At least you modify the difficulty and change some of the options within a difficulty. Though it hasn't worked for me that much with some of the harder special challenges in Challenge Mode,

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It seems to me that the answer to this question depends very much on the player. I will lay down my perspective and explain, maybe that helps.

XC1 is for me personally one of the best games of all times, so I am definitely happy about the remaster. But it has some flaws, maybe the remaster will fix some. What stands out in XC1 is in my opinion the music. I seldomly heard that great and memorable music, that emotionally connected very well with the plot. The second area that makes this game great for me are the characters. HoangNhatAnh might be right that character arcs are better in XC2, but the characters in XC1 were so lovable. I connected very well emotionally with them. Shulk, Fiora, Reyn were such a great team, I loved being with them. And Sharla and Melia were great additions. I loved also heropon Riki, much better Nopon-character than Tora (XC2). The third greatness are the environments. The feeling of freedom and how well it all was placed onto the body of the titans, it gave a feeling of a great area. And how different it all looked at day and night. The plot was good too. The downsides are visuals (which look improved in the remaster) and clunky combat. Don't get me wrong, the combat is strategic and deep, but it can be difficult to get it done right.

XCX was not a bad game, but some things spoiled it for me. After XC1 had so great music, I was disappointed in the music. It mainly was one track that was bad, but sadly that was the music of the hub, a sort of base/city. That by the way was another downside for me. XC1 had no hub or base, you explored the world, always pushing on. In XCX you have the base and mount missions, but get back to base. It felt less like an advanture that way, more like a military expedition. I also have barely any connection to the characters. I think there were way to many of them and all their story arcs were separate. The plot was also split in chapters, which disconnected me a bit from the story. I think this was to better fit in the online, but I give a crap on online. On the upside I think this game has the best visuals of the three. I like the comic style of XC2, but frankly some areas and monsters of XCX look absolutely stunning. I am usually a defender of unrealistic artstyles, but the absolutely beatiful and strange world of Mira feels more otherworldly because of the more realistic artstyle. This seems counterintuitive, but with a more comic style I always feel the artstyle represents something else. If you see these alien plants in all their strangeness and the realistic artstyle, this seems more impressive. The mechs were OK, I felt they didn't add much to the fighting. But they indeed add much to exploring. The mechs made traversal so much easier and really helped to reach some areas. Ah yes, the game has mechs. If that is your thing. XCX has a real open world and offers a lot of additions in the sort of exploring.

XC2 didn't get me so much in the story, so I havent played it through yet. As I said I like the comic visuals, I only felt the more realistic style helped me to impress me more with the sort of bizarre creatures and landscapes. But also XC2 looks beatifully. Both XCX and XC2 clearly outshine XC visually (no surprise as the first one wasn't even HD). The music is good, although personally I still prefer the one from the first game, but that may well be personal bias. XC2 introduces again a more strict plot and better characters than XCX. So it feels closer in these areas to the first game, although I personally preferred the first one. The fighting in XC2 is much more streamlined and feels more organic. The arts are mapped to face buttons now, so they are easy accessible. The idea of the drivers and blades feels a bit strange at first, but it allows with a relatively small cast of characters (that you can better emotionally connect to and that better fit into the plot) to have a wide variety of fighting styles, as each blade offers different abilities. If you unlock a lot of them this gives you great possibilities for configuration.

Well, I hope my impressions help you a bit to get an impression of the up- and downsides of the three games. Overall I can recommend all three.

Xenoblade 1 is the best by a mile. Magnificent world, interesting story, likable characters, superb soundtrack, strong combat system, and of the three games, it has by far the least flaws. It's a true classic and a must-play experience.

Xenoblade 2 also scores highly in music, combat, and has some story/character scenes that rival the best of XB1. However, its environments don't have the same wow factor, it has some really annoying and cringey scenes, and there are some significant gameplay flaws like Field Skills grinding the main story progression to a halt and some really nasty difficulty spikes. Thankfully there's more good than bad overall, and on the whole it's an 8/10 game.

Xenoblade X is a technical masterpiece considering the hardware it was built for, its world is almost as enthralling as XB1, and as per usual the combat is great, but its mediocre story and abundance of tedious grindy filler make it the weakest of the three.

XBX has one of the best open worlds in any videogame ever made. Exploring and navigating the world is as enthralling as it gets, especially as you unlock the mech and later the ability to fly to cover more ground faster and reach previously unreachable locations. The game suffers in the story department though.

Xenoblade 1 has by far the best story. It's world is incredibly unique and striking, but it's not open world, so the exploration isn't really there.

I'd say Xenoblade 2's story isn't as good as 1's, but its characters are better. It's also not a true open world like X.

All 3 have great combat. X probably has the best combat once you are allowed to pilot mechs, because the mechs are really well balanced. They make you feel powerful without being invincible. I also think X has the best creature and enemy design. On foot 2 has the best combat simply because the systems have been refined.

I'm going to disagree on story. I found Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2 to be fairly unremarkable and unoriginal in the plot department. They were rehashes of much more interesting and thorough Takahashi/Soraya Saga stories (both games are like vertical slices of the vastly superior Xenogears).

I think, in the end, the reason I like XCX's story more is the scope of the story. XC1 and XC2 are not only much more linear, but they're a lot smaller in scale. Basically each one is a heroes journey story (which are like a dime a dozen in RPGs). XCX is significantly original, it puts the player in the center of a larger story, an entire city and its struggle against an alien planet - as the player, you go to various parts of the city and help them with the struggle, and it's all part of the whole.

As well, Xenoblade Chronicles X had a better world than XC1 and a significantly better world than XC2 (which wasn't terrible, it was actually better than most RPGs, but fell well below the bar set by the other two Xenoblade games).

My main issue with Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2 are that they felt a little too on-the-rails in both map and story design. The outer maps of XC2 lack the spectacle of XC1 and XCX, although the cities are nice. XC1 has some great areas (Fallen Arm, Makna Forest, and Frontier Village) but it's a mixed bag with some very bland and sterile areas (Sword Valley, Mechnonis interior, Bionis interior, the snowplains/mountain maze place, Prison Isle, Eryth Ocean, and the High Entia Tomb, the colony 6 mines) which, unfortunately, take up a significantly larger portion of the game. The worst area in a Xeno-game still remains the Encephalon from Xenosaga, but some of the locations of XC1 come painfully close.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is kind of like 2 games. The first 6 or 7 chapters, and then the last 3 or 4 chapters. The last 3 or 4 chapters are basically one large dungeon that's reminiscent of The Tower of Babel from Xenogears, and a little of Zeboim civilization from Xenogears. While the World Tree (or whatever it was) is more fun than the Tower of Babel (particularly the lower portion with the annoying platforming), the ruins of Zeboim Civilization are SIGNIFICANTLY more interesting than Morytha, though. None of the games have a "dungeon" type area as interesting as Solaris, which IMO is (to this day) the best "dungeon" in an RPG ever (I put dungeon in quotes, because it's not really a dungeon, it's more like a country inside of an Archology).

IMO Torna the Golden Country was better than the first half of XC2, but not as good as the second half. New Game+ of XC2 is the most fun experience I had with the game.

Anyway, XCX is a much larger game than the other two Xenoblades. But DESPITE being larger, XCX was fairly remarkable in how much more manageable the play sessions were. Since it was non-linear, players were presented with options for short, medium, long, and really long bits of the game they could do. Then there was also a lot of random curiosity stuff, exploring some new area with your new Skell/Gear. The non-linearity is refreshing, XC1 and 2 don't really do anything better, storywise, they just shove more into the critical path; and for the most part, you're forced into the same experience, while the experiences you can have with XCX are vastly different depending on which paths you take.

The big difference with XC1 and 2 vs XCX is in XC1/2 the story is spoonfed to you as you go along the rails. In XCX you seek out your own way to move through the story of a city from earth and its struggle against the alien planet it has been plunked down upon.

Ooops, I DP'd this thread =(

You guys must have incredible tolerance to have been able to play XCX. I have 20/20 vision yet that tiny text was too frustrating to look at.

Part of the reason I want to see a remake, to have that font fixed.

Really shoulda been fixed through a patch, but at this point yeah that's the best one can hope for.

The text size didn't actually bother me in XCX, what bothered me was the sheer overwhelming amount of tedious filler. The mech license test is the perfect example, instead of just rewarding you with your license for completing a chapter as it should have done, it gives you this ridiculous long list of annoying, boring tasks to tick off that can take hours. The game simply doesn't respect the player's time.

It's a shame cos if the story were less dull and the gameplay less clogged with filler, it'd be a true gem, as it does have many great qualities. Even with all it's flaws it's still a good game, but it could've been great.