Probably the most conflicted i've been about a game in a long time. To be honest, I went into this game with a very open mind despite its very unfortunate reputation. Having played this whole thing, the reality was more or less what I expected- better than its detractors make it out to be, not as good as its fans hype it up to be.
Xenoblade 2 certainly has many of the components that make Xenoblade great- Its soundtrack is fantastic, its open world areas are genuinely amazing, and its combat greatly improves upon its predecessors. Unfortunately, it stumbles in many areas. There are multiple aspects of this game that feel severely archaic: Movement and traversal, field skill checks, side quests, the shitty tutorials, that crappy map + compass, and the menus all feel like they are straight out of a game that came out 15 years ago. Many aspects of outdated JRPG game design plague XC2 all over the place and its unfortunate to see in a game that came out in 2017.
Other than that, there is the story. Oh boy the story. The early chapters honestly feel like a trainwreck that I can't look away from. The voice acting is all over the place, the dialogue is even more corny than your usual JRPG, and the bizarre attempt at injecting comedy-anime style humor into cutscenes fell flat hard. I rarely use the word "cringe" to describe something, because the word has lost its meaning from over-usage, but it certainly applies here for me. Fans of Xenoblade 2 will swear on their life to you that the story gets much better in later chapters. I will admit- this turned out to be true. However, it's never truly great. I will say that there are several VERY strong moments in the story in the latter half of the game that I quite liked, however even these moments were dampened by the lingering corny dialogue issue, as well as Rex's general aloofness to what is happening around him being increasingly annoying (There are very few things I dislike in media more than a dumb protagonist- I acknowledge this is a personal issue though). That said, I can appreciate a lot about what the story was trying to do conceptually, so I don't hate it by any means. Additionally, in terms of characters, I found most of the main cast to be very likeable and most of the main antagonists to be pretty compelling.
Some other rambling thoughts:
Despite the voice acting's inconsistency early on, it does improve. Additionally, for the english version of this game i think that the casting choices were fantastic. Every character's voice fits them perfectly and its hard to imagine any of them without them. The only one that I don't think fits funnily enough is Rex, mainly because he sounds older than hes supposed to be.
A thought on Blades: I really do not like the blade system foundationally at all and found it disappointing. I just don't like that I have all these neat unique characters but i can't actually play as them. It really rubbed me the wrong way and I never did fully get over it. Additionally, I think having the blades be in an rng gacha pull system was just....horrible.
I also have to comment on the world building. I think that the game built off of XC1's concept perfectly with the idea of Titans and the world tree- I thought both were very cool and a nice way to take the Bionis concept a step further.
-End of extra random remarks
All in all Xenoblade 2 has high highs and low lows, but ultimately the xenoblade magic is still present and I did enjoy my time with the game despite its issues.
Xenoblade 2 certainly has many of the components that make Xenoblade great- Its soundtrack is fantastic, its open world areas are genuinely amazing, and its combat greatly improves upon its predecessors. Unfortunately, it stumbles in many areas. There are multiple aspects of this game that feel severely archaic: Movement and traversal, field skill checks, side quests, the shitty tutorials, that crappy map + compass, and the menus all feel like they are straight out of a game that came out 15 years ago. Many aspects of outdated JRPG game design plague XC2 all over the place and its unfortunate to see in a game that came out in 2017.
Other than that, there is the story. Oh boy the story. The early chapters honestly feel like a trainwreck that I can't look away from. The voice acting is all over the place, the dialogue is even more corny than your usual JRPG, and the bizarre attempt at injecting comedy-anime style humor into cutscenes fell flat hard. I rarely use the word "cringe" to describe something, because the word has lost its meaning from over-usage, but it certainly applies here for me. Fans of Xenoblade 2 will swear on their life to you that the story gets much better in later chapters. I will admit- this turned out to be true. However, it's never truly great. I will say that there are several VERY strong moments in the story in the latter half of the game that I quite liked, however even these moments were dampened by the lingering corny dialogue issue, as well as Rex's general aloofness to what is happening around him being increasingly annoying (There are very few things I dislike in media more than a dumb protagonist- I acknowledge this is a personal issue though). That said, I can appreciate a lot about what the story was trying to do conceptually, so I don't hate it by any means. Additionally, in terms of characters, I found most of the main cast to be very likeable and most of the main antagonists to be pretty compelling.
Some other rambling thoughts:
Despite the voice acting's inconsistency early on, it does improve. Additionally, for the english version of this game i think that the casting choices were fantastic. Every character's voice fits them perfectly and its hard to imagine any of them without them. The only one that I don't think fits funnily enough is Rex, mainly because he sounds older than hes supposed to be.
A thought on Blades: I really do not like the blade system foundationally at all and found it disappointing. I just don't like that I have all these neat unique characters but i can't actually play as them. It really rubbed me the wrong way and I never did fully get over it. Additionally, I think having the blades be in an rng gacha pull system was just....horrible.
I also have to comment on the world building. I think that the game built off of XC1's concept perfectly with the idea of Titans and the world tree- I thought both were very cool and a nice way to take the Bionis concept a step further.
-End of extra random remarks
All in all Xenoblade 2 has high highs and low lows, but ultimately the xenoblade magic is still present and I did enjoy my time with the game despite its issues.