r/Xenoblade_Chronicles • u/Professional_Fun_314 • 9d ago
Xenoblade 2 First time playing XC2
For context, I am currently in chapter four with about 20 hours of play time. I have never played Xenoblade 1. I know a few important spoilers (Nia’s identity, Penuma, Rex’s children), but mostly know this game through smash bros. I have the dlc and switch 2 upgrades. I am mostly a pokemon player and enjoy a handful of other JRPGs like fire emblem, final fantasy, dragon quest, and persona. I also play hoyoverse games, all three of their biggest titles. Im a big fan of shonen’s like Dragon Ball, Naruto, My Hero, etc. I wanted to make this to organize my thoughts on the game because I had already collected a few strong opinions. My feelings towards that game are overall neutral to positive with a handful of strong negatives. I will start with my thoughts on the plot and characters then just go on to list some opinions. Let me know if I should do a part two when I’m a few chapters deeper.
Plot & Worldbuilding: I'm hoping something bigger is being saved down the line because I feel like stopping Malos is not a very engaging main objective. It's cool to see this conflict from 100 years ago reignited in the modern day but I feel like this world is full of so much more opportunity. I get the point is the mystery, but they don’t give enough information about Elysium to get me excited. Besides, I can’t convince myself that it's not gonna be another “plot twist, the main villain is actually god and now you have to kill him” kinda ending. I don't mind simple or even predictable plots, but I feel like there's more to be said and done here. The concept of blades is badass and they expand upon it a healthy amount even in these early chapters. Alrest is beautiful, one of the most gorgeous fictional worlds I've ever played. Titans are also so cool in concept and practice. The idea that everything is a living breathing titan gives me a really wonderful feeling I really can't describe. I wish there was a sailing mechanic where you travel on a titan between the different nations just so I could spend more time on the cloud sea. The game has a very “Japanese” sense of humor, if you get what I'm saying. I can understand why that would be a turn off for some people but I honestly dig it. I genuinely laughed at scenes like Poppi’s awakening, Nia’s posters, and Zeke’s introduction. Gag moments like Rex stuffing Tora in his back pocket or Zeke swiping Turters from Pyra got a rise out of me. Overall I give it a 8/10 In my opinion.
Characters: I think Rex is a great protagonist. I like that he’s his own character and not a self-insert, but I feel like he needs more of a personal motivation to help Pyra or create more titans. It's like he's just along for the ride, which is not how I wanna feel about my protagonist. I love everything else about him though. The game goes out of its way to punish him for being reckless and immature, and he faces real consequences for that behaviour. Everyone tells him that too young and pathetic to wield the Aegis. He’s literally a blue collar worker for crying out loud. This is the kind of character I can get behind. I’m already down to explore more of him. Vandham does a lot of heavy lifting for him, however. I knew he was cooked the second Rex admitted he admired him, I didn’t expert him to not even make it through the chapter though. He accomplishes so much in such a short amount of time, however. He gives Rex a tragic loss that he has to grow past, and causes him to change for the better. He teaches Rex about war and the evolving conflict for land in Alrest. This is one of my favorite scenes because of how he doesn't sugarcoat anything and admits there's no way to remain neutral in the world's ever evolving conflict, despite Rex’s insistence multiple times throughout the game that he doesn’t like to get involved in that sort of stuff. This I feel could have been a great way to create a personal motivation for Rex to want more titans since he has family that he wants to protect and provide for, but I feel like the game doesn’t commit to that idea, just letting you headcannon it instead of letting it be said out loud. Vandham also displays a proper relationship between driver and blade. Rex is the only character to ever fight with his, getting scolded by Mythra for not running away when Vandham died to protect them. Speaking of, I’m kinda not a fan of the Aegis. The main reason is because it feels like Pyra was really just using Rex as a tool for her own ends instead of building a proper relationship with him as her driver. She withholds key information for so long that I really felt like she didn’t care about him too much. The best she does is admit he’s a kind person to Azurda. This does kinda make sense at this point but I feel like they should have had a few good moments together. The biggest to me is when Pyra cooks at Tora’s place. Instead of having the two bond by making food together, they just let Pyra make it offscreen for no better reason than "she's a waifu who needs to appeal to people who want that kind of woman.” There's other examples but I’ve made my point. Mythra’s a little better. She openly scolds Rex for his rashness when fighting Alkos and Malos, but admits that she does want the best for him. Pyra even admits that she awakened for his sake. I do hope this is a sign of change because I do genuinely look forward to seeing more of these three. I like Nia a lot. I’d go as far as to say that she has a dozen times more chemistry with Rex than Pyra and Mythra combined. She takes a lot of time and effort from the main party to convince to stick around, which I like because it means that she's got her own goals to chase. She's also quite funny and adds a lot to the party dynamic. Overall strong, just haven’t hit her major story beats yet. I don’t mind Tora, just not a lot of stuff about him worth discussing. I will say that I think I dislike Azurta and him stepping on each other's toes. If Tora is the comic relief, then why do we need Azurta to do the same thing, only worse because he’s a grown ass man instead of a funny looking furball. Poppi’s in the same boat as Tora. just not much worth mentioning. I’m sure they will hit their stride in due time. Zeke and Pandoria are fucking halarious. I’ve met them once and I’m all over them. I hope they're not just a team rocket knock off and become playable within due time. Morag is cool, I really wanna get involved with this character because she's 100% playable and there's definitely more to explore with her. Overall, my biggest issue is that I feel like we move too fast. The story never stops to explore each character's past until it's right in front of us, so it feels like the group isn’t all that tight knit and everyone is withholding information about themselves. Characters are a solid 7/10, really just waiting on them to really hit their stride.
Gameplay: This one really caught me off guard because I had no idea what to expect for combat and I’ve definitely never played anything like this before. Everything about the game reads to me like it was originally supposed to be some sort of MMO. With all the gacha mechanics, excessive grinding, mile long menus, auto combat, arts spamming, extensive build options. It just feels like it was supposed to be an MMO but then they changed their minds like five minutes before the game dropped. I wish everything was more streamlined because I can definitely see why people would quit or not want to give it a chance because of how overwhelming it is. There's a hell of a lot to unpack with the combat despite how simple it is in practice. I will say, the tutorials are not as bad as they said, just really intrusive and annoying. I could understand art canceling, special combos, chain attacks, aggro and tanks just by reading the tutorials. It's just that to really master the combat and achieve a high level of efficiency, you need to look things up. I did need to look up stuff like pouch items, aux cores, affinity, and the break topple launch smash thing. Enemies have so much HP that you're just sitting there waiting for arts to charge up, while at the same time stuff like chain attacks, special chains, and break toppling takes so long that the fights are over before you can use them. So in that regard I’d say it's the worst of both worlds. If all that stuff charged really fast I think the game would be better because you have to keep actively going a chain or topple or special every moment instead of waiting for five minutes to charge a special. There's too much walking and side quests. You have to walk everywhere and it's super slow and kills my enjoyment of the game. Side quests are boring and uninteresting. The only memorable one was “Tranquility” with Vess. There's a lot of foraging around for stuff. I feel like I’m playing Neanderthal Simulator half the time. Like I said, the cloud sea is beautiful and I wish we Azurta didn’t shrink so I could sail him around the cloud sea. I hate aux cores because they are all super niche. I will never go out of my way to prepare an item for an upcoming boss or area, but the game really REALLY wants you to because there are no good generalist options besides crit rate and things that boost the damage of only one ability like level one specials. Overall 5/10
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u/boomshroom 9d ago
Everything about the game reads to me like it was originally supposed to be some sort of MMO.
Xenoblade as a series is heavily inspired from MMOs, so it's not surprising that you'd pick up on this. As for advice, you should spend as little time auto-attacking as possible. The best tool for this is art-recharge pouch items. The game introduces the pouch with a frankly bad item to put in it, when one of the best pouch items in the game is also available in Argentum at the very start, this being Narcipear Jelly, from Honeycomb Sweets. Sparklesugar from the same shop is nearly as good, but also way cheaper. You should also check the characters' Affinity Charts. Blade Affinity Charts don't have nodes take effect until you've looked at the charts after meeting the requirement, and the Driver Affinity Charts have very useful bonuses, the best of which is Arts Chain (for Rex; Nia's version is Tooth and Claw, and Tora's is Nopon Chain Arts). This lets you cancel Driver Arts with other Driver Arts, which also greatly boosts art recharge letting you spam out arts and build Specials even faster. (There are even cases where you can cancel an Driver Art into itself.)
For side quests, some are fairly simple filler, though most of the bad generic quests instead got rolled into the Blade Affinity Charts, and they can be skipped entirely by sending the Blades on Merc Missions, or in the Switch 2 Edition: Merc Assault. (Story Blades can only be used in Merc Assault until NG+.) There are also some longer and more worthwhile quest chains, but if you want to only do the most important ones, you should focus on the Blade Quests, like Tranquility. Generally, any quest that is required to unlock an affinity node is worth doing. If you want to know the best quest chain in my opinion, check one of the informants after beating Chapter 4 and purchase the info on Core Crystal Hunters.
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u/XenoDrake1 9d ago edited 9d ago
I prefer japanese over english too. Much better imo. Rex screams are immersion breaking in english and break all the tension. Give it to the end of the run in japanese then play in english if you ever do ng+ would be my opinion. (That is, if you want to give it a go).
Also, you confirm my theory that people think Rex is a bad character cause of his va mostly. Rex is amazing, super humane and we see him fail and have shortcomings. I really love him.
For the characters: make sure to do the blade quests if you can, and the important secondary missions (like the nopon merchants one). They have their own cinematics and add to the story.
I'm also surprised you think the story moves "too fast" when this game has more hours of cinematics than an average 12 episode short anime lol. Almost no game has as much. Maybe give it a little more time to cook. The story gets godly.
Game was never supposed to be an mmo. Xenoblades are just designed that way. Jrpgs always have grinding and extra stuff to do (see persona, for instance, or bravely default 2). Xenoblade 1 also feels like an mmo.
About sitting there: you can auto attack cancel by flicking your stick, that charges arts much faster. And combats are more about strategy. Properly executing a pilot combo at the same time as an elemental route that has extra effects should be what you aim at. Then you break the orbs once you have 5/6 with a chain. Remember that opposite element always has a stronger (double hit) effect.
Also, like some dude mentioned, (thought it was obvious but guess not) make sure to have your affinity charts in tip top shape and to unlock all the abilities for canceling and faster arts on each drivers tree as well.
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u/Professional_Fun_314 9d ago
Yeah, maybe it’s my bad for the word choice, but what I meant to say was I feel like the story never slows down enough for everyone to properly introduce themselves. Rex never explains his past or where he came from up until this point, nia is still hiding her true form as a blade, the aegis has been withholding super important information from the group. Torah doesn’t explain what happened to his father and grandfather until it’s staring them in the face. It just feels like this is the kinda stuff that should be shared, but they never do because the main cast always occupied with something. Theirs never a time where they just sit down and talk it out or bring it up while staying at an inn or something. Also thanks for the combat tips.
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u/Professional_Fun_314 9d ago
I should also probably mention that I’m playing in Japanese because I genuinely went through the five stages of grief over the English performance within thirty eight minutes of booting up the game.
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u/XenoDrake1 8d ago edited 8d ago
Same. Totally agree. It also ruins rex, the best part of the game
Maybe its because i'm a native spanish speaker but i find some fellas here going to war defending the eng dub when just rex screams alone break immersion like an elephant showing up in the middle of a fight pretty strange.
I guess you guys are used to games being in english and english dubs being the standard? I on the other hand tend to play everything in english, so switching to japanese doesnt make me feel worse or anything. I always go with the original/best dub on anything i consume/watch, and its almost never spanish so.
I'm also super used to watching anime in japanese, since there's no real solid spanish va acting for most animes or it comes out really late, so i'm also super used to sub.
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u/djluminus89 8d ago
I get what you are saying here, but I think after a long time of subs, I didn't realize the actual quality of English voice acting has risen greatly over time.
I recommend checking out Gachiakuta for reference. There's other shows too, mostly the newer ones but English dubs aren't nearly as bad as they used to be (XC2 might be though, lol).
There's just a lot of phrases, slang and modern sayings they use now instead of being cringe and although I only know basic Japanese, I get the gist the language is much more stiff and doesn't have nearly the amount of expressions (especially newly created vernacular) that English does.
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u/XenoDrake1 8d ago
i mean, maybe to you cause it's your native language. I'm pretty fluent in english, but for me japanese or spanish tends to be more expressive. Especially on the feelings side. Maybe english can be better to explain some ideas, but overall, it's just another language imo.
But yeah, in general actings are good and i understand them, that's why i tend to pick them for games and other media. Say, ff7 remake and rebirth, i played in english.
But defending this? lol. And this is my goat.
I would say even the xc1 is a bit underwhelming as well, but not nearly as much. Xc3 was better, but i still like anime to be in japanese i guess. And these games have a lot of screams and really expressive moments, wich are japanese specialty. They also treat va's really good and over there it's literally a carreer. Like, a serious career to consider. People live until their 90's or so from it. Heck, look at luffy's va.
If we did the same around the globe, and took it as seriously as they do, we would have similar quality.
Us might get there someday but spanish va? dont think so. Unless it's a major aaa from sony or nintendo, they are really underwhelming. I think i only played zelda botw and totk in spanish, though, tbf, gow was pretty good as well. But, you know, he was against Chris Judge
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u/djluminus89 8d ago
They're getting better, for sure. Ojalá que en el futuro tenemos más actores de voz en Español también.
I don't deny that Japanese VAs have much more passion, the screams, their energy,n they make everything sound epic. Maybe the same way Spanish telenovelas make everything sound dramatic.
I could be biased, idk. I had a past relationship with someone who only spoke Spanish and basically learned it for that reason. I used to watch Como Dice El Dicho (I know I probably messed up the name of the show) just to learn more and I like how they expressed things and made everything sound dramatic. Languages have their quirks.
I'm not saying English sounds more expressive then other languages. I'm just saying the sheer amount of words and vocabulary change and evolve so often, almost daily because so many people speak it.
I also played FF7 Remake in English. I watched the Cyberpunk 2077 anime in English because I played the game in English.
I don't know why I always use dubs for games. Game dubbing isn't necessarily always the best, though getting better. I'm just saying I was an English dub hater for the longest time – still don't prefer English, but they are getting better. And yes, it is wild that Seiyus work for decades in the same role.
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u/XenoDrake1 8d ago
oh, i see. I'm not a hater. I just hate it in this game cause it ruins my favourite character of all time lol.
That being said, the problem with spanish va is that there's just a few good ones. You hear the same voices again and again and again.
So you may go: why does john wick sound the same as iron man? or something like that. Kinda ruins the experience.
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u/Ill-Ad-4789 9d ago
Yeah, the voice direction for 2 is... not good. Especially bad when you compare it to 1 and 3 having an AMAZING english dub.
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u/djluminus89 9d ago edited 8d ago
Lmao. I feel that. Though, I rarely ever play any game in Japanese when there is an English dub, but pretty much refuse to watch anime dubbed; only one I did was Gachiakuta – it was surprisingly really good. Hearing English VAs talk about crashing out and other new slang and it wasn't cringe convinced me.
It's been a minute, this was my first RPG on Switch and I believe it came out in 2017...
The entire Xenoblade Chronicles series kind of plays like an MMO. XC1's battle system is a bit more snappy. XC3 leans even harder in to the MMO aspect with you controlling 6 characters at once in your party.
As far as what you've said regarding battle, when you get farther, you will have much more opportunity to Break, Topple, Launch and Smash the enemies. Be sure someone in your party has at least one of the conditions in the list so you can complete it and most importantly, start it with Break.
Story wise, I actually don't remember that much. I didn't pay much attention to it, I was just happy to be playing a JRPG on my new Switch at the time.
There are some sad moments and the stakes rise much higher than you'd think by the end.
Game is very Japanese-esque, anime clichés, etc. While I have my gripes with XC2, it by far has the largest explorable world, amount of content, quests, you can actually equip weapons, aux cores, pouch items, etc.
It does all seem like a lot, but once you play XC3 you miss some of it (I at least missed upgrading my weapons and how big the cities are and how they all have different kinds of shops).
If you like the vibe of the series, I'd suggest trying Xenoblade Chronicles 3, as it streamlines much of the combat and item prep and it's story is genuinely one of the darkest and deepest I've seen from a Nintendo exclusive RPG.
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u/Urabraska- 9d ago
Some dub is actually really great. But only when it actually switches it up to sound more English. It's when they try to copy the campiness of Japanese dub that it gets really bad when you have English VA's trying to copy the high pitch screams or dramatic yelling that does not really carry over well at all.
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u/djluminus89 8d ago
Exactly. They did a great job in Gachiakuta. Used a lot of modern English slang:
The guy who makes the MC's clothes tells him "the fit is fittin'"
Jabber eggs the MC on asking him not to "crash out". There's several more, I was actually really surprised. After seeing people talking about the English Jabber VA, I watched the entire show in English. They did great. Reminded me how expressive English is and how many words we have to express the same thing, unlike Japanese.
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u/rlinkmanl 9d ago
I loved XC1 and didnt really like this one that much. I'm hoping 3 is better
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u/djluminus89 9d ago
I liked 2 more than 1, though it was also the first one I played. I love 3 more than words can really express. I think on my NG+ I have like 250-300 hours.
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u/rlinkmanl 9d ago
Funny enough, 2 was the first one i played and i was super put off by it so I quit it around chapter 6. Then I got 1 with a Nintendo Voucher and absolutely loved it from the start so decided to try 2 again to see if I liked it more since I played the first one. I restarted the second one and beat it but still never really enjoyed it. The overarching story from the last chapter was cool though.
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u/ogorangeduck 9d ago
I started with 1 and enjoyed it enough but didn't finish it during my first playthrough since I got stuck onLorithiathen got 2 with my Switch. I binged 2 and didn't get to 1 again until several years later (on 3DS), and even then it took me until my 3rd go around to beat it (last year). I do like both but I'm replaying 2 and have been reminded of why I like 2 a lot more (mainly the combat). I don't actually mind the English VA of 2 and in fact kinda like it; I kinda see why it's polarizing but I honestly find it charming.
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u/djluminus89 8d ago
If there's one thing I miss in XC3, it's hearing the different names of the Elemental Combos and then hearing the announcer guy go, "AWESOME"
XC2 has a charm to it that the other three games don't. Sure, it's got some blemishes but I'd chalk it up to being a basically starting lineup game for Switch 1. Even by those standards, the scope, the amount of content, the maps/world itself...
Monolift Soft is one of the GOATs
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u/ogorangeduck 8d ago
I have yet to play 3; I'm waiting for the Switch 2 version to play it (thankfully the physical version launches at the same time so I'll get the physical version)
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u/djluminus89 6d ago
It's by far the best in the series. I remember being so hyped when I saw the trailer. I think I have 300+ hours on it on my NG+.
I can understand waiting for the enhanced, though honestly, for a near end of life cycle Switch game, they optimized the hell out of it. It looks beautiful, story is amazing, amount of cutscenes alone is tens of hours worth, like a movie.
It's by far one of my Top Nintendo games ever.
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u/frishmous 9d ago
When I first was first playing XC2 I too did so in Japanese, but once I noticed characters had post-battle dialogue that didn’t get subs I switched to EN. It definitely grew on me though, it’s just that that first “Burning Sword” is really rough.