Absolutely fantastic expansion. The smaller scale lends itself really well to the story and the new combat system compensates for the smaller cast by allowing each member to have 2 blades each.
The battle system itself is really fun to use, being mostly similar to the main title but with some differences both better and, not worse, but not as good imo. The blade combos being more flexible makes them easier to understand on a base level but the secrecy behind which combos grant bonus damage is a bit disappointing.
Anyway besides that almost every complaint I had about XC2 is gone from this, and while I prefer the cast/story overall of the main game as a standalone expansion this is great in both those regards. The only reason I'm giving this 4.5 instead of 5 is due to the baffling decision to force the Community Level being increased to Level 4 to progress the story.
In order to progress this: you need to complete side quests... -_- Most of these weren't that bad to be fair, leveling from 1 to 2 at the first block was perfectly fine, just 2 hours of mostly combat or exploration, no problem. But having to then go and recruit 32 more supporters (twice as many as the first time) was just bruh. It took twice as long, and the more quests you do the fewer options there are, until by the end you're almost forced to do one of the far-too-many "hey go collect a shit load of this thing for me" quests which I really do not enjoy. Shifting that down to Level 3 in order to force players to do more combat/exploration through side quests (and just spend more time with the party in general) would've been perfectly acceptable, but requiring Level 4 is just bizarre and sours an otherwise near perfect expansion.
Overall, this is probably a little better than XC2 in terms of structure and being far less frustrating as a whole. If you played that then this is 100% worth your time :)
The battle system itself is really fun to use, being mostly similar to the main title but with some differences both better and, not worse, but not as good imo. The blade combos being more flexible makes them easier to understand on a base level but the secrecy behind which combos grant bonus damage is a bit disappointing.
Anyway besides that almost every complaint I had about XC2 is gone from this, and while I prefer the cast/story overall of the main game as a standalone expansion this is great in both those regards. The only reason I'm giving this 4.5 instead of 5 is due to the baffling decision to force the Community Level being increased to Level 4 to progress the story.
In order to progress this: you need to complete side quests... -_- Most of these weren't that bad to be fair, leveling from 1 to 2 at the first block was perfectly fine, just 2 hours of mostly combat or exploration, no problem. But having to then go and recruit 32 more supporters (twice as many as the first time) was just bruh. It took twice as long, and the more quests you do the fewer options there are, until by the end you're almost forced to do one of the far-too-many "hey go collect a shit load of this thing for me" quests which I really do not enjoy. Shifting that down to Level 3 in order to force players to do more combat/exploration through side quests (and just spend more time with the party in general) would've been perfectly acceptable, but requiring Level 4 is just bizarre and sours an otherwise near perfect expansion.
Overall, this is probably a little better than XC2 in terms of structure and being far less frustrating as a whole. If you played that then this is 100% worth your time :)