I’m really hoping Xenoblade Chronicles X comes to Switch. As much as I liked XC2, I liked XCX more; but I do like both games for different reasons.
With XCX, I generally felt more comfortable playing nearly all of the time, thanks to the much more open design of the world. There was always a ton of stuff to do, and each little thing helped build onto the main character’s enterprise, and developing his/her team. There’s always a feeling of growth and expansion that I have not come across to this extent in RPGs before. Being I am a huge fan of strategy games, this probably created the larger appeal for me.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - as I have written before, is kind of two parts, chapter 1 to 6 make up the first part, and 8 to 10 make up the last part, with chapter 7 being kind of a mix. The first part had a lot of character development subplots, which have their charm - but overall I didn’t find them as interesting as the story in Xenoblade Chronicles X (aside from chapter 3 which has a really good peak into how good this game can be).
Chapter It is 8-10 where my main love for the game comes from. It felt a lot more cinematic and exciting. The tone was more serious, and the central plot took the stage. This part of the game blew away anything a Xenogame has done in narrative since at least Xenosaga Episode 3, although it did it with high polish - and XS3 was often very unpolished.
When it comes to towns, I really enjoyed XC2, the towns are a gigantic improvement over the first XC - while I really enjoyed Frontier Village, every other town on Bionis annoyed me in one way or another - mostly I found them very very dry. On the flip side, I loved New LA in XCX, and enjoyed the variety of other towns in XC2. I felt having more robust towns of other species was missed in XCX - I wanted to see a big Nopon Village along with a few other similarly big ones - The Wrothian Camp And Nopon camps were insufficient. I did like the expanding human base camps throughout Mira, but some colonization town-building projects would have been awesome; but dev budgets... I think colonization projects would have really fit the theme of the game.
While I will replay XC2 on New Game + soon to gather the extras, I don’t see my total time going outside 120 to 150 hours in total (game took me 62 hours to finish my first run); although I will most likely do a third run of the game somewhere after the DLC updates are done. XCX had me in excess of 200 hours on one save, and I would probably do at least 150 on a Switch replay (if it comes out). I like both games more than XC, but I still really like XC; I like all the Xenogames.
My favourite is still Xenogears, at ~50-55 hours in length (and that’s with exploring all the extra stuff, like Zeboim civilization) it’s actually a shorter game than any of the three Xenoblades, but it might feel a lot bigger and longer because of the sheer density of locations visited and plot covered in that timeframe.).
I generally like to assess Xenosaga as one thing, even if they are three; the games are surprisingly short on their own. Xenosaga 2 can be easily finished in 20-25 hours without even feel like you’re rushing, and the other 2 are not a whole lot longer; although XS1 can get a bit more lengthy if you like to read the database (like I do).
Anyway, I rank them:
1. Xenogears
2. Xenosaga
3. Xenoblade Chronicles X
4. Xenoblade Chronicles 2
5. Xenoblade Chronicles
If I broke up Xenosaga into its three parts, XS2 would definitely be at the bottom, I am not sure how to assess XS1 because it doesn’t stand well on its own without at least 3 (but I still love XS1 for much of its content). Generally, because the Xenosagas are only a complete story when considering all three, I combine them. I like ALL the games, so 5th isn’t bad, it is only because someone has to be at the bottom of the list, there are RPGs I really enjoy which do not compare with any of these 5 games.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
