Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@rallydefault I don't have any of the Fighters Pass 2 characters, and aren't really influenced by Smash much, but I hope this time people check out the game and play it, just like Byleth. My timing for buying games that eventually got into Smash isn't too bad, I have ARMS from launch, bought Fire Emblem: Three Houses a month before the Smash reveal, bought FF7 Remake six months before Sephiroth came out, bought Splatoon before Ultimate itself was announced... the Xenoblade games are no exception, I started playing Xenoblade 1 five years ago, but I literally didn't know enough about Smash, or care enough at that point, to know who Shulk was. I beat the game then realised, oh, that guy's in Smash, that'll be good to expose people to the series.

The Three Houses one is strange, because I had started playing it, and was really into it. Bought the character, played it, and Byleth is almost like a second main when I do play the game once a month. I didn't care about the hate, I believed Three Houses was a legitimately good game with a good protagonist.

@Ralizah @link3710 You know why Beneath the Mask is so good? It was arranged by ACE. Their music is so full, so faithful and special. All their area and battle themes from both Xenoblade games are fantastic. Spiral Mountain was arranged by the man who composed it to begin with, almost like Hirokazu Tanaka's remixes, so as far as creative interpretation goes it's limited. Yoko Shimomura's arrangements are amazing as well, breathing new life into older songs.

The Smash arrangers I don't like are Yuzo Koshiro... that's it. His work uses such an outdated sound font that when combined with realistic instruments, sound horrible. The Tiger! Tiger! remix is an example of this, it adds literally nothing new to the song except some drums that clip a bit when they're played too fast. His Splatoon remix was awful. If you want to know how to make a good Splatoon remix, go ask Chip Tanaka, or Tomoya Ohtani.

To link3710 I've listened to the Ultimate music on my computer, it's perfectly fine. I imagine it sounded less good on the Switch because of compression but some of the arrangements just flat out suck.

Xenoblade 2 was done dirty with remixes, and the only reason it wasn't a complete failure was because of ACE.

@TheJGG
Yea I haven't yet purchased the second Fighter's Pass because my group that usually plays Smash together hasn't congregated during the pandemic. Once things get a bit closer back to normal I'll definitely buy the second pass so that we have all the fighters to choose from.

My experience with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was... up and down, for sure. Generally I prefer straight-up fantasy settings for my RPGs, but I actually really love this world. It's very creative. The combat was not fun for quite some time because I feel like the game doesn't adequately explain it to you, but once I watched some videos online I started to enjoy the combat. But then I came across a part that needed me to have a certain skill level and I just didn't have it, and I didn't really know what to do. The game can just be kind of confusing... I have close to 40 hours in it but I still feel like I don't understand most of the systems.

@TheJGG I wasn't aware that the Smash soundtrack had been released anywhere? I thought the only versions on the internet were ripped from the game (thus are rather compressed). The main copy of the soundtrack circling the internet uses other releases of the songs where possible (Melee, Brawl, 4, or original games), it's only songs that are exclusive to Ultimate that have no high quality release yet.

@rallydefault I spent two hundred hours in the game and beat the Torna DLC, and I still don’t know what a fusion combo is. It takes time but is absolutely worth the investment.

@link3710 Sorry, I wasn’t clear, I did download rips of the soundtrack. Having listened to the music frequently it doesn’t sound compressed at all, so in that there’s little excuse for composers to laze!

@TheJGG It's just a driver combo (topple, launch, etc.) and a blade combo (the elemental specials activated by blades) being activated at the same time (before their respective timers run out, that is).

Christ @Ralizah I’m half glad I didn’t know. At least in Torna it was easier to initiate both Driver and Blade combos, due to the streamlined combat.

Torna’s battle mechanics were so simple compared to mainline Xenoblade systems that I actually really like it. I’d put it between 1 and 2’s combat, with X not far behind, and considering how good the gameplay and battle mechanics are in Xenoblade games, that’s really good. The simpler mechanics like streamlined Driver/Blade gameplay, easier elemental combos, and attacks like when Addam switches to Mythra and inflicts Smash. Those were useful. It also made the boss fights a hell of a lot harder because the simplicity allowed for less confusion. The final boss of Torna, or rather the penultimate final boss of Torna, was a really creative, difficult and epic boss fight. Everything was good whether it was the reworked Party Gauge, the two mechs in the background, or the boss’ insanely huge health bar, even on Easy, along with the reminiscent boss theme. It was awesome in every sense of the word.

I think Torna's battle system makes an amazing first impression (in part because it's actually explained decently!) and sustains itself well up to the end of the game but does get a little tiresome in the postgame. Although, to be fair, blade/driver switching honestly should have been in the base game! I think the main game's battle system sustains itself better and remains fun into the postgame and beyond.

For anyone frustrated with the battle system in the main game I would highly recommend giving Chuggaconroy's video a look on youtube it does a much better job of explaining everything you need to know. It definitely has a somewhat steep learning curve but once you get over that it's so engaging.

@mr_somewhere @TheJGG Torna's dynamic battle system is my favorite in the series to date. In general, Torna lacks most of the flaws plaguing other Xenoblade games. Even the side-quests are better!

Granted, if it was a 100+ hour experience like XC2, I'd want a little more complexity in the battle system, but for the 30 hours or so that it lasted, it worked out quite well.

@Ralizah Torna's battle system is a lot of fun for its run time but if you're going for 100% it kinda overstays its welcome. That's how I feel about it anyway. The sidequests are generally much better alright, the main game's sidequests are a real mixed bag but defo an improvement over the original. Playing through the original in DE I think the sidequests in that have (for the most part) aged the worst. I hear X has the best of the bunch in those terms but I never owned a Wii U so I'm still holding out for a port.

@Ralizah I sped through it in under ten hours, but I was really going for it, skipping cutscenes and all that. If it was a full game of course it would have to be a bit more complex but everything in it, side quests, character camaraderie and development, and NPC interactions, were great, yeah.

I don't think the limitation with Torna is the battle system, but that you've got a fixed set of blades and drivers, and far less in the way of customization options. Then again, the post game is far smaller than that of the main game and there's only really one of the Golden monsters that's up with the superbosses in terms of difficulty, so I'd think that it ends up easier to 100%.

It's fairly short for a Xenoblade game, but 10 hours for the campaign would be rather rushing through it by my reckoning. It's really more like 15-20, going up to 30 by the time you've done all the side quests. There are plenty of full price RPGs that are around that length but nowhere near as consistent in quality, so it's phenomenally good value.

I've made some slight progress in my new playthrough, I've reached Mor Ardain and am just about to fight Mòrag for the second time. Difficulty's been rather fair so far though I'm not particularly excited for the bosses in Chapter 9, it's gonna be a pain.

@CactusMan any strategy in particular you use to get the most rare blades? Or it was just to open enough Legend Core crystals until Lady luck shines?

I am still missing 4/5 blades with about 250h in (have not played in a while though)

Using boosters and ramping up your luck stat helps a bit, but mostly it's just a case of farming core crystals and skipping the animation.

I still refuse to say what I feel about this game as a whole until I get much later into it, but I can't ignore anymore that this is game is very obviously a mess. Enough of it is because it has cool ideas that it wants to do, even if it leads to weird issues. But some of it are just issues that the original Xenoblade didn't have, and fixing them would not lead to a worse game for anyone at all. Same with X, which is just baffling to me.

A lot of it is just user friendliness and presenting the various gameplay elements well. The tutorials in this game are kinda just garbage. I also didn't like when games thought you were too stupid to do anything it wanted you to do, but the opposite extreme is not any better. And parts of the combat are just so absurd, you have to present it in a way people can actually get. I've looked it up, and I still can't at all remember how those elemental orbs after a combo are supposed to be used in context of a driver combo or how to do good drive combos beyond doing them after an elemental combo. And I just don't like how they did the sidequest system in certain ways, and the map often takes too long to use in any way.

Now, if I finish the game and declare it a masterpiece by the end, I won't be shocked. I still think the game is great in a lot of ways thus far. But its also really messy, and is too inconvenient too often. Which is a real shame to me, because convenience is one of the reasons Xenoblade stood out at first.

I also like the story but at points its almost an ironic kind of enjoyment. Its such a specific type of anime style of storytelling, combined with a more uneven English dub, and some truly odd timing for lines and things that makes it...certainly interesting in ways that I'm pretty sure weren't intended.

@kkslider5552000 My opinion of this game changes quite dramatically. It's almost seasonal. One day I'll think this is a great game with good voice acting and combat and the next I'll hate the characters, combat and the atrocious dub. I think this game is the least good out of the three Xenoblade titles, but it doesn't make it a bad game. I'd rate them from best to least best as such; 1, X, 2.

I never really liked 2. Loads of people insist it's the better game, but the combat's waay more convoluted than the original's, and the story just has heavy tonal whiplash. There's some things 2 does get right though, like the side quests being a bit more interesting, and voiced heart to hearts. I absolutely adore the 10th chapter as well, and the voice acting, aside from Rex and probably Tora, is pretty alright.

The Torna expansion is probably my favorite aspect of 2, if not for the slightly better combat system and the gacha mechanics being stripped out entirely, in favor for a set amount of blades which feel like actual party members.

@VoidofLight Give Rasmus Hardiker some respect, he voiced the Luminary and Tricky Devil in Dragon Quest XI! ;p

I prefer Torna's combat to the main one, it's stripped down but is still wild fun. The random blades were quite boring, so they made grinding for Rare Blades a pain in the neck.

@TheJGG The gacha system was the bane of my existence when I got to a certain dungeon in one of the later chapters. It probably didn’t help that at the time I didn’t know the importance of side quests in xenoblade, and I only had the tutorials to go off of from 2. However, I remember finding loads of skips in the dungeon that aren’t really meant to be taken, until I reached a road block and had to grind to level up blade abilities.