Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Nintendo Switch) Second Opinion Review

Starter areas ease players into their world and explain how all those buttons and levers work. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is notoriously bad at that, constantly spewing new info, and doing so somewhat ungracefully. What little immersion can be found during the first steps into the world of Alrest dissolves by the frequent appearance of combat tutorials that don't explain things that well before they disappear into the black endless void of nothingness. That won't end very soon, as tutorials pop up even 60 hours deep into this odyssey! A clear mark of bad game design, and not of a deep, interesting system, because the rule when it comes to overly elaborate mechanics is to hide complexity under a facade of simplicity. This feels as it adds stuff for the sake of adding stuff.

The continents of this world are creatures called Titans. So, everything takes place on the back (or the inside) of giant, almost demi-god-like beasts, and it is quite the interesting sight. The franchise has always been in love with scale, but sadly, this love extents to the options handed out to you. More than 10 different merchants and types of consumables, when just a few would suffice; many weapon types, and many abilities; plenty of time required to be spend before exploration, and many balls to keep in the air while fighting. Learning the game and getting familiar with the myriads of options available is a slow process, and this kind of throws most of said options on you a bit too early, so it will be hard for many to enjoy the immense variety. And then there are the Blades…

The story focuses a lot on Blades - human-like weapons that have their own personality. The are many of these to find, they get experience and unlock new abilities, and the party trio can actually "equip" more than one and swap them on the fly essentially changing their skillset. Here's the thing, though. These are immensely powerful beings, so it feels kind of wrong when you are fighting a bunny and spend a minute or two to kill it. Oh, you need to level up a bit, so time for some grinding! Hmm, it survived 10 hits from this giant, fire-enveloped, mystical greatsword. Err, you also need to use Arts, which are skills that increase a certain meter, which in turn can unleash powerful attacks. Alright, this has lots of tactical depth, makes sense, makes sense… darn it! This still takes too long!!!

This is very combat-heavy. One needs to fight to collect the necessary resources, find key items, or simply go from A to B, so it doesn't help that it's all so slow. The duration of each battle isn't even a matter of skill. After you grasp what there is to grasp, and master what there is to master, combat can be summarised in one word: waiting. It's all automatic, and the only occasional input expected from you is a button press at the right time. After waiting some more, you will be able to create ability combos, and then some. So, you've prepared your crew accordingly, you know how to exploit enemy weaknesses, position your hero, chain attacks together, and create very powerful combos that unleash tons of damage. Gee, you've just decreased like half of the enemy health… at best.

Battles take way too much time, and it's very easy for them to take even longer since wondering enemies can join in on the fun. At best these add a few more minutes to the process. At worse, a large monster 30 levels stronger than the party will come and kill everyone in a couple of blows - quite the common sight in the first region where lvl5 critters run around lvl50 behemoths. One thing that should be noted, however, is that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is actually at its worse in the first 10 to 20 hours of the adventure. It doesn't get much better after this, but it does get better, with the player finally given the freedom to explore the world, and experiment with the party management options. Even more importantly, the story gets noticeably better as well to the point that the chapters that take place closer to the finale feel as if they are a part of a different adventure altogether.

We follow Rex the salvager who spends his days diving into the Cloud Sea. Around this bizarre ocean mountain-sized Titans swim, and the sentient races of this world fight for space as these living lands slowly decrease in number. During the introductory "dungeon," he'll become bound to a legendary Blade called Pyra, and together they will try to reach Elysium, the supposed paradise on top of a gargantuan tree, where people can finally live in peace with their creator. Epic, right? Well, the game will often work against its otherwise intriguing setting. One notable example is how, unlike in classics such as Final Fantasy VII, where you are constantly reminded of what's at stake, here Rex will spend an enormous amount of time in missions that don't really feel connected to the main story.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 really struggles with having a consistent tone. There are plenty of themes explored here, but maybe the main one is of world that's close to its end, and how that affects everyone. Well, too bad that this often approaches such a bleak future as if it is a show meant for children. No matter what predicament the heroes will find themselves in, you'll be served plenty of silly shenanigans during the many, and needlessly long cut-scenes. There are some moments that are more serious, usually near the end, where characters slowly start to reveal their "secrets," and unexpected (and interesting) things start to occur, but before all that happens, you'll have to sit through many hours of predictable scenarios and boring dialogue sequences.

Plenty of "little" things hurt the believability of the world, like how many victorious boss fights end with a defeat in the cut-scene afterwards, how the characters never shut their darn hole during battles (an awful, modern JRPG trend that needs to die), or how fast travel is possible no matter what has happened story-wise, since you can escape your "inescapable prison" to do some shopping, and then come back to your cell. The inconsistency in tone continues with the art style as well. It all looks good (especially the landscapes), but it kind of feels weird seeing a character that is clearly crafted by Masatugu Saito walking right next to a Tetsuya Nomura creation. The game is all over the place. There are lots of good things to talk about, but they are buried under an immense pile of rubble.