Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@Ralizah That would sound pretty bad if it wasn't pretty much the ONLY negative sentence in a thousand words about how amazing the game is. And the writer does say, as others have here, that this is a game for TV play anyway. Some games are just like that. I did a bit of grinding on handheld in BOTW, but for the most part it was a game I wanted to see on the big screen, not a six-inch display.

Listened to the Kotaku podcast today - one of the guys was very lukewarm about Xenoblade 2 after playing 15hrs or so. However, he didn't like XC1 either, so make of that what you will. I've still got it on preorder!

Hm, I heard the voices on that english trailer and they sound pretty good for me. The only thing is Pyra's voice when she screams, but other than that, I like the VA.
And for the handheld mode... BotW has problems in handheld mode, and it is a game that, at its core, was made for the Wii U. I assume XC2 was made for the Switch from the ground up, but the system has its limitations.

@JasmineDragon I disagree. BotW's landscapes translated beautifully to a smaller screen. XC3D was a bit of a mess, but its low res visuals weren't particularly attractive on a large TV, either.

And, with the Switch, there is no such thing as a "game for TV play." It's a hybrid device, so games should be well-optimized for tablet as well as TV play.

I mean, obviously visual compromises will have to be made, but even demanding games like DOOM and Super Mario Odyssey were designed in such a way that they looked great in handheld mode.

@Luna_110 BotW arguably performs better in handheld mode than docked, in terms of framerate stability. This was certainly the case at launch.

@Knighty_IX Thanks for the preview links. Opinions seem to be all over the place, which certainly makes me lean toward the eurogamer reaction being hyperbolic. The sub-HD resolution doesn't particularly bother me, as several of Nintendo's bigger games use adaptive resolution to keep things running smoothly. SMO actually dials down a number of visual effects. They still look impressive enough on the smaller screen, though.

Oh, and to answer your question from before (somehow, I didn't see your reply), I hadn't read that interview on Xenogears before. Interesting stuff!

@subpopz I wasn't a huge fan of the original Xenoblade, but enjoy aspects of X immensely. Even though it's closer in design to the original, XC2 seems to address several problems I had with the original.

@Ralizah I don't know, to me the fact that it's a hybrid means that you'll get some games that are better on handheld and some that are better on TV. You get things like Stardew Valley and Disgaea 5 that are awesome handheld games, some like BOTW and Splatoon 2 that (again, my opinion) are much better on TV, and you can get the best of both worlds.

I think trying to optimize everything for both handheld and docked modes means that there will inevitably be some games that aren't great in either mode. I'd rather let the devs pick their angle and optimize for the mode that really lets the game shine. It's awesome that you can play just about any Switch game in either mode without significant hits, but in a case like XC2 there was clearly a choice made to focus on a beautiful big-screen experience instead of limiting everything to what looks good in undocked mode.

Im any case, I seriously doubt that the game really looks like Xenoblade Chronicles 3D in any mode. The Switch is vastly more powerful than the New 3DS and has a bigger and far better display. There is no reason whatsoever that a AAA game that was designed for Switch from day one would end up looking anything like XC3D. That game is pretty much the pinnacle of technological development for N3DS and a remarkable achievement for that platform, but even the lowest budget Switch games so far have looked better than that. I find it really hard to believe that one of Nintendo's top-tier teams couldn't do better than that for a bespoke Switch game. So hopefully that statement was just an exaggeration.

I guess we'll find out soon!

The difference is that Splatoon 2, even if it looks better on the TV, still looks good on the tablet. Same with BotW. SMO is a bit rougher, as I said, in that not only does the resolution take a decent hit, but certain visual effects are scaled down, but it still looks really good on the tablet. The image is a bit softer on the tablet, but I would never, ever describe it as "blurry."

I disagree. If a game is designed around portable mode, and then upscaled in TV mode, it'll look good either way. Designing it around TV mode specs to begin with is just treating it like a home console. Considering how popular the system's portability is, this seems like a poor decision on the part of the developers.

I'm sure the comparison to XC3D was hyperbole, but repeated assertions that the game looks "blurry" in handheld mode are worrying to me. I don't expect the game not to take a decent hit when it's played on the go, but I do expect it to be designed with the performance specs of handheld mode in mind.

As you said, this is designed by a top-tier Nintendo developer. I have a hard time believing that they'd release a game that looked terrible off the dock. People were also talking about how bad SMO looked in handheld mode before release, and it looks fine. Way better on the TV, but still fine on the tablet.

Yeah, I'm hoping that people picking this up at launch will share their impressions of the game's performance in handheld mode. Although it probably shouldn't take long for undocked footage of the game to surface. I'm kind of surprised it hasn't already.

Xenoblade X was a nightmare to play on the gamepad. Not enjoyable at all.

The reason for this is mainly the 480p restriction resulting in non-readable tiny text. And one should say that XCX used the Gamepad as a second screen (in a very good way). Therefore, in Off-TV mode, you missed the second screen. Obviously, both things are different for XC2.

@Chandlero

Was it really 480p? Wow lower than the Vita.

@Dezzy Yeah, therefore Off-TV-Play was perfect for Virtual console titles but always an optical downscale for all HD games. In my opinion, the biggest flaw of the Gamepad. Would the WiiU-Gamepad had come with a 720p display, I never had bought an HD-TV.

Regarding XC2: I really hope that it will look good in portable mode. That is a game, I personally want to play on trips and in bed.

@Chandlero

The Wii U gamepad was the best legal way to play XC1 as well.
Big screen sucked cos of the resolution. 3DS version sucked because of downscaled textures. Gamepad just right. And suitable controls if you got the eshop version.
1080p in Dolphin preferable of course.

The 480p resolution is the reason most games didn't look stellar on the GamePad. Even if they don't always hit the goal, Switch games have done a better job of hovering around the 720p mark, which results in a much crisper display when played in portable mode.

Mario took a bit of a hit in regard to resolution, but that game was constantly running at 60fps with almost nothing in the way of hitches.

@Tsurii Thanks, it'd be great if you could post your impressions of handheld mode. At this point, I'm too weary of any issues the game might have in handheld mode to preorder it.

@Ralizah

90% of games look fine on the gamepad in my opinion. I think Xenoblade is the only one I really couldn't play at that resolution.

And the battery was still a joke. If it was 720p that battery would have lasted 1 hour max

I played XCX on TV except for reading those small texts (which they never bothered to fix in updates) when I switched to gamepad. Tiny texts wasn’t readable on TV from my playing distance. Also, game was looking good enough for me on gamepad.

Rocket League has high picture quality drop in handheld mode but I’m enjoying it same as I do on TV. What concerns me withXC2 is frame rate dips in both modes. Anyway my preorder is still up so we’ll see in 7 days.

@CroRock The font size in XCX was ridiculous. The couch in my game room isn't even very far from the TV, but I still couldn't read the dialogue half of the time. Glad Xenoblade 2 fixed this.

I'm more willing to be forgiving to games like DOOM and Rocket League that were developed with the specs of more powerful machines in mind in the first place. DOOM already had to be optimized extensively to work as well as it does on the Switch, so if you want fully portable DOOM, you just have to deal with the lower framerate and resolution. With Rocket League, Panic Button made the tough but necessary choice to shoot the resolution in order to preserve the framerate. That just has to do. It'd be a shame if Nintendo adopts this sort of standard for its first-party games that were designed from the ground up to work on the Switch, though.

@Tsurii I mean, I'd probably get it eventually, but my excitement would mostly be gone. I didn't get the Switch just to get "hybrid experiences" that are so gimped in handheld mode that they're only really appreciable on the TV.

My standards aren't super high. I realize the hardware isn't being pushed hard to preserve the battery life. And, you know, I've yet to find a game that was too severely compromised. SMO sees the biggest difference in performance between TV and handheld mode, and that still works pretty impressively on the handheld. At least in terms of visuals and performance (I feel like the heavy emphasis on motion controls gimped handheld mode to begin with, which, yes, affected my enjoyment of the game to some extent).

It's possible that the "blurriness" these journalists are reporting is just an initial, knee-jerk reaction to seeing a game go from 900/1080p on the TV to something a bit lower than 720p on the tablet. That's what I'm hoping for. If it's just the "soft" image quality of something like Mario Odyssey, then, you know, that's fine, and will still look massively better than anything I've ever seen on a handheld before.

And, even if things aren't ideal, I guess there's always the hope that post-launch patches will fix the visual presentation, like they fixed the framerate issues in BotW.

I've got to say, having never been a huge fan of the music in Xeno games (with the exception of certain tracks in Xenogears and XCX), I'm surprised by how good the music in this game is. It's edging toward being one of the better JRPG OSTs I've ever heard (and since most of the best video game music is JRPG music, some of the better video game music I've ever heard).

The art style is vibrant and the character models are so much more emotive and fun to watch than the ugly realism of XC's characters or the stiff, doll-like motions of XCX's characters.

The battle system has been revamped in a way that seems to bring new life to it. Love how streamlined the battle controls are in comparison to older games, too.

The side quests and map exploration apparently draw extensively from the improvements from XCX.

Urgh. To think I blew this off at the January Switch presentation!

OMSQUEEE! This comes out next week. I can't wait!

@Tsurii Have you seen Chuggaconroy's GamXplain Q&A about Xenoblade 2? Chuggaconroy (no idea who that is, as I don't follow youtube celebs, but he seems reasonably familiar with Xenoblade and its mechanics) says there is a decent amount of environmental interactivity in this one, including useful field skills that open up areas, "puzzle solving," and a decent emphasis of platforming (not to the same extent as X, though). Curious to see what he means.

EDIT: Found it! Although I've been having issues embedding the video for some reason. Here's the link.

This game comes out in one week from today, wow that was fast. I have so much to play right now it's overwhelming. I won't be getting this game at launch since I don't have the money so I'll be getting the 6th. I bring my 2DS XL everywhere with me trying to finish Xenoblade Chronicles 3D in time but that's never going to happen...