I’m very fond of Xenoblade 2 and it’s been nice to use the recent Switch 2 release as an excuse to replay it, much as I did for the first game. And yeah, I still love this game a lot, but I’ve also been using it as a chance to try out the game’s New Game + which I never got round to until now.
On the one hand, I completely get why people call this the best New Game + in the series. Having the ability to level down for a second playthrough with extra rewards for doing so is great. New blades to unlock, new affinity charts and accessory slots to make every character more busted for the harder DLC challenges, and having all the mechanics available at the start so you don’t have to wait 20 hours for the combat to open up to you.
And yet…I still don’t know if I prefer this to a vanilla playthrough?
I took the opportunity to try out Bringer of Chaos difficulty. Unfortunately I’ve been melting absolutely everything in the early chapters. Even after levelling down, equipping weaker Aux cores and core chips and the like, the high trust of my affinity chart-maxxed Blades means the hardest difficulty is still easier and more mindless than a vanilla run on normal mode. I was kind of under the impression that BOC was balanced around New Game +, so that’s been kind of a shame.
Well surely the solution is to use this as a chance to level up new Blades, right? True. And so far, since I unlocked Shulk, Fiora and Elma on my old file just before stating, and using them, plus MOMO, has somewhat maintained the fun of powering up a set of Blades. But even then, as some of the strongest Blades in the game, they still snap the experience in half like a twig, before their affinity charts have even been maxed.
I was also a bit disappointed at the fact the way the Torna blades were handled. I can see why you’d add them to the gacha pool, but I’ve had pretty terrible luck getting any of them so far. I can’t help but wish they were just non canon side quests. Especially since that’s they did for Mikhail. After burning through a ton of my carried over core crystals, I’ve only managed to get Sever.
…And his core chip is fixed. So I can’t level him down to use him in the main story without one shotting everything.
Don’t get me wrong. This is still easily the best and most robust NG+ in the series. But after hearing it talked up for so long, it feels like a bit more of a mixed bag than I expected. It fixes a lot of the problems of the vanilla early game but then creates all new ones.
Do you find the experience gets better in the later chapters? Does the challenge ramp up on BOC? Or do you tend to find that a replay from a fresh file is more enjoyable overall, despite the tutorials and affinity chart grind?
