So, I know a few of us talked about Xenoblade Chronicles 2 months ago, but I only just recently finished it. Due to me job and a backlog of other titles (like Uncharted 1-4), I've just now been able to devote a couple of weeks with it. Some of my thoughts...
Game Play: In a lot of ways, combat is a definite improvement from XC1. The whole Special system and using it to chain Special Blade combos is pretty decent. Not too difficult to understand or master and adds some depth. However, I don't think most of the Specials necessarily do any significant amount of damage unless you get the enemy into a Break or Topple status, and as with XC1, this can be difficult with the AI players essentially doing whatever. I wish they'd added more commands besides "Focus on this enemy". Basically every other Action RPG series (notably Star Ocean and Tales) offers a way to dictate AI behavior to a greater extent, or even ways to switch characters mid-battle if need be. You can change the roles of characters via the Blades they use, but that's just, well, not enough. Being able to tell the group something like "Focus on defense/healing" would have certainly made some of the later boss battles less frustrating.
Another combat negative, you only get 3 attacks per-blade to choose from during battle, compared to the like 6 attacks you could have in XC1. Now, granted the cool-down/recharge time per-attack is a lot faster than in XC1 (for the most part, some weapons are slow as hell) and you can change blades, it still feels limited. It's like the old days of ARPGs when you could only map about 4 attacks (B +UP, B + DOWN, B + LEFT, B + RIGHT, that sort of stuff), and generally makes some of the battles (especially the earliest ones) feel more than a little tedious. I think the UI for XC1 and XCX had it right. One last thing, potion mechanics are a joke. They fly all over the place, and if you want to go pick up one, your characters are generally slow as hell to move. Despite these negatives, I did appreciate the fact that timing is important, and it makes the fighting more interactive than XC1.
Other Game Mechanics: So, let's talk about Blade growth. If you want to unlock more abilities/stat boosts for your Blade, you have to first raise their Trust. Obviously you can just win a bunch of battles with them, but the quickest way is to just spam Pouch items. After raising that trust, some of the further unlockable abilities/stat-boosts come from giving the Blades their "favorite" item; this is annoying as you'll only find out what that is by spamming Pouch items or looking it up online. If you don't look it up online, you literally have to go to half a dozen locations to buy different Pouch items. I mean, these are all optional, for the most part... until they're not. Certain unlocks in Blade growth are for field abilities that are typically for opening shortcuts and bonus areas. But towards the last half of the game (starting about when you enter Spirit Crucible Elpys, specifically the part with the spiders, and definitely true in the World Tree) some of these field abilities become mandatory. Basically, you have to spend time developing Blades you may not even care about to progress the story.
The "open-world" nature of the game seems a little cut down to me. I dunno, Alrest just doesn't feel as big as the Bionis/Mechonis. Alrest is probably bigger, but it sure didn't feel that way. I remember doing a lot more exploring in XC1. I spent the same amount of time for each playthrough of XC1 and XC2 (~90 hrs). Most of the time for my first playthrough in XC2 was spent grinding. Compare that to XC1, I fought enemies as I met them, and only did grinding for Gadolt and Zanza. About grinding... I admit I got lost in Uraya, got bored, and started grinding back in Gormott. By the time I faced Akhos and Malos, I was Level 41-42. For most of the game I was overleveled, and that was cool because I didn't have to fight a bunch of pointless battles and could enjoy the game's scenery. But in the World Tree, things start to get unfair. The levels jump drastically just before the Jin + Amalthus fight. Jin is a pushover, but despite all my grinding, I was only 4 levels above Amalthus, and he's a very cheap boss. And then Malos comes off as a push over, thanks to all the grinding I did to defeat Amalthus. So this game has pacing issues that XC1 never had for me.
Town development is okay, as are quests. Nothing much to say, except that I miss the system they had in XC1 where you could see the affinity and relationships of the townspeople. In XC1, as you did quests, you could actually see how it affected the people and how it changed relationships. That's gone in XC2, and quests just feel like... quests. You do something, you get your rewards, and that's it. That's typical of RPGs, but it feels like a step backwards, since it reintroduces the disconnect the player has with any of the town's development. It also means all those NPCs that you can talk are just bland characters after all. So I think the world of XC2 is a little less deep and interesting since the quests don't really pull you into the lives of the people like XC1 did, or at least you can't see the results as easily.
I do think XC2 makes a perfect case for why the whole trend away from manuals and towards in-game tutorials hasn't always worked for every genre, especially JRPGs. I dunno about everyone else, but I was quite confused when I tried to add some AUX cores to a blade only to find out it I couldn't because it was "unrefined". I thought you could just pick them up and use them, and you needed to go to the AUX core store if you felt like buying them. Instead you need to supply the material for the AUX core store person to refine it for you. Don't remember this being thoroughly explained, but it I probably glossed over it. Still there were plenty of other things I felt could have been better explained. For example...
1) Advanced combat and Specials only gets a brief talk at the beginning of Gormott, leaving a lot of the finer details out, e.g. how to do something like Fire -> Steam Bomb -> Steam Explosion. Stuff like AoE, side and back attacks are ignored, you're just supposed to know or figure them out yourself (compared to XC1 which gave you more direction). Not a problem for me, but it can be difficult for newer players. Important things like Aggro are never discussed, unlike in XC1. You do get an explanation of Topple, but by that point you should nearly be Level 20 and have sunk at least a dozen hours or more into the game...
2) Field abilities are poorly explained. No good tutorial or text descriptions in game, especially as some of them are required. At the very least, they could have demonstrated it with Roc with some Wind Mastery or whatever with Vandham talking about how important it is to develop a blade.
3) I think a lot of Poppi's configuration was poorly explained. I mostly had no clue what any of the stuff did and I never touched it because apparently I didn't need it in the end.
Story: Whoa boy. Here we go. The story is a definite step down from XC1. The Xeno meta-series is typically known for big philosophical topics, generally about divinity, humanity, and science. You get none of that here for the most part, except for a very brief time when you meet Klaus. Other than that, it's essentially a throwback to old JRPG tropes. Boy meets girl, boy saves girl, girl saves boy, feelings develop, boy vows to protect girl/fulfill her wish, bad guys are bad cause they want the girl. You could easily mistake this for the plot of some of the great JRPGs of the 1990s, like Lufia or Lunar Legend. Thematically, there's a surprising lack a depth here in comparison to XC1.
Rex himself is another throwback to old JRPG stereotypes. He's the young kid, eternally optimistic, and he just happens to be the one person who can change people's hearts and minds through his kindness. That's been done before, and it's boring. I will admit, it's genuinely interesting how Nia, Pyra, and Mythra open up to him eventually, but I don't get the same feeling that other characters develop as much. Tora instantly loves Rex-Rex (and evidently Poppi too); they could have had Rex develop as an older-brother role-model, but that's only briefly done in a few Heart-to-Hearts. Zeke seems to have always been Rex's "chum" once you hit Indoline. Morag is a brick wall throughout the whole game, but I kinda prefer her like that; doesn't seem right to have her suddenly not serious thanks to Rex's influence.
One thing that really bugged me: character motivations. Rex is okay. He just wants to help Pyra/Mythra, and that happily coincides with his wish to save Alrest. But Jin and Malos, geeze... They try to be so edgy and dark, but to me it wasn't clear what their goal was. Jin just wanted to destroy the world and die, but then he didn't want to die, but then he did anyway...? And Malos was just acting on instinct, trying to fulfill his "role", but then the hell with that, he admits things could have been different if he'd met Rex earlier. There's just too many mixed signals going on with both of them; ultimately the villains come off as weak in their goals. And then there's Amalthus. He hated humans for being dirtbags. He loses his mother, then decides the world sucks and should disappear. Truly, a deep and insightful villain /s I'm sorry, but just because we get to view a sepia-colored cutscene of his tragic memories does not make him a good character. Mikhail perfectly sums up the villian's motivations when he saves the group at the World Tree and says "I dunno" when explaining his actions. None of these guys know what they're doing/want.
Speaking of Amalthus, he mentions his hate of humanity, which brings up a confusing point in XC2. Humanity is apparently any sentient bipedal creature. It's the Indolines (tall, elf-like religious folk), Mor Ardanians (Scotland for God's sake!), the Gormotti (Cat People), Urayans (Strong, dark, pointy ears) and Nopons? I get that Klaus branched evolution, but this broad term of "humanity" is never quite explained, especially when XC1 had very distinct races (Homs, Nopons, Mechon, High Entia).
Conclusion: So that was really negative, I realize, but I enjoyed the game despite it's flaws. The reason I come down so hard on XC2 is because XC1 was a masterpiece in my eyes. It was the Chrono Trigger of the last generation of JRPGs to me, a timeless, memorable adventure, so XC2 has some tough boots to fill. It didn't fill them, but I played through it all and liked most of what I saw. Visually impressive and acoustically pleasing. I was happy to spend hours at a time playing it, and it really helped me reconnect with my Nintendo Switch (which had been neglected for the PS4 recently). Definitely not better than XC1, but it holds up well enough. 8/10 for me.
Game Play: In a lot of ways, combat is a definite improvement from XC1. The whole Special system and using it to chain Special Blade combos is pretty decent. Not too difficult to understand or master and adds some depth. However, I don't think most of the Specials necessarily do any significant amount of damage unless you get the enemy into a Break or Topple status, and as with XC1, this can be difficult with the AI players essentially doing whatever. I wish they'd added more commands besides "Focus on this enemy". Basically every other Action RPG series (notably Star Ocean and Tales) offers a way to dictate AI behavior to a greater extent, or even ways to switch characters mid-battle if need be. You can change the roles of characters via the Blades they use, but that's just, well, not enough. Being able to tell the group something like "Focus on defense/healing" would have certainly made some of the later boss battles less frustrating.
Another combat negative, you only get 3 attacks per-blade to choose from during battle, compared to the like 6 attacks you could have in XC1. Now, granted the cool-down/recharge time per-attack is a lot faster than in XC1 (for the most part, some weapons are slow as hell) and you can change blades, it still feels limited. It's like the old days of ARPGs when you could only map about 4 attacks (B +UP, B + DOWN, B + LEFT, B + RIGHT, that sort of stuff), and generally makes some of the battles (especially the earliest ones) feel more than a little tedious. I think the UI for XC1 and XCX had it right. One last thing, potion mechanics are a joke. They fly all over the place, and if you want to go pick up one, your characters are generally slow as hell to move. Despite these negatives, I did appreciate the fact that timing is important, and it makes the fighting more interactive than XC1.
Other Game Mechanics: So, let's talk about Blade growth. If you want to unlock more abilities/stat boosts for your Blade, you have to first raise their Trust. Obviously you can just win a bunch of battles with them, but the quickest way is to just spam Pouch items. After raising that trust, some of the further unlockable abilities/stat-boosts come from giving the Blades their "favorite" item; this is annoying as you'll only find out what that is by spamming Pouch items or looking it up online. If you don't look it up online, you literally have to go to half a dozen locations to buy different Pouch items. I mean, these are all optional, for the most part... until they're not. Certain unlocks in Blade growth are for field abilities that are typically for opening shortcuts and bonus areas. But towards the last half of the game (starting about when you enter Spirit Crucible Elpys, specifically the part with the spiders, and definitely true in the World Tree) some of these field abilities become mandatory. Basically, you have to spend time developing Blades you may not even care about to progress the story.
The "open-world" nature of the game seems a little cut down to me. I dunno, Alrest just doesn't feel as big as the Bionis/Mechonis. Alrest is probably bigger, but it sure didn't feel that way. I remember doing a lot more exploring in XC1. I spent the same amount of time for each playthrough of XC1 and XC2 (~90 hrs). Most of the time for my first playthrough in XC2 was spent grinding. Compare that to XC1, I fought enemies as I met them, and only did grinding for Gadolt and Zanza. About grinding... I admit I got lost in Uraya, got bored, and started grinding back in Gormott. By the time I faced Akhos and Malos, I was Level 41-42. For most of the game I was overleveled, and that was cool because I didn't have to fight a bunch of pointless battles and could enjoy the game's scenery. But in the World Tree, things start to get unfair. The levels jump drastically just before the Jin + Amalthus fight. Jin is a pushover, but despite all my grinding, I was only 4 levels above Amalthus, and he's a very cheap boss. And then Malos comes off as a push over, thanks to all the grinding I did to defeat Amalthus. So this game has pacing issues that XC1 never had for me.
Town development is okay, as are quests. Nothing much to say, except that I miss the system they had in XC1 where you could see the affinity and relationships of the townspeople. In XC1, as you did quests, you could actually see how it affected the people and how it changed relationships. That's gone in XC2, and quests just feel like... quests. You do something, you get your rewards, and that's it. That's typical of RPGs, but it feels like a step backwards, since it reintroduces the disconnect the player has with any of the town's development. It also means all those NPCs that you can talk are just bland characters after all. So I think the world of XC2 is a little less deep and interesting since the quests don't really pull you into the lives of the people like XC1 did, or at least you can't see the results as easily.
I do think XC2 makes a perfect case for why the whole trend away from manuals and towards in-game tutorials hasn't always worked for every genre, especially JRPGs. I dunno about everyone else, but I was quite confused when I tried to add some AUX cores to a blade only to find out it I couldn't because it was "unrefined". I thought you could just pick them up and use them, and you needed to go to the AUX core store if you felt like buying them. Instead you need to supply the material for the AUX core store person to refine it for you. Don't remember this being thoroughly explained, but it I probably glossed over it. Still there were plenty of other things I felt could have been better explained. For example...
1) Advanced combat and Specials only gets a brief talk at the beginning of Gormott, leaving a lot of the finer details out, e.g. how to do something like Fire -> Steam Bomb -> Steam Explosion. Stuff like AoE, side and back attacks are ignored, you're just supposed to know or figure them out yourself (compared to XC1 which gave you more direction). Not a problem for me, but it can be difficult for newer players. Important things like Aggro are never discussed, unlike in XC1. You do get an explanation of Topple, but by that point you should nearly be Level 20 and have sunk at least a dozen hours or more into the game...
2) Field abilities are poorly explained. No good tutorial or text descriptions in game, especially as some of them are required. At the very least, they could have demonstrated it with Roc with some Wind Mastery or whatever with Vandham talking about how important it is to develop a blade.
3) I think a lot of Poppi's configuration was poorly explained. I mostly had no clue what any of the stuff did and I never touched it because apparently I didn't need it in the end.
Story: Whoa boy. Here we go. The story is a definite step down from XC1. The Xeno meta-series is typically known for big philosophical topics, generally about divinity, humanity, and science. You get none of that here for the most part, except for a very brief time when you meet Klaus. Other than that, it's essentially a throwback to old JRPG tropes. Boy meets girl, boy saves girl, girl saves boy, feelings develop, boy vows to protect girl/fulfill her wish, bad guys are bad cause they want the girl. You could easily mistake this for the plot of some of the great JRPGs of the 1990s, like Lufia or Lunar Legend. Thematically, there's a surprising lack a depth here in comparison to XC1.
Rex himself is another throwback to old JRPG stereotypes. He's the young kid, eternally optimistic, and he just happens to be the one person who can change people's hearts and minds through his kindness. That's been done before, and it's boring. I will admit, it's genuinely interesting how Nia, Pyra, and Mythra open up to him eventually, but I don't get the same feeling that other characters develop as much. Tora instantly loves Rex-Rex (and evidently Poppi too); they could have had Rex develop as an older-brother role-model, but that's only briefly done in a few Heart-to-Hearts. Zeke seems to have always been Rex's "chum" once you hit Indoline. Morag is a brick wall throughout the whole game, but I kinda prefer her like that; doesn't seem right to have her suddenly not serious thanks to Rex's influence.
One thing that really bugged me: character motivations. Rex is okay. He just wants to help Pyra/Mythra, and that happily coincides with his wish to save Alrest. But Jin and Malos, geeze... They try to be so edgy and dark, but to me it wasn't clear what their goal was. Jin just wanted to destroy the world and die, but then he didn't want to die, but then he did anyway...? And Malos was just acting on instinct, trying to fulfill his "role", but then the hell with that, he admits things could have been different if he'd met Rex earlier. There's just too many mixed signals going on with both of them; ultimately the villains come off as weak in their goals. And then there's Amalthus. He hated humans for being dirtbags. He loses his mother, then decides the world sucks and should disappear. Truly, a deep and insightful villain /s I'm sorry, but just because we get to view a sepia-colored cutscene of his tragic memories does not make him a good character. Mikhail perfectly sums up the villian's motivations when he saves the group at the World Tree and says "I dunno" when explaining his actions. None of these guys know what they're doing/want.
Speaking of Amalthus, he mentions his hate of humanity, which brings up a confusing point in XC2. Humanity is apparently any sentient bipedal creature. It's the Indolines (tall, elf-like religious folk), Mor Ardanians (Scotland for God's sake!), the Gormotti (Cat People), Urayans (Strong, dark, pointy ears) and Nopons? I get that Klaus branched evolution, but this broad term of "humanity" is never quite explained, especially when XC1 had very distinct races (Homs, Nopons, Mechon, High Entia).
Conclusion: So that was really negative, I realize, but I enjoyed the game despite it's flaws. The reason I come down so hard on XC2 is because XC1 was a masterpiece in my eyes. It was the Chrono Trigger of the last generation of JRPGs to me, a timeless, memorable adventure, so XC2 has some tough boots to fill. It didn't fill them, but I played through it all and liked most of what I saw. Visually impressive and acoustically pleasing. I was happy to spend hours at a time playing it, and it really helped me reconnect with my Nintendo Switch (which had been neglected for the PS4 recently). Definitely not better than XC1, but it holds up well enough. 8/10 for me.