Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Confirmed for Holiday 2017

If there had been a 2018, they might as well have ripped my heart out.

So it didn't get delayed. Color me impressed...

Also, can I just say that I love that they continue to use voice actors with English accents? It really lends the series its own unique flair.

I'm still really surprised this is due by the end of the year.

This trailer didn't do anything for me, it had too little gameplay. Maybe I'll get excited once they show off more of the gameplay.

The Skies of Arcadia vibes here make me very, very happy. Endless ocean of clouds..... how I can't wait!

Looks and sound great.

Seems that they went more with the fantasy setting this time around, but it doesn't matter.

If smash doesn't release before, I'll buy the switch with this game.

I'll believe it when we get a date. Mario is October 27 so this is likely December.

Ni No Kuni 2 is November 10 so I'm actually OK if this gets delayed until Feb/March.

I'm still not convinced though. The characters are very chibi, and the world looks very empty compared to XCX. I know this is XC2 and not XCX2 but it seems like a huge step backwards, like it started as a Wii game then moved it to Switch without much effort.

On the bright side I always wanted a sequel to Legend of Dragoon and this looks a lot like that. FYI JRPG on PS1.

Maybe the VAs will grow on me, but right now it seems like the quality of performance is inversely linked to the quality of the British accent.

But ... the Internet said it would be delayed ...

Xenoblade 2 at the same time as Mario Odyssey...in the same year as Zelda Breath of the Wild. I've been waiting for satisfaction of this level for a literal decade.

The English voices........... god they're so bad. Include Japanese PLEASE

By the end of this year,the Switch's library of games after only 9 months on the market will be stronger than any console that's came before it.I don't think that can be disputed.It might not be vast,but pound for pound there has been none stronger.

I'm happy for the return of the British English voices, gave its predecessor a unique flair.

I should be more excited by I've been Double Metroided out today.

Doesn't change the fact that I will buy this on Day 1 and just jump into it immediately for the next few months.

this year is looking good for the switch

What a launch year for the switch and this will be the perfect final game to end the year.

@Anguspuss

Like next year will be bad with metroid prime 4 , FE switch and pokemon switch

Gosh... !!
Earlier than I thought.
I will consider this game.

@Xenjamin maybe you'll be luckier, but the Russian Nintendo channel's stream I watched made a subtitle footnote that the game will only come with English voicework.

I do prefer Disgaea-like choices regardless of my attitude to the voices (especially since being an anime fan often draws your attention to many quite familiar names in the original Japanese cast), but at least with Switch there's a chance JP version could include English text and serve as an official purchasable undub. XD

@crimsontadpoles I have to agree. I was really looking forward to this but it was mostly video. The small bit of gameplay footage that was shown looked very rough. And the voice acting was terrible. I hope it comes together well before it launches. It's Monolith Soft so I have faith though I do wonder that because so much of their staff worked on BOTW for so long, has Xenoblade 2 suffered as a result?

@nhSnork poo it'll probably only come with English then. Im not even a big animé or Japan fan its just that the voices i heard on this trailer were just bad. No feeling, felt like they just read their lines to get it overwith. Japanese voice over tends to be too dramatic sometimes but at least it gets my blood pumping and gets me invested.. such a bummer if its only English. Xenoblade being heavily story based will suffer immensely because of this for me.

I bet the cute redhead is gonna be censored in some way xd
Also is it my idea or the VA sounds kinda bad...

Looks great. The character design seems "meh" to me, too anime and less unique..... But I've no doubt the game itself will be fantastic. Monolith hasn't let me down in the two predecessors after all.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE I'm guessing we'll have a Xenoblade 2 Direct sometime in November/December to focus on gameplay, but lets keep watching Treehouse, because we're sure to see some "complete" gameplay going on. I think it'll come together better than the trailer this week.

Sure this Xenoblade will be awesome!!

I'm not convinced yet.. the content so far looks sparse and in early dev (maybe I should watch it again)? My hopes are high, but this will have to be delayed to bring it up to expectation levels and quality it needs to be...

..and as an Englishman, please for the Queen's English sake... Drop those voice actors or at least employ real English actors!!! Terrible, just terrible.

Still need to play the first one but the accents for this... I don't want to say what I want to say. Also is it just me or does it look really laggy? I still don't feel like it's coming this Holiday..

Looks bad, very cheap character design. All my interest on this game is gone.

I wasn't impressed with the main guy's voiceover. Nice hearing a British accent, but the voice was terrible! Also the two main characters look weird. Still, if the rest of the game is excellent I can live with it I suppose.

@Hikingguy It's most likely the character designs. They have no personality at all. They just look like generic moe blob anime characters

So... many... GAMES!!!

>__< please include the option for Japanese voices

he has a cat in his basket on the back... omg a cat!!! instabuy!!

MUCH HYPE

"THIS DOESN'T HAVE AN NA DUB, LIKE ALMOST EVERY OTHER ENGLISH DUB EVER, THEREFORE IT'S TERRIBLE."

- Any time any game has a British dub.

If I hear complaints about the accent or voice acting I'm gonna scream. People said the accents in XC1 were too London/South East English. This guy has a northern accent, everyone hates it. You can't win.

@Pocky well, it will be. Why wouldn't it? It's Xenoblade. Why all the fuss about the graphic style being different? Did we not learn our lessons about judging this stuff when Wind Waker and every subsequent Zelda came out?

@rjejr I see the more anime'esque character design, esp. in the 2D art in the menu, but chibi ... I've read that before, but I still don't see it.

We had Zelda in March, MK8 DX in April, Street Fighter in May, ARMS for June, Spla2on for July, Rabbids in August, Pokken in September, Frickin' Mario in October. So I'm gonna say Fire Emblem warriors in November and Xenoblade in December!
Say we get Kirby in January and Yoshi in February
(Minus Street Fighter, and there may have been something else that month) that's not a bad 1st year for the Switch. Let me rephrase that. That's an incredible 1st year!

One of the characters was designed by Tetsuya Nomura? Strange. Game looks good tho!

Wonder what'll get censored this time around.

It is different in art style, but it's amazing to me.

Gotta dig out the WiiU and finish the original.
My wallets in big trouble. 😝

@Ralek85 "anime'esque character design, but chibi"

Well it looked chibi to me in the trailer, but I'm getting used to it in the Treehouse vid. Still very anime after XCX though, but I've accepted that for a PS1 type JRPG in HD.

@Hikingguy "I own the disks for Legend of Dragoon but I never played it. Is it any good?"

Well honestly I'm not sure how well it will hold up, I played it when it released when the only games I was playing was JRPG on my PS1 and it was good enough that I remember really liking it and always wanting a sequel. Good level design, turned based battles, characters, the usual JRPG stuff.

Good news for me, besides Legend of Dragon I got a fleeting Skies of Arcadia vibe when they were talking about living on titans and flying in the skies. If they can combine Skies and Dragoon that'd be awesome. But now I'm just setting myself up for severe disappointment.

For anybody who played the first game but stopped early - I stopped after about 15 hours due to boredom for year - the game is good frmo about 15-50 hours in, then it gets really good, then it gets great a few more times after that all the way up to about hour 100 or so. I forget where I ended, I played a lot after it was over.

Here's the Treehouse segment on Yotuube, courtesy of Funky_Kong for anyone interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfGk6VMcJsw&index=15&list=WL

@rjejr How on earth did you figure that the worlds are empty from just a few seconds of gameplay? Show some mercy to us. Please.

TAKE MY MONEY NINTENDO THIS LOOKS AWESOME.

@rjejr Thanks for that link! I loved Xenoblade Chronicles X, never played the first game. The linked video made it clear that this is a sequel to the first game...that's cool, I always wanted to play the first but didn't want to pay $$$ for the 3DS version...now I'll just pick this up!

I couldn't think Monolith could disappont me so much... I don't like the art style at all it reminds me of a bad anime and I don't know what to think about the new arts system.

I need to add a line for "RPGs on Nintendo systems" in my budget. Wow do I want this!

This game looks so dope oh my goodness!

Watch the Treehouse vid, this game is gonna mop the floor with the first 2, and I LOVED those games.

@rjejr
Come on, man. You know how incredible the last two games were.

Nuff said.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE @crimsontadpoles They were saving the story for this trailer, and then the gameplay for this tree house:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfGk6VMcJsw

@Lone_Beagle You're welcome. Don't know what you loved about the second - probably just that it was a great game I suppose - but if you want story the first game is significantly better. And the music is much better. I'm so happy XC2 has music similar to the first. It's just too bad it takes so long to become great.

@Hikingguy With that collection of unopened games you could probably make a few bucks if you really needed the money. If you decide to play Skies of Arcadia I hear the port - dont' know where it is, PC or Gamecube maybe - cuts down on the ultra annoying pace of random battles. As great as that game was, I coudn't replay it if I wanted too, those random battles would kill me today. I have no use for replaying nostalgia and ruining my great memories.

@JaxonH But I also know how incredible Xenosaga 1 was, then 2 and 3 happened. Well 2 was bad, 3 was ok. Sometimes sequels don't stack up. Baten Kaitos had a great first game, the sequel was ok. Final Fantasy zig zags like Star Trek movies. Monolith made a great story in XC and a great game in XCX, they're due a hiccup. Nobody can keep up that pace. Grandia 1 and 2 were both really good games, 3 was only so so. (Nobody counts X.)

https://pressstarttobegin.org/2014/02/25/grandia-iii-the-game-that-killed-a-franchise/

@Cosats "that the worlds are empty"

I don't know, it looks like they based it on a game from the PS1 days, and those games tended to be empty, it suits the art style. And empty compared to XCX, which was practically over run with wildlife and fauna in some parts. It did look more lively than XC.

@rjejr
That was before Nintendo owned majority of Monolith Soft. One thing about Nintendo is they keep their top teams producing creme de la creme software. There will be no hiccup.

And seriously, watch the Treehouse of Xenoblade 2. This game looks astonishingly good. Epic story, cool characters (it's just the main characters pants that look odd... oh well I like odd and different) incredible world... and ya the world is insanely awesome. Seems more fantasy than sci fi, and XCX definitely felt sci fi, but it looks amazing nonetheless.

@JaxonH I thought it looked alright, nothing about it looked "astonishingly good", I mean even taking it on it's on merit - ignoring games I've just seen a few hours earlier like God of War, Spider-Man, Uncharted Lost Legacy, Horizon etc. - what bothered me about Xenoblade II was the constant texture pop-in due to the extremely limited draw distance. It felt like you could see grass for like 5 meters and as soon as you started moving the details of the world started pop-in ... literally right around you. It's not deal breaker obviously, but I would be lying if I said I don't find it seriously distracting. It was just too close. This kinda stuff (and framerate issues in Zelda) botheres me way more than the level of visual fidelity at display.

@rjejr Every other jRPG features kids/ young adults and an anime'esque look. I'm not sure what about it is really "PS1". Hell even the 360, often refered to as the "bro gamer" console, got games like Blue Dragon, Eternal Sonata and Star Ocean, which were filled with anime aesthetics (Toriyama designed the characters for Blue Dragon) and young adults or kids. It's just a thing many, many, many jRPGs do.

But yeah, it's a depature from the first Xenoblade game, and certainly XCX.

@Pocky ah you're putting words in my mouth there. I never said you said a Zelda game was bad. Simply that we shouldn't judge a game on it's art style. No half baked theories here.

The game looks fantastic from what they showed in the Treehouse segment. It isn't empty - the plains had plenty of enemies - and personally, I like the artstyle. I don't think it feels generic at all.

Plus, it seems Monolith can't win - check out old XCX threads, and people slammed them for character models, specially the faces. They changed the models and people slam them, again....

I can't wait for this. Takahashi doesn't dissapoint when we isn't rushed by time and budget. Bring this on!

I'm in the minority, I think this looks like crap.

@JaxonH "And seriously, watch the Treehouse of Xenoblade 2."

This was much easier when the Reply button in the email took us to the comment.

Yes, XC2 looked much better in the Treehosue than the trailer. I'm still not convinced, but mostly I'm just trying to keep myself from being too excited at this point.

@Ralek85 "But yeah, it's a depature from the first Xenoblade game, and certainly XCX."

That was mostly my point. And I just finished playing FFXV, nobody is going to confuse this with FFXV. Really any of the FF games since 7. OK maybe 9, 8 was all sci-fi. And while I felt like it had a bit of Star Ocean to it - I didn't play the new one but Last Hope - it seemed a bit less shiny than those games.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I see, a game inspired more by those old PS1 JRPG than the past 2 gens.

@rjejr Well, I felt XCX had more of a scifi vibe, while this and the the first one, had more of fantasy vibe (not purely, but on balance).
I'm not sure I can assign such labels to any generation of Playstation though. I mean in terms of jRPGs, PSX and PS2 were all over the place, and PS3 ... barely happened at all anyways.

I say this this game does have a "classic but modern" (e.g. no turn-based combat) feel about it. Considering it's releasing the same year as FFXII HD, a game that could probably be compared to Xenoblade on many levels, it's really confusing to me to try to create these kind of boxes though.

I'll have to play it to really get a feel for what that sensation is, and to be better able to describe it. But as I said, jRPGs with an anime aesthetic happened every gen. I really enjoyed Eternal Sonata for example last get. Best Tales game I've played since Tales of Symphonia.
On the other hand, I also really loved Lost Odyssey, which as far as looks go, would probably be better compared to XCX than this or the first game.

It's really hard to pin down in terms of generations

@Ralek85 PS3 had Eternal Sonata and the 2 WKC games, but that really did feel light after PS2. I suppose the PS2 games, and Dreamcast, had a similar look, but the graphics leap was great enough that I separate them in my head.

You are right about the anime look, guess my brain just needs comparisons for everything.

@rjejr I think the most important thing to remember is, that there are excellent jRPGs out there spotting either look, plus there are also excellent jRPGs out there spotting either fantasy or scifi settings, or something in between.

For example, I for one absolutely love Resonance of Fate. Yeah, it was bit grindy and the story never really amounted to that much, but I loved the characters, the mood (and also humor) of the world, as well as the excellent combat and genuinely fresh ideas like the hex system. If going purely by the looks and setting, it could be argued that it was not really a "jRPG", but it mechanically and structurally it was, plus it was made by TriAce so.... "j" indeed ^^

It was also on PS3 btw (and 360).

@Ralek85 Resonance of Fate

I remember that one, very brown w/ handguns. Was enough for me to skip it, I like my games very colorful and fantasy. I have a limited amount of playing time, my choices are probably too dependent upon graphics, but that's how it is.

@rjejr I don't know, I like colorful games (or I wouldn't be here) and I like games that are dark (like e.g. Bloodborne). It's not my personal metric for preference ^^

Resonance of Fate is not a dark or broody game though, like I said, it has some good humor in places, as well as some good art direction and detailed designs and architecture. It's not a visually stunning game though.
And yeah, I loved the part about the handguns, honestly, I was so refreshing to have these mechanics, these deep combat systems, this type of lengthy adventures ... all of that without your typical swords, magic rods or mythical summons and what not.

There is nothing inherently bad about any of this, but I've played games featuring these themes for more than two decades ... Resonance of Fate felt like a fresh coat of paint, and like I said, the stuff under the hood, like the combat system, was also like nothing I've ever played before, and nothing I've played since. That's actually a damn shame, because they've managed to come up with system that was as deep as it was fresh as it was absolutey flashy to look at all the same.

Honestly, Resonance of Fate is my first recommendation for jRPGs on the PS3. It's the best example of how flexible the trappings of this 'genre' can be. If you ever stumble upon it in a bargin bin, it's really worth taking a look, even if you don't go through the whole thing. I'm just saying I wouldn't dismiss out of hand because of the color scheme.

@Ralek85 If I ever start going thru all videogames JaxonH made me swear to start w/ Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon. I'm playing Kameo now, which isn't a JRPG, but I'm enjoying it and it came on the Rare Replay disc. Over the next 12 months I'll likely be playing Ni No Kuni 2, XC2, and KH3 (it's gotta release at some point). It's like the golden age trifecta of JRPG. And I think that's enough for now.

@rjejr

If you have a 360, I'm definitely with him as far as Lost Odyssey is concerend. Rocksolid jRPG, with some outstanding art direction and amazing music, plus a good, mature story, with the "A Thousand Years of Dreams" bits (which are actually part of a novell) standing out in particular as probably the most enjoyable pieces of writing I came across in a jRPG so far. Also one of the few games, I actually bought the OST for

Blue Dragon though is really nothing special, it's an all-around good game, nice character art (obviously given the creator), some neat gameplay ideas, like being able to attack multiple enemies at once, which might then fight each other, but other than that it's super average. If you've played jRPGs before, you'Ve played 90% of Blue Dragon already.

Definitely go for Resonance of Fate instead of Blue Dragon. As the ben-there-dan-that quota is pretty much reversed for that one. Also, Zephyr, Leanne and Vashyron are a likeable bunch altogether, and the latter is voiced by Nolan North, who is a veteran and brings a decent performance to the character.

Anyways, games to keep in mind. One of the best things about the X1 is the fact that you can play Lost Odyssey on it, with Resonance of Fate hopefully forthcoming (still got my PS3 hocked up though^^).

KH3 will release at some point, but that is really the only thing that seems a given as far as that one goes I'm curious about Ni No Kuni, I played the 1st for a good while, and found it quite charming, but ultimately, I grew really bored of it. The visuals and the picture-book'esque presentation were truly stunning though, and Ni No Kuni looks even more gorgeous.

I hope the gameplay is also improved, and hopefully (though I'm not betting on that) the story will move at a less glacial pace. Also, two things standing about about both Lost Odyssey and Resonance of Fate: You do NOT play as (some) kida(s). You play actual adults or young adults. I found that a real nice change of pace, as it also made it easier for me, to relate to the characters.

@Ralek85 I bought my first Xbox of any type, Xbox One, a few months ago, so that's why Jax was telling me about those old 360 JRPG now. I've since watched trailers of each but haven't started either yet.

Ni No Kuni 2 looks much better to me. It looks like they've dropped the whole other world part and are just focusing in the game realm so that should speed stuff up. At least I hope so. And no Pokemon fighting creatures, you fight, so I'm hoping that's an improvement as well.

@rjejr Ah ok I see, well, feel free to take my recommendations under advisements then Speaking of which, I would even suggest to give Eternal Sonata preference over Blue Dragon. It's really an interesting take on the life, death and music of Chopin, mixed with a bunch of interesting mechanichs for a Tales game, plus mostly likeable characters. Also, amazing music obviously.

Unfortunately, as of now, Eternal Sonata, just as Resonance of Fate, is not yet available on the X1. I'm not sure it ever will be, but I sure hope so ... more people ought to play that one, plus there are NO jRPG (certainly no more exclusives) on the X1. With the cancellation of Scalebound and Phantom Dust, I feel confident that Microsoft has finally given up on Japan, and thus I doubt we'll see much, if anything, in terms of these types of games coming to Xbox - which in turn only leaves them making available the 360 library, if they still feel like catering to that audience at least with a minimal effort.

Still, I hope you enjoy Lost Odyssey. It runs better on X1 than it did on 360, so that should be a nice incentive as well (the game had a few technical issues on the 360 in terms of frame rate and loading times)

@Ralek85 Eternal Sonata

I played that demo a few times on PS3 when I first bought my PS3. It was ok but the story line never really interested, I'm more of a meteor destroying the Earth kind of guy. And I think, but I'm not sure, it was fixed camera. I had outgrown fixed camera even then.