Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@Matt_Barber ok thanks. Appreciate the help. It does kinda stink when you run into these. I did a little research and I'll try to level up my party in those areas.

@NintendoByNature Yeah, it's not the greatest of mechanics.

It's much more of a pain with side quests though, where you'll need to max out the skills of specific rare blades to finish some of them.

@Matt_Barber yep. I'll keep at it. I've gone this far.

Physical copies of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are currently very expensive in Europe, presumably due to scarcity. Do you guys think they'll be more widely available (and hence cheaper) after 3 launches?

@PrinsPaddestoel I doubt they will re-print Xenoblade 2, unfortunatly.

Seconded, are least probably not on the current Switch. There was a lot of buzz that there'd be a new print run of the game when Pyra/Mythra were revealed for Smash, but that never happened.

I'd love to be wrong, but most physical Nintendo games are typically only on shelves for 2-3 years barring evergreen sellers like Breath of the Wild and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Given that Torna cartridges are also getting hard to come by it'd be nice if they did a re-release where you got both, plus all the DLC and patches, in one cart.

Still, you can probably file it alongside a port of XCX and remakes of Xenogears and Xenosaga in terms of things that probably aren't going to happen.

That's a shame. On the website of one prominent retailer it explicitly says it's sold out and will NEVER be available again, so that seems to confirm it.

Do you guys think I could finish XC2 NG+ within a month working 40 hours a week?

Like what's the completion time on NG+ vs a normal playthrough? (Mine took like 200 hours)

I was on track to play all of XC1, Future Connected, Torna, and XC2 before 7/29.. except when I got to Torna/XC2 I wanted to do NG+ for my second playthrough except NG+ is stupid and I couldn't get into it initially so I took a week+ off after XC1.. now I picked it up again and was able to look past the game ruining elements.

You can finish an NG+ far quicker than your first run. Maybe 20-30 hours if you just stick to the main story and a minimal amount of side content.

Completed side quests are carried through, so you won't need to do them again. Unfinished ones are reset though, so make sure to finish any long-running ones (e.g. Ursula) first. Blades are also carried through, including any late game items you give them, so you will melt all the early game enemies in seconds. Even the final boss fight shouldn't be that hard.

At a pinch you could skip the cut scenes, although that's probably not what you want if you're doing it as a refresher before the new game comes out. I found that watching the flashbacks again after playing Torna added an extra layer to that story too.

There are a few things you can only do in the NG+, such as buying all of Poppi's upgrades, maxing out Poppibuster, and recruiting the Torna blades, although they're all optional.

I hate to say it but the blade quests weren't as good as they should've been. Like some of them have some interesting ideas but they're missing the extra step to really get me invested in these characters. Great idea, like a good chunk of the story, needed one more rewrite or addition.

Man this is unquestionably the most I've ever complained about a (barely) 8/10 game.

There's things I genuinely think are great from the story side of things, but I think being done with the main story made it clear to me that I love the gameplay side of this significantly more. Most of the highlights of the post-game were the more challenging/longer battles and the rare times I discovered some new area, not so much the actual quests (though those had some highlights at least). I'll probably go back to the normal game one more time in a few months, right before I start Torna and I'm most looking forward to the DLC challenge mode thing tbh (considering which characters that involves, that feels too fitting for me).

@Matt_Barber Well that is my problem.. sticking to the main story lol. And I am going to do the same as i'm doing in Torna, punisher of hell difficulty and reset everyone's levels to 1.

But ok ok.. 30 hours, that's good to know. I can do this I can do this

So is NG+ Bringer of Chaos impossible if you reset your levels back to 1? Playing Torna it had not been too bad.. needed to grind out some levels here and there, but now at the Malos fight and the mechs before it is just impossible.

Like how are you intended to play this mode? I haven't done a chain attack the whole game, it is kind of stupid....

Just finished Xenoblade 2.

• Great value if you're into jrpgs. I finished 138 hours playtime, to 100% it would take much longer.
• Great soundtrack
• Some really high production values in the cutscenes.
• World is really well designed.
• Battle system, while really easy to understand at a basic level, feels hyper complicated at an intermediate level. It felt like the rpg equivalent of learning tekken. I got to the end, and had given up on learning blade arts, and what accessories actually do.
• Some of the female characters designs were questionable. I'm all for scantily clad ladies when it makes sense, but the designs didn't really fit the characters being portrayed.

Overall though, a really solid game.

After reading and watching all the previews of XC3, I'm more convinced than ever that XC2 is going to end up like The Adventure of Link and Super Mario Bros 2: the odd one out.
They're still good games, but different from the rest of their respective franchises.

In XC2's case it's primarily the tone and atmosphere that stands out. Every other Xenoblade game is quite serious in its storytelling and while XC2 has its share of serious moments, the overall tone of the game feels much lighter.

Then there's the gacha mechanic casting a dark shadow over the whole game, bringing the whole experience down, which I hope never returns, not to mention the horrible implementation of Field Skills. Also very different from the other games is the fact that there's no single big connected world but rather seperate lands, which doesn't give the same feeling of awe and wonder. There's the overabundance of fanservice. And finally there's the feeling that the whole game felt rushed to release. From the story that seems like they sticked to the first draft, inconsistent character designs, terrible tutorials, awkward translations and voice acting,... It all makes for a subpar Xenoblade experience compared to the others.

Still, like I said earlier, XC2 remains a good game. Exploring the different zones remains a Xenoblade strongpoint and its combat system was the best until now. The story, while very convoluted, has some great moments and its main cast is very likeable.

I enjoyed XC2 despite all its flaws, but just like Zelda 2 and SMB2, I think most of us will look back on it as the black sheep of the franchise.

Yeah X by all logic should be the odd one out, since its not a numbered game, and is one of the only JRPGs I've ever even heard of where the main story is largely a footnote to slowly evolving side content. Also online. But 2 is so bewildering and first draft in multiple different ways. Also, someone at Monolith Soft was convinced that gacha elements are in games to be fun, instead of to make people pay more in mobile games. They are not. Just because you took out the monetization, doesn't mean its good now.

I kinda don't wanna rant about Xenoblade 2 anymore, since it does many things incredibly well (some better than the original), but when its bad, its impressively bad. Its worst elements stand out more than in most comparable games, quite frankly. And as an anime fan whose actually sometimes defensive of fanservice nonsense, it is so adolescent and early 2000s and meh enough of the time in ways that I've been done with in actual anime for years now (and a lot of that reflects the story and cutscenes in general). I mean Rex says "power of friendship" unironically. Like what are we doing here?

Actually, I just watched the new Thor movie, and tbh it has kinda similar issues. Good story is here, really solid ending, but...what is this focus on these specific jokes? Why this tone?

@kkslider5552000
Yes, at first glance one would come to the conclusion that XCX is the one that stands out, but as you and myself said, it's actually XC2.

Also, I'm glad you made the comparison with anime because that's one of the reasons why I like so few anime movies and shows, even though animation in general is my favorite art form. I happen to think western animation is far superior to Japanese animation in most cases, except for most Ghibli movies and a couple of others like Wolf Children. This seems to be an unpopular opinion among the gaming crowd but that's how I feel.

I mean you should probably watch better anime tbh instead of listening to the people that pretend My Hero Academia is peak fiction or some nonsense. I love western animation too but half of the good shows get cancelled for really dumb reasons and there's generally not nearly the same quantity of shows either.

@kkslider5552000
Maybe I do.
Can you perhaps name a couple of good anime shows (not movies) that had a proper conclusion?

Proper conclusion is a bit tougher since anime loves doing adaptations of larger stories that lead to either bad or non-conclusions, but I can still name a few that would be strong examples.

Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Space Dandy, Erased, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Little Witch Academia, Madoka Magica, Violet Evergarden, Nichijou, Serial Experiments Lain, Both FMA series, Yuri on Ice, A Place Further Than the Universe, Death Note, Cardcaptor Sakura, Eureka 7, Flip Flappers. Also all four seasons I saw of Digimon back in the day are complete stories on their own (with only one of them even being a sequel).