Review in progress:
What happened here?
The combat system is bad. It's dull, repetitive, confusing, and poorly explained in-game. I don't care if the combat is actually really deep because it doesn't feel good to execute at the end of the day. I looked up tutorials and it's still uninteresting. Not being able to customize your party's armor is a letdown. It was cool seeing all of the different gear in Xenoblade Chronicles actually change your party's appearance since it's not a particularly common feature.
The "comedic bits" are abysmal and undermine any attempt to tell a serious story. Pretty much every bad anime trope under the sun is used. The character designs are mostly bad/horny, which further dampens story immersion. The story/world is tonally inconsistent with the original. It feels like a completely different franchise now.
Rex is a cookie-cutter shounen protagonist with no personality or personal growth. Pyrah is a submissive woman who likes to cook and has no real agency. Mythra is a basic tsundere. Other party members are just as underdeveloped or are straight-up bad (like Tora). The main romance would be considered creepy and inappropriate if the genders were swapped or if this was a Western game. It's superficial at best and they have no real chemistry. They don't even bother to fully commit to the romance aspect, which seems to be extremely common with Japanese games. It feels incredibly half-assed. The implied harem is the icing on the shit cake.
Nopon are more prominently in the story this time around. They were annoying in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and are even worse here. Their voices are grating and they feel out of place. Chapter 4 is abysmal and feels like filler. The story doesn't really get interesting until near the end of the game. I will say that the way that they tied it to the original was cool, but everything besides that was a letdown story-wise. Xenoblade Chronicles was much more consistent with the story pacing as well. Basically, nothing happens in 2 until the last third of the game.
There's so much bloat. Systems on top of systems on top of systems. None of it feels cohesive or fun to interact with. The gatcha and salvaging mechanics are the worst offenders. Field moves are also incredibly annoying. They make exploration feel tedious since you'll usually need to backtrack later and/or fumble around in menus for 10 hours every time you run into an obstacle. It makes no sense that only the blades you have equipped are checked for skills instead of your entire roster. There's way too much RNG because of the aforementioned systems. It feels like you're playing a free-to-play game that they forgot to add microtransactions to. Trying to play optimally is a nightmare due to all of the RNG and grinding required to get an ideal party. Changing which blade is attached to a driver requires using an extremely limited consumable, but the game doesn't tell you that they are very hard to get before you use it. Party management would be much less tedious if the item restriction wasn't in place.
The English dub is complete dogshit. The Japanese voice option doesn't include subtitles for environment/combat dialogue, so either way, you're getting a compromised experience. The English dub in the original was great. How is it so bad here?
The UI is cumbersome in other areas as well. Trying to use the map is a nightmare. It's way too zoomed in and is segmented most of the time. It's often impossible to see where far-off objectives are. Side quests are still boring. They all feel like generic MMO fetch quests with very little variation and uninteresting storytelling. They also don't have a recommended level, which results in a ton of wasted time if you try to complete everything as you get it. Unlike the first game, all quests seem to require you to go back to the quest giver to complete. Quality of life in general is lacking. The lack of autosave for anything other than getting new blades is baffling. Gathering items now requires you to stand in place and watch an animation. It really hurts the flow of gameplay.
I encountered a bug where the background music for blade bonding stopped playing. This is fairly minor but really should've been fixed. I didn't encounter any bugs in Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition.
This is a massive downgrade from the first Xenoblade Chronicles. I'm very disappointed and legitimately can't understand why someone would prefer this over the original. The only strong points are the narrative ties to the original near the end and some of the world design. The soundtrack is good but doesn't reach the heights of the original, either.
What happened here?
The combat system is bad. It's dull, repetitive, confusing, and poorly explained in-game. I don't care if the combat is actually really deep because it doesn't feel good to execute at the end of the day. I looked up tutorials and it's still uninteresting. Not being able to customize your party's armor is a letdown. It was cool seeing all of the different gear in Xenoblade Chronicles actually change your party's appearance since it's not a particularly common feature.
The "comedic bits" are abysmal and undermine any attempt to tell a serious story. Pretty much every bad anime trope under the sun is used. The character designs are mostly bad/horny, which further dampens story immersion. The story/world is tonally inconsistent with the original. It feels like a completely different franchise now.
Rex is a cookie-cutter shounen protagonist with no personality or personal growth. Pyrah is a submissive woman who likes to cook and has no real agency. Mythra is a basic tsundere. Other party members are just as underdeveloped or are straight-up bad (like Tora). The main romance would be considered creepy and inappropriate if the genders were swapped or if this was a Western game. It's superficial at best and they have no real chemistry. They don't even bother to fully commit to the romance aspect, which seems to be extremely common with Japanese games. It feels incredibly half-assed. The implied harem is the icing on the shit cake.
Nopon are more prominently in the story this time around. They were annoying in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and are even worse here. Their voices are grating and they feel out of place. Chapter 4 is abysmal and feels like filler. The story doesn't really get interesting until near the end of the game. I will say that the way that they tied it to the original was cool, but everything besides that was a letdown story-wise. Xenoblade Chronicles was much more consistent with the story pacing as well. Basically, nothing happens in 2 until the last third of the game.
There's so much bloat. Systems on top of systems on top of systems. None of it feels cohesive or fun to interact with. The gatcha and salvaging mechanics are the worst offenders. Field moves are also incredibly annoying. They make exploration feel tedious since you'll usually need to backtrack later and/or fumble around in menus for 10 hours every time you run into an obstacle. It makes no sense that only the blades you have equipped are checked for skills instead of your entire roster. There's way too much RNG because of the aforementioned systems. It feels like you're playing a free-to-play game that they forgot to add microtransactions to. Trying to play optimally is a nightmare due to all of the RNG and grinding required to get an ideal party. Changing which blade is attached to a driver requires using an extremely limited consumable, but the game doesn't tell you that they are very hard to get before you use it. Party management would be much less tedious if the item restriction wasn't in place.
The English dub is complete dogshit. The Japanese voice option doesn't include subtitles for environment/combat dialogue, so either way, you're getting a compromised experience. The English dub in the original was great. How is it so bad here?
The UI is cumbersome in other areas as well. Trying to use the map is a nightmare. It's way too zoomed in and is segmented most of the time. It's often impossible to see where far-off objectives are. Side quests are still boring. They all feel like generic MMO fetch quests with very little variation and uninteresting storytelling. They also don't have a recommended level, which results in a ton of wasted time if you try to complete everything as you get it. Unlike the first game, all quests seem to require you to go back to the quest giver to complete. Quality of life in general is lacking. The lack of autosave for anything other than getting new blades is baffling. Gathering items now requires you to stand in place and watch an animation. It really hurts the flow of gameplay.
I encountered a bug where the background music for blade bonding stopped playing. This is fairly minor but really should've been fixed. I didn't encounter any bugs in Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition.
This is a massive downgrade from the first Xenoblade Chronicles. I'm very disappointed and legitimately can't understand why someone would prefer this over the original. The only strong points are the narrative ties to the original near the end and some of the world design. The soundtrack is good but doesn't reach the heights of the original, either.