A Dive Into Xenoblade Chronicles 2

you lived through 2020 and 2021 and i don't think we need to remind ourselves any further of just how shitty pretty much everything was about those two years and 2022 in the grand scheme doesn't seem to be shaping up to be a whole lot better it felt difficult to try and find the motivation to do anything but escape all of it for as long as possible but thankfully for me i ended up being obsessed with something something that gave me a spark of joy and passion when i really needed it xenoblade [Music] my journey with this series begins on april 1st of all days i'd picked up my very first jrpg that was not a part of the pokemon or mario franchises in any capacity xenoblade chronicles 2 and with it came the expansion pass in torna dlc at the time when i asked for the game i was eagerly anticipating the release of xenoblade chronicles definitive edition i figured there was no better time to get into this franchise several creators i respected had overwhelmingly positive remarks with this series xenoblade 2 is a masterpiece okay xenoblade 1 and 2 i love i love them they're awesome this game is good i like xenoblade chronicles too i haven't beaten it but i liked it so i figured i was ready to try them out i needed anything to get me somewhere else for at least a few hours and so long as it was a video game to me it didn't really matter what form it took because i'd heard lots of people who weren't crazy about jrpgs that sung the praises of the xenoblade series for seemingly everything they had amazing stories lovable casts of characters fun combat expansive and creatively constructed worlds and even i knew how fantastic the music was thanks to super smash brothers in fact it really goes to show how much a left field character in a massive crossover series like that can truly give a franchise a push in the right direction this series has grown quite a bit since then in terms of popularity but if we're going to talk about this series popularity there's one important player in this equation that no doubt introduced this series to tens of thousands of people the first introduction i and many others had with xenoblade chronicles was trucker conroy's enormous 119 episode let's play series of the wii original i only watched the first few episodes of it over the years to keep myself from spoiling anything beyond the first fourth of the game but one of the first things he says is that this game was his favorite game of all time now don't mistake me here i don't mean to idolize any content creators because they're just people like you and i are but it really illustrated to me that this game must have meant something truly special if it was his favorite game ever someday i thought i would hopefully play it and i'd hopefully find a lot to love in it too but despite all that hype i still wasn't sure how much i would end up enjoying the whole series i even legally acquired the original game on my wii in 2014 and i remember being really overwhelmed by the number of systems and terminology and jargon that was present in just the opening hour i also remember thinking the controls were really weird and i ultimately forgot all about the game i'm not huge on rpgs or at least i didn't think i was the most traditional rpgs that i played growing up were the pokemon games and i don't mean to dismiss these games of the series as time goes on i begin to like these games more and more but i have a few problems with the series that ultimately turn me off from the genre as a whole for reasons i'm sure many of you have already heard before most of it having to do with the random encounters feeling like an ever present pace breaker there are multiple rpgs that i've loved ever since i was a kid but most of my favorite rpgs like mario and luigi partners in time or paper mario were really fun to me because they strayed away from their genre's traditional mechanics that often irritate me in other words i typically enjoy the rpgs that try their best not to be traditional rpgs i don't mean to say i hate rpgs but it is a genre that i feel you need to have a better understanding of than most other genres for a lot of the games within it to click with you if that makes any sense like if you look at a platformer you immediately have some sort of understanding of what the goal is how to progress through the game what makes it fun etc with rpgs though i feel like it requires just a little bit more of a first-hand understanding to really comprehend these games and what makes them so appealing when they're firing in all cylinders in my experience anyway outside of even rpgs though i was unsure of how much i liked games that put a lot of stock into their stories i used to put all of my chips into the gameplay i thought movies and books were better mediums for storytelling and that games should just better tailor themselves around gameplay because that's unique to this medium right and even the games that do put a lot of stock into the story can really only be magical that first time you know subsequent playthroughs could really only be interesting if you had forgotten most of that story and wanted to relive it xenoblade chronicles 2 had all of this stacked up against it it was fighting a steep uphill battle from the outset it didn't help that i had also heard how much more divisive this game was compared to the first game but eventually on april 1st i figured why the hell not right it can't hurt to try the game out and i just needed a break from my schoolwork so here we go xenoblade chronicles 2 was an experience i don't think i can do justice with words but that's what i aim to do with this video what i can say definitively is that there was one unquestionably good thing to come out of 2020 for me and that's that i got to fall in love with xenoblade more specifically xenoblade chronicles 2 and xenoblade chronicles definitive edition would come not long after never had a game connected me to a story so much never had i enjoyed such a vast cast of memorable characters never had i encountered such a detailed and dynamic world in any game before xenoblade chronicles 2 wears its heart on its sleeves and is unapologetically anime for lack of a better term in so many ways but as much as i adore this game it's certainly not a game made for everybody from what i've observed over the past two years popular consensus appears to say that xenoblade chronicles definitive edition or otherwise is superior to xenoblade chronicles 2. while i would still say this game has overall been viewed quite favorably by the public there are far more people mixed to negative about the sequel compared to the number of people who didn't like the first game the writing the voice acting the character designs they come off as kind of cringy to a number of people regardless of your thoughts on the game i'm not interested in going out of my way to try and alienate anybody all i am interested in doing is explaining why i somebody who didn't believe he liked rpgs fell in love with this game that by all means i didn't expect to even like given my gaming background at that time that and why i consider this game to be equally great to the first game overall i want to make it abundantly clear that this video is not meant to be a participation in the xenovoid 1 vs xenoblade 2 debate quite frankly i could not be less interested in being a part of that conversation what this video aims to do is to illustrate why i think there's way more to love about this game than some of the vocal detractors would make you think a defense of xenoblade chronicles 2 if you will to anybody interested in playing xenoblade chronicles 1 or 2 i'm going to be spoiling basically everything about them this video will mostly be an exploration of xenoblade 2 and all of its elements but i will also be readily pulling examples and comparisons to xenoblade 1 and a select few gameplay mechanics from xenoblade x this video would be best experienced having played at least both xenoblade 1 and 2 to the credits i'm not holding back or warning you beyond this point i highly highly recommend that you experience these games yourself before watching if you haven't played any of these games i'd recommend beginning with xenoblade 1 but if xenoblade 2 interests you more you can easily enjoy this game without context of the first game all i will say further is that xenoboy 2 is one of the coolest ways i've seen any sequel be handled and playing the first game will elevate your experience of the second game finally all of the outside sources that i use in reference in this video will be linked to in the description and they will be indexed on screen based on their order of appearance but with that jrpg length introductory anecdote out of the way everybody please kick back relax get yourselves a snack and a beverage and familiarize yourselves with those timestamps because this is a dive into xenoblade chronicles 2. [Music] [Music] [Music] the vistas the nations and their varying cultures and the art direction or the stuff of magic that immersed me into this world of all rest for hours and hours and hours and hours and i went into this game trying to analyze my thoughts on it trying to describe stuff like oh what do i think of this game design decision and other nonsense like that and ended up coming out completely blind perhaps the most stunning aspect of the xenoblade games on their surface level is the absolutely massive sense of scale and their well let's call it attention-grabbing art direction the idea of roaming across the back of a titan is something out of a childhood dream i can't fully believe how well realized and detailed that setting is in this game the amount of care the developers had to put into the geography of both auress and the bionis and mcconus in these games is not only insane but a spectacle of technical engineering especially considering how behind the technical curve nintendo's consoles usually are unfortunately the limitations of nintendo's position in said console technical curve are pretty evident if you look around on the technical side of things this game is quite clearly being compromised in some capacity with resolutions in handheld mode lowering to 368p according to digital foundry docs mode by contrast mostly sticks with 720p and dips below to 540 which is unfortunate but it's also not unusual for the switch by any means this game can get pretty ugly when you look at some smaller scale technical details textures in geometry fail to load quick enough when you fast travel to far away locations sometimes and even during some major cutscenes you can evidently see where the draw distance reigned for grass and plants ends in regions like gorman or this gate and theoscaldia palace and despite all of this the frame rate can still dip below the targeted 30 frames per second fairly often i wouldn't consider myself a graphics nut per se but if there were one critical visual drawback of both xenoblade 1 and 2 as they are now it would be the resolution i pray one day we can get a port or a console for these games to run an actual 1080p or higher but apparently that's going to be a day much further down the line because for some reason the only market nintendo isn't interested in satisfying is people who want better console performance anyway so on the technical side of things these games are quite clearly compromised but does that mean i think these games look ugly as a whole absolutely not in fact i think both of these games are absolutely gorgeous for what they are i think they are the perfect case study that demonstrates that the art style and art direction is far more important to me than the technical graphics ever will be the 3d anime art style is perfect for these characters their model proportions their expressions and the animations all fit this main cast beautifully it translates super well between the 2d art and the 3d models i love reading the body language of the characters be it during battle or when just sitting idle the character animations are absolutely gorgeous in this game look at any two characters using the same weapon class and you see them all exuding unique characteristics from the others look at zeke and morag wielding mega lances for example morig is direct hard-hitting and practical zeke on the other hand is bombastic over-the-top and stylish so stylish in fact that zeke's mega lance kit is rendered suboptimal for it which is really funny take nia and rex using bit balls nia has a certain gracefulness and elegance about her but she also has a ferocity lunging out too whereas rex is doing a ton of silly twirls and leaps while slamming down as hard as humanly possible details like that are by far the most polished aspect of the visuals in these games and i think this art style best suits the xenoblade series most xeno games prior to xenoblade 2 appear to chase after a more realistic visual style to somewhat jarring effects i think xenoblade 2 is a clear illustration that the team focused on making an art style that will age much better in this regard while it already is visually dated thanks to the hardware it was released on this more cartoon-inspired art direction has proven to stand the test of time much better than the sort of photo realistic styles of the original i'm glad monolith clearly learned from what the first game did and stuck with this style that will age much better all i mean to say is there's a good reason shulk went from looking like this to looking like this the fact that the switch is even rendering something like the gormati titan moving its neck while i'm on the opposite end of the map is the exact kind of detail that brings all rest to life alongside stuff like neo drill marker poppy's purposely stiff animations while to some little details like the resolution lowering to maintain decent performance or foliage spawning and as you approach it may be distracting one visual thing that i found to be quite distracting at infrequent points for the robotic animations that are used in cutscenes obviously they could not have uniquely animated all these cutscenes by hand this is the only sane way you can go about it my quarrel with it is that on a rare occasion it can sometimes be difficult to understand what's supposed to be happening in scenes like this hey no you get away from me don't touch me stop that rex don't tease her all right all right i shared this minor complaint with xenoblade 1 and x by the way i also think the pacing of a handful of scenes can sometimes feel a little too slow or unnatural due to only the japanese dub being lip synced this is hard for me to describe but the way scenes play out in xenoblade 1 feels much snappier with how little space there is between each line of dialogue where in this game sometimes the amount of dead air can be it can be a little jarring what an idiot it's a rare distraction for myself personally but i thought it was worth mentioning in the character design aspect a few npcs can look a little scuffed in low poly but this is only a problem i have with a couple npcs there are no major characters that i look at and feel that they don't belong in this style design wise i love nia's cat aesthetic that she's got going on rex is a salvager outfit sure it may be a little bit funny looking but i like his design overall i know that statement may be blasphemous to some people but i think it gets across his character right away this outfit is rather goofy looking i think most would agree and that's exactly who rex is in spite of how grim circumstances get rex is always prepared with another rule of the salvager code to spit out and this design gets that across quite well if you ask me thor is fittingly dressed in messy mechanics clothing borah keeps herself uptight and in the ardanian uniform at all times zeke is all wild and loose etc i could see anybody finding a favorite character design in somebody in the main cast if you silhouetted each of the characters i'd find them each distinguishable from similar designs in contemporary jrpgs i think pyromithra and bridget look really cool too i like how pyro and mithras clothing are inverted from each other in a way not only illustrating how different they are from one another but also showing how incomplete both of them are before they become pneuma but alright i'm very briefly going to brush against the elephant in the room because it feels wrong not to address this in any sense i don't have a firm opinion on the sexier character designs for the female characters in this game i've seen women on both ends of this discussion that make very compelling points and i ultimately feel like i flip flop on the subject all the time on the one hand some have found it comforting or empowering to step into the shoes of pyro mithra braided etc i've seen some state that they've helped them feel more positive about their own bodies and that's truly a beautiful thing this is the best possible thing a character could do for someone i also never once found the character designs to distract from any of the story scenes either even if i'm not the same gender as pyro and mithra they are some of my favorite characters ever seeing them overcome their depression and finding happiness through rex's love and support is one of my favorite character arcs of all time now no character in this game has been written to be a fan service character every character to me feels like they have been granted depth and compelling attributes beyond their visual design on the other hand you have the inverse of this effect it makes some women feel very uncomfortable playing this game part of it can feel like it's sort of pandering to a horny demographic as if the characters themselves wouldn't grab your attention they have to hook you with something else it's also hard to ignore the larger video game spaces treatment of notable female characters than just women in general all i mean to say is name me a series where a running staple for a time was that if you got a lower clear time a male lead would take off more of his clothing during an end screen you know this game also doesn't help itself by including scenes like this in it [Music] the only male characters in this game that i would consider to kind of fall underneath a sexual empowerment angle would be maybe zeke maybe gorg and maybe gin don't be intimidated squidward try to imagine him in his underwear oh no he's hot i apologize for being such a centrist about this but i really do think there's a valid point to be made from both perspectives and neither group are in the wrong for feeling how they feel about this i attempted to seek out what women themselves felt about this and ended up finding a healthy amount from both ends of this debate i don't believe monolithsoft had ill intentions behind this but the intention is also something you can't exactly be 100 certain of in situations like this however you feel regarding this i just encourage that we all listen to what women themselves are saying about this because i rarely end up seeing their perspectives on this discussion surrounding their depiction and it really doesn't feel right and please do not spare me any criticism surrounding my take on this i'm not an authority on the subject at all and if it wasn't such a common talking point surrounding this game i wouldn't have brought it up at all if i could help it all i ask is that we listen to the women bringing forth their experiences and encourage that they continue to do so i now want to shift the conversation to say that i think a lot of the character designs in this game look really damn cool i can't say i've seen a game with a similar variety and style of characters across the board now don't get me wrong not all of them are winners [Music] but i found a lot of them to be insanely creative adenine percival dagus grassette cora cassandra harold and florin are my personal favorites among the non-story blades and despite being so wildly different looking from each other the style of this game remains intact in my opinion because of the fact that these are all mythical blade creatures shown to be just about any kind of sentient life forms and gameplay wise you could realistically use whatever blades you want to be them common rare tank healer attacker anything so long as you allocate your resources appropriately but we would not be talking about a xenoblade game's art direction if we weren't going to talk about the area aesthetics i think xenoblade 2 shines the most visually in the variety of the worlds that it takes you through i would liken the xenoblade series to metroid in terms of how much the atmosphere can enrich the exploration even when it can be something of a walking simulator the only area and i do mean the only area that i don't love is the empire or more ordained which visually is pretty dull compared to the splendor of everywhere else it's a desert surrounded by old abandoned buildings which is an aesthetic i do not much care for the factory itself is also visually not distinct enough to really have any recognizable landmarks and it makes navigating through it for the first time a nightmare but even still this is all pretty well justified by the story considering how much emphasis is put on the fact that this titan is nearly dead it's been thoroughly drained of all of its natural resources and it's just left with the industrial creations of the denizens living there they can't grow crops here the temperature is so high and the climate is so dry that they have to annex gorman to get natural resources from their titan instead and this isn't even mentioning that mordain has an absolute banger theme and that pretty much makes up for it in my opinion everywhere else though oh don't get me started gourmat has so many little nooks and crannies everywhere and tons of enemies to take on in every level range oh my lord it is bursting with so much color and life the left theory in archipelago is a place that i want to visit in real life who the hell came up with this seriously this is incredible and it puts skyward sword sky to shame i'm sorry don't get me started with fonzette village all right you know what i think i'm getting myself started with fonzette village i have an absolute adoration for village environments like the ones in fonzette and the shire in the lord of the rings the atmosphere is just as pure as it gets and god i wish there was somewhere in the world that felt like that the fact that it's disconnected from the conflict everywhere else in the world all people are always so lovely the environment's always surrounded by nature and accompanied by some soft wind instrument pieces just holy man i want to live there tantal is rather generic and it's snow team but your traversal is anything but generic you begin traveling down these massive pillars over a drop into a frozen lake and it's one of the most relaxing areas in the game at night despite being so bombastic and lively during the day the inline praetorium is the definition of heavenly on the surface despite the landscape being above the clouds and having this really soothing choir music the theming is doing its best to hide the fact that the common focan immigrants in indole are struggling to stay alive so much so that they're left with these tents inside this small portion of land providing some foreshadowing that maybe the praetorium and its leader aren't exactly interested in providing comfort to anyone other than themselves mother uriah this is hands down one of my favorite settings in any video game the pink trees the purple and orange skies this absolutely sprawling and vast expanse of lakes and puddles it is unreal how much this game gets out of its art style considering how technically capped it is on the switch mortha is haunting and creepy the remnants of a long dead society that claus failed to save elysium behaves very much the same a chilling site of humanity's effects on what should have been the safest place in all rest i eventually have to stop myself before i list every location but i love all of these areas and they are so distinct from one another and are so beautiful that i think i can safely say i prefer the locations over the ones in xenoblade one just a little bit just a little bit please don't kill me just a little bit the cloud see itself is just such a beautiful overarching setting for the game i couldn't imagine the scenery of this game if i tried it's truly a creative feast for the eyes the vision of the world tree is very much the same it's just this massive swirling spiral of ether it's quite similar to majora's mask's moon in more ways than one it's always visible from anywhere on all rests looming in the background it's shrouded in so much mystery and making your way over to it is such a good way of visualizing your progress through the story much like the mcconus was in xenoblade 1. like the mechanism xenoboyd 1 though when you do venture inside i can't say i find it to be as visually stimulating until you finally do make it to elysium but these compelling aesthetic designs are only the half of it xenoboyd 2 excels at world building just like the first game does the concept of blades and drivers is explored through pretty much every branch of this game there are a multitude of story cut scenes and plot threads based on the relationships between drivers and blades side quests and background details build on this stuff too you encounter tons of scenarios developing relationships between blades and humans take vessels blade quests that puts on full display the consequences of blades returning to their core crystals with their memories completely wiped in a heart to heart after the fact vest has to try to reconnect with the family who once knew her in her past life take an interesting dilemma where you have a pair of blade sisters one of which praxis is spontaneously lost and then rebonded by your party continuing the quest then necessitates that praxis fights theory then theory slays her own driver and then decides that the two of them will relive their sisterly bonding experiences in her next lifetime how about a maltest stealing the powers of blade core crystals and endle having complete control over the distribution of zed core crystals essentially enslaving them nora doesn't have the supposed aptitude required to bond with the core crystal so he works around it by building an artificial blade did you notice how every driver in the party explores a unique kind of human and blade relationship this world is very clearly built around this concept and i think it's explored in a lot of valuable detail in pretty much every corner of this game's world and story the world design behind all of the locations in xenoblade 2 are also incredibly structurally unique from one another the ryden titan swallows your ship whole and the entire thing is laid out as the mouth throat and stomach of this thing when you reach the electro ruins you can see the tail of the orion titan 2 but it doesn't even stop there come chapter 9 when all the titans are gathered around the world tree go to the alethra ruins and oh look at that that kind of continuity is all over this game the notable exceptions i end up finding are really only in place for convenience's sake for example fast traveling out of uriah early on is perfectly fine for me because is anybody going to argue that locking you out from the other locations would even be a little bit worth it for the sake of it i sure hope not the left theory and archipelago conceptually is somehow even cooler than uriah instead of one massive bulky creature we get a series of small platform-shaped titan appendages that are strung together by these thin bridges with a gigantic wall of clouds shrouding the background you can explore the hidden islands by diving into the cloud sea and swimming over to them i thought jumping down was just gonna void me out the way it normally does but they just let you swim around here to your heart's content navigating across these huge islands offers so much enemy variety too one island is full of birds and antelope type enemies the other has sharks with legs and flying worm dragons but this variety doesn't just hit you all at one time though far from it by the time you've reached gourmet you can fight enemies in every single level range if you're heading straight for tour guides just to your right are leveled 10 to 12 wolves and gentle wildlife enemies lie just to their left just off of that path is an island fostering level 40 crustacean enemies and underneath this huge network of branches lies level 70 arachnid and bat type enemies and to top it all off you have a territorial robber to scare the out of you that's level 80. there is always a bundle of hidden goodies and landmarks for every inch of these titans and i do mean every inch temple ranch is a titan that you go to for one story event but this is a fully fledged titan with close to as much content as every other major titan in the game and while i generally enjoy when games can be shorter or get more use out of smaller spaces and more condensed level design xenoblade 2 essentially offers a pseudo open world game alongside its compelling narrative drive it's not necessarily open world per se but there's so much to see and do and it continues to be so intrinsically satisfying to explore that it just never gets tiring to me i don't find it excessively dense like say mario odyssey's end game but i always feel rewarded for looking around wherever i can despite what it can look and sound like from an outsider's perspective i'm always looking for and finding something valuable in these massive worlds and there's absolutely no sense of emptiness where the game doesn't clearly intend for there to be no opportunity to place a hidden treasure chest as ben over looked even in the final stretch of the game there are treasure chests hidden throughout where only the most inquisitive players would find them these areas are balanced incredibly well between being expansive and dense and it never feels like you've quite seen everything these areas have to offer and i love that these environments also craft such a believable world layout too it doesn't feel like a big chunk of game code this is the world of all rest to me many secret landmarks in this game truly feel like secrets you could easily miss out on take the fife for forgetfulness you can venture underneath abba cavenich and hop onto a ledge and slide down this massive tunnel until you've reached an island in the cloud sea that you could very easily have seen from this ledge and thought ah that's probably just a background detail right no siree that's a genuine secret that intrinsically satisfies you while the game still extrinsically rewards you with exp and a fast travel point it's a similar deal with the hidden pool and phantom ima and there are tons of other ones like it in this game all of this meticulous detail worked wonders in subverting what i was expecting going into this game i thought it was probably going to be a very story first type of game with a lot of shallow and unappealing gameplay to serve as a backdrop to serve the narrative more than everything else but where xenoblade 2 really began to make me change my mind on that impression was in his combat systems so let's explore that shall we [Music] [Music] going into this game i did not expect to care about battling enemies every rpg that i have played and finished with turn-based combat has had fun battles to be sure but it was not the appeal of those games to me in the mario rpgs while fighting enemies was satisfying and fun in its own way i mostly enjoyed the moments of characters just talking to one another or just exploring these unique spaces that often don't appear in the mainline mario games one part of the pokemon games that always delivers in my opinion are the variety of creatures you find and the landmarks that make questions run through your head like what could have happened to create this place it pushes me through those games even when the battling doesn't really interest me that much i swear i don't always hate turn-based battling but i want to explain the three common reasons that they often don't engage me one lack of real-time control two random encounters and three it feels random the first point is absolutely a me thing when a character's movement and controls align with my button presses immediately it feels so satisfying in a way that traditional turn-based battling doesn't often manage to be this is why mario luigi as well as paper mario manage to be some of my favorites despite being turn-based there's always a timing-based action to regularly use and it makes combat feel satisfying in a way that selecting a pokemon's attack just never will be for me the second point is more or less just a frustrating immersion break for me and the games that have random encounters i'd feel much more inclined to battle pokemon if i could tell when a new route added new creatures to battle or catch walking through grass and having the game tell me hey you just ran into this thing that you apparently couldn't see in grass that goes up to your knees feels like kind of a halt in the world's believability for me obviously suspending disbelief is important to do to an extent but this is where it kind of feels silly to me plus how many times have you or anybody else on the planet said oh thank god another random encounter because for me that would be very very few times the third point requires a little more elaboration random elements are baked into every video game it's important to have them for both programming simplicity and variety i'm not saying these games having random elements is a problem i would be a huge hypocrite if i did considering how much i love mario party my problem is and this ties into the first point that when i'm not allowed to do anything but sit there and watch my pokemon attack the random elements are often at the forefront of my mind leading to battles feeling more arbitrary and out of my control to the point where it's hard to feel engaged in what's happening if you enjoy turn-based battling that is not a bad thing i encourage you to keep enjoying it if this type of battling didn't work people wouldn't still be putting it in their games but i just find it gets on my nerves more often than not i perhaps rashly assume that xenoblade 2's combat may lead to similar issues just making me want to get each battle over with and moving on to the next one well poor research on past me's part i'll admit because it turns out xenoblade 2's combat is not only not turn-based it also manages to retain a lot of strategy found in turn-based systems while being a fun-action rpg of sorts [Music] oh man do i love the combat in this game combat in this game is explosive kinetic and all around just a lot of fun from my understanding of this game's battle progression it usually goes down something like this auto attacking charges your arch using arch chart is your specials using specials can further elevate your blade combos which you can then use in combination with your driver combos to do fusion combos to do more damage above the whole party there's also raising the party gauge you fill up the party gauge by getting crits hp potions bonus artifacts and progressing blade your driver combos filling the party gauge allows you to revive fallen party members and use up one note in the process or do chain attacks when the gauge is maxed out which doesn't even take into account the affinity between the driver and blade increasing the way that they fight and when at max infinity you can charge a level before special or that landing a level three blade combo gives the enemy an elemental orb that you can break when chain attacking to further extend the chain attack and that's not even getting into the awk scores or the equipment builds or poppy swap or the pouch items or the blade abilities your blade team combinations and the various effects those all have on each driver and i'm sure there are plenty of other little relationships going on under the hood that i don't even know about but generally this is how the combat builds in each battle in and of itself the combat is complex and has tons of depth to it but what's so cool about it is that it sidesteps all the issues i normally have with turn based battling first and foremost game feel auto attacks consistently do damage and your attention is more focused on charging your arcs and positioning yourself to do the most damage possible and trying to manage who has the enemy's aggro this already eliminates my biggest problem with rpg combat having to tell your units or pokemon to do the same attacks over and over and over again feels so draining when you're not allowed to do anything but just wait around auto attacking eliminates the need to do that and instead lets you manually input the arts that are meant to do a lot of damage while you are technically doing the same attacks over and over and over again to me it's really satisfying because of your ability to control the character in real time and having your inputs immediately result in your output performing archer specials at the same time your auto attacker art hits an enemy increases your damage output and special attack charge it's one of those actions in the game that just feels so good to do especially with the blue circle giving you that affirmative feedback i really dig timing based rpg combat and this game absolutely nails it you can move your character of choice in real time you can position yourself somewhere relative to the enemy for certain arts to do more damage you can be knocked over or stunned by enemies you can run away from battle altogether and you can even speed up your auto attack cycles by side stepping mid animation to cancel the combo i much prefer this system for auto attacking over the way it works in xeno wood 1. the agency over where and when you auto attack is an extra hint of precision i greatly appreciate in xenoboid 1 during the late game super bosses there were plenty of times where auto attacks triggering off put me in a bad spot when there were enemies with nasty spike penalties i also greatly enjoy the rhythm you can get into when you're stutter stepping which changes depending on the weapon class you're using the first game system isn't bad sometimes moving around and auto attacking at the same time could be useful but i see xenoblade 2's version as a solid evolution it speeds up combat gives players more agency and precision allows for more control over aggro and offers a small layer of mastery on top of an already pretty complex combat system the nature of being in control of all of this in real time is what keeps me grounded in this universe it makes me feel far more immersed in the world it feels hectic it feels like i have enough control of the situation to the point where it makes me feel as though i determine whether or not i win these battles it's also chaotic in such a way that makes winning difficult battles by the skin of your teeth immensely pleasurable i rarely play a pokemon game and think dude this battle is insane meanwhile in this game [Music] i [Music] [Music] i love this game so much as long as you truly understand the combat you can overcome any story battle without needing to grind assuming we're not talking about like end game super bosses as far as random elements go your party members are really the most crucial aspect of rng that can kind of make or break you but in most if not all cases i thought the ai was pretty damn good there wasn't a significant number of losses that were caused by questionable ai decisions most frustrations occur when you inflict a break on the enemy and then your teammates who both have topple arts don't use them or maybe the opposite happens i had many times where i anticipated my party wouldn't follow up on the driver combo so i switched blades preemptively only to find out my teammate already followed up on the combo and now i made it so we couldn't progress to the next stage the same can be true for blade combos but even that has a workaround that the game just doesn't tell you about at all male driver ai are apparently programmed to prioritize driver combos over blade combos while female ai are the opposite turned out to be true whenever i change driver combinations sure would have been nice to have that acknowledged in a tutorial somewhere but uh we'll get there every now and again i would switch to the healer role so i wouldn't need to worry about blade switching but this was far from common on the whole i found the ai to be competently programmed and quite reliable the most annoying issue i find is fighting larger enemies and trying to revive your teammates is a pain in the ass because of how far apart everybody gets and you can't set ai preferences to just kind of stick closer together which considering that was an option in both bass xenoblade 1 and x it got to be kind of annoying another gripe i have with combat after playing the first game is why did they remove the ability to help party members out of status effects again when it comes to launch or smash it'd be a little silly to save your party members from something like that but why not just exclude those two and allow yourself to help your teammates out of at least topple it's not like that feature really hindered combat in the first game if anything it made combat more fun as helping your allies was just another thing to do the extra control over the ai formation helped me through some tough battles in xenoblade definitive edition i would have greatly appreciated the same kind of option in the damn challenge mode missions in this game especially from massive enemies like cloud c king ken while we're comparing the two numbered games combat systems i do easily prefer chain attacking in xenoblade 2 over 1. i'd say the key thing i prefer about xenoblade 1's chained attacking was being able to break topple and daze enemies within them but considering how this game also grants you bonus experience for overkilling enemies and chain attacks i think it is more than obvious that xenoblade 2's chain attack mechanics are preferable to me the elemental orb extending the chain attack cycles of the party is so much more in your control over praying to the high heavens you activated chain link on your next attack in the first game chain attacking is always at least a small risk due to the depletion of the party gage so having that guarantee that you can extend this combo with the right elemental attacks is much appreciated getting off a level 3 blade combo to set up an orb is a decently long process and it feels earned when you kicked into the chain attack and see 5 orbs in front of you that took quite a bit to accrue keeping the orb system from being busted but also allowing knowledgeable players to put their skills to the test and guarantee the length of their next chain attack this is actually something torna changed that i hope doesn't stick around if a system like this one is in future jrpg like xenoblade entries for torna itself i think having orb master is perfectly fine it's a shorter game and you would never be able to get a full burst if you had to set up the orbs the way you do in this game but it is nowhere near as satisfying to get a full burst or elemental or when everyone can just kind of use whatever special they want to and get rewarded for it at least not for me but that may be a discussion for a future video i enjoy xenoblade 1 and 2's combat systems quite a lot and i appreciate how differently they behave from one another while retaining similar elements like affinity party gauges and arts it feels like an adaptation of combat from the first game while still keeping a healthy sense of familiarity to it as well i have an unending respect for how well the first game got it right considering how i've never seen a combat system like this in an rpg and much of my price for xenoblade 2's combat is directed at the first game as well that said if i had to pick one i prefer you'd probably be xenoblade 2s i prefer having all of your arts assigned to face buttons so they're always one click away i like being able to choose when my auto attacks go off by moving around to stop them i enjoy being able to chain driver and blade combos together simultaneously and i just enjoy how much depth and customization there is in too also this game has one of the funniest status effects i've ever seen stench oh my god that is so conceptually beautiful the idea of territorial robart letting out like a really nasty fart just to have pyromithra go like you you you wrecked you're so stinky now not to undermine the first game combat by any means it still works insanely well for that game but if there's one area i think xenoblade 2 made impressive strides of improvement on the first game it would be the combat i do have some complaints but they're fairly minor in the grand scheme of things balancing wise my biggest issue is that the shield hammer weapon class is pretty bad at doing its job and as a result most of the blades using it end up being horribly outclassed in every conceivable way other than pure block rate which even then is easily outclassed by poppy with the right build the only real sort of exception being shulk who's essentially just a pseudo shield hammer redeemed because of his vision gimmick and because he actually does enough damage to grab the aggro unlike other weapon classes that always at the very least feel satisfying to use even if sub-optimal on certain drivers like nia using great axes more like using knuckle claws and wrecks using pitbulls the shield hammers don't feel fun to use on even the best drivers unfortunately although it does highlight something that i think is really great about the rare blades and it's that even if they aren't great in battle it doesn't render them completely useless because they also have blade quests heart to hearts and field skills that give them some utility in the party and on merc missions unless you're god free the only other issue i have is that some bosses have too much health but this mostly just becomes an issue during the challenge battles and even that makes the victory all the sweeter i loved entering a new area and seeing new creatures to fight i loved that feeling of leveling up the party members i loved killing unique monsters and hearing that triumphant fanfare most importantly i loved waiting until that very last sliver of health of a unique monster after building up four elemental orbs and letting it rip to watch that bonus multiplier fly and getting that massive boost in exp sending your exp bar all the way to the right all at once that feeling is so palpable and was when i truly knew i loved this game's combat i love it so much that i finally understand firsthand the appeal of leveling systems in rpgs in a lot of games i find leveling systems to often feel limiting that's kind of the whole point this thing is stronger than you so you can't fight it now but eventually you'll be able to in this game it finally clicked in my mind why this would be appealing territorial robber is the classic example in the xenoblade games growing strong enough to bury this massive ape who gave you so much anxiety early on in the game is a type of euphoria i have just never experienced in rpgs before it also became more appealing to me because in xenoblade 2 the leveling system feels way more lenient than other games i've experienced in pokemon early on once you get the enemies like three to five levels higher than you the battle feels like it's essentially already ended in this game i frequently fought enemies six to eight levels higher than i was and while it wasn't easy it certainly felt rewarding to punch above my level range and managed to pull through on my recent playthrough i really put that to the test and it was a lot of fun especially once chain attacks were on the table chain attack overkill's reporting more experience is a mechanic that i adore and i hope something like it is integrated into every future xenoboyd game in some way it completely eliminates any need to go after 600 weaker enemies to slowly put drops in the bucket and instead incentivizes that you go after higher leveled enemies unique monsters especially i can't quantify how good it feels to overkill unique monsters above your level and getting that massive spike in exp wp and sp it is the most satisfying way to grind to the point that it doesn't even feel like you're grinding at all at least not to me it sure is a damn shame i didn't know about this mechanic on my first playthrough since the tutorial for chain attacks doesn't explain what bonus means so i figured it just meant better loot but i suppose it makes some sense because the tutorial that explains chain attacks is the same tutorial that details how they work how elemental orbs work and full bursts which is a mechanic you will absolutely not be able to use until you set up five to six ores which at that point in the game is highly highly unlikely but we'll uh get to that when we get to that as i said all of this wasn't even mentioning that you can tailor what blades you use to adapt to so many different mechanics within the combat your blade team combinations are similar to extensions on what team combinations you could do in xenoblade 1. in xenopoid 1 the 7 party members will add for just about any team composition you'd like when it comes to the combat roles and while to some the five controllable party members in this game may seem a little limiting at a glance it far exceeds the custom ability of the seven party members in xenopoid 1. in xenoboard 1 it was normally pretty clear how you should outfit each party member to get the best results you pretty much always want to outfit dunban with agility gems shulk with strength up gems rhine with muscle up gems etc that's not to say you can't customize each party member to significant effect you do control what arts each character uses their armor and equipment and their skill links and that's substantial don't mistake me but it nevertheless can be a little bit limited i think that's perfectly fine because you mostly experiment via your team combinations and skill link abilities each party member is substantially different from one another so just trying varying combinations can prove to be a lot of fun try using two tanks two mages two [Music] that's where most of the customization comes in in my experience anyway in xenoblade 2 each party member has their preferable roles and weapon classes but your blade team builds can be centered around any specific element of combat that you want maybe you need more blades with driver combo arts we'll sort through your weapon arch and see what type of weapon you need maybe you need a specific element to get that last sliver of a blade combo that you just keep missing we'll sort by elements and you'll certainly find something maybe you just want to have a new party member in general what bust open your core crystal menu and start rolling speaking of which i can't tell what the consensus is on the gotcha system in this game but i enjoy it one reason being is that there's no financial investment involved so i didn't develop a gambling addiction not only that but there are also a healthy number of obtainable blades through side quests so if some players want to avoid this system at all costs you can get them through those means if you'd like although i do think it would be best to offer a few more of them during the first third of the game as you progress the story you also get a healthy number of rare blades so even if you hate side quests and have the worst luck possible you will find plenty of rare blades to offer you plenty of variety i think playing through the game without the blade summoning would greatly weaken the variety you get on subsequent playthroughs but that option is made available to you if you don't want anything to do with this system core crystals are also a fairly common resource you'll amass plenty of just playing this game normally you don't need to grind for them at any point in the game if you pick reasonable times to use up your current stock from defeating enemies while it can be a pain in the ass to try and roll for the last few rail blades you're missing newt the differences between rare blades and comet blades are not major enough to lock yourself behind any progression gate so long as you have the core tips to upgrade the weapons and do a half decent job advancing their affinity charts you can use pretty much any blade you feel like using some of the rib redblades have pretty bad stats many tierless even put drawmark in the bottom tier and you're forced to use him on nia your best healer until you unlock rex's master driver capabilities regardless of how sub-optimal a blade is you can roll with whoever you want to so long as you take proper advantage of the game's numerous systems and mechanics i generally never really care about playing as absolutely optimal as possible since the combat was so much fun to begin with i played through most of this game by using characters with the personalities that i enjoyed the most and just went from there and i had a great time keep in mind on my first playthrough this was with a very simplistic view of the combat if you truly understand how this game works you can do whatever the hell you want with any of these guys i never once had to grind to move on with the main story either because the game grants you experience for doing lots of things unrelated to combat whether you're exploring landmarks completing quests or doing merc missions so long as you're doing something in the game you'll get the exp that you need to progress now that doesn't make it any less of a pain in the ass to get all the rare blades from rolling i obtained all the base game blades 145 hours into my first playthrough and 120 into my second needless to say you have to either love the game or hate yourself to go all the way with this i would say only do this if you enjoy the combat enough to grind which oddly enough i enjoyed doing which sounds all kinds of up unless you're looking to get everything in the game you could get by just fine using only maybe two-thirds of the non-story rare blades as far as variety is concerned another reason i enjoy the gotcha system this game has in place is that you're guaranteed at least three pity rare blades so even if you have the worst luck in the world you will still get at least a few rare blades from random summoning another helpful mechanic the game just does not tell you about i only know this because of the analysis that's been done of this game's code i don't care about all the math going on behind all of this but all i know is that you will not get locked behind any progression gates regardless of blade summoning rng as previously stated if you have solid core chips and aux cores you'll be able to use whatever blades you want to through the main story rare blades in general are commonly stronger because you know they're rare they should be valuable but common blades are useful if you put resources into them i've seen some state that this system is a bad gotcha system with the reason being that you can't upgrade the common blades into anything better while that in and of itself is true that still doesn't make common blades useless releasing them gives you boosters so the next time you roll you better tailor what elements you're getting and have an increased chance of pulling a rare blade or a stronger common blade since common blades all look essentially the same to me in essence you're just kind of upgrading by re-rolling for new blade abilities and weapon classes commons also have damn good abilities like orb master ultimate combo equivalents to indoor and outdoor attack up and can be helpful for field skill leveling if you care enough to get red blades you will no doubt accumulate enough three or four star rarity common blades they'll also work just fine for you if common blades didn't exist rare blades would cease to be valuable at all if they were the only thing you could summon and none of this is even accounting for the fact that it can be really exciting to pull a new rare blade when you're not expecting it in my most recent playthrough i was about 19 hours in and i just wanted to pull more common blades to get better merc mission skill since i just unlocked the merc group then all of a sudden this happened [Music] i almost spat out my drink and evident by the seizure-inducing footage you may be seeing i was incredibly excited if this system can make me feel like that even after playing this game for 300 hours then i really don't see how this system can be a bad one yes there are good blades you get by paying for the expansion pass some of them even made completing some of the dlc challenges that come with them possible outside of new game plus but the main game itself gives you plenty of guaranteed rare blades through the story after blade summoning is introduced poppy's first two forms rock wolfrick bridget aegean pandoria and nia are all given to you simply by progressing through the story there are also side quests available in the base game as it was released in 2017 that give you rare blades too poppy cutie pie praxis theory cassandra harold vest and chiba even the unluckiest player in the world will get at least three rare blades per driver so long as you roll whenever you stockpile core crystals and allocate resources into the resulting blades appropriately i guarantee you you can get by just fine in this game so long as this is the case now i can sit here and say that right but how true is this to put that to the test i went through the main playthrough up until the beginning of chapter six not having used any of the dlc packs that give you extra core crystals and money i use the other perks because come on i didn't pay for the pass for nothing but i wanted to put myself at a disadvantage for summoning specifically during the first five chapters of my recent playthrough i would actually go as far as to say i was getting new blades too quickly and that summoning really only becomes annoying in the post game when you're missing one or two rare blades trying to fill out affinity charts was especially overwhelming in aria when there was no mercenary groups to help maximize my blade leveling within just over three hours i obtained godfrey adenine and dagus which was happening while i was filling out percival and draw mark's affinity charts alongside all of their own by the beginning of chapter 6 i had already obtained 15 out of the 21 randomly obtainable blades one of which isn't obtainable until after you beat the final boss all without having done anything but thoroughly exploring each area going for the available quests and every once in a while going out of the way to fill out some of the affinity charts and progressing through the main story i didn't grind for core crystals at any point before the post game and still got that many blades from random summoning and the pity system about halfway through the story which soon jumped even higher when in the big ass summoning spree of the dlc cores i got three more rare blades back to back the only rare blade i was missing by the time i beat the final boss was newt who's close to his rarest cosmos is i do believe these statistics to be generous in the game's favor as it's coming from someone who already knows the game's ins and outs and is something of a completionist himself but trust me when i say this system is way more lenient than some people would make you think it is so long as you're being smart about it that doesn't mean it's flawless though i only have one real problem with it and it's that i think there should have been some way to guarantee what type of common blades and abilities you could summon there are certain merck missions that require you have certain common void types or certain field skill abilities and some of them lock you out until you summon a blade with that ability this issue is especially problematic for the dlc quest to unlock poppy buster where you need to get 8 incredibly specific types of common blades god forbid you don't have a giant mega lance go summon blades for the rest of your life before you access the end of this quest i think there should have been some sort of work around for things like this not one so powerful as to remove the got system's purpose but one that could at least let you control your common blade abilities to some extent say maybe getting specific materials or pouch items could help you manifest a blade with specific blade abilities like expeditionist or orb master etc the end universe explanation would probably need to be better than that one but i feel like there has to be a better way to handle this system for situations like this this is the only situation where i fully agree the summoning can be problematic otherwise i consider this system incredibly well balanced and it helps make this game more interesting to replay over xenoblade 1. this system allows for unique combat builds on repeat playthroughs that very likely differ quite a bit from your first and it allows you to change strategies in a current playthrough you constantly get new party members and if you're the type to just stick with what works that type of playstyle is perfectly viable but it's also tons of fun to change things up every now and again when you pull new rare blades or if you just want to shift your party around for the sake of it it's for those reasons i think the gotcha system is pretty great i think it hits the perfect balance between being an integral system to the game while not allowing it to completely dictate your capabilities in most situations saying something like that makes it seem like you can just aimlessly coast along the main story battles to which i say there are some boss battles that give even the most experienced players a hard time i died several times against akkos and malos in chapter 3. i always end up dying to the stupid robot boss in temporary and despite being significantly higher level than jin and malos in chapter 7 i ended up losing on the first round it's impressive that a game with this many party building options can still manage to give me a hard time after all of this time on the topic of blades and since i can't think of a good time to bring this up this game's dlc offers you shulk fiora and elma as playable blade partners via the challenge mode if i were a fan of the previous games before i played this for the first time i would have lost my mind this is insanely cool fan service some of their blade abilities are really useful too all the missions i would consider abnormally difficult are dlc quests that were made significantly easier if you have these guys on all rests this doesn't act as a band-aid used to make non-dlc content doable but it gives you the tools to take on the most difficult obstacles that the game can throw at you and i appreciate that the dlc skins are pretty neat cosmetics and some of them even have really good combat effects the fan service is pretty cool and this mode is much more substantial than xenoblade definitive edition's challenge mode but be sure to save the hardest challenges for new game plus for your own sanity my only real problem with the dlc gameplay wise is that in order to use these guys outside of the window challenge you need to beat some pretty difficult challenges and given how poorly this game teaches you about his combat it's pretty jarring to go from artifice ion to essentially any challenge mode mission other than the first four or five it can be so unknowingly difficult that some players don't even believe it to be possible to beat some of these and it's a tad overkill to me good luck beating elma using anyone other than corvin i'm sorry this is kind of up topic but i need to rant about elma redux because this mission drives me insane this battle limits you to level 60 elma's level 65 and spawns three other elma's that you need to eliminate in order to fight her normally you are damn near required to begin the fight focusing on getting a level 3 dark blade combo otherwise elmo will continue spawning in additional ghost elements and you need to spend most of that time afterwards generating aggro with a very evasive blade otherwise you will die immediately no questions asked on my first playthrough i had to use corvin and spam of asian arts for 25 minutes before i could get to fighting elma normally and when i did get to fighting her normally somehow she managed to clip zeke and cosmos off the edge and i was down to driver because this mission is cancer this mission even when you're doing it the way the developers expect you to beat it it's just so boring and her health is so ludicrously high that it's just plain tedious when it isn't actively aggravating just save yourself the time and do the hardest challenges in new game plus after maxing yourself out it is not worth it although on my second playthrough i managed to beat it on my third try about 35 times faster than my first playthrough elma redux aside i really like the challenge mode dlc it is really damn hard but if you're looking for a real challenge this mode will give it to you considering how much there is to do with this game's combat i think this mode really helps illustrate how much there is to explore and i think this addition is substantial enough to be paid dlc made after the main game's release as much as there are signs of this game having been rushed through reports like how many devs were supposedly working on xenoboy 2 whilst also working on breath of the wild i don't think xenoboy tuned its base form is lacking substantial content or staying power either on that subject i don't think this game is the most polished game out there but considering how many things are in this game i am amazed at how few glitches i've run into in my roughly 450 hours between xenoblade 2 and torna i only recall the game crashing twice and i don't even have footage of this happening because it was only on my first playthrough most if not all the glitches i remember bumping into have been solely cosmetic or just some janky collision between enemies and i think that is really impressive for a game of this caliber i also just want to praise how much content is in xenoblade 2 without any of the dlc the new game plus blades that are added the extra affinity charts the traveling bards and the extra flourishes added to the game all give incentives to keep playing this game this isn't even mentioning how many side quests secrets unique monsters and variety there is in this game not to mention the dlc is not only a collection of add-ons to xenoboyd 2's base game but also a revamped prequel story with its own huge amount of unique monsters in depth to enjoy i felt that was worth significant praise i think there's a lot of worthwhile things to get invested in with xenoblade 2. while i run into endless pleasant surprises with xenoboy 2 and as much as i truly love it i would never argue it's perfect and i want to bring up more things i didn't like to make it clear that i don't love everything about this game in spite of how it certainly can feel like it sometimes and i'm doing this now since from beyond this chapter it'll be mostly positive so believe me i won't let the world burn a second time so pyro mitra [Music] [Music] [Music] if there's one aspect of this game that i view as pretty much in every way indefensible it is the tutorials i don't think i'm exaggerating or being overly hyperbolic when i say this game has the worst tutorials i have ever seen this didn't bother me too much on my first playthrough but that was only because i didn't understand how much fun i was missing out on or how many mechanics i was misunderstanding i may love the combat now now that i understand it and on future playthroughs this naturally can't bother me as much because now i know everything i need to know but getting to this point took a long time and required a lot of research outside of the game while i can understand why people dislike certain aspects of this game like the voice acting or the art direction that can be boiled down to a simple matter of taste like most aspects of criticism can be art is inherently very subjective with the tutorials on the other hand i seriously struggle to come up with a single reason to enjoy how they're handled in this game watch anybody's first playthrough without any outside help and see how overwhelming the tutorial rollout is in the beginning in the tutorial fight with malus you're taught a ton about the combat all at once teaching the player mechanics during major boss battles is not a bad thing at all the first game did exactly that and it's not a problem so long as it is manageable this tutorial throws three different major mechanics at you all at once and teases talking about other mechanics for some reason considering how unorthodox the combat can look without playing the game before this is not an issue you can hand wave because the game needs to communicate these things well especially considering you can't re-read any of this and i think it's pretty clear to see why it is not communicated well specials are charged up by attacking with arts you can charge specials to three levels of power use an art at the precise moment that the auto attack hits home they'll charge up specials more than usual when you do this you'll see a success indicator oh my god also when you use a special you need to execute a button challenge attacking the enemy with special may even give you a chance to perform blade combo but i'll tell you more about that another time oh my god edward trust is a topic for later like you should probably focus on defeating malos i went into this game generally knowing very little about most of the systems in it the game like most rpgs throws a lot of crucial information at you in the opening hours and even beyond because it has a lot of systems and i understand you cannot seamlessly convey some of this stuff without outright explaining it and visualizing it to you via tutorials that is all perfectly fine to an extent plenty of games that i love have very slow and tutorial heavy openings in xenoblade 2 there are many problems not only with the pacing as a result of said tutorials being so prevalent but there's also a massive amount of poor communication about aspects of the game that are absolutely wonderful when you understand how they work but frustrating is all hell when you don't certainly not helping things is the fact that these tutorials are not conveyed through anything other than text and some highlighting of the ui no graphics like xenoblade 1 you know the wii game that came out in 2010 in xenoblade chronicles 2 we get text highlighting and nothing more a poster child example of poorly communicated tutorials is the first pouch item you buy shout out to chugga conroy in the very beginning of the game in argentum you're told to go to the fish place to buy your first pouch item all of the items there suck but it's okay since honeycomb sweets just downstairs has the nars fair jelly and other art recharge based items which is one of the best item effects that speeds up combat a considerable amount some might say needing to use the pouch items to speed up combat is bad design but i would honestly disagree because the way i see it pouch items and their effects are an incentive to pick up gold and spend it on the effects that you want in battle you don't really need money for much else in the game other than combat gear but these things work in tandem to better your performance in combat sorry i'm digressing a little bit but you're getting the idea that this is an integral mechanic right why would the player think to go do that when the game makes them interact with this shop this early in the game you generally are wanting to save up as much money as you can you're spending most of it on the gear that the game is making you buy so you go through the intro in the ancient ship and you may have felt that the combat was really slow i thankfully didn't have this impression but on repeat playthroughs i certainly understand firsthand why some would come to that conclusion especially considering you're only given two drivers for the first five to six hours of the game when the game clearly wasn't built for combat using only two drivers once you get nia back at the end of chapter 2 it's so immediately clear that this is the way combat in this game should have been for its entirety because the increase in speed is absolutely massive this pouch item tutorial possibly could have led you to thinking pouch items were essentially worthless thus potentially making the combat forever remain slow and i think you can see where i'm going with this it's one of the first tutorials and we already have a potentially massive deal breaker for someone the game has the ability to point players at the objectively better items i get the feeling a portion of people who don't like the gotcha system in this game may have felt at least a little bit differently about it if the game explained the pity system a little bit to better illustrate that the game doesn't just reward you for being lucky there are systems in place to ensure that players get at least three pity rare blades per playthrough if they get consecutive unlucky core crystal poles why not illustrate that to the players in an optional tutorial or something along those lines in terms of pacing i also find some of the tutorial rollouts to be really uneven i think you should absolutely have the ability to chain attack by chapter two even if you don't get a lot out of two member chain attacks i think it'd be much better than finally allowing you to get them in the middle of chapter three think about it you'd get used to two member chain attacks being on the weaker side and then getting your full party of three could feel even more empowering and add value to the party members while allowing you to get to grips with a few of the mechanics attached to chain attacks kind of like i don't know xenoblade 1 i want to clarify i don't consider xenoblade 2 to be a significant regression or step back from xenoblade 1 in any area except for this one the late chain attack unlock is also something torna doesn't improve on for some reason but at least that game informs you of what you need to know about the mechanics and lets you double check that you do understand how everything works i also think the limit of only allowing two blades on a driver is really stupid especially once you get to chapter three you could unload all of this one time only information in the intro but oh no having more than two blades to switch between is way too complicated but that isn't even the worst part by far the most inexcusable aspect of the tutorials is that you cannot reread any of them in the game and unlike x there's no wii u digital manual to fall back on xenoblade chronicles 1 on the wii allowed you to do this in torn of the golden country the expansion of xenoblade 2 did this it's worth highlighting that after the game's release monolith packs this game very frequently to add a lot of free quality of life updates some features i would argue should have been in the game at launch but of course better late than never and thankfully i got to play the game with all these nice quality of life updates and monolith clearly took feedback on stuff like this which is exactly why the tutorials continue to be so utterly baffling out of all the patches the devs kept adding like the massive melee mithra aux core costume after mithra was added to smash as a spirit making tiger tiger give more rewards to lessen the tedium of grinding making the ardanian soldiers no longer spam don't forget me and think you can take me the dev team fixed all of those things but they couldn't add like a tips and tricks menu somewhere to let you reread tutorials even if the tutorials were left as they were it would still suck but it would at least be something torna has practically the exact same user interface as this game why could they not have just used those assets and stored the tutorials for xenoblade 2 in there they could add dlc and a prequel expansion but not a folder that lets you remember how chain attacks work without scouring the internet with other confused folks looking for the same information i would hold this against xenoblade 2 even if the first game didn't let you re-read tutorials because by that point it would be a series-wide issue and xenoblade x didn't do a whole lot better but i especially hold this against xenoblade 2 since the first game not only did this with little graphics to better illustrate what was being explained to you via the text but it did it with a hint of character thrown in there the party members have unique character-driven conversations explaining how each party member should be built to use them optimally and if you misunderstand how safe spike damage worked well there's nothing stopping you from rereading the explanation multiple times from the game itself anywhere from a simple menu but in xenoblade 2 you know the game with even more complexity through the combat systems and mechanics if you don't understand how chain attacks or elemental orbs work then you bud go on google look for somebody else to explain it to you i ended up gaining a lot of misconceptions about the combat and how several of the major mechanics worked and these misconceptions stayed with me until around the end of chapter 8 which was when i finally looked up how combat worked which i don't think should ever have to be a necessary step for players to take it made going through the challenge battles a really frustrating chore at the beginning because the game didn't really give you any tools to figure out how the combat works if you misunderstood one of the systems all working at any one given time during any battle i'm willing to take responsibility for some of the misconceptions i had but games should be responsible for reliably delivering explanations of their mechanics through their menus regardless if it's super mario odyssey breath of the wild or dragon quest 11s echoes them an elusive age definitive edition jesus christ who name this game again i was new to a lot of this stuff and i was doing my best to pay attention and be sure i understood as much as i could but along the way some of this information was going to be lost on me and monolith considered this in previous and future installments of the series but not here in one of the most complex combat systems in the series all of said misconceptions and several more could have been avoided with one menu and these informant salesmen do not count either they should be available in a tutorial menu not in some off corner of alba cavenich this should be available for free in-game at the drop of a hat whenever the player would need it i understand the information exists online but here's the thing if at any point i'm compelled or forced to look on the internet to help me progress or figure out something in your game that it is attempting to communicate to me then that's a surefire sign your game is doing something wrong this angers myself and so many other fans of this game because it is without doubt the biggest obstacle to newer players fans of this game need to recommend tutorial videos from online content creators for the combat to fully make sense to the newer players and no matter how you slice it that is a huge problem and this is ultimately why i can't recommend xenoblade 2 over xenoblade 1 as the first entry to the series to newcomers not because i think one is superior to two i've stated before and i will say it again i think these games are both fantastic and i think they do stand on even ground with each other and i think both of them have some slightly different appeal from one another where i could see anybody finding valid reason to enjoy either game over the other but not even taking into account the story reasons to play one first i say xenoblade 1 is a better first entry point because i think xenoblade 1 doesn't have any trouble communicating its systems like this game does xenopod 1 explains itself pretty much perfectly and it's not even close people who adore xenoblade 2 pretty much admit it themselves this game is an excellent game that does a terrible job explaining itself until you actively choose to hunt down the information yourself and that hurts to say because if you've engaged with the combat and its full potential you know the fun to be had when you get to the second half of the game you know the story goes bananas and is deep and powerful and serious in ways that even the beloved first game hadn't explored yet but the truth is so many people only managed to see this game for what it was in the beginning a silly over-the-top anime game with fan service and a lot of power friendship type story arcs the fact is a lot of that has to do with the game's introduction and poor advice and let me tell you as somebody who enjoys the slower and lighter tone in the beginning as much as a serious and quicker tone in the second half as somebody who adores the combat is somebody who adores this game the fact that i can't recommend it to newcomers without additional guides really hurts to say it really does i can't find a reason to defend this these problems very well could have ruined the game for some people and the pacing suffers enough to where if the game doesn't grab you i can't say in good faith that it's on you and again the worst part of the tutorials is that they're just undermining so many great aspects of these complex systems pouch items help speed up combat considerably and each driver and blade have their own favorite pouch items using a pouch item that said character likes ends up boosting the effects of it as well that is amazing attention to detail that lots of people probably didn't engage with very much at all hell i didn't even know you could use pouch items to give yourself more trust between a driver and blade that sure would have been nice to know about [Music] another aspect of xenoblade 2 that i feel is occasionally lacking is the side quests this game likes to throw a lot of fetch quests at you where it will straight up just tell you collect x amount of y to help z or go over here and kill this many monsters or go over here and talk to this person the other series i have experience with that has a lot of side quests is zelda and that series has a number of engaging quests in minigames but it also has a few fetch quests like the bigger on trading sequence or the gilded sword quest that said i don't think i mind fetch quests all that much while on a gameplay level they aren't really stimulating to me i think they do an okay job immersing me in the world in a weird way i feel like npcs having a laundry list of materials that you need to get is sort of in line with the idea that this is a society of everyday people not everyone in these villages has the fighting ability of these master drivers because it's really dangerous out in some of these areas there are monsters roaming everywhere it sort of makes sense that they'd be looking for a hand to get their vegetables that are surrounded by you know all of this i don't mean to imply that fetch quests are actually like genius or amazing or anything but i think it goes unmentioned how these quests can sort of add to the world building of some of these games that said i fully understand why fetch quests get a bad rapper why many dislike them on a creativity level i think it's clearly a sign that you're scraping the bottom of a barrel but i don't even feel like i hate them on a gameplay level either i think i need two things for fetch quests not to bother me the first is having some sort of entertaining dialogue or character building if they're willing to go an extra mile a mild chuckle can go a long way even if i'm just farming collection points a good in-game example is the blade quest lots of the quests specific to the rare blades go an extra step further and develop each blade in some significant way that kind of thing makes the journey worth it to me but even with that in mind the quality of the writing takes a very noticeable dip in some of the blade quest cutscenes some of the resolutions of these quests come off like a scooby-doo wrap up where they're talking about the value of the quest they just completed which considering a lot of the subtle nuances of the main game's writing it kind of feels like it's talking down to the audience in some of these scenes not in all cases but there's a pretty noticeable difference between when you're in a quest scene or a story scene i suppose that's kind of the point the quests maybe are meant to add a lighter and simpler storyline so as to keep the tone from being too much of one thing for too long but even with that in mind some of these scenes go on for way too god damn long to get such a simple task across my go-to is dagus's fight against the arrogant behemoth this scene takes five and a half minutes to essentially get across that dagis is a cocky arrogant prick which we already knew and that we're going to fight a monster which you already know as soon as it shows up this is the worst it gets but seriously it is excessive if it isn't and maybe i'm just a nitpicky dick why don't we have the scene playing out in the corner for a little bit peru's quest has it even worse she's just standing there talking to these criminals who are kidnapping children and for some reason is like offering to go with them and it goes on for so goddamn long it goes on even longer than dagus's scene does and it's all so boring to watch they're just standing there talking about all when anybody who is anybody knows that you're gonna fight these just get on with it these scenes being so long is really annoying because they aren't providing more information about the characters throughout they're just kind of like repeating themselves over and over again until you actually get to the fighting part daggus don't take on this monster yourself oh but i must for my kingdom you guys are weak wow dagus you're a real prick and an idiot i don't think we can beat this thing daggest don't try just oh my god get on with it already there are also a few blade quests with objectives that are flat out terrible i'll talk about bearing or soul later but agate's quest in particular in the beginning is some of the most uninspired busy work a game can throw your way somebody sat down and decided they should make you run across every region trying to find mineral deposits that even when successfully cleared can just flat out deny you progress by playing out the exact same dialogue of agate fleeing from bugs just dragging out a joke that was at most mildly entertaining the first time i have no sympathy for like this it is not only uninspired it is an active waste of everyone's time it's a real shame too because beyond that trial and error introduction the quest is quite good in my opinion seeing agate need to overcome her fear of bugs to discover a new mineral is the sort of thing i like about these quests additional little bits of world building mixed in there with a lighthearted character arc i wish it didn't have to kick off with such a horribly uninspired primary objective though cassandra's quest makes you retread over the exact same areas two times back to back to do essentially the exact same thing you did the first time why what is the appeal of this meant to be i enjoy the writing and storyline in this quest cassandra is one of my favorite character designs in the entire series her battle dialogue is absolutely adorable and if there's any shield hammer i would make an excuse to use it would be her that said the whole quest is just dragged down by how tedious this process is and it's disappointing because it's just not living up to the standards of the rest of the game's content in my opinion look at harold's quest by comparison harold flees to the spirit crucible elpis in an attempt to take her own life because she views herself as nothing but a danger of the party the party then has to comfort her and help her understand they're capable of keeping her in check and help raise her confidence as a result even if the gameplay isn't extraordinary that character progression makes it feel worth it and it connects you to the braille blades characters elektra's quest is pretty similar but it's much lighter in tone and it's really nice to see elektra help out the boy that she accidentally shocked at the beginning stuff like that is cute and again makes elektra a compelling character despite not being part of the main story in any capacity i think the best blade quest storyline in this game is praxis and theories it explores an interesting dilemma that i can really only see being pulled off this way in this game's universe the emotional weight is made very clear none of the scenes go on for too long it makes both of these characters really likable even if they were initially your enemies and seeing the conclusion of their storyline in the quest theory and practice is just really cute i can't think of another story's universe where a plot line like this could be possible and i think it's really well done bess's questline is a similar deal that i think is equally as emotionally compelling and unique to xenoblade 2's universe i would say on the whole i'm net positive about all the blade quests because the other thing i want fetch quest to provide is some sort of significant extrinsic reward since the act in itself isn't really intrinsically satisfying in many instances in this game every quest will give you exp sp gold or items and any combination of those things i never completed any quests thinking it was all entirely a waste of time i always felt at the very least satisfaction in the fact that i was getting one step closer to maxing out the dev level in that province i feel that the quests are average on the whole due to how many generic quests there are but i don't think you're meant to do all or even most of the quests in these games at all i'd say you only really should do it if you're looking for the intrinsic value of completing these games just for the sake of it a saving grace is that these games always implement these quests in really interesting ways with the world at the very least in the first game in x you have the insanely detailed affinity chart that changes whenever you do a quest or talk to people torna has the community system that sort of does a similar thing and in xenoblade 2 you have the development system where the higher the development the lower the prices and shops are and the more these areas offer new quests and items doing quests generic or otherwise makes you feel like you're making an impact on the world itself even if it's marginal in many cases that kind of progression makes the worlds in these games feel very lived in and dynamic to the point where i often don't mind the tedium overall i like the side quests in these games but i do think it could stand to be improved in significant areas in future games field skills are a neat addition to the game in my opinion but it's difficult to avoid having a few gripes with them the big problem is that you need to equip all the blades with the field skills required i struggle to come up with an alternative to this but all i know is that re-equipping blades to use field skills after dying and respawning is a pain in the ass my big example with this issue was in the cliffs of martha i was progressing through the area and i wanted to fight a unique monster a unique monster who has the ability to gain 10 levels if you let him do a certain attack each time i died i had to re-equip several blades for two field skill checks and then re-equip the blades i wanted to use in combat it wore me down and made me give up certainly not helping things is that you can't pause when climbing for some reason i would assume this would be to prevent some glitch found in testing but considering how many field seal checks are on climbable objects this limitation becomes very annoying how come you may ask well for example let's look at the bathin the thing whatever watchtower and more ordained this area is obscure enough to the point where i think anybody would be interested in seeing what's up there even if it's just a treasure chest and a nice view it can be worth it for the intrinsic satisfaction of seeing something that not everybody would see playing this game and even though this game is full of field skill checks where you activate a game shark moon jump code for some reason it was decided the players should have to climb this ladder for 30 seconds before seeing what the second field skill check even requires if you don't have the necessary field skills well tough go down the ladder and around in the menus a little bit before enduring another 30 seconds of climbing this isn't a frequent situation this game puts you through but in a game that i would say is normally fairly considerate of your time stuff like this becomes more annoying the more you play i wish there was some sort of q or field skill team of blades like the merc groups that could help make fumbling about in the menus less of a hassle the ui in this game is fine but after rex becomes able to engage any blade it becomes really confusing which blades have what field skill levels whether or not you can engage this blade no sorry this blade's in this driver's top slot so now you have to go and rearrange their blades it just becomes a mess whenever you have to rearrange blades for something like this the fact that the field skills exist is really cool because it gives the overworld more secrets to find and rewards the players who advance their affinity charts and it makes common blades really valuable when they have certain abilities overall utilizing them can be a little bit cumbersome and i think it needs to be a quicker process to be more exciting to use them i have similar complaints with merck missions at times on the whole i enjoy merc missions quite a lot i love that they help you fill out affinity charts faster to simplify and shorten the process and i love that rock's affinity chart levels up when you raise merc levels as a way of carrying van damme's legacy with him that's another one of those details that makes this game just so goddamn lovable but i find it sometimes irritating when you're progressing through the story or doing a quest and you have to send three new merc groups out to go complete a mission it can sometimes come at the cost of pacing if you want to complete all the merck missions since it's never really a bad idea so you end up doing this a lot over the course of the game most of the time i don't mind it too much but where i do mind it is in ursula's side quest [Music] anybody who's done this quest knows the pain and suffering of having to re-equip the same merc teams every five to ten minutes and that's when the small issue turns into a swirling whirlwind of tedium for several hours this quest requires that you do the same merc missions over and over and over again and it's just not fun no matter how you slice it look through my footage past the beginning of this quest i would wager that without fail every hour at least once you would see that name popping up in the corner it is beyond tedious and absolutely the worst quest in this game on a gameplay level tiger tiger is a fine enough mini game finding the secret areas is fun getting high scores is also fun in its own way with the dlc you get a massive boost of ether crystals to lessen the amount of grinding you'd have to do even with these enhancements i still ended up dedicating a few hours to it anyways and while i didn't hate it by any means i think it needs to not kick you out of the hub world in between rounds it's so jarring and repetitive if it just let you keep trying again you know like a real arcade machine and also displayed the number of crystals in your inventory that'd be all i need to have it not bother me as it is it's better than it was before but it's still grindy to the point where some people won't recognize how truly busted you can make torah and poppy poppy cutie pie especially is a force to be reckoned with but if you hate tiger tiger and you don't have enough poppy mods to sell for crystals then tora is essentially dead weight to your party it's not the biggest problem but the game gets kind of grindy in a not so fun way when you need to upgrade poppy with a few crystals to your name [Music] if there's one point i think many would agree is the low point of this game it's chapter four i don't think it's all that bad personally but after the insanely compelling previous chapter where you're introduced to an incredibly compelling and likable new character that connects to you so well after introducing mithra and demonstrating her powers after the beautiful scenery of ariah this chapter is like kind of the antithesis of that the beginning of this chapter is a hunt for rock's core crystal said hunt requires that you go through areas you've already been to before also you can board a boat this is essentially exactly what you did at the beginning of chapter 3. i think this is a good character moment for rex and not much else i really think this could have been turned into a side quest with some very minor adjustments once you get to more ordained you're greeted to some wonderful music but the least inspired environment thus far and the story takes kind of a dip as well after rex and the party knocked down this water tower it's very clear the ardanian soldiers would have their eyes out for them right especially considering they overcame morag like the strongest driver in their military but the party just kind of shows up in alba cavendish as if they're just casually touring the place nothing happens until morag encounters them again then where i teamed up with you which is really cool but then you have to hunt down these barrels near the factory because someone created an artificial blade similar to poppy and the ardanian military are interested in what purpose it serves i guess there are no memorable villains to engage you throughout this chapter so there are no exciting moments like malos luring pyra out by herself and having to book it up the stairs to help her it's just bana and muay muy being corny comic book villains they're also not threatening even a little bit eventually you meet mikhail and patroga but they just sort of show up and you just fight them because they're members of torna who are here in the factory for what reason the game makes it clear it's for the artificial blades but if that's the case why did these two need to go there in person they likely had to pay bana upfront to mass-produce all of them right the artificial blades can fly so why did they feel the need to journey to the factory there's no way they loaded all of them onto the monostorus especially considering they encountered the party by following them into the bulge harbor which is where their ship is it's not the most important thing to know but it feels like they just sort of had to retroactively throw these two in there so you have an actually intimidating boss battle for the chapter the journey to the factory is filled with either a confusing mini dungeon or ridiculously over leveled enemies and not really any new memorable mechanics or characters until the last bit then most of the story is focused on torah and his dad which is okay but the nop-on dialect is really grating to me during the scene and it takes away from the moment significantly then the factory is pretty generic and unmemorable it doesn't even get its own music and the track you hear the entire time you're here during the story is this really aggressive cutscene piece that melts your damn mind while you're trying to find your way around here [Music] bana is not an interesting villain beyond the first chapter we already knew this guy was an and making him the chapter's main villain to me adds nothing but a plot thread that torna has access to the artificial blades which if you were extremely observant you would already know that from the scene in chapter 2. he also doesn't really work for me as an entertainingly shallow villain mumkar is not a particularly deep character even by his game's own admission but timothy watson's performance and his personal connection to dunban not only give him such immense stage presence but it makes you love to hate him he's so deliciously evil that you can't help but love every second he's on the screen and that's why he's one of my favorite villains bannon's just kind of annoying to me and the game doesn't seem to want to get rid of him for some reason bringing him back another time in chapter six then fan lenore just sort of shows up here somehow and then the game gets good again just before that morig becomes a party member which is all kinds of badass poppy getting a new form was similarly cool and it came at the perfect time when i felt torn needed more blades i wouldn't give up this encounter with zeke for anything the dynamic mikhail and patroka have is comedy incarnate there are certainly highlights to chapter four but i would agree it's unquestionably the weakest chapter of the game oh god no no no not now i can't do it no here comes no no no narrative dissonance everybody's favorite gamer words for pretentious bricks like me to use way too much now this one is actually not a major negative i have with this game at all but it's something that i think deserves some extremely minor amount of critique this game has a few win in the game but quote lose in the cutscene moments that clearly piss off a lot more people than i ever would have thought i think these criticisms are valid in a couple of the commonly cited situations there's also considering how the first game pretty much made it so that every single boss battle's result directly led to the story's outcome to the point where i can't think of an instance of this not being the case example part of the reason i think the cutscene where fiora gets killed works for so many people is because just before you throw dozens of ineffective attacks at metal face even with the monado in hand and when the boss was low enough on health he then kills fiora and you then whittle down half of his health for him to then fly away in short the effects of your battle links very very directly to the outcome of the story this game does the same thing sometimes but it does have more moments where this synchronicity doesn't come into play as well some examples of the game doing this really well are when you lose to jen in chapter six you get part of the way through the boss and then the battle ends in chapter seven you get gin and mello flow enough on health and you trigger a cutscene where the party's getting their wrecked then rex awakens numa and you get a literally unlosable battle demonstrating how powerful numa is and you beat them these are examples of xenoblade 2 doing this very well this boss in chapter 7 is really difficult and making it to the halfway mark will likely be a challenge if your experience was anything like mine and the catharsis of unlocking numa and beating them in the story and gameplay is really satisfying however as i said before this game does have a few examples of major boss battles where the synchronicity doesn't come into play i think it sort of makes sense why people view this as a problem but this is where i'm just gonna have to have my gamer card revoked because i'm just going to be honest with you all when i say this does not bother me at all as it is in xenoblade 2. the only narrative and gameplay disconnect that bothers me in some capacity is that there's some emphasis put on the fact that every blade is really special and a valuable person but then they make it so you basically have to discard some of them so you can roll for better ones like something about that seems really up and even that doesn't bother me too much because the game is actively trying to guilt-trip you out of doing it and i don't know how else the devs would circumvent the maximum blade limitations anyway other than that though this just does not bother me at all in xenoblade 2 as it is most of the examples people list when stating this is a major problem eventually have you winning in some way afterwards anyway and i just never saw it as a significant irritation i suppose part of this is because i was really invested in the story but to me it never felt like the game was like neglecting my accomplishments or agency as a player whenever this happened the reaction i had was never like frustration if anything i often felt like oh okay these guys are pretty damn strong in a way that would often pay off later for me i don't think malz would have been as effective of a villain to me if you had not fought him and lost to him in the scene in chapter one had he just thrown his minions at you and left i would have viewed him as really incompetent and non-threatening instead of intimidating and unhinged i think i'd much rather just lose a fight then when i beat morag in chapter 2 i felt really powerful because bridget herself was a challenge earlier in the chapter and i overcame both of these two just now yet when rex was struggling against her in the cutscene my reaction was more like oh okay i guess i'm not really strong enough to be on her level because she's a super strong military figure and to me that makes sense even if it may not exactly align with what i did in the game in fact for me it made the moment when more became a party member all the more empowering because now you had the badass and powerful military figure on your side and because of that you scare off mikhail and patroka in the cutscene after you beat them in the battle the social isn't even considering that in that morag example rex holds back against her and clearly won the encounter because the two of them got winded so again i don't even think this example works that well again i think some of these critiques against the game are valid but i'm not going to pretend this bothers me because it doesn't and i do still uphold the opinion that this game does a really good job having the story and gameplay play off of each other in spite of this my investment in the story had a lot to do with the gameplay connecting me to that story in ways that allowed me to feel like i was contributing to it for example i had never wanted to punch someone in the face more than when akko spoke after vandam died and battling malos and akkos and kicking their asses with mithra after seeing this reflected in the story is why i love that moment so much even after playing this game several times every time counter-attack kicks in and mithra awakens i get chills up my spine without fail this story would not work or be as effective without the gameplay i stand by that i wanted to highlight notable negatives i have with this game since i've spent a lot of time talking about why i love it and i want to be sure it goes on record even if this game is one of my all-time favorites now i hope i've made it clear i think it's imperfect like any and all games while these things were all things that held the game back from true perfection in my eyes there was one aspect that caught my attention right from the very beginning minute of the game that i think pretty much is perfect the music [Music] the number of tracks in this game that i love is too many to count i'm pretty dog ass at explaining music or music theory but it let's try it anyway i connect to music much more when there's a tangible experience or scenery that i vividly remember thanks to that song i love a lot of meme music unironically because of associated jokes or memories i have with them ryan you're a life saver oh yeah baby this ultimately leads to my conclusion as to why i love video game music in particular so damn much there's always some experience to grab onto that makes me cherish the song that much more there's nothing really to remember about hearing a song on a radio station or on spotify it's just kind of another song playing on the station designed to play songs something about having that backdrop that memory that imagery and that visual connection keeps music in my head so much more xenoblade chronicles 2 to absolutely nobody's surprise was one of my favorite soundtracks ever yasunori matsuda ace kenji hiromatsu manami kyota and the whole crew of musicians and performers all went hey do you guys want to around and drop one of the best soundtracks ever yeah sure i got an afternoon to kill and hits you with a huge variety of intensely emotional orchestral pieces [Music] stress relieving and calming environmental themes [Music] and blood pumping rock infused bangers [Music] during my first playthrough of this game i was going through my second and third semesters at college and since it was entirely online much to my unexpected displeasure there was a lot of sitting at this desk for many months it stressed me out quite a lot especially because i slept in the same room i worked in which i consider extremely detrimental to at least my own ability to relax and get a good night's sleep so whenever i got stressed out about the impending doom that seemed to inch ever closer i just put on one track that manages to be one of the most relaxing tracks i've heard in a video game tour goth knight you've been listening to it a seemingly insignificant track compared to the rest of the ost right i mean there are plenty of other relaxing songs to relish in but tour goth knight is the most significant area track for me for the same reasons i gave before i loved walking around this gorgeous city and just looking out into the completely open cloud sea at night for the first time and thus this memory comes into mind whenever i study and put the song on i could practically fall asleep to this song music is a truly magical and universal language that communicates emotions better than words could ever hope to if you haven't played this game yet and you've made it this far into the video if you do nothing else to engage with this game all i ask is please listen to some of the soundtrack it is absolutely gorgeous heck there are plenty of great hour and a half long videos compiling many of the songs in this game give them a listen if you're looking for new stuff to listen to now listen i'm all for people expressing their opinions on anything really especially in the context of discussing video games if you hate the things that i love and you love the things that i hate that's why disgusting things can be fun because we can talk to each other and try and understand each other better ideally i'm obviously fine with you hating this game at your core but i will not be convinced or swayed into thinking this sound drag is anything other than great at the bare minimum now what justification could i possibly use to back up such a bold and seemingly baseless claim [Music] listen to that bass line the prominent percussion the horns blaring the melody i don't need to make a verbal argument for this soundtrack this track just did it for me the soundtrack does a masterful job making the cutscenes as engaging as they are for as much as this moment may get a lot of flack i think the tomorrow with you track carries the scene in spite of some lacking vocal delivery at the climactic moment i love the way the game uses drifting soul in particular the first time you hear this song is when van dam's pushing back to save rex and just before he sacrifices himself thus at first the song appears to come into play whenever bad is going down so when they use the instrumental during nia's transformation you think oh no oh no someone's about to get killed no this can't happen now man but instead it's accompanying mia being the absolute queen that she is finally freeing herself of her secret bam misdirection the last time you hear the song is during the final boss when rex tries to appeal to malice's humanity in all three of those situations the song fits really well and syncs up with the pacing of the scene very well xenoblade is insanely good at making it seem like the songs were designed to fit the pacing of the scene when it was very likely the other way around the pacing of these scenes is phenomenally timed with the music and it's truly truly euphoric there's one track that i feel rarely does that and it's the theme the game uses for the comedic moments wanted nia it rarely aligns with the pacing in many of the scenes it's used in and i just find it to be really repetitive it's no deal breaker for the rest of the ost though the song itself isn't even really bad i just think it's kind of overused the vocal themes drifting soul in one last u are absolutely gorgeous one last u is easily a top 10 favorite credit song and one of a few reasons the ending hit me so damn hard counter attack is bad ass and always gets me pumped up for a boss fight where we used to be is beautifully melancholic and the opening theme that blasts during the intro flyby is about as good a first impression the game could make in my opinion i can't really describe to you much about the compositional element of these pieces but i can tell you how they make me feel and i think they all achieve exactly what they're looking to make me feel garfont village day has an energy like you just got home to see your friends and family after being away from them for longer than usual and finally getting to enjoy ourselves in each other's company in other words your home [Music] i can't stress enough i'm unable to explain all the emotional impact these songs had on me and how damn good the ost is without just playing the entire thing for you i also have a lot of trouble comparing xenoblade 1 and 2 soundtracks with each other xenoblade 1 as the more iconic tracks which i think is mostly in part because of its inclusion in smash brothers all that time ago however i feel like there are even more tracks in xenoblade 2 that hit absolute banger territory but they're also slightly less memorable because of how many there are if that makes any sense there are so many battle themes in this game good luck trying to memorize which one is which i've had a huge majority of the soundtrack laid out in front of me for nearly a whole year and i could still easily confuse the title's exploration and still move forward with each other whichever soundtrack you prefer i think we can all agree even if xenoblade isn't your thing the music is some truly fantastic stuff in spite of my own admission that the score can sometimes save the scenes that otherwise have lacking elements i found there'd be an insanely high quality story a story that really made me appreciate not only how a story can impact a video game but how much i can enjoy the approach of a game putting immense focus into said story [Music] trying to put into words my thoughts on these characters and this story has been without doubt the most difficult part of this entire project trying to describe something you love is hard to do let alone trying to describe that thing you love in an entertaining way it's really hard to try and keep myself from rambling on about any one aspect i could easily just write another video about so i want to begin by getting my list of negatives out of the way because i don't have many of them i love a lot of the vocal deliveries given by the english cast in this game but evidently there seemed to be some sort of mishap in the vocal direction compared to the stellar overall direction in xenoblade 1. i don't know if that game's localization taking place so long after the game's release in japan may have allotted them more time to do as much quality assurance as they needed but in xenoblade 2 it sounds like there were far more points where their voice director has to have just said hey you know what that's fine like what was david menken instructed to do here this whole world is a wretched place whatever it was the line comes off as really damn awkward it'd probably make you think that david just wasn't doing a very good job right but then in the very next scene he absolutely kills this and how many people died because of it you'd forgive him just like that i find this to be true for al weaver too the scenes where he snobs are incredible and most of rex's most emotional scenes are excellently performed but then when he screams earlier on it sounds like this [Music] this appears to be something of a running pattern for recent xenoblade releases and i think it'd be nice to get something as consistently phenomenal as xenoblade 1's english dub was the biggest problem i have with the story is the aforementioned scenes of fanservice that don't add valuable attributes to the characters i've already mentioned mithra's two scenes but tauren poppy's relationship is surrounded by a disturbing subtext from the moment poppy is introduced most if not all the heart to hearts in this game that i don't like which is a relatively small handful feature this weirdly ignorant or pervy side to torah that doesn't come out often but whenever it does it makes me cringe because this is not in any way a likable or relatable character trait sure it's only a few heart to hearts and a few scenes but it still introduces a disturbing subtext behind torah and poppy's relationship that makes it difficult to like torah this robot is structured to look and speak like a child and if torah is brilliant enough to design the world's best artificial blades it does not follow that torah somehow wouldn't have the common sense to understand that having a closet full of maid outfits to dress said robot up in is an incredibly sketchy look for yourself again there is nothing explicitly disturbing going on between them but it's still not a compelling or enjoyable side to torah's character at all torah is by far my least favorite party member because of this stuff and it says a lot because whenever he isn't being a freak he has a share of great lines and likeable moments his conversation with rex in the lud cloud way is a particular favorite of mine the more general reason i don't like these scenes mentioned before is that they are not creating additional substance to the story being told i understand that this thing is kind of a trope in modern anime and taking a more anime direction in the storytelling isn't inherently a problem if you ask me what i am saying is that this trope appears to be thrown into the game just for the sake of having it and not because it could be used to enhance the story or subvert the trope these scenes only occupy a small fraction of the story mind you but as i said before they don't help the game break away from looking like a standard jrpg or anime game with all of the tropes that come with that association the last thing that bothers me is that the members of torna other than jin and malos don't feel like they get significant enough development in my opinion mikhail gets more to work with thanks to torna and i think his sacrifice does about as much as could be done with the minuscule amount of time he was given in this story akkos and petroka on the other hand just don't get much of anything valuable for one thing if there's any character in this game that i hate it's akkos i seriously cannot stand that whole what this is not following what was written in the script type of i couldn't tell you why i hate that with a fiercely burning passion he's so snarky in a way that just makes me hate him he's especially unlikable because of what he says after vandam is killed and it wouldn't bother me if the game didn't try to make you feel sympathy for him at the end momkar is a despicable character who you're supposed to hate because of his talking and as i said before it's very effective xenoboyd 1 doesn't try to make you feel bad for him in any way other than maybe pity that he's so petty that it gets him killed with akkos and patroka both of whom i think are widely considered the most hated characters in this game the game thrusts their backstory literal seconds before they both die and it feels way too rushed in last minute amalthus instantly kills both of them and could very easily kill anybody in the party just as quickly yet the game treats this moment like the player would be thinking you know i wonder what compelled akos and patroka to join jyn in his cause now would be a great time to stop the action completely and just start talking about that instead this is way too late to try and salvage these two and it really does seem like it was thrown into this scene at the very last second thornton's plan to erase all of humankind during the first half the game also comes off as incredibly generic and bland before malthus is introduced it comes off as villains do evil things because that's what they were born to do after a malthus is introduced and especially when he becomes more prominent as a villain it gets far more interesting than all of that malice and newa both serve as excellent illustrations of how we deal with or fail to deal with the trauma and negative influences in our lives malos is bonded by a malthus and is consumed by his darkest desires and hatred for the entire world throughout torna in this game's story malus never once doubts that his purpose is to destroy the world he never changes rex and numa largely attribute that to malta's influence on him by the time rex says this though malus considers himself too far gone to even tried to redeem himself pneuma or pyro and mithra contrast malice's unwillingness to change in their character arc they were bonded by adam and appeared to inherit his courageous and righteous values but also share his fear that the power they've been given won't be one that they can control it's because of wrecks helping them overcome their fear their depression their self-hatred that they overcome their driver's weakness whereas malo succumbs to his driver's weakness and ends up dying because of it not only does that tie into one of the game's main themes that change is necessary for the creation of a better world but it creates a compelling reflection between numa and malos who make for a phenomenal party member and villain respectively jyn's story is far and away the most tragic and painful he was bonded by laura a person controlled by abuse and fear and he takes care of her he opened himself up to someone and loved and protected laura in every way imaginable he encountered resistance to his initial ideology that changing the world is not a vain gesture in torna but he nevertheless always had someone there to remind him that the fight for change had a purpose both a personal and wider purpose yet when a malthus a man who embodies the exact opposite of this idea ruins jin's life he's consumed by his very same ideology and loses sight of the man that he once was he lost the part of his soul that saved and protected laura time and time again the part of his soul that helped make her into the amazing person that she became it's not hard to understand why though he's doomed to live on for the rest of his life remembering the one event that he wants to forget a constant reminder of the worst most selfish and horrific side of humanity how could somebody not become nihilistic and jaded after that rex and laura both serve as excellent reflections of amalthus and jinn post torna laura and rex both suffer through trauma nearly as badly as jin and the malthus do laura's only family was taken from her and all that's left of it is the same abuser who traumatized her as a kid rex never knew his biological parents and becomes a salvager just to find a way up to the world tree so the rest of the world could find a place to live in peace so nobody has to suffer through what he did throughout this story he suffers through multiple events just as tragic as laura's death and often has to confront the fact that some of this is his fault and he still remains a good person in spite of everything these two have equal reason to spiral down as jinn did but they always persevere because things can change there's always hope and life's about taking the good with the bad right rex almost loses sight of that and it's when jin inflicts the very same pain that he suffered through onto rex completely working counter to what the love of his life would have wanted him to do he's become just as horrible as the same man who ruined his life and is so far removed from that loving connection and understanding of blades and drivers that he once had rex doesn't lose sight of what he's fighting for though and it's because of his friends his found family the people who he inspired to be better and fight for a greater cause that he doesn't give in nia in particular seemed equally as jaded as jyn is but rex shows her the side of humanity that she lost contact with for such a long time and it's why she's the one so resistant to the idea of rex giving up rex is saved because of his good deeds his love and his dedication to his friends while jen continues to fall further and further until his last moments it isn't until laura and rex get through to him again that he makes one final stand to fight for change once more he kills the man who wanted the very same thing that he spent 500 years working for the same man who ruined his life and god damn it is so satisfying especially after playing torna one of the best villains i have seen in any story for sure lastly we have a malthus i hate how much i can relate to him considering how despicable he is not because i want to enslave a group of people and destroy humankind but because of how much i've often thought stuff like this i often wonder if we are growing as a people or in fact regressing i think amount of his thoughts have been running through the heads of many people especially after the last two years and his motivation doesn't come off as too outlandish considering what he's been through obviously he's not a person you should root for in any capacity but it's hard to avoid feeling for him seemingly every attempt he made to help the world ends up hurting it and his mother appeared to be the only person to show him affection and she was taken from him no matter how many times i watch his death scene it never ceases to give me chills him seeing his mother as he dies is just it's just perfect [Music] one of the best lineup of villains i have ever seen and the standout characters obviously do not just lie there this main party is absolutely amazing and if you gave me an entire game of just these charming people bouncing off of each other i would be there for it the characterization of every character is simply masterful and i don't think there's a better scene to demonstrate what i mean than the fight with the maltese during this incredibly tense situation the game still finds the time to give these characters playful banter that doesn't feel like it's distracting from the confrontation in any way poppy's being overly polite pandori is acting all sassy and zeke is insulting a malthus for being ignorant and rallying the whole group together these characters are the heart and soul of this game and i couldn't be happier for that nia is one of my favorite characters period she pulls off this amazing balance between being playful and having this intensely relatable struggle of not feeling accepted for who she really is at first she appears to only be able to follow jyn because he's a flesh eater like she is she clearly doesn't gel with how jyn and malos do things and in general she just doesn't feel accepted this keeps her from using her abilities that could have saved people that she cares about but the fear of rejection is a very powerful one it's only once rex embraces her tells her to be true to herself no matter the challenges that may follow that she breaks free and finds her place in the world i mean that's just beautiful somehow she can be this likable on a more emotionally vulnerable level and still remains the funniest character in this game i must say you look a little different from your poster a little different whoever drew that should be the one in jail all of this and she's just a badass in nearly every regard both of her designs are awesome the twin rings and her catalyst cimitar are among my favorite weapons cosmetically and even when nia gets friendzoned she just moves on from it and recovers near instantly nia is the best character in this game and i will hear nobody argue otherwise i absolutely adore rex and i will never even begin to comprehend what so many people hate about him i understand a naively optimistic character like rex doesn't click with everybody but i truly don't think there's much of anything wrong with him other than this scene after the party exits the spirit crucible he shames nia for not revealing she was a flesh eater sooner which is not only incredibly insensitive which is pretty out of character for rex but also a blatant contradiction of what he says to her two scenes ago i consider this to be an incredibly out of character moment for him in every other scene i absolutely love this boy he has an incredibly pronounced sense of growth and it makes for a compelling hero's journey from start to finish he's no doubt a flawed person but what i don't understand about the arguments people often use to criticize rex is that they treat his flaws as if the game excuses him for making mistakes when that couldn't be further from the case not only does the game criticize him but he also criticizes himself for his own mistakes he blames himself for things that he couldn't have done anything to prevent he feels so distraught about haze's death specifically because he felt as though he should have been able to save her he admits when he's at fault plenty of times throughout this story nothing's changed i'm just as weak as i've always been don't worry about it she was right this was all my fault you're not to blame your majesty it's my fault stupid i was stupid i didn't understand pira and mithra's feelings i walked in the shadow of the aegis's light blindly walking my own path while she walked alone this is almost exactly how shulk is treated in xenoblade 1. he has several flaws that his game calls him out for too and that's why these two work as protagonists the games criticize both of these characters and they grow to change and overcome those character flaws i have seen way too many people try to use this final scene at the bridge to demonstrate that oh rex doesn't really grow as a character and it truly might be the worst possible example you could use this scene is the most apparent illustration of rex maturing and it happens in the only way that i think is appropriate rex resisting the idea that he has to let numa sacrifice herself is not a regression of his character could you even imagine how shitty the conclusion of this game would be if he just accepted her decision straight away he went on this incredible journey and learned and suffered through so many things because of pneuma he grew to become the master driver because he actively bettered himself to help her overcome her depression because of how much he cares about her how is he supposed to react to this situation he resists before ultimately realizing that he has to accept her choice and does what he couldn't do in chapter 3. rex needs to realize that him growing more powerful doesn't mean he can do everything he wants and he still needs his friends to help guide him and help him make the right choices sometimes that's what this moment is this scene as it is is amazing and i will never understand what so many people hate about rex and i don't care too he's just as good as shulk and i will not budge on that torah unfortunately doesn't get a lot to work with and you can sort of tell during the final stretch of the game he barely says anything other than rex rex it's fine though because poppy really starts pulling some emotional weight during the second half of this game arena lee deserves way more recognition for her performance here the entire last cutscene is amazing and her delivery has a lot to do with why it carries the emotional weight that it has of all the characters it's the robot that has some of the best overall vocal delivery oh the irony at first i didn't like morag that much i didn't dislike her but there just wasn't a lot going on for her emotionally or at least that's what i felt on my first playthrough my recent playthrough made me appreciate her much more especially because of her interest in faith in rex i like how she breaks out of her somewhat mundane everyday life in pursuit of what actually excites her and her most tender emotional moments mean a lot more coming from her considering how collected she usually is i especially love how naturally her relationship with nia progresses throughout the story obviously they didn't like each other during chapter 2 and by chapter 5 nia still doesn't really feel comfortable around her and for good reason by the time nia saves nile though these two grow mutual respect for each other to the point that by chapter 7 these two are willing to throw themselves in harm's way to protect the other and it's further solidified through post-battle dialogue like this that was a good stance you had there nia i could see how hard you were applying yourself thank you it means a lot coming from you by the end of chapter 7 morag throws herself between nia and the strongest blade in the entire world with her literal neck on the line which is just so badass on both a written and visual level the fight choreography and camera work in these cutscenes are so goddamn good to the point that i actively look forward to seeing new cutscenes in these games these cutscenes made me fall in love with analyzing scenes in my other favorite stories trying to understand why the camera is moving the way it is what the various framing tactics are implying about the subject of the shot but sorry i digress zeke is such an anomaly to me he serves as effective comic relief in the early game but by the end he has some of the most dramatic lines and it somehow doesn't feel jarring at all he serves as an older brother of the group in a sense and brings with him the good and bad parts of that kind of character he's always looking out for the party after he joins up and even if he can be blunt he still gives words of wisdom to rex when he needs it he also certainly loves to tease the other party members nia especially i mostly love the energy he brings to the group and the way it ties into his backstory with his family he learns that the tantalize royal family bloodline is not related to adam as he had been told for his whole life but that doesn't matter because his bloodline isn't what makes him special he's special because he's zeke von genbu chaotic bringer of chaos his silly off-the-wall energy his ridiculous gestures and his sense of justice are why people love him not because he's a prince of tanthal or because he could have been related to adam the eye of shining justice bit is also elevated to a whole other level because the team actually made it into a real gameplay mechanic in new game plus i don't care what you think about this game that is incredible i've brought this up multiple times but the relationships between all of these characters feel so real and even the dynamics that don't feel like they should work at all still do anyway zeke and morag are complete polar opposites in terms of personality zeke spent a chunk of his life completely separated from his home and morag dedicates her every effort into being prideful and interested in the safety of hers yet even the two of them grow a mutual respect for one another and both share an uncertainty for their purpose in life and that's just something i never would have expected to go on between these two nia and rex's relationship is possibly my favorite next to numa and rex's even if rex and nia aren't romantically interested in one another it doesn't diminish how meaningful their friendship is rex supports nia to the point that she not only breaks away from the idea that humankind is selfish but no longer feels afraid to show herself for who she is nia's faith in rex is what causes him to grow to become the hero she believes he can be in chapter 7 she gets so furious with him because she isn't talking to the same person who went out of his way to help save her someone he barely knew at that time in the titan battleship by the ending nia's influence on rex is treated as the most important in his most crucial decision and for good reason she and the rest of the party are there to help him make the right choice no matter how powerful rex gets he'll always need the people around him to be there for him just as shulk will always need ryan and the other members of his party to be there for him i also just love the banter between these two it's just so cute the main cast of blade synergize with their respective drivers well and even if they often don't get as much to work with as their drivers they're still all likable and compelling in different ways pyro and mithra are the exceptions and that they get by far the most to work with and are some of the best characters in this series for it i don't know how someone could watch a scene like this and not get giddy with joy i truly don't it's just a scratch hey let me help thank you rex no worries least i can do pyro and mithra have a troubled life to put it lightly pirate exists as a cocoon for mithra a fail-safe she can rely on when stuff gets difficult she is designed to be so intentionally different from mithra because that's what mithra believes is best for the world pyra can cook she's gentle kind genuine and she can control her powers perfectly these were all qualities people in torna expected her to have and she gets continually scolded and made fun of for not having those qualities then malos exploits her insecurities and traumatizes her causing her to completely break down and lose all sense of control she does the one thing she wanted to avoid most and sinks torna she no longer wants anything to do with herself and yet somehow her life continues to get worse and worse pyro is then awakened by rex and she develops a sense of guilt for using him you can see signs of that in the very first scene they share together pyra getting sealed away appeared to largely be adam's choice and yet she is the one who ends up being blamed for not being around to stop a malthus's rampage on specia pyro and mithra view themselves as a burden on the world and the people they love the only thing they want is to die to rid the world of their existence and the only thing stopping them from doing so is rex they're literally tethered to his life force and even if they could just transfer the rest of their core into him evidently he excites them in a way that nobody else does when adam awakened mithra there always appeared to be this business first vibe to their relationship mithra was expressly awakened to stop malos and adam and her getting along was a secondary concern rex on the other hand bonds with pyra because they share a common interest and he later demonstrates he cares about her in a way that nobody in torna not even adam did rex never once snaps back at pyro or mithra in the way jyn laura milton or bridget did in torna there is arguably one time where rex takes for granted the positive influence pyro and mithra have had on his life and i think this is best represented by two seemingly minor reactions from mithra that make a world of difference on repeat viewings mithras scolds rex at vandam's funeral for not running when he should have this is yet again an example of xenoblade 2 critiquing rex for his mistakes he's not being excused for this but whatever rex bad right this is an understandable reaction for mithra to have she had to reawaken the side of herself that she never wanted to show to the world again and she had to use her powers she never wanted to even consider using again because rex didn't run so what is his response to her berating him he admits he was at fault and what truly throws her off guard is that he was interested in her safety think of how sad that is mithra is rendered speechless because she realized someone wanted to protect her he goes out of his way just after to apologize again fully admitting he was at fault and says that all he wants to do is become worthy of being her driver this is the level of affection nobody has given pyromithra up to this point and they don't know how to respond to it then you have the moments before numa's awakening just before the fighting begins rex admits all the ways in which he wasn't there for pyro and mithra when he should have been he hadn't recognized how isolated and alone they felt how much they hated themselves and their powers how truly afraid they were of themselves despite pyromithra's plea to rex asking him to let them die and be forgotten rex doesn't entertain it for one second he pours out his heart and soul and reminds them of his promise their reaction to this nearly makes me cry every time i re-watch the scene while pyro manages to say rex's name mithra is once again completely speechless all she can do is cover her face and you can see she's about to burst into tears rex's love saves them on both a physical and emotional level and you can call the scene corny or what have you i don't give a about that this is beautiful just like the relationship between these characters i've alluded to this before but the post battle dialogue and heart to hearts further sell me on the dynamics between these characters by having these relationships front and center during the gameplay just as much as it is during the story heart to hearts and affinity are my favorite mechanics in this series and are probably the reason i prefer having a pre-written cast of characters instead of the near endless customization and team building possibilities in games like pokemon that obviously has its own appeal on the gameplay end of things but i don't know man when you get a vibe for how your party members talk to each other and how they get along it's just pure bliss for me i live for these moments the relationships being contextualized in the gameplay through affinity is absolutely amazing because you feel more in the moment when there's a sense of morale to the battles for example when you're walking around and the affinity line is broken and mithra goes hey pay attention to me i always go like oh i'm sorry i feel like in other games the most you get is that you can heal your other party members but otherwise everyone's just kind of awkwardly standing next to each other while they take turns attacking whatever goons you're fighting i sometimes go out of my way to fight enemies just to hear these characters interact with one another i feel abuse insults and colorful swearing are your real talents lie what a mean thing to say thus it grabs no more healing for you when the drivers pass the baton off in a chain attack they say something different depending on the driver they're passing it to [Music] and this isn't just a level of detail given solely to the main party by the way the non-story railways get their own myriad of battle dialogue with the five drivers as well as other rare blades including non-story ones [Music] no no i was not not even a little is that me stop it you're scaring [Music] the fact that a game this big can still feel like it has the heart and soul of an indie game through the endless list of details like this just doesn't feel like it should be possible and yet it is i love these games dude the story and characters hadn't just gripped me because of this alone though i'm embarrassed to think that i ever believed that story should remain a secondary concern in video games and do you want to know why this moment is why everything about this scene is perfect in my eyes and was when i felt incredibly invested in the story what the f that can happen simon thorpe's excellent voice acting the music the camera work the fight choreography nia foreshadowing or flesh eater form vandam stabbing himself with rock sides and mithra's awakening was all just so enthralling i vividly remember how pissed off i was at malos and akkos i couldn't believe it i cared so much about all of these characters and i wanted to just punt these two so bad and from then on i was sucked in i wanted to keep playing the game not just because the combat was interesting and the worlds were fun to explore but because the characters were so likable that i tapped into this beautiful cycle where whenever the gameplay would start feeling a little bit standard the story would motivate me to keep going and whenever the story felt really standard the gameplay would kick it up a notch neither the story nor the gameplay felt like they were being sacrificed in service of the other and i was in a state of pure bliss as a result an additional reason this was the case is because of how xenoblade 2 handled its status as a sequel xenoboy 2 despite what the name implies doesn't really follow up on the events of xenoblade 1 and i think that was a great move the ending of that game is exquisite and while we could intuit that the party in that game would need to continually fight for their futures having to come up with another grand scale threat for this already developed cast of characters to overcome would have just felt like it was undoing all the hard work the first game story put in they'd likely need to come up with new character arcs for each character a new lesson for them to all learn that they didn't learn in the first adventure etc so xenoblade 2 takes place in an entirely separate universe right well mostly but also not really thanks to the conduit for one thing this makes it so you don't need to invest 70 hours into xenoblade 1 just to understand the story of xenoblade 2 and that's wonderful at the same time the connection to xenoblade 1's universe makes details of xenoblade 2 better enhance the meaning behind certain characters and moments in the first game story i grew to better understand alvis as a character when i realized that he's an aedis which explains why he knows as much as he does and how he can talk to shulk even when he's mostly dead i also really dig out klaus's two halves illustrate two different ways someone could go insane after becoming a god where zanza was driven by fear ego and narcissism claus is consumed by regret and sorrow claus tried to restore what remained of his planet and where zanza manipulated his creations to perpetuate the circles of suffering for his benefit claus is defeated by the fact that his creations were doomed to endlessly cycle through those same struggles that his planet did no matter how many measures he created to prevent it these weren't things this game had to bother with at all but it makes for a uniquely great experience for both inexperienced newcomers and series veterans from what has been said on xenoblade 3 as of the time i'm saying this sentence tatsuya takahashi appears to want to keep that same style of sequel for that game and i couldn't be happier it certainly seems like it could follow up on the events of xenoblade 1 and 2 but there's every possibility that there could be some level of alternate universe shenanigans going on i don't really know and that's exciting to not know there's certainly a lot riding on that game though to be sure what i think works best about this setup is that the developers don't need to confine themselves into only developing one select universe i can only imagine creatively how exhausting that would be and from everything we've gotten from monolithsoft as of right now i see no reason they wouldn't be able to come up with innovative new ideas for every new game say what you will about any of these games and i have and i will but there's nothing about this series that gives off the idea that these games are being made out of obligation xenoblade x 2 torna definitive edition and three they're not light iterations on what was accomplished in xenoblade 1. monolith could easily just coast off of what they did in xenoboad 1 and add just small tweaks to that game's gameplay style and i'm sure plenty of people would like that xenoboid 1 is a goddamn accomplishment especially for the time it was made but monolith have never just settled for light additions to xenoblade 1. these games all stand on their own as unique experiences because monolith are capable of giving us something different with every release if this sequel structure allows them to continue following this standard then i am completely on board with the series for as long as i live the best part of all of this is that the developers still appear to be happy with what they're making and they're experimenting with creative ideas while making games that the fans still enjoy torna is the perfect example of what i mean by all of this a notable number of people who didn't enjoy xenoblade 2 enjoyed torna and that game's story was more or less already written by the time the base game came out and nothing about that game feels like it's compromising itself to appease the people who didn't enjoy xenoblade 2. obviously not every xenoblade game will work for everyone and that's okay but monolith's willingness to experiment so creatively with this series is something i have nothing but undying respect for yet another reason i find these games so addictive is that despite being so damn long these games rarely ever feel like 70 to 150 hours in length i think it's a testament to how valuable the pacing of these games is to the overall experience i find the pacing and xenoway 2 isn't as consistently good as xena wood ones was mostly due to the tutorials but overall you're given a fair amount of time to process the story side of things really well in my opinion in chapter 1 you're introduced to titans drivers blades salvagers and the aegis i do think this game throws way too many proper nouns at you in the intro though in just the first few cut scenes alone there's rex gramps titans the cloud c elysium the architect fonzette village and the argentine trade guild okay ah i'm with you so far but now's the chance for the player to grow accustomed to all of those names all of those things and take this in at their own pace right then all of a sudden there's hurricane malolo ordain uriah corrine left here in archipelago papunen chairman bana drivers blades nia drill mark mallow sever jin i think it's fair to say that all of this is coming at you way too fast how fast these things are all being thrown at you well within the first like 20 minutes of this game imagine someone new to the series like i was just following the tutorial suggestions and getting all of this information blasted into your brain at once it's way too much and it makes the intro feel really confusing in an intimidating way it thankfully eases up on that as it goes along though in chapter 2 the party takes the time to highlight blades and how they awaken it's illustrated that some people don't have the necessary aptitude to become a driver and we see the ways in which people like torah would think to work around that in chapter five you get a look at all risk's big picture how core crystals are distributed the state of the refugees in indole and seeing the tensions between warden and uriah increasing it begins focusing on the wider politics of all rest during this chapter in chapter 6 and 7 you get an idea as to why tantow became isolationists and the struggles its people go through because of it indoles holding the tantoy's royal family's dirty secret above their heads and demands that they siphon off part of gambu's ether energy to harvest more courtships for their military in return then just before the grand finale you get a look at mortha what remains of clause's planet and the inhabitants who lived through the creation of xenoblade 1's universe the pacing is why i think this series is so addictive to myself and many others despite these games being at the minimum 70 hour long games i have never walked away from any playthrough feeling anything other than man i wish there was even more content to delve into i actually really hope xenoboyd 3 gets post launch support like xenoblade 2 did because after i beat definitive edition and future connected i felt really sad when i knew that there wasn't any remaining content to sink my teeth into obviously this is not to say these games don't have enough content they absolutely do but it says a lot that i could spend 150 hours on one playthrough of a game and still want more if this game's intro is something of an overwhelming shove into all rest and its intricacies then the last four chapters are a rollercoaster ride that contain some of my favorite moments in any story that make the slower first half of the game pay off in a really satisfying way the final chapter especially is amazing we get the answers to the two burning questions asked throughout the game what does the architect think of his creations and is elysium real or not elysium is real enough alright but it isn't the elysium that rex thought it would be the way the party members all react to this in a different way and the steady way the camera hides the overview of everything is absolutely brilliant it truly couldn't be any more desolate and the atmosphere is appropriately grave rex understandably doesn't know how to react to this in his phantasm with pyro and mithra you get the sense that this situation is exactly what he wants right he's with the two girls he loves he's at home and they're all just allowed to sit down and have a bite with each other the inclusion of color in this particular phantasm seems to implicate that pyro and mithra are maybe reaching out to rex after all they've been shown to be able to access his headspace yet rex no longer knows what he's doing now he just realized his dream is no longer possible it's been violently ripped away from him and all of this overwhelmed him claus is then revealed to have been behind those phantasms to test what feelings lie within his creations we're then filled in on all rest creation and what the purpose behind clause's additional creations was claus lost faith in humankind and became obsessed with researching the conduit believing that it would allow humankind to evolve by opening a portal into another universe it instead left clause with half of his body alone in the orbital station the other half would become zanza and xenoblade 1's universe with nothing left for him to do klaus zen worked to rebuild the world instead of attempting to reset it in the way zanza wanted to it all began with the creation of a cloud c the cloud c is composed of particles that deconstruct and rebuild matter into the image of things that previously inhabited clause's planet core crystals were then introduced to recreate life as they contained the memories of former lifeforms and were then bonded with the cloud seized particles to create titans who then gave birth to even more creatures blades then act as a way to further evolve the future lifeforms born from core crystals by sending information about allrest and its environmental stressors to logos and numa who then influenced the code of the unbonded core crystals to create said evolutions claus thinks that his efforts were wasted he believes humankind has faded to the same end as his planet but even someone as truly apathetic as claus found faith in humankind in the end because of rex and pneuma but no time for that malice is going to destroy everything and even here in the final room of the game the game somehow has time to hit you with one of the best battle themes in this series are you kidding me [Music] so [Music] the final boss isn't quite as good as zanza's final fight in my opinion but i still love it the final battle team has a wonderful thematically fitting title and the scale was just so grand that i love every second of it the final cutscene has a thousand wonderful things in it but the most heartwarming of all is this you shine a light on my melancholy path you showed me the way [Music] based on what i understood from xenoblade 3's first trailer this new world the party is arriving in could likely serve as the same world shell created in the conclusion of xenoblade 1 and it raises a lot of questions did xenoblade 1's cast arrive before or after xenoblade 2's cast does if it was the former then does the titans being introduced likely caused some tremors or concern for a shulking company is that what generates the conflict where's the mcconus's sword we don't get a glimpse of it in either one or two's ending it very well could just be an alternate universe where these two casts of characters inhabit the same world i'm obviously just spitballing questions i have but it says a lot that i feel this excited for that game considering i first played this game less than two years ago to bring all of this back to the first time i played xenoblade 2 it only feels right that i end this segment putting my heart on the table i couldn't describe to you the soul crushing feeling that i felt when i realized alongside rex that newman was going to sacrifice herself i haven't felt warmth rapidly leave my body like that in quite a long time i went into that ending not dissatisfied but it didn't feel conclusive for numa to not be able to thrive in that ending with everyone else one last you then kicked in and that was ripping my soul into little bite-sized pieces it felt like a sick joke and as soon as the camera panned down a rex's hand and the core crystal began to flicker i started crying not just crying i i was sobbing i truly couldn't tell you the last time any story touched my heart to the point that i began crying it just doesn't feel like it happens anymore and i hate that i hate feeling so emotionally mute to so many stories but this was the first time in such a long time that i cried tears of pure joy not of laughter or sadness just pure unbridled joy there is absolutely no chance in hell that pyro and mithra forgot their memories i refuse to entertain that idea at all you can have your theories or your head canons or what have you but thematically it makes way too much sense for pyro and mithra to retain their memories monado rudra does a better job than i could ever hope to explaining why this is what i think the ending was in this twitter thread so check that out if you want capping it off with nia being mature enough to push rex towards the two of them and seeing them presumably about to embrace each other was all i could ever want out of the ending the characters i loved all together celebrating their triumphs and being just plain adorable together i don't give a single how corny it is to some anymore i love these characters i love this story and i adore this ending the power of video game storytelling was not only made clear to me but i will be damned if i find a more exciting story than the ones present in these two games this story was the beating heart of the game that pulled me forward all the way through even when the game was spamming me with bad tutorials it sold me on everything i couldn't pull myself out of the world of all rest it would be overly hyperbolic to say that xenoblade 2 saved my life or something to that effect i'm incredibly lucky to be in the situation i'm in especially right now but it wouldn't be hyperbolic to say that xenoblade 2 did give me a bright ray of light to push me through a time when i truly wasn't excited about anything else this game illustrated the power of video games to me in a way that i hadn't recognized before the power of a genre i didn't think i enjoyed whatsoever do you want to know something i started playing pokemon emerald to simply gather footage to use in this video and in my free time i just beat that game for fun i played through it and understood why other people loved this series that i just didn't connect with all that much before i had a wonderful time playing that game and i started playing pokemon white the very next day and almost beat it in under one week i didn't think that would ever happen i would have called you crazy if you went back to 2020 and told me that this game of all games would become one of my favorites that i would go out of my way to buy the collector's editions of these games or that i would have begun writing a mess of an 80 page script trying to describe every single reason i loved it it just feels nice to know that all the build up to me finally playing these games was worth it i can only pray that xenoblade chronicles 3 ends up joining the ranks of xenoblade 1 and 2. it's a massive expectation to fulfill but i have the utmost faith that monolithsoft can do it they've achieved something truly magical with this series thus far and they've grown significantly from both their humble beginnings with xeno gears and even from the creation of their magnum opus i've highlighted that this game certainly has problems i don't think i could ever argue otherwise after making a 30 minute description dedicated to those problems what's perhaps most impressive about xenoblade 2 is that even if it had to share of problems that would probably ruin other games for me the fact that it remains so endearing and fun to play for 90 percent of the run time for me is a testament to how strong its best qualities are because when i'm playing xenoblade 2 i'm rarely ever thinking about the field skills being annoying sometimes or how much i'm walking in a straight line or how the quests are just average the only thing i'm really ruminating over is how i never get tired of this cast of characters how i've never seen environments as striking as uriah or letheria in any other game and how the exploration and combat are always holding my interest by the time i reach gorma i'll gladly accept xenoblade 2 flaws and all if what i get in return is one of the most consistently engaging and lovable games that i've ever played like rex says himself life's about taking the good with the bad right this series will continue to grow both artistically and in terms of popularity and monoliths have proven that they are more than worthy of the love from the people who resonate with their games not every game will work for everyone of course but the team always makes a visible effort to make something better every time and all i can really ask of xenoblade 3 is that it makes it clear that this passion and ambition isn't going away perhaps all of this comes off as too fanboyish maybe a video like this one doesn't serve much of a purpose at all why bother listening to what one person thinks about a game right maybe there's some truth to that but i don't care i really don't xenoblade chronicles 2 is a game that i will cherish for the rest of my life and i feel absolutely no shame in saying that thank you monolithsoft for giving me a reason to fall in love with video games all over [Music] want again to know [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey everyone uh this is a less scripted end of video ramble so if you're looking for more analysis this is uh the end of the video proper so this is just stuff pertaining to my channel the stuff i plan on doing in the future and just thanking the people who made this video possible so uh first and foremost i'd like to thank any of the outside sources that i used you'll see them all scrolling by while i'm talking and they're all linked below in the description if you're interested uh the other people i want to thank are all of you i can't express how much i appreciate you listening to something i made for any amount of time especially if it was this video i hope this video did its job in providing at least a somewhat interesting discussion of xenoblade 2 and i hope if nothing else that it was at least entertaining uh but let me know what you think i could improve on this was my first time doing a video of this scale and scope and i more than likely made a few mistakes that i may have not even recognized i apologize in particular for my uh varying quality in voiceovers uh it's the part of the process that i struggle with the most and i hope it wasn't as distracting to any of you as it was for me playing this video back over and over and over again um yeah i did a lot of like on-the-fly learning throughout this project so uh eventually i just had to reach a point where i could leave it act good enough so i could eventually release this video before i die or xenoblade 3 comes out whichever one of those comes first in terms of what's to come in the future i plan on covering torn of the golden country next in a much much shorter video i believe torn is a big enough expansion that warrants its own video later on when i'm actually you know prepared i plan on making a big xenoboyd chronicles definitive edition video in the same vein as this video uh judging by the script's current size it's about like 40 pages i think it'll almost definitely be shorter but i think it'll hopefully be equally as comprehensive and i'm fairly confident in that script i think i plan to do a similarly large analysis for x whenever i finish that game i still have barely gotten past like chapter four i think man xenoblade x it really got screwed didn't it like it's just stranded on the wii u like a desert island in the middle of nowhere but uh hopefully after i beat that game i'll have something to say or that i could at least just shed attention on it because i feel like that game is just it's definitely a black sheep of the series right now considering that we've gotten three story driven xenoblade games and we still have only really gotten one x game so uh that'll be interesting for sure i would love to get torna and xenoblade 1 and future connected out before xenoblade 3 releases in september but uh we'll have to see how all this pans out uh all of this is subject to change obviously at some point i want to do all this because i really do love this series and i don't want to leave any stone unturned so now that all that's out of the way i just want to give credit to a bunch of xenoblade creators and hopefully give you all more content to experience from the community i'm dying waiting for xenoblade 3 so hopefully i can help you avoid dying doing the same by giving you some dope content surrounding the series the fan art for the series is absolutely marvelous and i don't even have a concrete list of artists that i could link so on screen you should see a big list of artists that i think you should absolutely check out if you're looking for more immaculately well-crafted illustrations of the series and its many beautiful characters environments and weapons and all that stuff on youtube xenoblade isn't really talked about all that much because it's still a fairly niche series and i hope i can give you some more quality content to watch via these creators i'm about to recommend and now speed runs xenoblade 2 in torna and has a playlist of fantastic blade guides and challenge mode videos as well as xenovoid definitive edition guides and tips he no doubt will have an equally comprehensive list of xenoblade 3 guides when that game comes out and he also covers larger parts of the xeno series if that's of interest to you k jewelers makes deep dives into the characters and stories of this series and often covers other series like zelda and pokemon as well there are dozens of details in these stories that i likely only managed to recognize thanks to his analyses and for that i'm incredibly grateful he's also just one of my favorite creators to have come across recently i've just been binging a bunch of his youtube videos lately chuggercon you all know about chuggaconrad if you see if you've seen this video you know who chugga crowner is uh he has the most in-depth let's play series of both xenoblade 1 and xenoblade 2 and tornado that i could even imagine is possible especially right now given what we know about the series and uh they're both excellent let's plays they're probably the most culturally significant let's plays for xenoblade and i never would have tried the series and fallen in love with it had i not known for his passion for it so if you happen to be watching this by some stroke of god thank you so much charga winter va made an excellent video about nia that i think thoroughly details everything about how wonderful she is adam miller made a video explaining why he felt the intro to this game was fairly weak and it was really well made it helped me understand a lot why the intro didn't click for some people if you fancy some xenoblade 1 analysis cynical's 4 hour video should help tide you over it's about as comprehensive as it gets and i hope my video could manage to land in the ballpark of that video's quality king k has an equally exquisite video on xenoblade chronicles that i highly recommend it's sort of a comparison piece to xeno gears and he also covers numerous other series like zelda kingdom hearts sonic and plenty of others lastly snug boy has a concise and comedic video analyzing xenoblade 1 and he's another channel to become a recent favorite of mine links in the description for all those folks and i wouldn't have been as motivated to talk about these games or the series if not for all of these people so thank you to all of those mentioned i hope you'll join me for whenever those aforementioned future xenoblade videos are ready but until then thank you so much for watching and please have a wonderful rest of your day

Channel: Tronk

Views: 37,844

Keywords: Xenoblade, Xenoblade Chronicles, Xenoblade 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Xeno, Xenoblade 2 Analysis, Video Analysis, Tronk, Troy, Tronk Xenoblade, A Dive Into, A Dive Into Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Xenoblade Analysis, Xenoblade Review, Xenoblade Chronicles Analysis

Id: Z-vv5c0gQ7A

Length: 146min 47sec (8807 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 15 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/M1dj37]

Thanks for that. That was fantastic

[u/TomDaTurtle579]

Just finished watching it! Instant sub, this guy knew exactly how to describe how this fan base loves these games!

[u/zso7]

2 hours

nah