it just makes me sad that the madoka dungeon crawler is such a terribly designed pile. the universe of that show is so ripe for psychological surrealism fuckery, and honestly some of the monsters and biomes in this game are pretty great but christ is it unfun to play. it's like one of the only dungeon crawlers i had to drop out of frustration.

the game itself is episodic, with 6 routes that you unlock as you go. within each route is essentially a mini VN where you can choose to visit different locations on the maps with the characters 4 times a day. usually the routes take the span of an entire month, which makes for a ton of VN-like interchange. the choices you make talking to the girls (as kyubey) will effect their karmic and emotional values which will affect the dungeon crawling portions of the route as well as potential endings.

at the end of the route you will always go to the same place, warupurugi's night, and try to fight the ultimate witch. whether you win or lose there, you can then carry over any of the accumulated spell books and emotional energy (scales damage, but makes you more prone to turning into a witch) into future runs or another route.

but herein lies the problem, the game is fucking hard. that, and you're going to need to be running these routes many many times if you want to get enough spellbooks and energy to scale your party members to actually slay warupurugi night. but not even that, if you don't grind enough you might just get filtered in the second or third route even.

it just simply isn't worth the grind, as much as i impressed with the amount of voice work story-building put into this game. i really should have just played this game on emulator so i could un-throttle my way through all the animations and text spamming because it just wasn't fast enough.

When I first started playing Xenoblade 2, I gotta be honest and say that it left a bad taste in my mouth.
After how much Xenoblade 1 did for me, as an imcredible story about a young man trying to change the future, with a tone that fitted the context of the war the characters lived, xenoblade 2 shift in tone left me confused.

"Why does the story has some many more ANIME stereotypes? Why are those designs so bizzarre? Why does the battle voice lines feels louder and much more repetitive?"

I may sound too rude, but feel like I was not the only one to feel that way: tons of people complained about the different selections of questionable designs, the goofier tone and cutscenes that feels put there just to fill the list of "anime moment" (Seriously, cutscenes like the "bed scene" I feel didn't need to be there imo).

And not to mention other questionable design choices of the game: the incredibly slow tutorial that kinda fails as a tutorial, the unnecessarily gacha-like mechanic to obtain new blades, and the fact that your story can be just straight up blocked by a stupid spider web in the middle of the cave that forces you to go back and famr for fire passives or something (Seriously Chamber of Offering, what the heck is your problem????)


But despite all of these weird decisions..... this game is still incredible. I don't know how they do that, but Xenoblade games are ALWAYS able to make you feel so may moments that will melt your heart, no matter how light or silly the tone of the story may be.

The world is still imaginative, full of wonderful set pieces and fascinating to explore. Once you get the hang of it, the combat becomes addictive, as you discover the various blade combinantios and the depths of it all. THe music is always divine, with set pieces that will literally make you cry on multiple occasions, no matter how invested you are in the moment.

And speaking of the story: I actually don't mind it now! Sure it is more light-hearted compared to what the other xenoblade games present, but the general tone and the various party members started to grow on me with time. I don't really like all of the main cast, but I can safely confirm that fellas like Zeke or Morag are my favorite Xenoblade characters.

Overall, I still prefer the tone and assets that Xenoblade 1 presented. But I can assure you that Xenoblade 2, while different in tone, is still an amazing title, able to put you into a world and a story it will stuck with you for years. DON'T FORGET IT