While the framerate is indeed mediocre in this game, what I meant to say during that segment is that the resolution looks like shit during battle and animations (especially the 2 seconds screen when you initiate a chain attack). Apparently, from what I read, it can go as low as 342p, which is absolutely ridiculous. But anyway, I just wanted to clarify that my problem was mostly with the resolution and not the framerate.
The framerate in this game, specially after the updates is in the majority of the time on its target 30 fps, and there is no instance of it having situations like Zelda BOTW infamous Kakariko village or lost woods level of drops (or even when freezing and launching a enemy). Yet somehow I see people still saying stuff like you just said while Zelda is rarely called out. The resolution on docked is 720p, same as Bayonetta 1 and 2 on switch, same as the Witcher 3 on Switch. The digital foundry analysis even says, great when docked, and yet I see people get the in formation there out of context or nlowing it out of the water.
Yeah, I thought that it was strange that you didn't mentioned the resolution, which is the major drawback with the game, mainly in portable mode (shit actually looks bad). I didn't have much problems with the frame rate tho
My problem with this game is that exactly, frame rate and resolution. Great game but the jarring frame rate turned me off. Played 3/4 of it so far. I am very upset they decided to bring out part 3 on the same crap switch hardware. Xeno X on the switch was amazing! Definitely should try!
Yeah Jin literally directly says he froze Lora as a reminder as to why he doesn't believe in the Architect, there's nothing wrong with criticisms but when they're blatantly false they're hard to take seriously.
Technically in games you can do what you want, time travel, resurrection miracles you name it, its what they will do in FF7 remake and resurrect Aeirth when she dies again, and its her destiny to be resurrected.
I don't experience games the same way as Erick anymore, maybe because he plays so many. I get less frustrated with being blocked, because I'm in no rush to go to the next game; I like spending time to learn layers of a dense and deep new gameplay, because that tickles my creativity. I care 0% about graphics performance, only about art direction. And I absolutely find Xenoblade 2 a game with an identity of its own.
I really loved this game. Nia's awakening and Pyra (Homura's) awakening into her true form are two of my favorite moments, (and that ending. Ye gods the feels) Granted, there is a hell of a learning curve, but once I figured out the combat, I really preferred it over XBC1's combat imo. My 2 strongest criticisms that annoyed me gameplay wise were: 1) The gatcha mechanics regarding the acquisition of rare blades. 2) the constant need to swap blades when needed to pass a talent/skill test. Definitely took me out of the game when I came up short. I was very verbal at my tv screen during those moments 😅 Looking forward to seeing what XBC3 brings us. Got a feeling they learned a lot and and implementing the best mechanics of the previous games. But man that UI (oofa) 😆 Great video Eric, as always really appreciate your content. It was your channel that reignited my love for JRPGs. Much gratitude.
Yea combat in 2 was better. 1 felt clunky. Using the arrow button to move a cursor to specific skills while trying to move around for positionals on a controller. Super uncomfortable
I thought the battle system was hard and complicated, but I think the real problem regarding that is the lack of tutorials you can revisit. You get the explanation of driver combos, blade combos, fusion combos, etc. ONLY ONCE, and unless you check a good guide on the internet there is no way you can exploit the battle system properly. That part got better with Torna and XC:DE
The English voice acting has lots of charm and I think at times it’s much better except the fights scenes obviously To me there’s no way most of these characters could sound different without losing their charm. It’s not perfect but I like how most of the cast voice acting
I have to disagree regarding the English VA for Nia. It is probably the thing I like the most about the game. I really loved that VA so much... Regarding everything else I agree. The worst part of this game is the way too much fan service and the general middle school horny brat kind of silliness... and also the damn blade RNG.
I can list a lot of bad mechanics, Merc Missions, Blades, some of the development level/affinity shit, blade affinity charts, the blade designs. Rex and Pyra have really bad. It’s clear the English voice direction had some issues too. Other than that, it is pretty decent
I like Nia's voice actor too the one I have a problem with is Rex I don't think his voice actor did a bad job it's just that he looks nothing like how he sounds
They often change character's names in fantasy JRPGs that don't take place in Japan. The Persona games all take place in Japan, but Xenoblade 2 takes place in Alrest, so for the localization I guess they wanted to give the characters (the ones who had Japanese names specifically) more fantastical, imaginary names.
The names were changed to better represent what the meaning of the names were in Japanese as they'd appear in English. Homura means flame, Pyra's origin is Pyro which also means flame Hikari means light, Mythra comes from the Iranian God of the same name which is the God of light. Mithras is also the name the Romans used for the deity which, because they used a lot of Ancient Roman terms, is likely also why it was chosen. Metsu means destruction, Malos is Latin (Malus) for bad which is used as the base for a lot of English words (Malice, Malpractice, Malady, Malnourished, ect.) Hana means flower, Poppi is literally a flower Pretty much every name change was done to keep the meaning of the name in a way that is less likely to be lost in translation. Do they need to do this? No. Especially since they are for the most part just switching one language meaning for a word (Japanese) to another one (Latin/Greek) that a lot of people who might be playing the game likely also don't know so the change is kind of irrelevant besides maybe being able to link to actual words/people. My personal take on the matter is, I don't care. If they change the names, they change the names. They aren't doing so out of a sense of malice. They are simply trying to make a better representation for those who don't know Japanese. Some times they fail (Looking at you Percival....), other times like the ones mentioned above, I feel they succeeded.
Yeah, I was gonna mention there's a difference between keeping the Japanese names for games not set in Japan. Especially if the names are supposed to be thematic.
@@RobertHinchey Amalthus's name change is perfect, though, because his name didn't originally mean anything. Changing it to a combination of Amalthea (who is related to the Aegis shield) and Thomas Malthus (who wrote a very wrong essay on overpopulation) is perfect for a humanity-hating man who created an Aegis.
Xenoblade 2 became my favorite Xenoblade, I don't think there is much fanservice apart from the costumes, I agree with almost everything except that Rex is too generic, it may seem that way at first but as I have replayed the game, I realize that Rex matures a lot throughout his journey, it's something you don't notice at the beginning or on a first playthrough, but this game has a lot of things that are there from the beginning and you don't notice, that's brilliant writing to me, also when you understand the combat you discover that it's the best combat of Xenoblade (I don't count X because I haven't played it)
About to play this game once I finish the extra story with Shulk and Melia. I'm so excited I can't even focus on the current one anymore. I'll probably revisit the 1st game after a few months or maybe a year after I'm done with all of it as I plan to get the 3rd one once I beat 2. Eric made me expect some good fan service here as I treat it as a bonus instead of a detriment like most people who hate that stuff though it's fine as well if there isn't much.
Many things are indeed wrong with the game, yet it still managed to become one of my favorite JRPGs, so far only dethroned by SMT5 as my favorite Switch game. I don't agree with it looking bad though, but definitely rough on some spots, though I played mostly on docked mode. That Neptunia comparison might be too harsh though, lol.
@@Terron29 Same. lol It was my first SMT and though it's kind of forgettable in the plot and character department, with the exception of the Law reps, it was just so fun to play.
Its funny the first tie I started this game I stopped in that first town after you crash land. I was told you have to get past that first town then you will get hooked in. Seemed to work out and I took 160 hours on my first play through.
Why do most people do not understand the element battle system? I really thought it was really interesting and how you had to use different blades to take full advantage of the system. Why is it confusing for almost everybody and they dislike it? I find it something that adds variety and replayability inside of the same game battles and being able to pull different strategies.
First time i played it it confused the hell outta me stuck with it and ended up loving how involved every encounter was could have a little harder outside of boss battles which I also loved
This game have a lots of problems, but I love it. For me what really bothers me is the gacha system, some of the side quest to level up the blade affinity and the horrible localisation.
One big issue is that they did away with almost everything that made Xenoblade unique - especially the different ways you can attract enemies. Some enemies in Xenoblade 1 and X attack when they hear you, so you have to sneak past them (even if they bump into you, they won't attack), and others will attack if someone use magic. Yet more enemies will never attack unless attacked, or only if their comrades are attacked by the party. However, in Xenoblade 2, all enemies attack you on sight! No blind enemies, no magical enemies, no docile enemies, nope. An even worse problem is the combination of needing field skills and the gatcha mechanic. Now, you don't need to get optional unique Blades, but you do need to boost your field skills with random Blades, especially with ice mastery which cannot be got with any story related Blade. The biggest issue is during that part in chapter 4, in which you can either get level freaking 6 fire mastery, or Joseph Joestar your way (in other words: RUN) past level 85 enemies. Anyway, I love all three games in the franchise (so far), but X has way more issues IMHO. Sending you in must-complete missions to the furthest island with the most dangerous monsters with extremely high levels - WHY?!? I have nothing but painful memories from trying to find the path that won't end up in me one-shotted by a level 40+ monster.
Xenoblade 2 is one of my favorite games on the switch but it definitely has it's flaws (and they're pretty fun to talk about). The issue with the navigation system and field skills are both some of the most glaring issues for sure.(thankfully it looks like both of these were fixed in XC3) Just like you I had to look up where to go a few times. Xenoblade 2s gatcha system is also a pretty common complaint. Personally I didn't HATE it myself because it was possible to beat the main story with regular common blades but I didn't beat it to 100% completion because I didn't want to get all the rare blades. Some of the blades had pretty cool side quests but others were awful. I somewhat agree with your issue on the enemies in the world. See, I actually really love seeing higher level enemies in starting areas! The level of fear when I saw rotbart for the first time is something that I don't think I'll forget lol! It was really wonderful and it gave me a good reason to go back to those areas after I beat the game! However in XC2 they didn't have different types of aggro like they did in the previous games (in XC1 for example if they had an eye above their head it meant if the enemy sees you then it'll attack you). Since this was absent in XC2 it felt like more enemies would try to attack you when exploring. I think your issue at 15:28 might have to do with the fact that you played Torna first. For me I finished the base game first and then played Torna afterwards so this didn't bother me too much, although I can imagine it feeling different if I chose to play Torna first. Also I'm surprised you hated Nias voice in English! I know a lot of people hate the english dub but for me personally I can't imagine Nia without her Welsh accent 😂. Like I watched my friend playthrough most of XC2 in Japanese but whenever I think of Nia I remember her welsh accent by default lol.
In my opinion the voices of the younger characters (or with young voices) are quite decent, especially Morag's. But the voices of Azurda and Dromarch are quite bad.
I've tried to beat the first game multiple times and I've never been able to. I always get bored with it. Xenoblade chronicles 2 was the first I was able to play all the way through and I loved it, almost 200 hours to beat it.
@@kwameoliver2455 doing this right now lmao. I dropped it a couple of years ago because the pacing felt so slow. picked it back up two weeks ago and almost dropped it for the same reason, but i decided to press on and slog through the beginning chapters because i really want to finish it before 3 gets released.
What's wrong with all of you!? The first one is a masterpiece! Second one is way worse with all those anime tropes and fan service and combat takes a lot more to pick up the pace =S.
@@All_Ice117 I mean I love the first one because I played it 3 times, if u start the game with torra the prequel it plays alot better, but mainly I don't like it I can say like the combo stuff is cool because it's better then the first but it felt actually better with the chain attack in the first game like where ur character was, even die hards don't Defend the shity story, it sucks the first one had the better story the second one had better overall characters, some of the blades stories was cool, but yeah it's like a shity anime the video game even pulling off some stupid awakening power that only the mc was able to do.
The Xenoblade series is better then the Final Fantasy series and I will die on that hill. It literally has all the talent that made 90s square such a powerhouse.
To be fairly honest, the only offender of getting lost was the Chamber of Offering Elphys Tomb or however it's called, because there it was useless the GPS thing.
It really speaks volumes when a game has so many flaws and yet it stands out as one of the best games on the platform, or in the genre even (at least from the last decade or so). Why is this game still SO good to so many of us? I think it has to do with the heart of the franchise and of it's creator Takahashi. There's a vision you might not be able to define, but its there. It breathes personality in every aspect of the game. Don't get me wrong, the game is solid gameplay wise as well. If you master the combat, you can feel like a GOD. And you actually feel like a smart person. Also, the worlds they create, it just had never been done before to the scale they did with the first game. And they keep creating these insane big alien worlds which are just a joy to explore. I'm so FUCKING hyper for X3, I truly believe from what Ive seen so far it will be the best in the series. They got rid of all the tedious stuff and just focused on everthing that makes these games fun, combat, story and exploring.
I understand people’s criticisms, but for me, Xenoblade 2 is the better game. There was so much more to enjoy in 2, but it required a bit of help from the internet, which absolutely is a problem. The gotcha system was fine and fun, but the extremely low percentages led me to have to strategize about it, which again required help from the internet. I don’t at all think the “fan service” at all messed with the game’s identity. I had no problem taking Pyra and Mythra seriously just because they had boobs and revealing outfits. Maybe I’m just used to living in Asia where women wear revealing clothing, lol. All in all, despite the confusing parts, it was extremely satisfying for me, and the story had me guessing a lot more than in Xenoblade 1, which was overly simplistic at times. I especially like how all the villains in 2 are given motivations that are easy to sympathize with. You found a lot of flaws that I can agree with, but they were like bugs on the windshield of this badass monster truck of a game.
the only people having problem with revealing cloths and boobs are american/britan puritans, its great and a shame we dont get it back in 3 cuz of twitter puritans.
I agree with everything you said.. "Fan service"? Name me 1 jrpg with out the " fan service" thing.. From jrpgs to Animes they were always doing that,it is not a new thing.. And we have people saying >..yeah but you played 120+ freaking hours a game that you didnt like for some reassons. Fun fact the same people are watching animes with fan service and they are playing games similar to xc2 but they forgot to mention about it...no critisism there. At the end of the day to all haters xenoblade chronicles 2 sold over 2 million+ copies at December 2020, it is the best-selling title in the Xeno series, and Monolith Soft's most commercially successful game.
I’m glad you acknowledge you like it at the beginning because so many people have this mentality that if someone finds faults in anything, that means they hate it. If there’s one thing I’m hoping for from 3, it’s that I really hope if blades make a comeback, maybe not make ‘Optional’ ones mandatory to getting passed certain obstacles. Though my biggest issue is BS like having to jump off a bridge and almost kill my party to reach the next area required to advancing the story.
There's also a lot of mentality that "if I can find faults with something, then it's disqualified from being good/great", as if a game needed to be completely free of such issues, and despite the fact their own favorite games get plenty of flak over certain things too. The good and the bad can exist side by side for fans like Eric, so it's not like those criticisms are some great discovery when they're brought up by someone who intensely dislikes it.
Positive side: agree on Pacing, Exploration, World Building, Lore, Music and everything honestly Negative side: - Agree: performance, hard to exploit the battle system (+ the tutorials), the Gacha system (by far the worse), downloading the JP voices, the translations (the part you talk about the names), what they did to Lora - Disagree: getting lost (like... how you get lost), field skills, the high level monsters (sorry for it gives the world more life overall), the skill trees and stores, fanservice (sorry but all people who complain about it en XC2 have problems)
The names of these characters is such an overblown none issue 🤡 I much prefer how their English name sounds since I can understand meaning behind them rather than a Japanese sounding name that doesn’t ring a bell For instance pyra is a name associated with fire Mythra is referring to a Latin word which is cool Jin sounds better than shin It’s just names that will make more sense for a western audience just like the Japanese names will resonate better for Japanese people We shouldn’t glorify Japanese voice acting or names or whatever just cause we want it For a western audience it makes way more sense that everything makes sense to us as well
I bought all xenoblade games when they released but for some reason as soon as i reach the final dungeon or area i seem to get bored of playing it. Up until now i havent finished either DE, X, 2 or torna and its just around 2 or 3 hrs of gameplay left
I got into XC1 last fall with the definitive edition, and just finished XC2. I'd say my biggest issue with XC2 is a lot of the anime tropey stuff, which I think feels at conflict with otherwise more serious situations, and the cutscene slog near the end of the game. If you know, you know. That was straight-up fatigue, and I feel as if some of those moments could have been trickled into the game before hand. That being said, I enjoyed XC2 a lot and I'm glad I didn't listen to some posts saying, "You can play it without playing XC1", because having played XC1, man did the later chapters land WAY better.
Glad you didn't hear them. I didn't even believe the developers about 2 when they said what they said... I always try playing the older games in a series first because I know that the newer ones usually improve upon the gameplay, at least. I agree, the anime stuff was what ruined 2 for me. I still finished it and enjoyed it, but it could have been WAY better without all that.
Tbh I don't mind at all Anime tropes in jrpg's, mainly because I play them because I'm such an anime fan lol like I see JRPG'S as interactive anime anyway, now my problem with xenoblade chronicles 2 is the type of anime it borrows is tropes from , being Echi battle Shonen, where as xenoblade chronicles 1 was akin to a dark Shonen that was damn near on the cusp of being a Seinen.
Always glad to see someone willing to critique this game's narrative and characters. I will never understand how there are so many people who will swear by this game as a "tearjerker". I think you have to be 7 years old or less in order to find this game either moving or thought-provoking. Just to add on to your criticisms in addition to them dropping the ball with Laura: Nia revealing she has the power to give people cancer and never using it again (and Malos not even dying from said power), Jin being able to move at the speed of light AND control "elemental particles", whatever the fuck that means, and yet he still somehow doesn't instantly win every fight from then on (also why wouldn't he have used that the first time he ran into Rex again), Pyra threatening to use Siren's targeting laser to incinerate herself, even though doing so would also kill Rex, which would defeat the purpose of threatening to kill herself since she was only doing that to save Rex's life (and she never uses this ability again nor did she ever use it earlier when it would have been extremely useful), Mythra calling down Siren indoors even though for the entire game up to that point we've been told it "can't" be used indoors, the way that the bad guys know where the heroes are at all times and have the ability to just teleport wherever they want and then leap away into the sky if they ever lose a fight, yet we the heroes have to trudge around on foot everywhere (there's no way any of them shouldn't all be captured by now with how omnipotent and omnipresent the villains are), the way that blade eaters and flesh eaters are introduced and then never differentiated from each other in any meaningful way, the way they make such a big deal out of Pneuma sacrificing herself only to come back to life literally 5 minutes later and miraculously split her personality into two separate bodies because magic and wishes I guess, the way that such a big deal is made out of Mythra being so traumatized by what she did 500 years ago that she sealed herself away underneath an alternate personality, yet when she wakes up in order to save Rex's life, instead of going back to sleep she just stays awake for no reason, as if she never even needed to be asleep in the first place, the way that the life cycle from blade-to-titan is never delved into beyond it just being stated as a fact (comes off as a really random tie-in that doesn't actually affect the plot in any way), Zeke being introduced as the comic relief character only to halfway through the game become the wise mentor character (why? What does the story gain from this?), and that's not even getting into all of the awful harem anime tropes including: Tora being an incel pedophile who made a bikini armor add on for his robot that's designed to look like a 3rd grader, the girls comparing each other's tits at a hot spring, Mythra sleepwalking into Rex's bed then waking up and getting mad at HIM for some reason, the "blushy crushy" scene, and the "pet play" heart to heart in Morytha, among others. Of course none of those things come anywhere CLOSE to the slap in the face that is the LITERAL canon harem ending that Tetsuya Takahashi included by his own admission because he wanted to "reward the players after going through so much heartache and suffering." Yeah, thanks Tetsuya, I feel so rewarded after 80 hours of you teasing this love quadrangle only to rip it apart, kick Nia into a garbage compactor, and then reform it into a triangle where Rex gets to be with BOTH Mythra and Pyra. The lazy hack couldn't figure out a way of actually writing a resolution to a romantic subplot that he just decided to take it out back behind the shed and shoot it in the fucking skull 6 times. Then he has the GALL to call that a "gift" he's giving to the players. Anyways, I put 350 hours into this game because it's fucking fantastic, but it has without a doubt the most overrated story of any video game I have ever played. It is not in any way a good story and the only even remotely well-written characters are Jin and Amalthus. Nia is decent, but everyone else is a completely forgettable cardboard cutout of an anime caricature. I think the only reason someone could find this game either "deep" or "emotional" is if you've had your entire corpus calossum replaced with a garden gnome.
My biggest issue with the game is one that wasn't even mentioned in this video: Slow progression in battle mechanics. In XC1, you knew almost every battle mechanic after the prologue, but the game still increased the complexity by giving you more characters and more skills down the line. In XC2, you spend a lot of hours with just 1 or 2 characters that can't do anything except using auto-attacks and skills. The more interesting mechanics like break-topple and elemental orbs get introduced only after you get your full party, and only really get interesting once you get access to more blades. The other issue is that, as Erick said, is that the element based combat is pretty confusing, and battles are very hard to win without understanding it.
In the first game the same thing happened, although it is true that it was better camouflaged because there are more characters and with more strategies (3 of the 5 characters that you get, by default, are attack characters)
@@SovietVenom lol idk man I didn't experience that in the first game, all of the battle mechanics were pretty straightforward from the start. Now in 2 I have no fucking clue what's going on.
Yeah it gets worse when you try to find the tutorial…..to then find out there isnt one in XC2 unless you buy those rumors. The amount of times I had to remind myself the diference between a driver and blade combo just to unlock a skill for one character….. i ended up spending 150hrs on xc2 but it took like 4 attempts to get through the game.
I got Kos-Mos as my 5th rare blade. Which was about 150 Rare and Common Core Crystals later. After words the game just decided to not let me have anymore rare blades that weren't sidequest or story until New Game+.
I love the game but the RNG with core crystal synthesis was ridiculously hard it took me forever to get KOS-MOS even with high luck and 100 legendary core crystals had to reload my online save back up to try again and again and again for several hours.
I can tell you why they made japanese voices dlc, sound files take up a lot of space and in XC2 the voice pack is close to 1GB. Nintendo cheaped out because cartridges cost more to manufacture than discs and it's easier to just put out free dlc rather than increase the size of the cartridge. Games like Valkyria Chronicles 4 and Shining Resonance Refrain did the same thing on Switch.
You make some good strong points, but Nia's voice actor was probably my favorite voice in the game. I felt like the welsh accent added soooo much to the character.
Main problem for me was that 2 seemed a bit too trigger happy on the anime tropes, and sometimes did them poorly. Xenogears, Saga, and Xenoblade 1 handled their use of anime tropes a lot better in my opinion. Also the voice acting. I will say it has charm but objectively it was really bad because I believe the voice actors barely had any good voice direction.
The way I see it is Xenoblade 1 is like a Dark Shonen damn near on the cusp of being a seinen, while Xenoblade 2 is a straight up Echi fan service Shonen .
You’re spot on This is why I couldn’t really get into this game I watched it on RUclips instead I still like a lot of it and I love the story music characters but the experience is almost ruined by a culmination of really annoying stuff
My only issue with the game is that it really drags out early game. I found myself grinding levels/companions. There were parts I just couldn't beat without some serious grinding, and it took me out of the experience. It wasn't like the first game where I could level a couple levels and move to the next area.
I beat this games 10 to 15 lvls below the recommended lvl besides bosses that are not part of the story like the gorillas but I mainly play rpgs so I guess this would be normal for people who are the same
@@ivenstorm to each there own I guess but I love rpg games. Well ones that have combat systems I like. dark souls and elden ring I don't consider action rpgs nor are they fun to much focus on exploration plus no quest makers nioh is better
I loved Xenoblade 2. Definitely one of the best games I've played in the past 20 years. No game is perfect, no story is perfect. I never felt like it was a where the hell do I go game. I find it ironic that you love Chrono Cross, one of the biggest where the hell do I go now games but still complain about that in xenoblade 2, which was no where near as bad. There are a few parts that can be tricky trying to figure out where the compass is trying to lead you, that's true, but with the map laid out for you from the start it's always just a matter of approaching from a different direction. You did show the factory, and I do agree that the factory is the hardest part to navigate. I loved how you would run into over leveled monsters on the map. Even getting suddenly one shotted can be shocking when it comes out of no where but it was part of the fun. The game is very generous to restarting points so you never lose much ground and you just have to keep an eye out in your surroundings. It's a nice addition to the atmosphere. The combat does have a steep learning curve and is not explained well in the game. This I feel is a criticism many had and I agree. The game should allow returning to tutorial information. Your best bet is to just look up youtube tutorials because there are people out there who explain it very well. It's a very fun battle system once you get into it but you can play through most the game without digging into the rich battle mechanics simply because you just don't know. There's no way you will beat the extra content without mastering the battle system though. The Elma Redux fight, that took me a while to figure out. Once I did, I was able to set up a team where it became rather easy. There are so many ways you can approach a difficult battle and figuring it out becomes so rewarding. I enjoyed the battle system in the first game but the second is superior. All it needs is a better tutorial. Getting Kos Mos was frustrating. That was the final blade I unlocked and I do wish it would have been easier. I was only able to use Kos Mos in end game/DLC content. I agree with your frustration here. I don't know why the name changes happen, I didn't know until this video. I'm not sure why that's bothersome though. Oh well. I never thought there was any plan to resurrect Laura. It was never said. It was just Jin preserving her body. Jin was traumatized when she died and went a little... off... as you do in JRPG's when reacting to trauma.
Got to agree with you on the navigation and resolution. Combat was a bit obscure but you didn’t need to exploit it to make it through the story (I only did the basic topple/break). I’d say that was more mastery for extra super bosses. Personally, I felt like the fan service WAS part of its identity. Most games with fan service are shallow as all hell. They aren’t real games, but pretty images masquerading as a game. I felt like XC2 was a real game that leaned into sexualization. And that was okay by me! Unfortunately I didn’t put the time in to gacha my way to Kosmos or Telos. Maybe if I ever play through it again. 😢
IMO most of the name changes in Xenoblade 2 are varied from decent to great. For example: Pyra and Mythra are better names than Homura and Hikari since they give more mythical vibe. Poppi original name, Hana, means "flower", just a flower. Poppi is a spesfic type of flower= more interesting.
The map is open world and when they went to some random quest or other request with a dialogue they changed the land area in the dungeon like map in Final Fantasy but dungeon crawler genre it will get lost easily. That may be used in many retro JRPG in remake or remaster some are just enhanced the graphics in compatible with the generation console.
It's a less ambitious game. Xenoblade 2 has simple and smaller maps compared to Xeno 1 and Xeno X. It´s a shorter game actually. They had put field skills and gacha to prolong the gameplay artificially. There were less people working in the game because monolithsoft was helping in Breath of the wild.
The shitty navigation system and the awful field skill system were almost deal breakers. I ended up really liking the story, characters and combat but lord there are few small things about the game that really add up as you continue playing.
Erick Landon critics on Xenoblade: The plot is so basic that I was able to figure everything that was happening. Also Erick Landon critics: Somewhere in the game, something happens. I was not excepting this to happen. Why didn't they write the plot like I would want them to? That's bad! Maybe that's because of critics like this that so many games all have the same plot...
My biggest gripe with the game by far was the map. I quit the game twice. I eventually finished it but man, what a love/hate thing I have going for this game.
Some of the name changes I don't get like Jin from Shin, but some like Pyra rather than Homura and Mythra rather than Hikari are changes to the Greek words for those Japanese words, with Pyra being the Greek for Fire and Mythra being Knowledge. Malos is also sort of an on the nose term for Evil or Bad in Greek. Elysium is the Greek name for Paradise(heaven) the name for elysium in the Japanese text. The Aegises are called Grail in Japanese as a parallel to the holy grail. I get the change there strictly because Nintendo likely wanted to avoid direct allusions to Judeo Christian lore. I don't necessarily agree with it but I can see why it was done.
Toning down religious references is common in localisations. Nintendo definitely isn't the only one doing it. Shin is a common word in English describing a part of the leg, so you can see why they changed it.
I strongly preferred the first, but at the same time I don’t agree with a lot of the points brought up. I didn’t think the game was necessarily hard to navigate, nor did I find the game to be very difficult at all, and I’m a person who gets frustrated all the time because I suck at games lol. The battle system takes forever to fully learn I’ll agree, but I enjoyed that to an extent because I was constantly learning more throughout the game and feeling stronger than before - granted a lot of this due to this not hindering me moving forward in the story. I’ll 100% agree on the field skills hindering moving forward though, that in my opinion was ridiculous. I do feel you overrate the amount of fan service in the game, and the “silliness” as it really is mostly tied to character designs and the beginning of the game. Past the beginning of the game it has hardly any silliness and becomes quite serious, and going as far as to call this a compile hearts game in jest is vastly overrating the fan service, in all honesty I found it to be rather mild for a game out of Japan. Unnecessary though, I’ll agree.
Man the story being locked behind field skills is the reason why i gave up on this game and to mention the story , writing, and characters irritates the fuck out of me, I actually hate this game wich sucks because I love the first game , i really wanted to enjoy xenoblade 2 , but its such a step back from the first game in every regard. That being said I'm looking forward to Xenoblade chronicles 3, it's looks promising, it also helps that the Main characters looks pretty cool unlike stupid looking rex.
thanks for this review. with all the Xeno 3 hype going on right now I was wondering if I should finally play this... but nah... this game still looks I'd bounce off it real hard.
@@faidou9954 Well, Xenoblade 3 isn't out yet, so I didn't count that game (even though it's probably gonna be better), and I don't think Xenogears and Xenosaga count because he said 'the worst XenoBLADE game'.
I very much agree about the fanservice. While it looks nice, it really doesnt fit in context most of the time. Certainly makes it harder to take certain characters and moments seriously... I am still bothered by Mythra in particular
I never had an issue with field skills and story progression. They generally give you exactly what you need before the required skill checks come up. Given I can't understand Japanese, the name changes aren't a negative for me. I was fine with the voice acting, but I do agree a couple could be better. I felt there was very little to dislike here.
Very good video and the complaints are also understandable, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is definitely one of the more flawed xeno titles, has a tremendous heart though and terrifically deep fighting system once you delve into it.
I feel like I was one of the only people who didn't mind the gacha mechanic for the Blades. I had fun learning to cheese some of the unique monsters to farm core crystals. It took me almost 250 hours to find all of them, but I had a blast doing it 😅
The only complain about this game for me is lack of tutorial.. Anything else is fine,i love the battle system once i understand how it works, and i like the battle in xb2 more than xb1 coz of variety of weapon and blades that you can experiment with.
Urm for me the tutorial is enough but not accessible easily (if maybe just me who dunno to access again those tutorial), but for i cant access the tutorial again. So if you leave the game like 3 month, i guranteed you lost the gameplay ykwim.
@@12exstar exactly, you can't look the tutorial again. Like ever..(well you can look online, but i rather see it in menu)The game didn't explain enough how it works for example how blade combo works,chain combo and how important is pouch. They did explain it but it's just like brief explanation and you want more detail in it.
Xenoblade 2 is one of my favorite, but it is so inconsistent that I loathe to recommend it to anyone else. I feel like this game was rushed. The fanservice is weird in a game that try to be this serious and the voice acting is all over the place. Some of the dialogue makes absolutely no sense and the main villains motivations comes of as schizophrenic. Not to mention it can be a bit glitchy at times (nothing horrible but it can be distracting). I love it but it is so hard to recommend.
Don't really agree with you on the story. I found it massively serious when it needed to be. Felt the juggle with humour and serious storytelling was on par with the other xeno games.
I'm up to the last boss. Can't quite take it out because I'm under leveled, but man did I feel you with when you said "Fuck this place" to the Chamber of Offering. I gave up and ended up barreling through most of that entire dungeon because every 2 feet you fight another set of enemies and trying to figure out where to go was like being thrown in an ant hill maze.
My final comment today lol I would have personally resurrected Lora and because of her Jin Lora and all the blades on their side of the antagonist join forces with rex and his party and so the party is nice and big you have large choice of character to select and I would of had torna battle mechanics option enabled to use and you have a choice which one you want to use, and I would of had switch characters during battle just like in Torna only now you can select between them all and have 8 in the battle at any time allowing you to select in none active party members for extra depth and strategy. I would of also continued this story with lora in Xenoblade 2.1 with mechs that let you jump drive and fly around, involved just like in xenoblade chronicles x. I think big when I play games.
I played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for nearly 200 hours and never got KOS-MOS. I still finished it and enjoyed it overall, but I'm still salty about getting RNG screwed and never finding her.
there was no expectation that luara was going to be brought back to life jin never said he was going to try to accomplish this also the end of the story was not the power of friendship saves everyone , the power of friendship didn't save pneuma..... aside from that im surprised at how accurate and good your review of this jrpg was
The biggest issue was the gacha blade system. Rng keeping your desired blade out of reach instead of a boss fight or event was awful. The story was also very slow and anime goofy for the first half. Plus they kinda over did it with the camera angles on prya booba. It was very hard for non jrpg players to enter
The complexity of the combat is precisely what makes it such a great game. When you learn how the orbs work and how to make fusion combos it becomes more rewarding than any other combat on any other RPG, including FF7 remake.
As someone who's put several hundred hours into both, I agree that XC2 has a great battle system, but FF7:R is more rewarding when mastered due to how fast-paced it is. XC2 battles feel like a slog even when playing optimally sometimes, and it's also much simpler to master XC2 since its not nearly as reflexive. Being able to control all 3 party members is also a huge edge in FF7:R; XC2's AI can be horrible sometimes such as killing themselves off of cliffs against aerial enemies and switching blades when you REALLY want them to keep the one they have. Moreover, the postgame was designed around full-grind and full mastery, leading to battles that are EXTREMELY long and difficult for the average player (Challenge Mode mainly). FF7:R still wins in battle system (I think XC3 does as well) but XC2 is a very interesting battle system, just a horribly explained one lol
@@Ultinarok47 I don't know FFVII Remake combate system felt too easy for me, but it is a very good combat system nevertheless. I do thing xenoblade 2 combat is far better than 3 though
This game was extremely overly complicated, in all the ways you explained, for no good reason, yet I absolutely loved it. But the character models??? Come on man, they were fantastic and it def did not detract from the story in my opinion.
For the most part, my ONLY gripe with the game, being one of my favorite games of all time, is that it feels like the development team had a list of 20 QOL improvements they wanted to make before release, but then found out they only had time and ressources to do 10 of them, and THEN found out they couldn't fix them through simple patches later on... The game feels finished, but terribly optimized for new players to enjoy, if they aren't fans of experimenting a lot with setups before finding something that works! I LOVE spending hours optimizing my setups in RPGs, so i found the game extremely well suited to my playstyle! But i can understand why it's a TERRIBLE system for someone who just wanna get up and go, and not spend hours in menus or doing every sidequests... So like my love of Mass Effect 1 (another of my all time favorites), i hate a majority of the systems individually, but the full package just works for some reason...
I haven't played xenosaga so I don't know how it fares in comparison, but I think this one is the best Xeno game. Yet, I can't say it's my favorite. I would say 1 is a very consistent game in terms of quality, whereas 2 has higher highs and lower lows. But the lows just sting and I can't look past them. As for the voice acting, while I don't think anyone will dispute that Rex was mediocre, I think the British voices made it very unique in a good way. Overall, since the game has the best pacing, story, music and possibly characters, I can't possibly say it isn't the best of them
I only played 10 hours before rage quitting based on the maps and combat. I really got into the story but couldn't enjoy it. The same was true when I played the remaster of the first Xenoblade.
The amount of time in and out of menus is really frustrating. e.g. Constantly interrupting gameplay to manage merc missions, check unlock affinity skills, changing pouches, changing blades for field skills etc. Sometimes I want to get on with the game, but I'm missing out if I don;t do these things. Also, how long it takes to gather items, considering how often you need to do it, even if you skip the dialogue. Still a very enjoyable game regardless.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was the first game i got on my switch and it's great just finished torna last week and it has problems still a good game. I'm looking forward to xenoblade 3 hope it's worth the wait
From Xenogears the original and the title changed xenoblade chronicles franchised.well I watched the whole game in this video but may a sequel to the series and different story of another title. Though the translation to the west may a different technical issue distribute outside japan for JRPG.
I loved every moment of this game. The only thing that I wasn't crazy about is how shitty it looks in the field. I wish they spent more time tuning the game's performance on Switch. The game itself is stellar and I loved it and DE which I played back to back in the Summer of 2020. I'm so stoked for XC3
spoiler alert Pyra and Mythra sacrificing themselves felt completely pointless when they literally ended up saving no one because everyone got teleported to the new world their creator made for them before his evil half was killed in the first game and i'm pretty sure the reason Jin kept Laura (might have misspelled her name) wasn't because he planned on bringing her back from the dead but rather because he couldn't bring himself to let her go and move on and is the main reason why he wanted to go and kill his creator
I agree with the criticism here... except I didn't like the game at all, the faults just killed it for me. The game was not worth the time spent and I dropped it pretty early.
There are 2 game mechanica that really grinds my nerves. Open world and gacha. And xeno2 has both of them. Thus i refuse to even consider adding it to my backlog
Erick i love your videos, did you have kos-mos? There is a trick to obtain her 100% sure, but require a lots o tries, I have a very few gameplay and I have it
I never knew there was a Japanese language pack, I'd never have started with the English voices otherwise. And knowing names and such have changed means I'm going to restart it. I have a lot of issues with localizations because they take too many liberties and change too many things. Also, out of 1, X, and 2.... 2 is definitely the worst. (Personal opinion of course) X is my favorite and 1 is great. Also not a fan of this games combat system or the ages mechanic or the "gatcha" feel of acquiring blades. This one is going to be a tough finish as the story and characters don't hold much appeal for me. Do like Poppi though. That character is unique and fun. Just not her upgrade methods.
Wait how did you hate Nia's english voice? She did amazing. I agree with you on a lot of points, but Pyra/Mythra had the worst offender. Her lines felt so forced and boring.
While the framerate is indeed mediocre in this game, what I meant to say during that segment is that the resolution looks like shit during battle and animations (especially the 2 seconds screen when you initiate a chain attack). Apparently, from what I read, it can go as low as 342p, which is absolutely ridiculous. But anyway, I just wanted to clarify that my problem was mostly with the resolution and not the framerate.
I agree with this point. I had to purchase an mClassic device to help with the resolution and general choppiness.
The framerate in this game, specially after the updates is in the majority of the time on its target 30 fps, and there is no instance of it having situations like Zelda BOTW infamous Kakariko village or lost woods level of drops (or even when freezing and launching a enemy). Yet somehow I see people still saying stuff like you just said while Zelda is rarely called out. The resolution on docked is 720p, same as Bayonetta 1 and 2 on switch, same as the Witcher 3 on Switch. The digital foundry analysis even says, great when docked, and yet I see people get the in formation there out of context or nlowing it out of the water.
Yeah, the resolution is bad, this game is literally unplayable on portable mode you can't see ANYTHING, or at least I couldn't
Yeah, I thought that it was strange that you didn't mentioned the resolution, which is the major drawback with the game, mainly in portable mode (shit actually looks bad). I didn't have much problems with the frame rate tho
My problem with this game is that exactly, frame rate and resolution. Great game but the jarring frame rate turned me off. Played 3/4 of it so far. I am very upset they decided to bring out part 3 on the same crap switch hardware. Xeno X on the switch was amazing! Definitely should try!
Jin froze Lora to preserve her body so he wouldn’t be as lonely, he never intended to revive her.
Your right don’t know how he miss it
Yeah Jin literally directly says he froze Lora as a reminder as to why he doesn't believe in the Architect, there's nothing wrong with criticisms but when they're blatantly false they're hard to take seriously.
That sounds more like mediocre writing to me tbh. The villains were pretty forgettable/average in this game ngl
@@thekirbyguy4576 quit your bitching, he made a mistake, grow up
Technically in games you can do what you want, time travel, resurrection miracles you name it, its what they will do in FF7 remake and resurrect Aeirth when she dies again, and its her destiny to be resurrected.
I don't experience games the same way as Erick anymore, maybe because he plays so many. I get less frustrated with being blocked, because I'm in no rush to go to the next game; I like spending time to learn layers of a dense and deep new gameplay, because that tickles my creativity. I care 0% about graphics performance, only about art direction. And I absolutely find Xenoblade 2 a game with an identity of its own.
I really loved this game.
Nia's awakening and Pyra (Homura's) awakening into her true form are two of my favorite moments, (and that ending. Ye gods the feels)
Granted, there is a hell of a learning curve, but once I figured out the combat, I really preferred it over XBC1's combat imo.
My 2 strongest criticisms that annoyed me gameplay wise were:
1) The gatcha mechanics regarding the acquisition of rare blades.
2) the constant need to swap blades when needed to pass a talent/skill test. Definitely took me out of the game when I came up short. I was very verbal at my tv screen during those moments 😅
Looking forward to seeing what XBC3 brings us. Got a feeling they learned a lot and and implementing the best mechanics of the previous games.
But man that UI (oofa) 😆
Great video Eric, as always really appreciate your content. It was your channel that reignited my love for JRPGs. Much gratitude.
This is why torna is such a good dlc because they take the criticisms from the first game and made it soo much better
Yea combat in 2 was better. 1 felt clunky. Using the arrow button to move a cursor to specific skills while trying to move around for positionals on a controller. Super uncomfortable
I thought the battle system was hard and complicated, but I think the real problem regarding that is the lack of tutorials you can revisit. You get the explanation of driver combos, blade combos, fusion combos, etc. ONLY ONCE, and unless you check a good guide on the internet there is no way you can exploit the battle system properly.
That part got better with Torna and XC:DE
And even then, the tutorials in the base game are terrible anyway, so even if you *could* look back at them, it probably wouldn't help a ton.
The music in xenoblade 2 is a masterpiece and we can't deny that.
Facts and Xenoblade 3 is gonna go off like crazy as well
not one single music I found good. Very average compared to xb1.
Some are even a disaster ( those horrible jpop for kids during cutscenes)
@@benjaminmartin2922 xb1 osts many made me fall asleep in my opinion hahaha
Xenoblade Chronicles X looks like it would be my favourite with the aesthetic and the mechs. I hope they release it for Switch.
They can't. It's too big of a game and it was completely designed around the Wii U's hardware.
The English voice acting has lots of charm and I think at times it’s much better except the fights scenes obviously
To me there’s no way most of these characters could sound different without losing their charm.
It’s not perfect but I like how most of the cast voice acting
That neptunia chronicles joke hit so hard fam I love it man. Keep it up. No joke though I think I 93% it I didn't hit up the last dlc but that's it.
I have to disagree regarding the English VA for Nia. It is probably the thing I like the most about the game. I really loved that VA so much... Regarding everything else I agree. The worst part of this game is the way too much fan service and the general middle school horny brat kind of silliness... and also the damn blade RNG.
I can list a lot of bad mechanics, Merc Missions, Blades, some of the development level/affinity shit, blade affinity charts, the blade designs. Rex and Pyra have really bad. It’s clear the English voice direction had some issues too.
Other than that, it is pretty decent
I like Nia's voice actor too the one I have a problem with is Rex I don't think his voice actor did a bad job it's just that he looks nothing like how he sounds
I absolutely fell in love with Nia, her voice actor playing a huge part
I just can't play the game with the japanese VA, Nia feels generic, the english dub gives her (and Zeke) more charm, Mòrag sounds kinda similar
So what if there's fanservice? A lot of RPGs (not just JRPGs) have that yet you're acting like it's for the so called "horny" people? Dude, grow up.
Nia and her voice was literally my favorite part of this game! I fell in 💕
Nia's voice actor was fantastic! I was surprised that was the voice he used as an example of bad voice acting.
They often change character's names in fantasy JRPGs that don't take place in Japan. The Persona games all take place in Japan, but Xenoblade 2 takes place in Alrest, so for the localization I guess they wanted to give the characters (the ones who had Japanese names specifically) more fantastical, imaginary names.
The names were changed to better represent what the meaning of the names were in Japanese as they'd appear in English.
Homura means flame, Pyra's origin is Pyro which also means flame
Hikari means light, Mythra comes from the Iranian God of the same name which is the God of light. Mithras is also the name the Romans used for the deity which, because they used a lot of Ancient Roman terms, is likely also why it was chosen.
Metsu means destruction, Malos is Latin (Malus) for bad which is used as the base for a lot of English words (Malice, Malpractice, Malady, Malnourished, ect.)
Hana means flower, Poppi is literally a flower
Pretty much every name change was done to keep the meaning of the name in a way that is less likely to be lost in translation. Do they need to do this? No. Especially since they are for the most part just switching one language meaning for a word (Japanese) to another one (Latin/Greek) that a lot of people who might be playing the game likely also don't know so the change is kind of irrelevant besides maybe being able to link to actual words/people. My personal take on the matter is, I don't care. If they change the names, they change the names. They aren't doing so out of a sense of malice. They are simply trying to make a better representation for those who don't know Japanese. Some times they fail (Looking at you Percival....), other times like the ones mentioned above, I feel they succeeded.
Yeah, I was gonna mention there's a difference between keeping the Japanese names for games not set in Japan. Especially if the names are supposed to be thematic.
@@RobertHinchey Amalthus's name change is perfect, though, because his name didn't originally mean anything. Changing it to a combination of Amalthea (who is related to the Aegis shield) and Thomas Malthus (who wrote a very wrong essay on overpopulation) is perfect for a humanity-hating man who created an Aegis.
Xenoblade 2 became my favorite Xenoblade, I don't think there is much fanservice apart from the costumes, I agree with almost everything except that Rex is too generic, it may seem that way at first but as I have replayed the game, I realize that Rex matures a lot throughout his journey, it's something you don't notice at the beginning or on a first playthrough, but this game has a lot of things that are there from the beginning and you don't notice, that's brilliant writing to me, also when you understand the combat you discover that it's the best combat of Xenoblade (I don't count X because I haven't played it)
About to play this game once I finish the extra story with Shulk and Melia. I'm so excited I can't even focus on the current one anymore. I'll probably revisit the 1st game after a few months or maybe a year after I'm done with all of it as I plan to get the 3rd one once I beat 2. Eric made me expect some good fan service here as I treat it as a bonus instead of a detriment like most people who hate that stuff though it's fine as well if there isn't much.
Any game mechanic that practically forces players to save scum is not a good mechanic in my opinion.
Many things are indeed wrong with the game, yet it still managed to become one of my favorite JRPGs, so far only dethroned by SMT5 as my favorite Switch game.
I don't agree with it looking bad though, but definitely rough on some spots, though I played mostly on docked mode.
That Neptunia comparison might be too harsh though, lol.
It's definitely on point
SMT 5 was so damn good. Did NOT expect the exploration to be so much fun in that.
@@Terron29 Same. lol It was my first SMT and though it's kind of forgettable in the plot and character department, with the exception of the Law reps, it was just so fun to play.
@@NuiYabuko the music was also really good
The majority of the names were changed to fit closer to the meanings and themes of the characters
Its funny the first tie I started this game I stopped in that first town after you crash land. I was told you have to get past that first town then you will get hooked in. Seemed to work out and I took 160 hours on my first play through.
Why do most people do not understand the element battle system? I really thought it was really interesting and how you had to use different blades to take full advantage of the system. Why is it confusing for almost everybody and they dislike it? I find it something that adds variety and replayability inside of the same game battles and being able to pull different strategies.
It's a really easy combat system to understand, it's far better then the first entry.
Agree with both of you. I really liked it and it's actually one of my favorite combat systems in the genre.
It's not the battle system's fault, it's the horrible tutorials that do a bad job explaining it.
First time i played it it confused the hell outta me stuck with it and ended up loving how involved every encounter was could have a little harder outside of boss battles which I also loved
Easy to play, hard to master
This game have a lots of problems, but I love it. For me what really bothers me is the gacha system, some of the side quest to level up the blade affinity and the horrible localisation.
One big issue is that they did away with almost everything that made Xenoblade unique - especially the different ways you can attract enemies. Some enemies in Xenoblade 1 and X attack when they hear you, so you have to sneak past them (even if they bump into you, they won't attack), and others will attack if someone use magic. Yet more enemies will never attack unless attacked, or only if their comrades are attacked by the party. However, in Xenoblade 2, all enemies attack you on sight! No blind enemies, no magical enemies, no docile enemies, nope.
An even worse problem is the combination of needing field skills and the gatcha mechanic. Now, you don't need to get optional unique Blades, but you do need to boost your field skills with random Blades, especially with ice mastery which cannot be got with any story related Blade. The biggest issue is during that part in chapter 4, in which you can either get level freaking 6 fire mastery, or Joseph Joestar your way (in other words: RUN) past level 85 enemies.
Anyway, I love all three games in the franchise (so far), but X has way more issues IMHO. Sending you in must-complete missions to the furthest island with the most dangerous monsters with extremely high levels - WHY?!? I have nothing but painful memories from trying to find the path that won't end up in me one-shotted by a level 40+ monster.
Xenoblade 2 is one of my favorite games on the switch but it definitely has it's flaws (and they're pretty fun to talk about). The issue with the navigation system and field skills are both some of the most glaring issues for sure.(thankfully it looks like both of these were fixed in XC3) Just like you I had to look up where to go a few times.
Xenoblade 2s gatcha system is also a pretty common complaint. Personally I didn't HATE it myself because it was possible to beat the main story with regular common blades but I didn't beat it to 100% completion because I didn't want to get all the rare blades. Some of the blades had pretty cool side quests but others were awful.
I somewhat agree with your issue on the enemies in the world. See, I actually really love seeing higher level enemies in starting areas! The level of fear when I saw rotbart for the first time is something that I don't think I'll forget lol! It was really wonderful and it gave me a good reason to go back to those areas after I beat the game! However in XC2 they didn't have different types of aggro like they did in the previous games (in XC1 for example if they had an eye above their head it meant if the enemy sees you then it'll attack you). Since this was absent in XC2 it felt like more enemies would try to attack you when exploring.
I think your issue at 15:28 might have to do with the fact that you played Torna first. For me I finished the base game first and then played Torna afterwards so this didn't bother me too much, although I can imagine it feeling different if I chose to play Torna first.
Also I'm surprised you hated Nias voice in English! I know a lot of people hate the english dub but for me personally I can't imagine Nia without her Welsh accent 😂. Like I watched my friend playthrough most of XC2 in Japanese but whenever I think of Nia I remember her welsh accent by default lol.
I agree about Nia with you :D
Didn't they have different types of aggro, they just didn't display the symbol?
In my opinion the voices of the younger characters (or with young voices) are quite decent, especially Morag's. But the voices of Azurda and Dromarch are quite bad.
I've tried to beat the first game multiple times and I've never been able to. I always get bored with it. Xenoblade chronicles 2 was the first I was able to play all the way through and I loved it, almost 200 hours to beat it.
Same, I just wanted to get it over with
@@kwameoliver2455 doing this right now lmao. I dropped it a couple of years ago because the pacing felt so slow. picked it back up two weeks ago and almost dropped it for the same reason, but i decided to press on and slog through the beginning chapters because i really want to finish it before 3 gets released.
I replayed the game multiple times and I've dropped it at the exact same chapter, 7.
What's wrong with all of you!? The first one is a masterpiece! Second one is way worse with all those anime tropes and fan service and combat takes a lot more to pick up the pace =S.
@@All_Ice117 I mean I love the first one because I played it 3 times, if u start the game with torra the prequel it plays alot better, but mainly I don't like it I can say like the combo stuff is cool because it's better then the first but it felt actually better with the chain attack in the first game like where ur character was, even die hards don't Defend the shity story, it sucks the first one had the better story the second one had better overall characters, some of the blades stories was cool, but yeah it's like a shity anime the video game even pulling off some stupid awakening power that only the mc was able to do.
The Xenoblade series is better then the Final Fantasy series and I will die on that hill. It literally has all the talent that made 90s square such a powerhouse.
To be fairly honest, the only offender of getting lost was the Chamber of Offering Elphys Tomb or however it's called, because there it was useless the GPS thing.
It really speaks volumes when a game has so many flaws and yet it stands out as one of the best games on the platform, or in the genre even (at least from the last decade or so). Why is this game still SO good to so many of us? I think it has to do with the heart of the franchise and of it's creator Takahashi. There's a vision you might not be able to define, but its there. It breathes personality in every aspect of the game. Don't get me wrong, the game is solid gameplay wise as well. If you master the combat, you can feel like a GOD. And you actually feel like a smart person. Also, the worlds they create, it just had never been done before to the scale they did with the first game. And they keep creating these insane big alien worlds which are just a joy to explore.
I'm so FUCKING hyper for X3, I truly believe from what Ive seen so far it will be the best in the series. They got rid of all the tedious stuff and just focused on everthing that makes these games fun, combat, story and exploring.
I understand people’s criticisms, but for me, Xenoblade 2 is the better game. There was so much more to enjoy in 2, but it required a bit of help from the internet, which absolutely is a problem. The gotcha system was fine and fun, but the extremely low percentages led me to have to strategize about it, which again required help from the internet.
I don’t at all think the “fan service” at all messed with the game’s identity. I had no problem taking Pyra and Mythra seriously just because they had boobs and revealing outfits. Maybe I’m just used to living in Asia where women wear revealing clothing, lol. All in all, despite the confusing parts, it was extremely satisfying for me, and the story had me guessing a lot more than in Xenoblade 1, which was overly simplistic at times. I especially like how all the villains in 2 are given motivations that are easy to sympathize with. You found a lot of flaws that I can agree with, but they were like bugs on the windshield of this badass monster truck of a game.
Disagree on pretty much all of that but too each their own! All xenoblade games are good in some way, excellent series and one of my favorites overall
the only people having problem with revealing cloths and boobs are american/britan puritans, its great and a shame we dont get it back in 3 cuz of twitter puritans.
I agree with everything you said..
"Fan service"?
Name me 1 jrpg with out the " fan service" thing..
From jrpgs to Animes they were always doing that,it is not a new thing..
And we have people saying >..yeah but you played 120+ freaking hours a game that you didnt like for some reassons.
Fun fact the same people are watching animes with fan service and they are playing games similar to xc2 but they forgot to mention about it...no critisism there.
At the end of the day to all haters xenoblade chronicles 2 sold over 2 million+ copies at December 2020, it is the best-selling title in the Xeno series, and Monolith Soft's most commercially successful game.
@@nediusvalar6685 Hypocrites and its so sad rip waifublade 3
@@nediusvalar6685 For the fanservice.. heh
I’m glad you acknowledge you like it at the beginning because so many people have this mentality that if someone finds faults in anything, that means they hate it. If there’s one thing I’m hoping for from 3, it’s that I really hope if blades make a comeback, maybe not make ‘Optional’ ones mandatory to getting passed certain obstacles.
Though my biggest issue is BS like having to jump off a bridge and almost kill my party to reach the next area required to advancing the story.
There's also a lot of mentality that "if I can find faults with something, then it's disqualified from being good/great", as if a game needed to be completely free of such issues, and despite the fact their own favorite games get plenty of flak over certain things too. The good and the bad can exist side by side for fans like Eric, so it's not like those criticisms are some great discovery when they're brought up by someone who intensely dislikes it.
Positive side: agree on Pacing, Exploration, World Building, Lore, Music and everything honestly
Negative side:
- Agree: performance, hard to exploit the battle system (+ the tutorials), the Gacha system (by far the worse), downloading the JP voices, the translations (the part you talk about the names), what they did to Lora
- Disagree: getting lost (like... how you get lost), field skills, the high level monsters (sorry for it gives the world more life overall), the skill trees and stores, fanservice (sorry but all people who complain about it en XC2 have problems)
The names of these characters is such an overblown none issue 🤡
I much prefer how their English name sounds since I can understand meaning behind them rather than a Japanese sounding name that doesn’t ring a bell
For instance pyra is a name associated with fire
Mythra is referring to a Latin word which is cool
Jin sounds better than shin
It’s just names that will make more sense for a western audience just like the Japanese names will resonate better for Japanese people
We shouldn’t glorify Japanese voice acting or names or whatever just cause we want it
For a western audience it makes way more sense that everything makes sense to us as well
I bought all xenoblade games when they released but for some reason as soon as i reach the final dungeon or area i seem to get bored of playing it. Up until now i havent finished either DE, X, 2 or torna and its just around 2 or 3 hrs of gameplay left
I got into XC1 last fall with the definitive edition, and just finished XC2. I'd say my biggest issue with XC2 is a lot of the anime tropey stuff, which I think feels at conflict with otherwise more serious situations, and the cutscene slog near the end of the game. If you know, you know. That was straight-up fatigue, and I feel as if some of those moments could have been trickled into the game before hand. That being said, I enjoyed XC2 a lot and I'm glad I didn't listen to some posts saying, "You can play it without playing XC1", because having played XC1, man did the later chapters land WAY better.
Glad you didn't hear them. I didn't even believe the developers about 2 when they said what they said...
I always try playing the older games in a series first because I know that the newer ones usually improve upon the gameplay, at least.
I agree, the anime stuff was what ruined 2 for me. I still finished it and enjoyed it, but it could have been WAY better without all that.
Tbh I don't mind at all Anime tropes in jrpg's, mainly because I play them because I'm such an anime fan lol like I see JRPG'S as interactive anime anyway, now my problem with xenoblade chronicles 2 is the type of anime it borrows is tropes from , being Echi battle Shonen, where as xenoblade chronicles 1 was akin to a dark Shonen that was damn near on the cusp of being a Seinen.
@@abc4781 I think you just agreed with us, but you were more specific about it. You just mentioned what we didn't like XD.
Always glad to see someone willing to critique this game's narrative and characters. I will never understand how there are so many people who will swear by this game as a "tearjerker". I think you have to be 7 years old or less in order to find this game either moving or thought-provoking.
Just to add on to your criticisms in addition to them dropping the ball with Laura: Nia revealing she has the power to give people cancer and never using it again (and Malos not even dying from said power), Jin being able to move at the speed of light AND control "elemental particles", whatever the fuck that means, and yet he still somehow doesn't instantly win every fight from then on (also why wouldn't he have used that the first time he ran into Rex again), Pyra threatening to use Siren's targeting laser to incinerate herself, even though doing so would also kill Rex, which would defeat the purpose of threatening to kill herself since she was only doing that to save Rex's life (and she never uses this ability again nor did she ever use it earlier when it would have been extremely useful), Mythra calling down Siren indoors even though for the entire game up to that point we've been told it "can't" be used indoors, the way that the bad guys know where the heroes are at all times and have the ability to just teleport wherever they want and then leap away into the sky if they ever lose a fight, yet we the heroes have to trudge around on foot everywhere (there's no way any of them shouldn't all be captured by now with how omnipotent and omnipresent the villains are), the way that blade eaters and flesh eaters are introduced and then never differentiated from each other in any meaningful way, the way they make such a big deal out of Pneuma sacrificing herself only to come back to life literally 5 minutes later and miraculously split her personality into two separate bodies because magic and wishes I guess, the way that such a big deal is made out of Mythra being so traumatized by what she did 500 years ago that she sealed herself away underneath an alternate personality, yet when she wakes up in order to save Rex's life, instead of going back to sleep she just stays awake for no reason, as if she never even needed to be asleep in the first place, the way that the life cycle from blade-to-titan is never delved into beyond it just being stated as a fact (comes off as a really random tie-in that doesn't actually affect the plot in any way), Zeke being introduced as the comic relief character only to halfway through the game become the wise mentor character (why? What does the story gain from this?), and that's not even getting into all of the awful harem anime tropes including: Tora being an incel pedophile who made a bikini armor add on for his robot that's designed to look like a 3rd grader, the girls comparing each other's tits at a hot spring, Mythra sleepwalking into Rex's bed then waking up and getting mad at HIM for some reason, the "blushy crushy" scene, and the "pet play" heart to heart in Morytha, among others. Of course none of those things come anywhere CLOSE to the slap in the face that is the LITERAL canon harem ending that Tetsuya Takahashi included by his own admission because he wanted to "reward the players after going through so much heartache and suffering." Yeah, thanks Tetsuya, I feel so rewarded after 80 hours of you teasing this love quadrangle only to rip it apart, kick Nia into a garbage compactor, and then reform it into a triangle where Rex gets to be with BOTH Mythra and Pyra. The lazy hack couldn't figure out a way of actually writing a resolution to a romantic subplot that he just decided to take it out back behind the shed and shoot it in the fucking skull 6 times. Then he has the GALL to call that a "gift" he's giving to the players.
Anyways, I put 350 hours into this game because it's fucking fantastic, but it has without a doubt the most overrated story of any video game I have ever played. It is not in any way a good story and the only even remotely well-written characters are Jin and Amalthus. Nia is decent, but everyone else is a completely forgettable cardboard cutout of an anime caricature. I think the only reason someone could find this game either "deep" or "emotional" is if you've had your entire corpus calossum replaced with a garden gnome.
My biggest issue with the game is one that wasn't even mentioned in this video: Slow progression in battle mechanics. In XC1, you knew almost every battle mechanic after the prologue, but the game still increased the complexity by giving you more characters and more skills down the line. In XC2, you spend a lot of hours with just 1 or 2 characters that can't do anything except using auto-attacks and skills. The more interesting mechanics like break-topple and elemental orbs get introduced only after you get your full party, and only really get interesting once you get access to more blades.
The other issue is that, as Erick said, is that the element based combat is pretty confusing, and battles are very hard to win without understanding it.
That's likely because it was "confusing". Get to grips with one thing, something new gets added, learn that, something new gets added again etc.
In the first game the same thing happened, although it is true that it was better camouflaged because there are more characters and with more strategies (3 of the 5 characters that you get, by default, are attack characters)
@@SovietVenom lol idk man I didn't experience that in the first game, all of the battle mechanics were pretty straightforward from the start. Now in 2 I have no fucking clue what's going on.
Yeah it gets worse when you try to find the tutorial…..to then find out there isnt one in XC2 unless you buy those rumors. The amount of times I had to remind myself the diference between a driver and blade combo just to unlock a skill for one character….. i ended up spending 150hrs on xc2 but it took like 4 attempts to get through the game.
I got Kos-Mos as my 5th rare blade.
Which was about 150 Rare and Common Core Crystals later.
After words the game just decided to not let me have anymore rare blades that weren't sidequest or story until New Game+.
I love the game but the RNG with core crystal synthesis was ridiculously hard it took me forever to get KOS-MOS even with high luck and 100 legendary core crystals had to reload my online save back up to try again and again and again for several hours.
I can tell you why they made japanese voices dlc, sound files take up a lot of space and in XC2 the voice pack is close to 1GB. Nintendo cheaped out because cartridges cost more to manufacture than discs and it's easier to just put out free dlc rather than increase the size of the cartridge. Games like Valkyria Chronicles 4 and Shining Resonance Refrain did the same thing on Switch.
Shin Megami Tensei 5, and Fire Emblem Warriors 1 too for example. Heck, even Persona 5 was like that when it came out on ps3 and ps4.
You make some good strong points, but Nia's voice actor was probably my favorite voice in the game. I felt like the welsh accent added soooo much to the character.
Main problem for me was that 2 seemed a bit too trigger happy on the anime tropes, and sometimes did them poorly.
Xenogears, Saga, and Xenoblade 1 handled their use of anime tropes a lot better in my opinion.
Also the voice acting. I will say it has charm but objectively it was really bad because I believe the voice actors barely had any good voice direction.
The way I see it is Xenoblade 1 is like a Dark Shonen damn near on the cusp of being a seinen, while Xenoblade 2 is a straight up Echi fan service Shonen .
You’re spot on
This is why I couldn’t really get into this game
I watched it on RUclips instead
I still like a lot of it and I love the story music characters but the experience is almost ruined by a culmination of really annoying stuff
My only issue with the game is that it really drags out early game. I found myself grinding levels/companions. There were parts I just couldn't beat without some serious grinding, and it took me out of the experience. It wasn't like the first game where I could level a couple levels and move to the next area.
I beat this games 10 to 15 lvls below the recommended lvl besides bosses that are not part of the story like the gorillas but I mainly play rpgs so I guess this would be normal for people who are the same
@@colorlessserpent5009 ....as do I.... I just couldn't be bothered to finish the game.
@@ivenstorm to each there own I guess but I love rpg games. Well ones that have combat systems I like. dark souls and elden ring I don't consider action rpgs nor are they fun to much focus on exploration plus no quest makers nioh is better
@@colorlessserpent5009 as do I. I've finished nearly every snes rpg, and most of the American released jrpgs.
@@ivenstorm hell yeah I played most old rpgs through roms my own first game system was a ps1
I loved Xenoblade 2. Definitely one of the best games I've played in the past 20 years. No game is perfect, no story is perfect.
I never felt like it was a where the hell do I go game. I find it ironic that you love Chrono Cross, one of the biggest where the hell do I go now games but still complain about that in xenoblade 2, which was no where near as bad. There are a few parts that can be tricky trying to figure out where the compass is trying to lead you, that's true, but with the map laid out for you from the start it's always just a matter of approaching from a different direction. You did show the factory, and I do agree that the factory is the hardest part to navigate.
I loved how you would run into over leveled monsters on the map. Even getting suddenly one shotted can be shocking when it comes out of no where but it was part of the fun. The game is very generous to restarting points so you never lose much ground and you just have to keep an eye out in your surroundings. It's a nice addition to the atmosphere.
The combat does have a steep learning curve and is not explained well in the game. This I feel is a criticism many had and I agree. The game should allow returning to tutorial information. Your best bet is to just look up youtube tutorials because there are people out there who explain it very well. It's a very fun battle system once you get into it but you can play through most the game without digging into the rich battle mechanics simply because you just don't know. There's no way you will beat the extra content without mastering the battle system though. The Elma Redux fight, that took me a while to figure out. Once I did, I was able to set up a team where it became rather easy. There are so many ways you can approach a difficult battle and figuring it out becomes so rewarding. I enjoyed the battle system in the first game but the second is superior. All it needs is a better tutorial.
Getting Kos Mos was frustrating. That was the final blade I unlocked and I do wish it would have been easier. I was only able to use Kos Mos in end game/DLC content. I agree with your frustration here.
I don't know why the name changes happen, I didn't know until this video. I'm not sure why that's bothersome though. Oh well.
I never thought there was any plan to resurrect Laura. It was never said. It was just Jin preserving her body. Jin was traumatized when she died and went a little... off... as you do in JRPG's when reacting to trauma.
Got to agree with you on the navigation and resolution. Combat was a bit obscure but you didn’t need to exploit it to make it through the story (I only did the basic topple/break). I’d say that was more mastery for extra super bosses.
Personally, I felt like the fan service WAS part of its identity. Most games with fan service are shallow as all hell. They aren’t real games, but pretty images masquerading as a game. I felt like XC2 was a real game that leaned into sexualization. And that was okay by me!
Unfortunately I didn’t put the time in to gacha my way to Kosmos or Telos. Maybe if I ever play through it again. 😢
IMO most of the name changes in Xenoblade 2 are varied from decent to great. For example: Pyra and Mythra are better names than Homura and Hikari since they give more mythical vibe. Poppi original name, Hana, means "flower", just a flower. Poppi is a spesfic type of flower= more interesting.
While also having changed the spelling, making it feel more fantastical. Or at least I only recall the flower being spelt as poppy.
@@NuiYabuko yup you are correct. The flower is spelt "poppy" and not "poppi".
The map is open world and when they went to some random quest or other request with a dialogue they changed the land area in the dungeon like map in Final Fantasy but dungeon crawler genre it will get lost easily. That may be used in many retro JRPG in remake or remaster some are just enhanced the graphics in compatible with the generation console.
There was some bad voice work but it was direction, not actual voice actors. Nia was literally one of the best with her awesome welsh accent and all!
It's a less ambitious game. Xenoblade 2 has simple and smaller maps compared to Xeno 1 and Xeno X. It´s a shorter game actually. They had put field skills and gacha to prolong the gameplay artificially. There were less people working in the game because monolithsoft was helping in Breath of the wild.
The shitty navigation system and the awful field skill system were almost deal breakers. I ended up really liking the story, characters and combat but lord there are few small things about the game that really add up as you continue playing.
I really loved this game, waiting for the 3.
Xenoblade 3's battle system seems to be even more convoluted.
I love it.
It's going to be a massive shame or me if Kos-Mos and T-elos don't make a return in Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Erick Landon critics on Xenoblade: The plot is so basic that I was able to figure everything that was happening.
Also Erick Landon critics: Somewhere in the game, something happens. I was not excepting this to happen. Why didn't they write the plot like I would want them to? That's bad!
Maybe that's because of critics like this that so many games all have the same plot...
Bro he did not say that
My biggest gripe with the game by far was the map. I quit the game twice. I eventually finished it but man, what a love/hate thing I have going for this game.
Some of the name changes I don't get like Jin from Shin, but some like Pyra rather than Homura and Mythra rather than Hikari are changes to the Greek words for those Japanese words, with Pyra being the Greek for Fire and Mythra being Knowledge. Malos is also sort of an on the nose term for Evil or Bad in Greek. Elysium is the Greek name for Paradise(heaven) the name for elysium in the Japanese text. The Aegises are called Grail in Japanese as a parallel to the holy grail. I get the change there strictly because Nintendo likely wanted to avoid direct allusions to Judeo Christian lore. I don't necessarily agree with it but I can see why it was done.
Toning down religious references is common in localisations. Nintendo definitely isn't the only one doing it.
Shin is a common word in English describing a part of the leg, so you can see why they changed it.
I strongly preferred the first, but at the same time I don’t agree with a lot of the points brought up. I didn’t think the game was necessarily hard to navigate, nor did I find the game to be very difficult at all, and I’m a person who gets frustrated all the time because I suck at games lol. The battle system takes forever to fully learn I’ll agree, but I enjoyed that to an extent because I was constantly learning more throughout the game and feeling stronger than before - granted a lot of this due to this not hindering me moving forward in the story. I’ll 100% agree on the field skills hindering moving forward though, that in my opinion was ridiculous. I do feel you overrate the amount of fan service in the game, and the “silliness” as it really is mostly tied to character designs and the beginning of the game. Past the beginning of the game it has hardly any silliness and becomes quite serious, and going as far as to call this a compile hearts game in jest is vastly overrating the fan service, in all honesty I found it to be rather mild for a game out of Japan. Unnecessary though, I’ll agree.
Man the story being locked behind field skills is the reason why i gave up on this game and to mention the story , writing, and characters irritates the fuck out of me, I actually hate this game wich sucks because I love the first game , i really wanted to enjoy xenoblade 2 , but its such a step back from the first game in every regard. That being said I'm looking forward to Xenoblade chronicles 3, it's looks promising, it also helps that the Main characters looks pretty cool unlike stupid looking rex.
thanks for this review. with all the Xeno 3 hype going on right now I was wondering if I should finally play this... but nah... this game still looks I'd bounce off it real hard.
boy I wish I could be a fan of this series.
It took me 8 hours of time I actually recorded, maybe more, just to get Kos-Mos. I did it for her.
I actually liked Nia's Voice more than Rex's voice.
'This is the worst Xenoblade game ever' makes a lot less of an impact when you realize that there are only three Xenoblade games right now.
4 if you count Xenoblade X, and 8 if you count the entire Xeno franchise.
@@faidou9954 Well, Xenoblade 3 isn't out yet, so I didn't count that game (even though it's probably gonna be better), and I don't think Xenogears and Xenosaga count because he said 'the worst XenoBLADE game'.
I very much agree about the fanservice. While it looks nice, it really doesnt fit in context most of the time. Certainly makes it harder to take certain characters and moments seriously... I am still bothered by Mythra in particular
The english VAs were just reading lines. Pyras VA talked about it. Not allowed to see the footage. Just read from a script
I personally would have no problem with any of those complains most of what you criticize seem kinda miniscule complains and kinda nitpicky to me
I never had an issue with field skills and story progression. They generally give you exactly what you need before the required skill checks come up. Given I can't understand Japanese, the name changes aren't a negative for me. I was fine with the voice acting, but I do agree a couple could be better. I felt there was very little to dislike here.
Hey, I came from the future. Xenoblade 3 is the same with names. Everything changed!
Very good video and the complaints are also understandable, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is definitely one of the more flawed xeno titles, has a tremendous heart though and terrifically deep fighting system once you delve into it.
I feel like I was one of the only people who didn't mind the gacha mechanic for the Blades. I had fun learning to cheese some of the unique monsters to farm core crystals. It took me almost 250 hours to find all of them, but I had a blast doing it 😅
The only complain about this game for me is lack of tutorial.. Anything else is fine,i love the battle system once i understand how it works, and i like the battle in xb2 more than xb1 coz of variety of weapon and blades that you can experiment with.
Urm for me the tutorial is enough but not accessible easily (if maybe just me who dunno to access again those tutorial), but for i cant access the tutorial again. So if you leave the game like 3 month, i guranteed you lost the gameplay ykwim.
@@12exstar exactly, you can't look the tutorial again. Like ever..(well you can look online, but i rather see it in menu)The game didn't explain enough how it works for example how blade combo works,chain combo and how important is pouch. They did explain it but it's just like brief explanation and you want more detail in it.
I started Xenoblade with 2. Then played the other games. Xenoblade 2 was my least favorite.
lol same
Xenoblade 2 is one of my favorite, but it is so inconsistent that I loathe to recommend it to anyone else. I feel like this game was rushed. The fanservice is weird in a game that try to be this serious and the voice acting is all over the place. Some of the dialogue makes absolutely no sense and the main villains motivations comes of as schizophrenic. Not to mention it can be a bit glitchy at times (nothing horrible but it can be distracting). I love it but it is so hard to recommend.
I am on the same boat where I am enjoying the game, but it has soooooo many frustrations!
Don't really agree with you on the story. I found it massively serious when it needed to be. Felt the juggle with humour and serious storytelling was on par with the other xeno games.
i find nia annoying in japanese and charming in english lol and im pretty sure most agree
I STILL need to finish it. i really love this game so far. though i am just in the early part of the game.
I'm up to the last boss. Can't quite take it out because I'm under leveled, but man did I feel you with when you said "Fuck this place" to the Chamber of Offering. I gave up and ended up barreling through most of that entire dungeon because every 2 feet you fight another set of enemies and trying to figure out where to go was like being thrown in an ant hill maze.
My final comment today lol I would have personally resurrected Lora and because of her Jin Lora and all the blades on their side of the antagonist join forces with rex and his party and so the party is nice and big you have large choice of character to select and I would of had torna battle mechanics option enabled to use and you have a choice which one you want to use, and I would of had switch characters during battle just like in Torna only now you can select between them all and have 8 in the battle at any time allowing you to select in none active party members for extra depth and strategy. I would of also continued this story with lora in Xenoblade 2.1 with mechs that let you jump drive and fly around, involved just like in xenoblade chronicles x. I think big when I play games.
Hopefully the third game will improve in all the issues the second game has
I played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for nearly 200 hours and never got KOS-MOS.
I still finished it and enjoyed it overall, but I'm still salty about getting RNG screwed and never finding her.
What are you talking about this is the best game in the world.
Just bought a Switch because of this game! Pure Epicness.
This game is amazing
there was no expectation that luara was going to be brought back to life jin never said he was going to try to accomplish this
also the end of the story was not the power of friendship saves everyone , the power of friendship didn't save pneuma.....
aside from that im surprised at how accurate and good your review of this jrpg was
The biggest issue was the gacha blade system. Rng keeping your desired blade out of reach instead of a boss fight or event was awful. The story was also very slow and anime goofy for the first half. Plus they kinda over did it with the camera angles on prya booba. It was very hard for non jrpg players to enter
The complexity of the combat is precisely what makes it such a great game. When you learn how the orbs work and how to make fusion combos it becomes more rewarding than any other combat on any other RPG, including FF7 remake.
As someone who's put several hundred hours into both, I agree that XC2 has a great battle system, but FF7:R is more rewarding when mastered due to how fast-paced it is. XC2 battles feel like a slog even when playing optimally sometimes, and it's also much simpler to master XC2 since its not nearly as reflexive. Being able to control all 3 party members is also a huge edge in FF7:R; XC2's AI can be horrible sometimes such as killing themselves off of cliffs against aerial enemies and switching blades when you REALLY want them to keep the one they have. Moreover, the postgame was designed around full-grind and full mastery, leading to battles that are EXTREMELY long and difficult for the average player (Challenge Mode mainly). FF7:R still wins in battle system (I think XC3 does as well) but XC2 is a very interesting battle system, just a horribly explained one lol
@@Ultinarok47 I don't know FFVII Remake combate system felt too easy for me, but it is a very good combat system nevertheless. I do thing xenoblade 2 combat is far better than 3 though
This game was extremely overly complicated, in all the ways you explained, for no good reason, yet I absolutely loved it. But the character models??? Come on man, they were fantastic and it def did not detract from the story in my opinion.
For the most part, my ONLY gripe with the game, being one of my favorite games of all time, is that it feels like the development team had a list of 20 QOL improvements they wanted to make before release, but then found out they only had time and ressources to do 10 of them, and THEN found out they couldn't fix them through simple patches later on...
The game feels finished, but terribly optimized for new players to enjoy, if they aren't fans of experimenting a lot with setups before finding something that works! I LOVE spending hours optimizing my setups in RPGs, so i found the game extremely well suited to my playstyle!
But i can understand why it's a TERRIBLE system for someone who just wanna get up and go, and not spend hours in menus or doing every sidequests...
So like my love of Mass Effect 1 (another of my all time favorites), i hate a majority of the systems individually, but the full package just works for some reason...
I haven't played xenosaga so I don't know how it fares in comparison, but I think this one is the best Xeno game. Yet, I can't say it's my favorite. I would say 1 is a very consistent game in terms of quality, whereas 2 has higher highs and lower lows. But the lows just sting and I can't look past them.
As for the voice acting, while I don't think anyone will dispute that Rex was mediocre, I think the British voices made it very unique in a good way.
Overall, since the game has the best pacing, story, music and possibly characters, I can't possibly say it isn't the best of them
I only played 10 hours before rage quitting based on the maps and combat. I really got into the story but couldn't enjoy it. The same was true when I played the remaster of the first Xenoblade.
The amount of time in and out of menus is really frustrating.
e.g. Constantly interrupting gameplay to manage merc missions, check unlock affinity skills, changing pouches, changing blades for field skills etc. Sometimes I want to get on with the game, but I'm missing out if I don;t do these things.
Also, how long it takes to gather items, considering how often you need to do it, even if you skip the dialogue.
Still a very enjoyable game regardless.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was the first game i got on my switch and it's great just finished torna last week and it has problems still a good game. I'm looking forward to xenoblade 3 hope it's worth the wait
This…..is all accurate haha. I ignored these things cuz I loved the story, but it’s ALL TRUE
From Xenogears the original and the title changed xenoblade chronicles franchised.well I watched the whole game in this video but may a sequel to the series and different story of another title. Though the translation to the west may a different technical issue distribute outside japan for JRPG.
I loved every moment of this game. The only thing that I wasn't crazy about is how shitty it looks in the field. I wish they spent more time tuning the game's performance on Switch. The game itself is stellar and I loved it and DE which I played back to back in the Summer of 2020. I'm so stoked for XC3
spoiler alert
Pyra and Mythra sacrificing themselves felt completely pointless when they literally ended up saving no one because everyone got teleported to the new world their creator made for them before his evil half was killed in the first game and i'm pretty sure the reason Jin kept Laura (might have misspelled her name) wasn't because he planned on bringing her back from the dead but rather because he couldn't bring himself to let her go and move on and is the main reason why he wanted to go and kill his creator
I agree with the criticism here... except I didn't like the game at all, the faults just killed it for me. The game was not worth the time spent and I dropped it pretty early.
There are 2 game mechanica that really grinds my nerves. Open world and gacha. And xeno2 has both of them. Thus i refuse to even consider adding it to my backlog
Erick i love your videos, did you have kos-mos? There is a trick to obtain her 100% sure, but require a lots o tries, I have a very few gameplay and I have it
I find I have many faults with it to the point where I can’t really say I like the game. I don’t hate it either though, I just think it’s alright
I never knew there was a Japanese language pack, I'd never have started with the English voices otherwise. And knowing names and such have changed means I'm going to restart it. I have a lot of issues with localizations because they take too many liberties and change too many things.
Also, out of 1, X, and 2.... 2 is definitely the worst. (Personal opinion of course) X is my favorite and 1 is great. Also not a fan of this games combat system or the ages mechanic or the "gatcha" feel of acquiring blades.
This one is going to be a tough finish as the story and characters don't hold much appeal for me.
Do like Poppi though. That character is unique and fun. Just not her upgrade methods.
Wait how did you hate Nia's english voice? She did amazing. I agree with you on a lot of points, but Pyra/Mythra had the worst offender. Her lines felt so forced and boring.