Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

I really like the Blades in XC2 to be honest, each of them got their own quests where I felt they are quite fleshed out- better than a lot of side characters in other JRPGs at the very least!

At minimum they provide a good fun, at maximum they felt great to do and it's fun to see what happened to them.

Started Torna expansion. Loving it so far. The new titan is one of my favourite areas in either game. I swear they improved the graphics too. This is some of the best looking stuff I've seen anywhere on the Switch.

You think its worth the price tag?

I think I love Xenoblade 2 because of how Anime it is. The japanese voice acting is actually pretty good.
Really hoping we will get a Xenoblade 3 soon. We need more games in this franchise.

I love 2. It's probably my favorite game ever. Never played X (but read the story). The first game really isn't even a Xeno game (until it was retconed in 2). I think I'd even rate Xenoblade 1 as my least favorite out of all the Xeno games I have played.

It's 20 hours long, and you can occasionally find it as low as £20, or whatever it is in dollars. Definitely worth the price if you enjoyed the main game. There's a great new area and the story is very interesting, which fills in some of the lore used in the main game.

Well get it played. It is notably different from XC1 and XC2, but still completely brilliant. The world especially is something you have to experience. It's really one of the only open-world JRPGs out there, which makes it stand out.

What does that even mean? Given that a lot of people probably started with the series at XC1, that's just gonna add confusion to say it's not even a Xeno game. That's kinda the defining character of it for many people.

I think I'm basically considering the series starting at XC1, not Xenogears.

@Dezzy The series did start at Xenogears though.

Basically it has nothing to do with the Zohar/Conduit being a physical manifestation of the power of God.

Until it was retconned at least.

I wouldn't call that a retcon. They didn't change anything about the story, just added onto it. Also I guess we should use some spoilers if we're talking about the endings

How do you determine what counts as the same 'series' though? Unless it has the exact same titles, it's kinda an arbitrary choice.
If it's purely based on being made by the same developer with the shared lore, well then you could say Bravely Default is closer to the original Final Fantasy than FF7 is.
So which one is the same series?

I'm considering the series starting with XC1. Partially because I missed the Saga games, and haven't played Gears since the 90s, so remember almost nothing about it. But also the Blade games have the shared name, the shared focus on massive worlds, the same battle mechanics, and were the games owned and published by Nintendo.

Xenoblade 2 is the one Monolith Soft game I felt almost completely satisfied with by the end, technical and performance issues aside. Torna, as well. It's the best piece of video game DLC I've ever played. I've tried so many times to get into Xenoblade 1, and I just don't like it. The open world bits feel pointless, and I dislike the characters.

Xenoblade X is needlessly complex, big, and frustrating, although I do have to admire the sheer sense of scale to everything.

@Ralizah

How on earth can you like XC2 but not XC1? They're so damn similar. They feel like almost identical games to me, in every way.

@Dezzy Only in the sense that they're both JRPGs with a balance of free-roaming and linearity. And the story connection at the end, I guess. Combat-wise, writing-wise, setting-wise, aesthetically, musically, in terms of how side quests work, the huge focus on Blades, etc. they're extremely different.

@Ralizah

Relative to other RPGs, the combat, setting, stories and characters are all incredibly similar.

As I'd pointed out during my playthrough, some of the scenes even play out exactly the same. The Cliffs of Morytha scene is almost identical to the fight on Prison Island scene.

@Ralizah I feel the same way. I didn't not like XC1, I just thought it was alright (though I am glad I did play it through to the end, because of the connection to XC2). The open world was beautiful aesthetically, but I also felt a lot of it was pointless and the sidequest system was not implemented well, so I didn't actually do too many of them.
XC2 was amazing and I loved it. Combined with Torna, it was one of the best video games I've played in a very long time. I did all the sidequests, powered up Blades, sought out Blades I was missing, whatever I could do to get more time within that world. I got very immersed in the world of XC2.

@Tsurii And that's how I know you have bad taste.

@Dezzy the mechanics are different though. Large worlds and being published by Nintendo are irrelevant, unless you drink the fanboy kool ade. (Edit: actually Saga 1 and 2 came to DS in Japan).

I consider the story to be what is important. Xenoblade was only named that due to Iwata wanting to honor Takahashi's work with Xenogears and Xenosaga. It was originally to be called "Monado".

XC2 follows the themes of the Xeno games, albeit not to the philosophical heights of the previous games.

@Trajan

Large worlds is definitely not irrelevant. That was one of the main draws of the games in the first place, that it was kinda the first to do a JRPG take on the mostly western open-world RPGs.

Also the stories are mostly just about the characters interactions. All that grand philosophical shtick only comes into either story right at the end. It's not really what they're ABOUT in any meaningful sense. I wouldn't enjoy them if they were. Stories mostly based on philosophy tend to be bad. Too abstract.

@Dezzy If you are a fan of XC2 I recommend you check them out. I can't show you where you are wrong without spoiling everything.

But yes, Xenogears and saga are predecessors to XC2.

hello everyone and help: i just finished this awesome game, put in a little over 200 hours with all the cool blade quests, etc. So I opened my physical copy of Torna, and it came with the dlc download codes. My question is, now that it's downloaded, am i supposed to start New Game +, or can i backtrack on my previous game. I really don't want to start over...

@Dezzy I mean, sure, Xenoblade 2 is closer to the first game than it is to, say, Dragon Quest XI. But the two are still different enough that people can easily like one and dislike the other.

@Cotillion Xenoblade 1 isn't a bad game, but I think Xenoblade 2 improves on it in almost every way. I like the characters, plot, setting (the titans swimming above the clouds are incredibly cool), music, character design, combat system, treatment of side-quests, and the blade system more than equivalent aspects of Xenoblade 1. I felt like both XCX and XC2 made good use of their large, open areas, whereas the openness in the first game felt much less meaningful, as they was really very little to find or do in all that expansiveness.