I got my copy of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 sometime in 2017, which is around when I started it. If you follow me, this should be no surprise, I take a long time to play lengthy jrpgs. Well, with XC3 imminent, I decided to beat out the last few hours of this game in preparation. To make my thoughts short, it’s a wonderful jrpg that is characterized by a whole lot of jank and some extremely strange decision-making on the part of the developers. Despite this, it succeeds in a whole bunch of ways and feels like a pretty unique experience. Spoilers ahead.

Story and characters are the thing that defines the Xenoblade series, IMO, so I’ll start with my thoughts on those things. Character-wise, XC2 is a little off-kilter - this will be a running theme for my thoughts. The main cast is strong -
Pyra and Mythra are a wonderful focal point for the game, their differing personalities making their whole character feel fresh and interesting, and introducing so many opportunities for fun character writing. I led with them because Rex is… not as good. He has the hallmarks of your standard jrpg protag: he’s kind, naive, very forgiving, a bit of a dumbass in some ways, and endlessly loyal to his friends. This is nothing new, and unfortunately he doesn’t get a ton of development beyond this point. His background as a salvager is sorta his most interesting facet, but it’s not too important to the story beyond the first chapter and his relatively common quips about the salvager’s code (which is vastly inferior to Deep Space 9’s Rules of Acquisition). His best facet to me is his age - Rex is genuinely a kid, and being immature sometimes comes into play. The best sequence he gets is right at the end of the game, arguably far too late, when the Architect tests him with the dinner scene with Pyra and Mythra. He cries, and it honestly hit pretty hard. This is a kid in the middle of a terribly difficult trial, having to act more mature than he is. There’s not enough of this kind of writing for him, unfortunately. I defended him early in my playthrough, but by the time I reached the end he really hadn’t left more of an impression on me.
Nia and Dromarch are excellent, with the caveat that Dromarch gets left behind by the story hard. Nia stays in the limelight for pretty much the entire runtime, and she just keeps improving. Her background is not overtly shocking considering how much the game uses that particular trick with all the main characters, but it’s effective nonetheless. Rex leaves a real impression on her, and it’s nice to see her grow and change.
Morag and Brighid are a strong duo as well, with Brighid being one of the most story-relevant characters in the whole experience. She acts as the grounding agent, constantly reminding the immature cast of the harder things in life. For my mind, she also has the most consistently strong performance in the game (more on that later). Morag has less overtly powerful moments, but she’s a charming character that often gets to act the straight man in the group.
Zeke and Pandoria are the goofballs of the group and it lands perfectly. Their shtick might strike some as overly quirky and “reddit”, perhaps, but I think it works. Their first appearances as random encounters along the way are hilarious. Zeke himself mostly serves the same purpose on the character front as Morag, he gives advice and tells facts about the past of Alrest, he just does it in a less serious manner.
Tora himself is forgettable, I’m sorry. The nopon shit just does not land at all, and the only one that left an impression on me was Chairman Bana. Tora’s story is sort of a tearjerker, I guess, but I didn’t really care too much either. Poppi is his better half, with some impactful moments at the end of the game. Overall, I’d say my favorites were Pyra / Mythra (with a preference to Mythra), Morag & Brighid, and Nia.
As for the antagonists, I think both Jin and Malos are fantastic. They start strong and only get stronger. Malos’ personality is so wonderfully comically evil, and Jin is a good Sephiroth analogue (kinda but not really). The rest of Torna are… good and bad. Patroka and Mikhail don’t get a ton of screentime, and Akhos is a goofy character. I won’t name the other antagonist for fear of unnecessary spoilers, but he’s developed well enough that he lands as a villain, even if I never personally hated him as the game maybe wanted me to. Malos’ infectiously wicked sense of humor stayed the highlight of the villain side for me.

The story takes some pretty big swings between good and bad. Chapters 1 and 2 are great. The game throws so much at you and does a great job introducing a ton of characters and ideas while building the world of Alrest and its rules. There are some fantastically strong character moments for Nia and Pyra, and the “twist” of assisting Torna at the beginning is well delivered. Chairman Bana manages to be a pretty fun introductory villain, especially contextualized well against Rex. The introduction of Gormott and Morag and Brighid is really well done. It’s been a while since I played this section myself (nearly… 4 years?) but I have been watching Chuggaaconroy’s LP, and it’s a great start to the game. In general, I would say XC2 is bookended well, with an amazing intro and a strong ending but some lull in the middle. Chapter 3 (“Our Own War”) is the strongest chapter in the whole game, IMO, with the absolutely incredible Vandham arc. In fact, I would go so far as to say the game peaks emotionally here, never really surpassing what it does. The style of Xenoblade 2 is, as many have pointed out, more ““anime”” than the first, and whether or not you agree with this assessment, I would say it succeeds in that regard here, tying some very “anime” tropes with a series of really well-directed cutscenes. The introduction of Mythra alongside the whole Malos / Akhos fight is sublime, and this is where the faintest inklings of what happened in the past and the underlying “real” story start to form for real, and it’s excellent. Chapter 4 is all over the place, introducing this whole arc with more Nopon and another artificial blade (or two), yadda yadda yadda. It sucks. The dungeon is pretty good, however.
Chapters 5 and 6 are both good, with the admission that the story drags a bit starting here and into Chapter 7. The introduction of Zeke into the main party as well as the deeper dive into Jin’s past both make for solid centerpieces of this section of the game. I didn’t really like Leftheria, but the trip to Fonsett village makes it almost worthwhile. Tantal is a great location, though, one of the most impressive in the game. Chapter 7 is awful. The Spirit Crucible Elpys dungeon is not only the worst in the game, it’s practically insulting how unfun it is as a player. Even the story stuff is less relevant here, since the trip for the third Aegis sword ends up being… fruitless. At least there was a bad boss fight too? In fairness, the Nia stuff in this chapter is strong, and her reveal is well done. The Cliffs of Morytha part also kinda stinks, with some notable jumps in difficulty and some absolutely awful exploration, but it leads into the finale of Chapter 7 and the reveal of Coffee With Milk, which is great. It carries directly into the beginning of Chapter 8, which is phenomenal. The whole section in the Morytha ruins, especially that first cutscene, are really excellent. The team-up with Jin is unexpected and quite good.
Chapters 8-10 are where the game really kicks into gear. Again, I won’t spoil anything, but this is where the Xeno elements all start to come together and we get the major reveals for the antagonist and his plans. I quite like this whole section and I think it goes a long way in making him feel like a believable villain. Jin and Malos’ pasts come to light and deepen their character arcs, with Jin getting a huge final showcase. The introduction of Klaus and the connection of this game to Xenoblade Chronicles 1 is more than satisfying, and the ending fights are a ton of fun. The ending is great, and that final cutscene (delivered to me at ~4 AM) and credits sequence is fantastic. I did a pretty quick summary of my thoughts just then because this game is unbelievably massive and going over every chapter in detail would be ludicrous, but I hope it accurately reflects my feelings.
TL;DR: Chapters 1-4: amazing. Chapters 5-7: mixed bag with some genuinely bad moments. Chapters 8-10: amazing. It’s pretty interesting having played this game before finishing the first, as it doesn’t answer all of the questions I have. Very much looking forward to seeing where the story ends up going in 3.

Despite its quirks, I really like the combat in XC2. It’s badly explained, yes, but once you have a grasp of the mechanics (which are maybe sometimes more complicated than they need to be), it’s a fulfilling and engaging system. I will say, I think that the bosses can sometimes be more of a pain than they need to be. Even your best tanks can be hammered pretty hard, and once even one party member is downed, I felt like I was mostly screwed. Being able to play every blade and every character yourself is something I wasn’t expecting going in, and it gives you so much freedom. So many blades have completely different playstyles, with some of the DLC blades even having unique mechanics and styles. I spent a large chunk of the game playing as Nia with Crossette, who plays very differently to any other blade. The gacha system rubs a lot of people the wrong way, and while I get that, I felt it was relatively well done. The game gives you the opportunity to succeed with literally any single blade, so there’s never any difficulty gatekeeping. On the other hand, the rates are probably a bit too low, and god help you if you’re trying for 100%. I got a solid chunk of the rare blades, Kos-Mos included, but not everyone. It’s enjoyable to get new blades with new mechanics and whatnot at a decent pace throughout the game, but it’s also frustrating to not get what you want, all the while being inundated with common blades.

Presentation is, again, an area in which XC2 bounces between high and low at speed. This is a launch Switch game, so it has a pretty bad resolution, but given the size of the locales, I think it manages in docked mode. I actually played the majority of the game in handheld mode just because that’s how I prefer to play most Switch games, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as people make out online. Compared to any number of previous generation handhelds with jrpgs, I think XC2 looks significantly better, even handicapped by handi-mode. Load times are pretty good, and cutscenes look really good. I did play the final chapters in docked mode for /the experience/, but I wouldn’t have had much issue doing handheld for them as well. The cutscenes themselves vary pretty wildly in quality. Like the Yakuza games, there’s a couple levels of complexity. The highest being voiced, pre-rendered cutscenes that play as video, and the lowest being unspoken, in-engine scenes. The former is amazing, some of the best sequences in the game rely on these and they really deliver. The latter is awful. Genuinely atrocious. The engine that Monolith use seems to absolutely crack at the seams in these moments, with janky ass animations and terrible timing. You can tell when these pop up that there was an internal sort of recognition at Monolith that this or that section wasn’t as important, that they could just use the unrendered cutscenes to deliver the information and it would be fine. There’s other things I feel fall under “presentation”, and it’s usually not good. For instance, why does the game not give you information on the Level 4 Blade specials? The information online was dug out through scraping the game’s code, of all things. At least put it in a game guide or something, christ. The maps are terrible. I hate the skip travel map for how clunky it is and how badly it delivers the information to you. Why does the game drop that ridiculous boss fight with all the spike damage on you for no reason? Why do anti-fun mechanics like blade shackle even exist? I can’t even think of all of them right now but there are probably dozens of bizarre decisions like this that feel like they go out of their way to hurt the player for no reason. Sure, some of these were just new console growing pains, as shown pretty clearly by how many QoL improvements are in both Torna and XC Definitive. Finally, the dub. I don't hate the dub, in fact I think it was sorta brilliant to use different accents for the different Titans of Alrest, I'm not sure it's ever been done before and it adds a nice layer of worldbuilding. That said, it's undeniable that the dub has some noticeable issues. Rex is the biggest offender, with some truly bizarre line reads at the worst possible times. Morag and Pyra / Mythra are probably the most consistently good, with very few flubs at all. The rest of the cast is somewhere in between, and even the better performances have some very odd lines scattered throughout, either feeling entirely out of tone with the rest of the conversation or bizarrely paced with weird staccato thrownin. The latter is the most common complaint. I can only assume it was somehow a result of production speed or a weird communication between Monolith and the teams in charge of the dub itself, because these little quibbles are everywhere. Again, I don't think this ruins the game - far from it - but it's an issue that pretty much everyone will recognize. Pyra and Mythra are the standout performance and they don't have much of this issue.

This is sort of a tangent, but with a game as long and complex as this, you end up doing a lot of menuing, so I wanted to talk menuing. You have to spend a lot of time managing your characters and blades in XC2, from their affinity charts to their accessories or their pouch items, movesets, weapon upgrades, aux cores, etc. etc. While this system is arguably not perfect, there’s a genuine sort of rhythmic meditative quality to doing it. Swapping between blades to check stats, checking affinity charts, I feel like on more than one occasion I ended up spending the bulk of a play session, usually late at night, doing just menuing.

This is the miscellaneous section, I guess, so I’ll bounce between different things here. This is an absurdly massive game, and some of its faults stem just from that alone. The number of quests, the number of blades, the number of stats and weapons and items and pouch items… ugh. It’s just too much. I’m not a guy that goes for 100% in anything, and I can’t imagine I would ever go near this game with that in mind. The platforming is awful - the game gives you no real idea of what you should be pressing or doing in some of these moments, and the level geometry and physics seem to vary wildly, resulting in some of the grossest movement I’ve ever seen.

Okay, I feel like I’ve complained enough. I love the soundtrack. Drifting Soul is a fantastic piece and so many of the exploration and battle themes are incredible and seriously memorable. I love the heart-to-hearts. Character moments are where this game shines, and a whole freaking boatload of them are just scattered around for you to find. I love the unique battle lines and unique blade lines. They feel like you’re commanding a party of friends. I spent a ton of nights in my dorm room, sitting in bed, smashing through blade gacha and through this game, exploring the massive and incredible world that is Alrest. I played this game at the nearby Starbucks, right when I started playing, getting the whole Chapter 2 introductory cutscenes while I waited for my next class to start. I have a lot of great memories with this game. There are so many baffling moments, but they’re offset by dozens of hours of charming characters, enjoyable exploration, fantastic music, challenging bosses, and a captivating story. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a terrible game. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a wonderful game.

Overcoming nihilism

I didn't think I would like this game at all but it's surprisingly decent despite the overall design and the gameplay quirks.

I feel like it over encumbered me with all the brand new mechanics introduced in this game compared to the first game which made the game a bit more overbearing. I do wish Blades had a slightly better chances of getting rares considering I only got 10 rares by the end of a 49 hour playthrough and my biggest grievance is the sudden requirement of Field Skills in the final quarter of the game that ruined the pace of how I was playing the story.

That said, the gameplay does shine when you get into a certain state of mind and flow. The characters were pretty decent and the designs of half of the characters are actually alright despite Rex and Pyra's designs which I don't really like as much as the other designs. The soundtrack had some decent songs and doesn't really surprise me since Xenoblade 1 had an amazing soundtrack as well. Really impressive they made these huge areas on this little device too and the story was a good journey other than the first quarter being a bit too "anime" for me.

In conclusion, this is still a decent sequel to Xenoblade that tried to do way too much in the gameplay department to the point of tedium while still nailing everything that makes a JRPG good in the first place.

Never judge a game by its cover.

Everything degeneracy stuffed into one package. The sexualization and love triangle have gotten to the point where I feel they literally encroach on the story. No, I am not exaggerating. I could write a whole essay on how the character design and writing in XC2 reflect a larger societal issue regarding Japan/nerd&otaku culture and its sexualization + portrayal of relationships and family. The battle system is way better than XC1 but the tutorials are awful. In handheld mode, this is possibly the worst looking game in the Switch's entire library. I hate Tiger Tiger, the sidequests still suck, field skills are awful, and the world still doesn't feel fun to explore. The character designs are terribly inconsistent and there's a gatcha system. The humor and voice acting are super cringeworthy.

The commentary on refugees amidst a climate crisis is one of the most morally depraved viewpoints I've ever seen in a video game. Please watch this cutscene. Essentially, the refugees are being criticized for protesting the Indol government (a powerful theocracy) despite being "fed and watered" by them. They're labeled as lazy and won't take matters into their own hands. What they refuse to explain further in this scene, is that Indol has total control over the distribution of core crystals, effectively giving them a monopoly over the war. Ardanian soldiers colonized Gormott, and these mostly Gormotti residents were displaced in the process. Ardanian presence in Gormott is large and they give core crystals to residents only if those residents enlist for their military. These refugees are literally powerless and you have multiple members of royalty plus a high ranking Ardanian officer complaining that these displaced refugees are lazy for holding up signs begging to stop the war. Asinine.

The soundtrack is great though.

This fucking game man. If I told you I immediately fell in love with it I'd be lying. This game has so many elements that, to the uninitiated, will seem like cons that its no wonder myself and others quit this game in the first act. All you need is a shift in opinion. Is Rex's battle shouts awful, or are you watching one of the funniest cutscenes you've seen in a jrpg? Does the lack of synching for english VA taking you out of the scene, or are you giggling to yourself when the lips move and no sound? I've got to say though when this game clicks, it fucking clicks.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a game that took me the better part of 4 months to complete, sometimes not playing for weeks, sometimes hours each day. This is not to say the game is particularly boring, its just that I really wanted to take my time with it. The sheer amount of random shit you can do (all very optional at least for my non-completionist brain) really allows for both short sessions before bed (levelling a blades affinity/doing side quests) or a big meaty session such as exploring a new area/progressing the main story.

The music alone carries whatever damage the awkward voice direction and occasional bad voice acting takes away from a scene. This is perhaps the single greatest soundtrack I've ever heard in a game, taking the place of my former favourites, the Nier franchise. No game has been shuffled and played in my day to day life quite as much as the Xenoblade franchise, and out of the I've played, Xenoblade Chronicles 2's is just unfathomably good. Nothing but the sweet promise of good music kept me from continuously loading up the game again. That first cutscene of the game, where you hear the orchestral soundtrack paired with the cloud visuals is, for the brief few moments before Rex opens his mouth, one of the most enchanting starts to a game for me.

After completing this game I just sat there for at least 10 minutes just kinda numb. A 4 month endeavour, finished. When something is such a constant in your life like this game is, the void left behind is palpable. For some reason despite having done side quests/blade affinity grinding in bed almost every day for 4 months (20 minutes here and there after work, or before bed) I knew I was done. Sure there were more generic fetch quests to grind, and yeah, I could farm core crystals and get all the blades. But when those credits rolled I knew I was done. So I sat there, tearing up just thinking about what a fucking ride it had been. I'm glad I played this game, I'm glad it has a stupidly large amount of content and has perhaps the GREATEST SOUNDTRACK of any game I've ever played. I'm glad I got to play one of the most enjoyable combat systems in a jrpg and an incredibly strong story (once it gets going). Really great game.

Only real complaint I have is pacing, which is my gripe with most jrpg's. One that immediately pops into mind is in Gormott, you can't just hop on a boat, you need to first find the titan and feed it. Or the implementation of field skills requiring you to menu just to open a chest/barrier. Just little blips in the matrix that take me out of the experience. Not a perfect game, but still insanely enjoyable.

Basically once you take all the cons (lip synching, questionable voice directions/acting, cringe anime tropes) into pros (this game is fucking hilarious), it really becomes something special. You just gotta fucking dive in and embrace the game in all its cringey and goofy glory.

for context, I want to preface, I am a big fan of JRPGs, i have been playing them since the mid 90's, on all different consoles, including some more obscure ones. I have also been an avid anime watcher since the same time. I have played Xenogears on PS1 and thoroughly enjoyed what I've played.

I waited some time to play XBC2, and i thought it would tick all the right boxes, but it fell flat on all fronts, so I'm just going to list why I did not enjoy the game at all:

- Did not enjoy the combat at all. There is a lot of combat in this game. it was slow, and felt cumbersome. my attacks did not feel like there was a large impact and using combos did not seem to be as useful as they should be.
-the game does not explain it's own combat system well through natural progression, and more mechanics keep getting thrown in throughout the game, which just makes it very bloated.
-Enemies do aggro you from a long distance away, forcing you to retreat to safety if they are too high level.
- constant repeated, annoying lines and quips after every single battle gets on your nerves.
- the levels are 3-dimensional but maps are 2D, and don't have multiple layers so everything looks like it's on top of each other on the map, making things confusing.
- excessive chance-based/ gatcha elements for a bunch of things like getting blades or dive containers.
- too many damn shops. why are there like 15 shops in every town?
-an excessive amount of fetch quests which often amount to "collect 10 of this and bring it back" which comes parceled with going out to the field, killing monsters and coming back, and then doing it again, repeat ad nauseum. I fully expect this in an MMO, not in a single player game, at least not this many.
- all the characters are written like someone threw a bunch of anime tropes in a hat and drew lots. of course all the women are comically well-endowed and are in love with the main protagonist. it's all cringey and I can't take it seriously. other JRPGs have this of course but not to this extent.
- the performance is pretty poor on the switch, it's probably one of the worst I've seen from a 'AAA' developer. I would enter a town area and it would get extremely blurry and stay that way for a good 5-10 seconds. this is not fun.

I gave it a serious chance but it did nothing for me.

Was kinda shitposting when my original review was just "Objectively better than the first game". Especially when I put it on here after not having played it for years. But coming back to it nearly 5 years later and 2 years after DE's launch I've only doubled down on that take.

Xenoblade 2 is not perfect, it's got jank, it's ugly as fuck sometimes texture wise (especially when they don't load in), there's some gameplay elements that can be frustrating and annoying (the gacha system which is still better than others anyways since it's 100% free as opposed to having to spend real ass money and there's ways to cheese it anyways), the unfortunate rushed development cause Monolith Soft was stuck shackled to Breath of the Wild can show at times and yet it's easily one of my favorite experiences with any game ever.

From the soundtrack to the characters and writing Xenoblade 2 is one of the best JRPGs of the past decade. A truly personal story of redemption, vengeance and acceptance. There are so many games that attempt the cycle of violence/revenge type deal and yet none of them have ever left an impact on me the way the last 3 chapters of this game have. Everything from chapter 7 onward blows the first Xenoblade out of the water emotionally, spectacle wise and writing wise. It is just constant escalation after escalation to an emotional and cathartic climax, and that's the key thing for me with this game. When you reach the ending and that final cutscene after the credits catharsis is the feeling that overwhelms you. Few films have hit me with that and even fewer games can stand to having done it to me but Xenoblade 2 did it and that alone will always make it special to me.

So it kills me when people just reduce it to nothing more than horny anime garbage. "The game with the two skanks that ruined Smash" and "the generic anime boy protag" and "that one weeb game with bad English dub". Last point funny as fuck to me cause it is genuinely no worse than the average English dub. Maybe compared to Xenoblade 1 but on this playthrough I genuinely found it fine. Maybe it's Stockholm Syndrome but aside from the early chapter weirdness after a certain point it's all fine and is legit better than the usual Square Enix dubs that fill in every grunt the Japenese dub has with awkward English grunts of their own lmfao. The horny anime shit take sucks too and it's always from people who have never played this game or coomers that only know any of the characters from porn. So for a really quick tangent for the other side of that last point I think media should be allowed to be as horny as it wants. If the writer/artist doesn't want it to be horny that's fine but if a writer/artist wants it to be horny what right do you have to tell them no? It's a bit of a double edged sword situation I guess since while it keeps people from wanting to play it it also gatekeeps itself from the exact people I would never want to talk to about this game. Only the worthy may pass yadda yadda it kinda rules tbh.

Goddamn tho that insane rambling aside going from DE which made me realize just how much the original Xenoblade has aged combat wise (especially when X was the same thing but faster and better) and going back to this with the sicko mode blade and driver combos PLUS how good it feels to switch out to a blade and immediately follow that up with an attack? UGH god it feels so good to kill shit in this game and Xenoblade 3 seemingly taking this but with extra abilities that were in 1 WITH X's speed is enough to make me shit and cum and piss.

So what don't I like? Well, field skills suck lmfao and the fact they can softblock process in chapter 7 if you don't upgrade certain blades enough fucking sucks ass. Really miss that sprint from X too and the gacha system can be mad annoying but that's what the Relentless Arduran and New Game Plus mode are for. And I guess the fact that you pretty much have to get the season pass for Torna and a lot of the post launch blades, but I think that's it lol and for the price you pay you get a shitton of stuff. Honestly it's shocking to me to this day that for a game that had such a rushed development that it turned out as good as it did when other games that were delayed and delayed and delayed couldn't even release without being broken messes.

Xenoblade 2 as mentioned at the start isn't perfect but it's one the most delightful and emotionally powerful experience with video games that I've gone through my whole life. I haven't even gone into the themes of immigration, persecution, regret, mental illness, idealism, self reflection, and religion the game is chock full of behind the scenes of what on the surface is quite simply a story about a boy meeting a girl. And if what I've read about Tetsuya Takahashi is anything to go by he is a splendid man and all of the Xeno games from Gears to most definitely soon Xenoblade 3 are some of most personal pieces of media ever made, and that to me will always be commendable and brave no matter what janky elements there may be along the way.

Anyways Mythra is my wife who I will DEFINITELY impregnate, Tora is my son and Rex is a good boy that does not deserve the shit he gets for his silly little costume and voice. Bring on Xenoblade 3.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a grand adventure including a fine story and lovely characters. The story is filled with subplots and fan service distracting from the main plot and the story gets incredibly focused after 70% of story progression. Its sluggish combat system feels like a long wait for bureaucrats finally doing their job, but once you finally understand the deep mechanics, it feels like getting a revelation from the Architect himself. The inconsistent tonality of this game is awful and the game design is anything but good: Field Skills and Gacha are slowing down the progress and exploration. Many characters are massively, unnecessarily and questionably over-sexualized which would not be a problem if these were optional costumes, but they are not.

I also want to mention its fantastic soundtrack. It’s probably one of the best video game soundtracks my ears have ever experienced. It carries a lot.

Much like the first game, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 attempts to be every JRPG ever made all at once, and suffers for its lack of focus and mechanical chaff - but for all the game’s stumbles and overreach, I can’t help but get giddily into all its overcooked systems and anime melodrama. The game is stupidly ambitious and committed to being exactly what it is with no compromises. It’s totally batshit, a messy and unwieldy thing that resists any attempt to engage with it like a normal game, and I’m super glad it was made!

The next one needs to be like 30% less horny so I can play it on my TV

With this review I've logged in 500 games on this site. I'm somewhat cheating here in this log as there have been several other games I’ve played since first starting my playthrough however I figured I’d make my 500th played game a more special one.
Xenoblade 2 remains one of the most befuddling and unique experiences I’ve probably encountered in not just playing a game, but also anticipating and perceiving post-release reactions to a game. To be honest, when the game was first announced I wasn’t too sure what I was looking at as much of my Xeno experience was solely playing Xenoblade 1, a game I not only enjoyed but regarded as one of my favorite JRPGS ever. Its more ‘moe’ aesthetic and integration of mechanics such as the gacha system was fairly off putting come its December 2017. I didn’t have a switch at the time so I wasn’t expecting to get it immediately regardless, but hearing the opinions of others at the time didn’t sway me into wanting to purchase it anytime soon. It’d take a good while once updates started coming out, an expansion released and general opinion settled that my interest began to pick back up. After seeing friends also praise and regard the game well despite my worries, I figured I’d probably enjoy this more than I had initially thought. Hearing my friend explain these intricacies into the bullshit and all the ways that one can twist the combat around had piqued my interest. Finally, in February I decided after the reveal of Xenoblade 3 to bite the bullet and get through the game. My experience with the game is and will probably remain very complex.

CHAPTER ONE: A brief overload.
From the very first hour of the game you have numerous odd tips and mental notes to keep track of as to how to mitigate certain issues with the game, such as the idea of canceling your auto-attack animation (tipped at in-game) and keeping a narcipear jelly on hand at all times (not explicitly tipped at). After several hours in the game the strengths of that pouch item are extremely apparent, but early on I would not have known just how powerful of a buff this gives, as its almost something you wanna have several of at any time. Then, even before you set off toward your first main story dungeon, you get these weird, weird mechanics like salvaging, resting at inns to use bonus exp, donating to fonsett, development levels, etc. Most rpgs have the hurdle of dumping their cool toys and mechanics early on but goddamn they shove a lot of different stuff from the first game at once.
I was decently surprised however when I saw Torna as a group appear so early in the game. I wasn't entirely sure what each of the Torna members' deals were outside of Nia being a party member and the other two shown, Jin and Malos, being antagonists- however I was immediately interested to see what they were planning for the story. By the end of this chapter I was pretty locked into seeing just what Xenoblade 2 was shaping up to be.

CHAPTER TWO: Opening up to you.
The game finally begins to reveal a much wider sandbox to throw its toys in, while also continuing to introduce several more mechanics, much of these to varying degrees of enjoyment.
For one, you finally get a chance to show off your core crystal summoning abilities and this mechanic is so mixed in my heart. On the one hand, it’s not that bad on a normal playthrough especially as most of your story mandated blades are busted and you get a lot of opportunities to find new blades through means other than the gacha. You also get a small pity system where three blades will be given to you after so many points have been accumulated in the back-end of things. Its pretty easy to get a good team going with just whatever core crystals you pick up along the way, even commons and bottom tier rares. On the other hand, I never did get Kos-Mos and there are about 5-7 hours of grinding I will never get back from my life because of how strange the percentages and mechanics are in summoning are. I didn’t realize until late in the game that the luck stat was actually a factor in blade summoning chances. Also, idea values/boosters felt like such a dumb way to alter your chances, I never paid them any mind in summoning.
Field Skills were a cool concept that I told my friend were neat when they first showed up and then later on understood what his response of “it’ll get tedious” meant. These are a neat way to not only show blade characterization but also growth of said blade. Some blades utilize gathering skills like botany and entomology, others are good at focusing or mastery of an element, and growing those on the affinity chart (I’ll get to these later, See Chapters 5 & 6). These were really cool when I had a few blades and these were only relegated to a few points throughout the story. As the game goes on and you get quest after quest, these requirements not only ramp up- but the amount of menuing whenever you encounter one gets to be absurd. There’s a lot of customization through these menus but in such a way that made me super confused by what exactly I was missing if one blade wasn’t performing as well as I had hoped.
You also finally get your first party member in Nia! Because of the nature of this review, I can’t cover every blade or character obviously. I enjoy the Welsh cat a lot. Her VA’s performance is a lot of fun and overall she’s a good baller. Sadly she gets stuck with Dromarch so her usefulness wanes as he’s locked into her party for the rest of the game and the idea of crit healing becomes more appealing. I do wish you were able to unequip story related blades to drivers (aside from a later mechanic in the game). You also later get access to Tora, making the party comp of fighter/healer/tank complete. First off, Tora’s a lot more tolerable than a lot of other opinions lead me to believe. He’s a dweeb and has his cringey moments but I figured he’d be unbearable from the start. Don’t like him as much as Legendary Heropon Riki though. POPPI though, I loved a lot. Poppi’s extremely cute and curious nature is very fun, and I thought the idea of an artificial blade was a cool idea. On the other hand, Poppiswap/Tiger, Tiger! is a nightmare! I hate that minigame! Overall this starting party is neat enough, although the way the story is structured makes this party quite odd in many respects, and I haven't even mentioned Rex’s qualms yet. Rex is a fighter with low dexterity, meaning he has a tendency to miss, so early fights might have you wondering why that’s the case and what's the best way to alleviate that. But then in chapter two, you spend much of it with Nia as a fighter/healer combo, which is fine. But then Nia gets captured as part of the story and the next half is mostly fighter/tank. These drivers are good enough to get fights done, but it's very odd you don't get a full party until the end of the chapter. Personally, it also didn't help that I still wasn’t used to the new combat mechanics such as combos and arts, so I wasn’t sure what I was lacking if I was getting my ass handed to me outside of pure level difference. Maybe that's just me but it did take me a long while to fully grasp what the combat of the game was capable of and how to fully utilize it. Once you do understand it, its great, but in my experience I did have to spend a lot of time bashing my head against the mechanics to think of what I was doing wrong or what I was missing.
Last thing I’ll mention here but this was when I began to watch some of Chuggaaconroy’s lets play. While I haven't watched that in its entirety, eyeing some of the early stuff to pick up on stuff I didn't realize or things the game doesn’t tell you did help a lot. As of beating it, I’ve only watched/listened to about 60 episodes of his series but his videos have been a great help in understanding what makes a blade good, what to look out for, stuff i missed, plot details I didn’t think about, etc. Major thanks to him and the effort he puts into his projects, long time fan of his.

CHAPTER THREE: Setting the Vibes
Definitely when I started getting into the story of Xenoblade 2 a bit more. I had heard prior that this game was way weaker than 1 in terms of plot but I was glad that despite that impression, I was starting to connect more and more with the cast I was dealt, including its new addition in Vandham. I was definitely curious as to what Vandham’s deal was given some of the details/assumptions you parse for yourself but the time I had with him was good and fine. Although the party comp issue arises again as I found myself hard pressed to have him in my team given Rex’s the main character, and a fighter, while Vandham is also a fighter but I’d like to have my tank and healer out as well. In addition to this, we get the new location of the Urayan titan to explore. The previous titan, Gormott is fine enough for a first major location, although I did find myself getting way to lost in some of its questlines (See chapter 4 for quest issues), not knowing just how exactly the titan was shaped and how certain paths connected to certain areas (also see chapter 4 for map issues). Uraya though, was a major step up to Gormott in my eyes, definitely comparable to the Satorl Marsh (Night) vibe but at a constant throughout its location. Definitely my favorite titan in the game.
Gameplay-wise there isn't too much to point out other than the introduction of the fusion combo/element sphere thing which I also didn't understand until a few hours after the tutorial fight. Also while its not really a complaint of mine I’m just now remembering that Rex never started out with a topple and had to learn that from Vandham. Cool character building moment but also how the hell did I go so long without a topple ability on Rex? Biggest thing to mention is near the end of the chapter and how much I enjoyed the final parts of the chapter, leading into the introduction of Mythra. At this point I had been feeling almost foolish for thinking that I wouldn’t have liked this game, and that this game was just gonna be on an uphill journey for most of the game.

CHAPTER FOUR: It could always get worse
I still don’t really understand this chapter or why this was organized in the way that it was. Thinking back on this chapter feels so bad- they did the Ardainian Titan’s introduction so dirty. Its probably odd to be hearing it put like that but prior to playing the game I had heard the Ardainian field (Day) theme quite a bit during some smash matches and it stuck super hard in my head, I love that song a lot. Finally after a long chunk of the game we reach this humanoid titan, one with a super neat lore, cool music and industrial vibes abound. But then story wise it feels like filler and actually exploring the Ardainian titan kinda feels like a squandered opportunity. In fact, I will take a moment to say that while I did enjoy the open world traversal in this game, the big difference in this and the first game to me was there was never a moment like the Sword Valley in this game imo. Sword Valley in XB1 was the moment where it really struck me just how momentous these locales were, that you were crossing this monolithic blade into the enemy territory and the second titan was getting closer and closer. XB2 has a lot of cool environments and exploration is fun and all, but there was never a moment that really struck me as to just how ‘powerful’ the thing being lived on was. I had hoped the Ardainian would be that but after a while of getting my ass beat in some abandoned factory I kinda grew frustrated at this game, at points I wasn’t quite sure where I was actually supposed to be going. Not helped by the fact that later in that area you travel along the side of the titan and encounter a bunch of level 70-80 monsters and you question what the hell you’re supposed to be doing on the Mor Ardain titan in the first place (i barely remembered myself).
This also brings up such other issues as quest trackers and the map screen. The former of which became less of an issue as I figured out to just use L3 to increase the map screen size and just find quest markers on the map through there. Otherwise it was always really hard for me to figure out really just where in space my quest marker wanted me to go other than just eyeing down when the numbers were going down faster. The maps in general however, are abjectly horrible. Some of the worst I’ve encountered. In parts like Gormotti it took me a while to realize Umon’s Shipyard was in the back of Gormotti, meaning northward and that there's a passageway leading up toward that valley, as its kinda hard to recognize that the back is leading to another map section. In Mor Ardain it gets real bad, up to a point where I always had to double check which end of Alba Cavanich leads to the palace or which one leads to the elevator back down to the shipping area or which end leads to the factories and fields. By now I remember but spacing things out in my head and visually piecing every part was already hard enough but the maps did nothing to help piece these together. This especially gets bad at the end of the chapter as the factory you fight through is so generic and maze-like in structure it takes a while to get through the dungeon. Worst yet you get shrunk down to two party members so its a lot easier to get your ass handed to you without your tank (also feeding into that issue of early party comp). This chapter especially feels terrible as its probably the last time we get major Tora development in the story and it could have been way more interesting, to be honest but it just ends up feeling more like a detour than anything. At least you finally get your blade limit increased from two to three finally! Why this was hindered in the first I really don’t know.
The end chapter fights could have also been cooler but I wish you had more time to work with your new party member, Morag. Thankfully I hadn’t died during this fight but I wouldn’t be surprised at people that did given that you start off the fight with your new party member with nothing equipped to her whatsoever and the two Torna members are a fairly competent duo (quartet?). Regardless, this was also one of the highlights of the chapter as Morag is such a cool character. She’s cool and stoic, and has a penchant for skin care- learning Morag was actually a party member was really interesting. I always thought she was a secondary antagonist/rival character but nah, have a character that oozes in style. Also Brighid is a cool as hell blade, being an evasion tank. I love her design a lot but she’s also just in the running for one of my favorite blades in the game moveset/skill wise. Playing Tora as a tank felt alright but not something I ever really thought was exciting but Morag as a tank was super inviting and I enjoyed building her a lot.

CHAPTERS FIVE AND SIX: This review is getting long enough as is and also my memories begin to blend in at this point
From here on the game begins to introduce less and less mechanics to fill in sandbox, but instead most of your time from here on is dealing with the backlog of what blades you’ve gotten and what quests you can get done. This was especially the point in which I figured I should go back and check out what all I could get done with the game, which meant opening up an endless can of worms that are the blade affinity charts and quests. Xenoblade 2 has a total of 38 rare blades, 7 dlc rare blades and 7 more rare blades in the new game plus (never tackled anything new game plus so my experience with that wont be covered here). Each one has its own affinity chart with a maximum of 45 nodes to fulfill (with a Dagas shaped exception), give or take a few pre-fulfilled nodes upon first obtaining the blade. Thanks to merc missions, filling these out one-by-one can be expedited, but even then much of the time spent in xenoblade 2 is spent working on each of these blades. To be quite honest, there's a good chunk of these blades I enjoyed using and seeing develop over the course of their quests but they might have a slight amount of spite associated with them due to the nature of their affinity charts or quests. Nim is a fairly great healer with good arts and whatever but I can’t help but think about how mind numbing it was traveling across temperantia and beating my head over an obnoxious unique monster that seals healing, feeling as though I wasted about 3 hours of my life. Other affinity charts like Ursula have you grind merc missions for an absurd amount of hours for what prolly could have just been an hour’s worth of effort. Much of this can just be done in the background and thankfully I obtained Ursula fairly early in my run but going into the merc menus ~100 times over for those goddamn stamps was so unnecessary. But even weirder are affinity charts and skills that feel completely unnecessary. Vess and Pyra’s cooking abilities are not worth any investment whatsoever, as their pouch items are completely overshadowed by purchasables and require way too many materials to grind for. Also I have no idea why some of these random ‘kill X enemies in X place’ exist on major blades. I can tolerate it on non-story blades as that stuff gets filled out on merc missions anyway. However, on a lot of these major blades it feels incredibly unnecessary, having to bring Pyra and Brighid to fight birds that are usually flying out of reach.
I bring these up now because I started to spiral here, dodging a lot of story progression despite actually being intrigued in where the plot was going. It’s fucked up because in reality you shouldn’t be doing but a few blade quests ever during your initial playthrough to be honest. Hell, don’t even bother trying to do more than 50% of the game’s content until post-game or new game plus. That’s not to say that other 50% of content doesn’t have worth, but it’d probably be way easier and worthwhile on a second playthrough where the new game plus features/changes open up to do clean up. Thankfully these two chapters do show off a bit more intriguing stuff plot/world wise as Leftheria is one of the cooler locations in Alrest, and I enjoyed my time in Indol. Still hate Temperantia though, I really wish the landmark system was better utilized and this map was the worst offender for bad fast travel spots. Also it wasn’t until I was finished with this segment and moving onto the next chapter that I realized tantal was also part of this duo of chapters. To sum up an entire chapter: Cool vibes, annoying traversal, Rex gets cuck vibes, Herald is a cool blade. These two chapters also show off a bit more of our last party member, Zeke, along with Pandoria). It’s kinda funny that we get a lot of Zeke-related lore in these two chapters as he has relations tying in with Indol and he’s the prince of the last major ‘town’ in the game. I love Zeke a lot, I’m a sucker for dipshit characters. I wish ‘new game-plus Pandoria’ wasn’t relegated to new game-plus.

Chapters seven and eight: The deepest depths, figuratively and literally.
Fuck the Spirit Crucible. I hate temperantia but I begrudgingly trekked it whenever a blade quest or something would require my attention there. Thankfully Spirit Crucible isn’t as revisited but any time it was required for some quest I tried avoiding it as much as possible. I still can’t remember the layout and its such a bothersome dungeon with its stupid art limiting mechanic.Story wise its a good chunk of developement for Nia and her relationship with Rex, but it was hard to focus when I could physically feel the desire to want to finish the dungeon as fast as possible. It was also hard to remember much of what I did in this chapter because this might have been the least amount of side content I did in my playthrough simply because of the nature of how these two chapters go. Not having Pyra/Mythra in the first half dissuaded me from doing anything outside of the main quest, and then chapter 8 is mostly confined to the area you’re stuck in.
After Spirit Crucible you get the last ‘bad’ area in the game with Cliffs of Morytha. Its so bizarre. In talking with a friend I was expecting his opinion to be mostly iffy about this location but I was glad to hear his mutual annoyance toward the level because I figured my disdain was primarily focused on the fact that I spent too much time in this area for reasons not tied to the plot. Even on a single shot through the place, just doing story stuff it's an annoying field skill ridden “dungeon” where you just juggle through blades in your inventory to traverse the place. It doesn’t even have its own theme music, just using the song from the factory from chapter 4. For me, this place has also dug its way into my brain as it’s the primary source for grinding gold and treasures once you have the expansion pass, so I did spend way more time here than I would ever recommend (but also maybe I wanted to max out Sheba’s affinity chart). You at least have a cool fight with Jin and Malos here and I will say, they’re a pain to fight but I'm kinda glad they are;. I’m more annoyed whenever I get my ass handed by some random merc in a blade quest because they have one obnoxious skill. Meanwhile Jin and Malos can be annoying to fight at times but I'm more tolerant of that because they’re supervillains with ridiculous powers to deal with. Also I had a lot of fun seeing Malos’s A.I freak out for some reason at points of the fight, sometimes not caring to path his way toward the party fighting Jin solo.
Thankfully Chapter 8 onward I can ease up and say the game finally gets back to a point where I find myself sincerely enjoying what its offering. Not a lot of bullshit, not a lot of egregious dungeon trekking or padded exploration. The Land of Morytha is a great location overall, and trekking through this area and piecing together some of the final parts to the world was incredibly intriguing to compare with Xenoblade 1. While I enjoy much of Xenoblade’s last third I do think it peaks a bit early and much of the final third I have mixed up in memory, while I think this one might stay in my memory a bit tighter (partly due to how it compares to the latter chapter).
Near the end we find ourselves finally at the world tree, you can feel the end in your bones and personally I’m thinking, “Finally we’re just about done here”. But I encounter one significant issue, I can’t put the game down.
Chapters nine and ten: How I learned to stop caring and love the smell of salvage
It is a bit weird how the last three chapters are pretty close in proximity, the start of Morytha to the end of the game isn’t but <10 hours probably? A good chunk of that is story and even then a bunch of that is probably still inflated by any last things you might wanna wrap up if you so want, assuming the position of a player going through this section casually. However, we are talking about a game in which every chapter, no matter how much or how little the story progresses, will have a good chunk of sde content be revealed. I did switch back and forth between going up the world tree and going back to side content I might wanna do. It finally sunk in, the completionist brain worms finally took hold and I did wanna see what each and every blade had in store no matter what the stupid requirements entailed. Eventually I did get Ursula maxed out, I did go through lengths to try and obtain every blade (sans Kos-Mos sadly), I did grind an incessant amount of money to max out Sheba’s requirements, and the checklist of missions and blades kept growing and my want to see everything for what its worth kept growing as well. …Until that 5-7 session of legendary core crystal grinding. By the end of that I just gave up and walked shamefully to the final boss, Kos-Mos-less.
If I had thought harder about it beforehand I probably should have just bought the game myself to be honest, rather the copy I played was borrowed from a friend. You should not nor would I ever advise anyone that picks up the game to binge it as much as I have over the past three months. There’s too much to this game, and adding more on top of what was initially released is an even more insane testament to whatever black magic fuels monolith and Tetsuya Takahashi’s mind. I don’t even wanna bring up the entirety of challenge mode, or how cracked that entire system is for wanting no less than peak performance from your blade prowess (also I lied, Elma wasanother pre-new game plus blade I didn’t see). I didn’t even try any part of new game plus, a mode that spans way further than just carrying over progress as it also unlocks new blades, different ways to spend bonus exp, and different driver charts. There were also plenty of blades I didn’t end up fulfilling, like all of the Shield Hammers (for good reason, sorry Finch), Vale, Newt, Aegeon, Gorg or Dahlia. But I think that’s alright.
Its a typical sentiment for a lot of gamers when playing these large 100+ hour rpgs to be attached by the end and feel as though its actually saying farewell to real people. Its not something I’m immune to and I’ve come to expect such sentiment with these kinds of games but it hits weirder -not exactly stronger- with this game. Even by the time credits roll I know deep down that its not striking me quite like other endings to games.
But I kept thinking about it, and I kept watching Xenoblade 2 content that I hadn’t continued like Chugga;s lp or dodged like some of Enel’s analysis videos. I also kept thinking about Drifting Soul, how fun of a villain Malos is, or how cool certain blades are- it hasn't left my mind and it’s going to be hard to do so leading up to Xenoblade 3’s release.
This game isn’t perfect, I can’t even really recommend it and I don’t even wanna begin the sentiment of ‘i hate this game; I love this game’. But I think I get it. After about ~180 hours of gameplay I get it.
It kinda feels nice, not only being able to kinda see this game for what its worth and not have this air of disappointment I had when it first released, but also being able to see this as nearly equal in my heart as the first game, on top of recognizing some of the shortcomings and faults of Xenoblade 1. I still think there’s a lot more quality of life stuff I wish they had just up and overhauled during their updates, such as changing map layouts or integrating better search functions or a multi-release function for blade menus. The main cast is somewhat of a mixed bag and tutorials are infamously bad, and some gameplay mechanics are confusing as all hell because of that. Some chapters are stellar while others leave you wondering what they were thinking? But I love this game, and I love the world Takahashi and the fellas at Monolith have made (even if my vision of such a series only encapsulates two of these games). I can’t really recommend this game, but I could say it was worth the time and wait. I hope you enjoyed my 5000 word long ramblings about this game.