Review: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Best Buy delivered my copy a day early, but I'm honestly just going to hold off until tomorrow to play it. I started it up, but that dubbing is just atrocious. I don't want it ruining my first experience. I'm content waiting to download the Japanese voice DLC. 

Ohhhh, the voices are just as bad in the US version? I thought the dodgy voices were only for our UK localisation!

( Edited 01.12.2017 00:32 by Adam Riley )

It's like Xenoblade 1 - they went back to mostly British for the English dub. Seemed like there was a high demand for it to return. After hearing this tho, Nintendo can't seem to get English VA decent at all following Zelda and now even this. I'm all for using relative unknown VAs, but something's going wrong somewhere given the low quality of BotW and now Xeno 2.

I wanna hear more of the Welsh girl. Love that they added one (I must sound like a broken record in my cries for more Welsh VA), but she doesn't give Drippy a run for his money from what I heard so far. Gonna have to wait for more footage after the game is out.

In general tho, the VA seems awful based on the trailers.

( Edited 01.12.2017 00:45 by Azuardo )

I don't mind her voice...but it just doesn't fit in the game's context or suit the character. The voice for Rex, though, is just horrendous in general.

Also, something I forgot to add in the review - there are objective markers at the top of the screen that count down the closer you get to the current objective's goal. That's fine, since many games seem to have this sort of hand-holding, so fair enough. However, several objective markers sit on top of each other, meaning it's sometimes very hard to see which one you need to be focusing on. It's only when you move far enough away from one, and close enough to another, that the markers separate and become clearer to read how far away the current mission goal is.

If you catch my drift...

Huh. Honestly, at this point I almost wish they had just continued with Chronicles X then. This sounds like they overdid a lot of the systems.

I can see how they've tried to streamline things by splitting special moves onto the right side of the screen, mapped to the action buttons, and then put the Blade swapping move on the left side. But that isn't the end of it, as there are bars at the top to watch that fill up and allow for regen if a character falls in battle, a special link that shows between Driver (Rex) and Blade (Pyra or anyone else you end up with as the adventure goes on) that needs to be watched as if it stretches too thin, powered up attacks don't work.

Then there is a combo system mixing Blade specials and Driver moves, the idea of juggling between different Blades at the right point to take advantage of their element type, and then the usual matter of suddenly finding enemies previously off-screen randomly deciding to join a fight. Too often some Level 30+ bird flew by and caught me out when trying to grind at lower levels.

Thankfully there's a Mario Odyssey warp style function to leap to key locations quickly...

very refreshing to read a very honest to god review on this game that does not gloss over the real flaws.

Renan said:
Best Buy delivered my copy a day early, but I'm honestly just going to hold off until tomorrow to play it. I started it up, but that dubbing is just atrocious. I don't want it ruining my first experience. I'm content waiting to download the Japanese voice DLC. 

i wont play it till january.
ill give some impressions in febuary 

It's not done as well as many were expecting an I wonder if some of the mixed reviews have played a part in this. However, it's still managed to open slightly stronger than the previous two Xenoblades in Japan, which is a decent uplift.

I want to give this a whirl but I've not yet finished a Xenoblade, played the Wii version many years ago, bought the 3DS remake and never played it and have been sitting on X for a little while now. 

I hope they can give the series a break otherwise I'll fall behind and won't bother to catch up!

Is anyone getting the DLC pass?

Adam Riley said:

Renan said:
Best Buy delivered my copy a day early, but I'm honestly just going to hold off until tomorrow to play it. I started it up, but that dubbing is just atrocious. I don't want it ruining my first experience. I'm content waiting to download the Japanese voice DLC. 

Ren - I'm intrigued what your thoughts are on the game now... Same goes for anyone else that has dived into it. I read a review on Kotaku that attacked it on so many levels that...well, I somewhat agreed with, but I felt more positive about it overall than they did in the end.

Also, the name changes for the English localization boggle my mind. I like that I'm playing with the Japanese VO now, but it is distracting to hear "Homura" but read "Pyra." Also, not particularly fond that the Judeo-Christian elements have been toned down. The original script lifts very heavily from Arthurian legend from what I can tell and it seems the translators just changed everything to generic fantasy jargon. 

I realize I'm still very early in the game, but I'm pretty disappointed. Xenoblade 1 is one of the my favorite games, I'd hate to see the series stay more in-line with X2. 

Welsh catgirl Nia is by far the best character. Refreshing to have a blunt and to-the-point Welsh woman as a catgirl  Defo gonna have to pick this up just for her at some point. But I'm keeping expectations overall in check. Hopefully the price comes down a bit over time, but it's always difficult waiting for Nintendo games to drop, since they rarely do by much. Might be better to wait for a Nintendo Selects version in the future.

So crazy, so many of my Switch friends are playing this game at the moment. Everytime i pop online everyone is playing this! 

I think the price won't really come down that much. This is the type of game that once it goes out of print it probably won't come back. Nintendo know how to keep the price of their games high because of this reason, although Pokemon, Zelda and Mario games remain in print but just hold their value! 

Its the reason why I always end up getting Fire Emblem games on day one!

I was really looking forward to this game, but I'm not impressed so far. I'm having difficulty defeating even the easiest of creature and I'm having to grind for hours just to acieve anything. Also, the creatures are grouped so close together that I start fighting something that I know I can beat, but something else wanders in range from somewhere and beats the crap out of me. It doesn't help that the game starts out with a story, then once that is established you're set to task doing boring menial tasks for hours. I'm really finding this game hard to get into. Going to try to persevere but don't know if I'll ever get much further without giving up. This makes me sad. 

Trepe, that's exactly how I felt. You've just hit the nail right on the head, and reading my review back, I am surprised I ended up giving it 7 rather than a 6. There are enjoyable parts, but the grind is awful.

Trepe said:
I was really looking forward to this game, but I'm not impressed so far. I'm having difficulty defeating even the easiest of creature and I'm having to grind for hours just to acieve anything. Also, the creatures are grouped so close together that I start fighting something that I know I can beat, but something else wanders in range from somewhere and beats the crap out of me. It doesn't help that the game starts out with a story, then once that is established you're set to task doing boring menial tasks for hours. I'm really finding this game hard to get into. Going to try to persevere but don't know if I'll ever get much further without giving up. This makes me sad. 

Flynnie said:

Trepe said:
I was really looking forward to this game, but I'm not impressed so far. I'm having difficulty defeating even the easiest of creature and I'm having to grind for hours just to acieve anything. Also, the creatures are grouped so close together that I start fighting something that I know I can beat, but something else wanders in range from somewhere and beats the crap out of me. It doesn't help that the game starts out with a story, then once that is established you're set to task doing boring menial tasks for hours. I'm really finding this game hard to get into. Going to try to persevere but don't know if I'll ever get much further without giving up. This makes me sad. 

Is this specific to this particular entry in the series or did the original and X play out like this for you as well?

The grinding feels worse in this game, but it's not just that. The tasks you have to do when the game start are mostly menial tasks that feel like little more than filler. In the previous titles the tasks at the start of the game bared some relation to the story. Also, in the previous games you felt like you were in with a fighting chance with enemies around your level. I'm having to fight enemies two or three levels below myself and like I said before, even then theirs no guarantee you'll win because a random creature can wander near and start fighting. In the other games the chance of this happening was there, but it wasn't as high. And the enemies generally weren't grouped so closely together.

( Edited 08.01.2018 13:48 by Azuardo )

Ah ok, I see! I am not quite sure i'd pick it up any time soon myself. I know I haven't got time for the grind and i've not even really started the previous two games! Still worthwhile knowing though. Thanks!

I gave up on Xenoblade Chronicles 2 after playing about 10-12 hours of it and didn't touch it again for weeks after. Recently I decided to give it another go and slogged through another 10 or so hours. Once I got to 20 hours in I finally started enjoying it more and got hooked.  In the end I enjoyed it and think it's a really good RPG, but the initial slog through the beginning of the game would be enough to put anyone off and it's a shame. The story is completely stupid and doesn't always even make sense but I enjoyed it because of the character development and themes of the story as a whole. It also had a nice payoff at the end which made some of the odder aspects of the story make sense. I finished the game after about 110 hours.

So, in the end, I'd recommend it for anyone who loves RPGs. Just be prepared for a slog at the start and some annoying English voice work (especially the fact that the same phrases are repeated thousand of times over and will probably drive you crazy) and a very confusing and convoluted battle system which is hard to understand at first (and you may still not  have a grip of it by the time you finish the game) but does ease you into it somewhat, although with very little explanation of what to do. 

( Edited 28.04.2018 21:29 by Trepe )

- Bad voice acting
- Painful start to the game (understatement, since 'start' equates to 10+ hours here!)
- Convoluted / confusing battle system

Spot on, Trepe! I think I preferred XCX over this in the end... Have the DLC updates made much difference, do you know?

Adam Riley said:
- Bad voice acting
- Painful start to the game (understatement, since 'start' equates to 10+ hours here!)
- Convoluted / confusing battle system

Spot on, Trepe! I think I preferred XCX over this in the end... Have the DLC updates made much difference, do you know?

I haven't bought any DLC, £26 is a lot. I preferred XCX too. XC2 isn't a big a game as X I loved the scale of X and the seemless exploration, but XC2's world feel tiny in comparison and they're all separated, so lots of loading screens. I think X's worlds look nicer too. The combat in X was relatively straight forward too yet still pretty satisfying, especially when you upgrade to a mech and can fly anywhere. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 feels like a downgrade in some respects. Although the character models in X weren't that great and XC2 has better character development and more story.

( Edited 29.04.2018 08:58 by Adam Riley )

im about 50 hours into this game and its showing no signs of closure.

how in the name of sega genesis did they get away with making such a long RPG??

Insanoflex said:
im about 50 hours into this game and its showing no signs of closure.

how in the name of sega genesis did they get away with making such a long RPG??