This game really said “what if we took all of the good parts of 1 and X, throw it out all the window, and actively make everything worse.” Xenoblade Chronicles X felt like 1 step forward for the franchise and this game was two steps back. Exploration and combat is very repetitive. Field skills ruin any semblance of exploration and reassembling the team just for exploration skills is annoying. The story was not interesting at all and I couldn’t take any of the villains seriously. The thing that baffles me the most is that in X, not only did they provide a run button, but a whole slew of methods to explore. Two had none of that and just padded out the entire game with all the walking that had to be done.

Overall big improvement over 1. This game was very fun to play and mess around with. Exploration is fun this game due to the vast world and it’s way to traverse. Combat is fast paced with all the moving around you can do, along with secondary and tertiary cooldown skills. And side quests actually feel pretty impactful and adds to the world building. It is unfortunate that the story took a hit and they went the silent protagonist route (especially since the music pauses for dialogue options which kills momentum), but it is a fairly unique and refreshing take for the jrpg genre