Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a true AAA game

Mate, there’s nothing wrong with loving a particular genre or series, and it’s not like you’re alone in your fandom! I’m definitely considering picking it up, but I think I might focus on finally completing BOTW (just 14 shrines to go) first, before committing myself to another enormous open world.

Why do people hate good guys in videogames? Shulk is an awesome protagonist. He’s upbeat and believes in himself. He has a best friend by his side who also believes in him. The characters in the first game are just so darn likable that the only way you could hate them like Schreier seems to is if you just really hate positive people.

Also… ROTE COMBAT SYSTEM?! Bwuh?!

Rex seems to share similar positive qualities, though here he’s accompanied by more of a father figure than a Reyn.

I find that viewpoint baffling also… maybe in the early battles where all you do is autoattack and press an art or two. But it soon goes well beyond that.

Look at the size of those… trees!

They are distractingly sized and/or shaped, I do agree…

To be honest, without the Monado and its mechanics I agree with that assessment. It’s part of why I didn’t like X - I don’t think the combat held up without it. I’m hoping they addressed it this time.

The adolescent character design certainly isn’t helping sell me on the game, that’s for sure.

Schreier says this:

The mini-map is vague and often feels like it’s withholding information. There are no larger maps to be found, so you’ll have to rely upon UI markers to figure out where you need to go.

Which is strange given how far he got, as it’s not really factual - you can toggle the minimap to a large map that overlays the whole screen as you move, and there are large maps for every area as part of the fast travel system. These include your current quest target and a bunch of filters including shops, collection points, salvage points, and questgivers.

Only a couple of hours in, so combat is still simple, but I’m liking it so far. The music (zone music, I mean) is lovely, and I mostly like the art style. I’m sure I’ll need to get a minimum of ten hours in before I have any strong impressions.

At least after five hours, this seems, uh, more Japanese than I remember the first one being. Still good, and I like it, but a little more ‘typical JRPG’ than I expected going in.

TIP: If you’re stuffing about with Manage Blades and see ‘Overdrive’ in one of the sub-menus, don’t stupidly think it’s a standard option and waste it on a common Blade.

Overdrive is a rare consumable used to transfer a Blade from one Driver to another. I hope I find more soon… :P

Mine arrives tomorrow. My daughter is really looking forward to it. I’m neutral since I liked X better than the original. See what happens.

I have it. It’s going under the tree so I’m not opening it til the 25th. Looking forward to it very much though!

I’m at the point now where the battles are flowing nicely and I’m all about building to the mega combos and trying for the elemental sequences that allow various debuffs to be applied.

So of course now I’m worried about all the wasteful ‘mistakes’ I’ve made in my characters’ progresson; cores discarded, lack of blades, variety of weapon arts untrained.

I’m not struggling yet, but it’s certainly crossed my mind that maybe I will in the future and now that I know what I’m doing I’d build a better team if I started again! ;)

I only found one more since then, and used it more wisely this time…

But it’s probably the most limiting thing about the game so far. Since cores reward random blades and they’re bound to a driver prior to revealing them, I ended up with a rare attack blade on my healer and two rare healer blades on my attack.

Since I wasted one Overdrive earlier I’ve only been able to transfer one blade over to the driver I wanted. I guess the other way is to dismiss them and hope they get drawn again at some point on a more appropriate blade. Or hopefully find a lot more Overdrives, though I saw someone with 100 hours in the game mention they’ve found fewer than ten of them in total.