Wyrdness said:
Tbh mate that's not a flaw of the game if you don't like your character being taken to the cleaners story wise, it's a much appreciated change in the usual story of the genre where your character is a nobody who out of nowhere competes with grand master level fighters, here it highlights how out of their league the party are and what they're up against but like it or not it's not a flaw of the game if them being defeated is not to your liking. Xenoblade X threw everything at players early on and you ended up with complaints about people not knowing what they're doing with even some reviewers not realising that the bar at the bottom were their abilities that they could scroll through and use, XBC2 has more depth to utilise so they pretty much had to ease players in in order for most players to understand what they're doing. You're free to rush through the early stages like some people have done but then later on in the game a number of these players have struggled because they didn't understand how to utilise certain strats like burst set ups and all, the approach is there for a good reason. |
In my opinion it is a flaw (albeit a minor one) simply cause it causes a jarring narrative disconnect between the gameplay and the cutscenes.
I have absolutely no problem with getting my ass kicked by stronger characters early in the game, and many (if not most) RPG's tend to do that. What irritates me is when there is absolutely no sense of continuity between the gameplay and the cinematics, and that's precisely what we have here. Fight after fight I wipe the floor with these guys, and yet a moment later my party is shown to be injured, panting, and getting their butts kicked in by a pristine, unphased foe that moments before crumpled to the ground.
The end result is to essentially invalidate the actual gameplay and take you out of the story, breaking whatever sense of immersion you may briefly have had. These types of encounters can be done right and have been done right for ages: Either have the antagonist grunt and retreat or, if you wish to show that he/she is far superior to you, have them wipe the floor with the player. As it is currently arranged, we have an in-game weakling that becomes a cut-scene untouchable, and that discontinuity can fairly be called a "flaw".
I think I will just get through the first four chapters. As I said before, I don't mind suddenly hitting a difficulty spike and having to further investigate the game to adapt and overcome; that is far more enjoyable and gratifying than being lead through it by the hand in my opinion. Like I said, I understand the fear of scaring people off, but Xeno 2 has thus far had a story and characters that make the effort worthwhile. Really, to this point the only thing that threatened to have me losing interest is an eternal tutorial, but I shall power through lol
That's an interesting conundrum for Japanese studios trying to appeal to western audiences, though: You don't want to frighten them off by laying too many unfamiliar mechanics on them all at once, but western players are also unaccustomed to being forced to go through endless hours of hand-holding (just look at how much more quickly the recent Monster Hunter gets you into the thick of the action as opposed to previous titles). Must be a difficult balance to strike.
