions being shown in cutscenes.
It looks wrong, it sounds wrong and it just feels wrong. There were times when I sat back and genuinely thought about how much better a scene would have been if had a more fitting voice actor.
Overall though the voice work is good for people unfamiliar - xenoblade chronicles or a few other select games that were localized in Europe.
The wide array of Scottish British and European accents might take a few hours of getting used to since Western JRPG localizations are largely dominated by North American voice actors. But it does lend itself to world building since each of the Titans is like its own country.
It stands to reason there should be a wide variety of accents, also there are some standout performances in the voice of a category.
I absolutely love Pyrrha and Mithra as well as all of the antagonists and there are a few stellar voice actors who have returned from previous center blade games and look if they really end up bothering you.
You have several options the voice-over DLC for Japanese is available for free to download from the eShop and if that sort of thing isn't your bag, there is an awesome audio mixer that lets you turn voices down in different situations like having them on for cutscenes butt off in combat for example.
Read more The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt Nintendo Switch - The Final Aspect Review
The combat I've spoken a lot about this and what I said is that it's more involved than any of the previous titles.
I was initially put off by the fact order attacks would be canceled by moving. When I saw it in trailers and the Nintendo Direct. But after having sunk in 93 hours and 28 minutes into the game, it hasn't affected my enjoyment one bit.
In fact it sort of would not make sense if they did go off while you were moving positioning is important to get the most out of your skills.
But when you use those skills in relation to your auto-attacks, is also important. If you time a skill to hit at the same time or slightly after an auto attack you will gain a bigger increase to your special meter.
Which allows you to pull off awesome abilities unique to your current blade, which can also be chained with your party's special abilities. There are also various combos to inflict status effects like toppling that can be important in some fights.
The biggest thing is just how switched on you need to be for combat now in many cases in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, you could sit back an auto-attack to victory, while I do really like that kind of battle system.
I also really like and acting a bit more enemies are generally tough. While you will slaughter regular enemies that are 5 or 10 levels lower than you are don't expect any named boss or unique monster to be a pushover regardless of its level.
While some normal mobs that equal level can feel a little too damaged spongy drawing out a fight. Sometimes a tad too long.
It's a rare occurrence than you might imagine. It didn't
hamper the speed at which, I wanted to move through the game XC2 is also
generous with aggro ranges on lower-level enemies.
Not every single thing in a ten-mile radius is going to bother you. Once you've out leveled things by 7 to 10.
You can pretty much walk right through them, without them daring to raise their hoof or claw to your magnificence.
Speaking of magnificence, it should be obvious to anybody that xenoblade chronicles to has an amazing OST. There is so much variety and it is so well composed.
There are genuinely heartbreaking tracks for somber story moments and matching the compositions to what you were meant to be feeling is absolute perfection not only that.
But the overworld music and the town music and the zone music is all so catchy and so great. They get altered for different times of day and in different situations and the attention to detail is just exceptional.
Read more 10 Tips Nintendo Switch Settings Newcomer Should Know
I haven't stopped humming away oftentimes unknowingly to these tracks since I started playing Xander Blake Chronicles 2.
There really isn't much more you could ask for in the sound Department and the same could be said for art and design. I'm covering two topics here because the art direction for both of these things goes hand in hand the world is interesting and unique. The art style shift to a more anime look has been a point of criticism for some fans.
But the change in art style to push better emotional recognition and animations on the characters doesn't leave the game feeling like a generic JRPG or like any other j RPG series for that matter the world is gorgeous varied and full of secrets.
I have locations that appear to have been put there just to get a glimpse at a beautiful landscape fittingly the characters are just as varied and gorgeous the uniqueness.The variety especially among the rare blades comes from monolith softs decision to bring in collaborative artists from all walks of life to leave their mark on the game.
There are rare blades designed by artists throughout the games industry as well as manga artists anime artists and even hentai artists.But here's the thing fanservice is not really that prolific throughout the game. Some of these designs are revealing or sexualized sure.
It's not the bulk of the art and cutscenes aren't all shot from a low angle pointing at everybody's. I think there is just enough fanservice in the game to keep people who like that kind of thing happy.
While not making people who dislike that kind of thing
uncomfortable and that is a really tricky happy medium to accomplish look.
I could go ahead and talk about Xenoblade Chronicles two for another hour easily.It really is that big and that good despite the lack of a flying skill.
The world feels huge rich and full of secrets and more importantly it is an absolute joy to explore the cutscene, animations, direction and message is up there with the best.
I have ever seen and the soundtrack will have you in pure bliss the entire game play. It for 90 hours play it, for 300 hours you won't be disappointed with this absolute gem that caps off one hell of an amazing year. The other way Chronicles 2 is worth buying a switch for and 2021 hasn't only been an amazing year for JRPGs.
Read more Best Gift Accessories Nintendo Switch Lite For Your Children Or Birthday
It's also been an amazing year for JRPG and it is thanks to all of you reading this article. I'd hugely appreciate it if you'd checking out for links somewhere to buy Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to order where you could consider supporting this blog directly.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Nintendo Switch : https://amzn.to/3we1B8S
