| Cerebralbore101 said: I'm only about an hour and a half into the game, but I've already noticed two small improvements over the last games. 1. Whenever a townsperson has something new to say, they have a star over their heads. This is a big improvement over XCX which had you running around talking to every townsperson just to advance your town affinity. 2. You no longer have to pick up random items to complete the collectopedia. Instead you go to dive points and dive into the sea to salvage items. You can use better cylinders to increase the chances of getting rare items. This takes out a ton of the frustrating randomness of getting certain required items. |
Agreed on this, this is great. The collection- and salvaging-system is a pretty good evolution from the collectibles stuff in the first two games and the interesting points stuff in XCX. Now you collect multiple things, but it is an action. And skills learned by your blades may bring you in more stuff to find (similar to how you did have to learn biology or other skill to activate some things to find in XCX). This all is really cool.
Other than that: This game basically brings back many things I loved about XC more than XCX. First of all music: XCX music was no comparison to the music in the first game. The music in XC2 is much much better. Maybe if not still music from XC was stuck in my head (because it was so awesome) I would see the music now as on the same level than XC.
More importantly: I'm not very much progressed in the story, but I do care a lot more about the characters than in XCX. In XCX you got thrown a lot of characters you could go into fights with, but I didn't really cared about them. It was a combination of too many and the stories while different were not connected really to your own character. Maybe also because you could create your own character, so it was taken out of the story. Or more stories in case of XCX. XC2 does have a much more consistent single story and much less characters (so far) that bond to your character much more and therefore I do care for much more.
Probably that is the point the blades come in. With less characters to play the blades allow you to play different combat-styles with each of them. In XC the combat was fixed to each character, Sharla for instance was always a healer. Now it is more diverse, even early on with the core crystals. Each character can with a switch of the blade change the fighting style. That can even happen in the middle of the fight. The only thing is - I wisch I could also switch blades for the other than the main character. Maybe I can though, and havent figured it out yet.
I did like though in earlier games that I could configure which arts to use. Now the arts are fixed to a blade (at least so far, maybe that changes later). I also could access more art in the earlier games, although now they are conviniently mapped to face buttons, so fighting selecting arts is easier. Not sure which I prefer really.
The landscapes and the creatures are great as they were in both earleir games. I do like that. That was the part I liked in XCX so much, although I didn't care about the story, but exploring the land was excellent. But the same was true for XC. The only thing XCX made better was, that I could explore new regions without progressing in the story. As the story in XC was so great, this was no big deal, but still. Now it is like XC, I still have to see if the story holds up, so far it is good. One thing though: I love we are back on Titans. It is much more awesome to run around on a thing, and even more now that they are alive.
The first city (after the trading guild) - I think Terigoth or so - is confusing to me. I actually use the questmarker to bring back stuff I had to fetch for an NPC instead of remembering there it was. And even with the quest-markers, I often don't know how to get down there or up there. It really didn't help that at first I moved through the city per cut-scene. Doesn't help to remember there I was going. After I could move freely, I needed quite some time to find back to the city entrance. I don't know more cities yet, maybe they are designed less confusing. The trade guild is fine for instance.
I would like an option to turn on japanese voice acting, maybe they patch it in later like with Zelda. That would be great.
Overall I like it much more than XCX (which was still a great game) and it is not too far away from XC. Let's see how it all develops.
