I don’t think this was quite as good a bonus story as Torna, but I still think it was a pretty fun experience and it was nice to get to spend more time in the world. My favorite part of Xenoblade has generally been running around beautiful environments and exploring all the nooks and crannies while excellent music plays, and this story certainly delivered on that. The new standard battle theme was some extremely funky disco-esque jam, and the other new tunes were great, too.
As for the actual story itself, it was pretty alright, I suppose. It wasn’t super complicated or anything and it didn’t have any wild reveals like the main game, but I liked that it elaborated on some minor characters from the main game. One side character more or less getting closure and a conclusion to her arc was pretty great, as well. That was probably my favorite bit of the actual story. There are some things that were left unexplained, presumably for sequel purposes? Man, I don’t know. Speaking of characters, I would actually take a bullet for Kino and Nene. They’re good littlepons Brent. Generally I like the Nopons even in 2 though, the tendency to make them weird creepy otaku non withstanding. There was none of that in Future Connected, though, which pleased me.
As far as gameplay goes I didn’t think it was as mindless or easy as a lot of people are making it out to be, as I found some segments more challenging than a lot of stuff from the main game. Honestly, I didn’t actually complete the Ponspectors quest just because I didn’t feel like grinding arts and EXP to match the boss’s level... Maybe that’s just because I relied on skills and affinity to pull me through and overleveled by doing all the quests...?
It’s definitely not as much of an interesting twist as Torna was from XC2, though, and I was a little disappointed Kino and Nene were basically just Sharla and Reyn in terms of gameplay. I kind of wish they’d made the unnamed character whose character arc I liked a fifth playable character and given her a different kit.
Anyway, keep in mind that I played it after playing through the Definitive Edition as my first XC1 experience, so I dunno if my impression is colored by that in comparison to people who played it back on the Wii or 3DS. I thought it was fun and definitely worth playing regardless, though, even if it isn’t quite as good as other parts of the series.
As for the actual story itself, it was pretty alright, I suppose. It wasn’t super complicated or anything and it didn’t have any wild reveals like the main game, but I liked that it elaborated on some minor characters from the main game. One side character more or less getting closure and a conclusion to her arc was pretty great, as well. That was probably my favorite bit of the actual story. There are some things that were left unexplained, presumably for sequel purposes? Man, I don’t know. Speaking of characters, I would actually take a bullet for Kino and Nene. They’re good littlepons Brent. Generally I like the Nopons even in 2 though, the tendency to make them weird creepy otaku non withstanding. There was none of that in Future Connected, though, which pleased me.
As far as gameplay goes I didn’t think it was as mindless or easy as a lot of people are making it out to be, as I found some segments more challenging than a lot of stuff from the main game. Honestly, I didn’t actually complete the Ponspectors quest just because I didn’t feel like grinding arts and EXP to match the boss’s level... Maybe that’s just because I relied on skills and affinity to pull me through and overleveled by doing all the quests...?
It’s definitely not as much of an interesting twist as Torna was from XC2, though, and I was a little disappointed Kino and Nene were basically just Sharla and Reyn in terms of gameplay. I kind of wish they’d made the unnamed character whose character arc I liked a fifth playable character and given her a different kit.
Anyway, keep in mind that I played it after playing through the Definitive Edition as my first XC1 experience, so I dunno if my impression is colored by that in comparison to people who played it back on the Wii or 3DS. I thought it was fun and definitely worth playing regardless, though, even if it isn’t quite as good as other parts of the series.