Xenoblade 2 thoughts (no spoilers)

[Jumpin]

Wyrdness said:

Jumpin said:

Just a note on the battle system - it gets a lot better once you complete chapter 7 - but it can also be heavily improved by unlocking all three skills that fill your ARTs for the beginning of the battle. The devs didn’t seem to have much focus on polishing the gameplay experience for players who are under 40 or so hours in; the battle system is slow and not very fun during that stage. I had a lot of fun with it in the later chapters though.

As for story, it takes a bit of a turn during chapter 7, and becomes a very different sort of a game. In fact, from chapter 7 onward it is easily the strongest that story telling has been in Xenoblade, and is reminiscent of the higher points of the Xenosaga games.

Despite Xenoblade Chronicles X not having a linear plot driven story, it did end up having about twice the number of cut scenes as Xenoblade Chronicles, even though the absolute must view cutscenes amount to a lower amount (8 hours on XCX vs 10 hours on XC). I am not sure the amount of time of the cutscenes in XC2, but it seems to be a lot higher than XC.

Not entirely true on the combat, the early chapters  focus more on combos as well as utilizing the break/topple/launch/smash structure and then in C3 you unlock the chain attack. That's a lot of depth as the break structure not only deals significant damage outside of combos but requires you pay attention to the attacks arts you equip on characters and use while combos not only seal certain actions and statuses enemies use but activate element orbs which in turn makes the player consider what blades to engage,  this depth is comes into play against high powered enemies as you want to trigger many element orbs so you can go into the chain attack to have multiple bursts to multiply damage.

All of this is well before level 40, it's only slow when you first start the game up to about level 10 or so, the end of chapter 8 just adds a final layer of depth to consider as an option.

For me, I found it slow until Pneuma is unlocked. Also, in later chapters, characters charge up their meters a lot more quickly, so it is fast to get off combos which not only do a lot of extra damage to the target but all surrounding enemies. I found it somewhat challenging to make it all the way up to even one combo in regular battles in the early game but was hitting them all the time in the late game.

But then again, I never took advantage of the topple system beyond using Rex's Anchor shot to topple them. I suppose I could have done a lot better if I would have focused on more than that. I was also kind of bad at using combos early on, Chapter 4 is when I actually began utilizing them. So, leave it up to me to be a shit at Xenoblade, which is probably why I found the late game battle system a lot faster, more engaging, and more fun.