The XCX battle system was substantially better feeling than XC. The biggest problem with XC was at how frustrating targeting was (sometimes it would target super distant monsters, and even bring some extras into the battle inadvertently), the camera was terrible (many times it would flip around into a wall, the floor, or in some odd direction), and it was difficult to tell what side of the monster you were on - all three issues fixed in XCX.
XC2 seems a little bit further refined and simplified from a UI standpoint, while actually increasing the depth; although this might not be a great thing. Although, I hope this is not a needless overdesign, the two extra steps to the topple look a bit chore-ish, kind of like Melia's weird buff + casting. Honestly, I would prefer getting rid of topple, it's a chore after a while. RPGs are better the more simulated they are; that's what the genre's about, after all. Timing/action shit can be fun at first, but kind of ruins the game in the a long term. The more actions they are, the more painful and chore-like repetitive actions tend to be:
Example: individually taking each slide out of a box, putting it in a projector, turning the projector on, looking at the slide, then taking the slide out, putting it back. Then picking out the next slide, and repeat. OR, press a button to flip to the next slide. If you had to do one or the other for a couple of hours, which would you rather do?
I've had this argument before, so before someone comes running and says "would you rather just press buttons repeatedly to pass levels in Mario?" I'll point out that RPGs don't have to be repetitive, there are different actions to use for different situations, but they don't have have to be convoluted; and on the Mario example, Mario's abilities are incredibly simplistic, jumping is just tapping a button, running vs walking is just holding a button down vs. not holding it down; and also Mario is not an RPG, it's a platformer, two very different mechanics - but both benefit from a simple interface to do what you want to do - you wouldn't want to have to do a button combination every time you wanted Mario to jump, would you?
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
