Monolith Soft Boss Talks About Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Development Struggles

[Jumpin]

curl-6 said:

Jumpin said:

What I mean is the quest system in the first Xenoblade game is glaringly unpolished compared to anything in XC2 - XC2’s quests and heart to hearts are much more polished. Some of the issues included quests filled with blockers, lack of direction, and tons of obscurity. They were presented as flavour text + a fetch list of tasks, like some kind of cheaply made generic Facebook game; it screamed placeholder.
Character models look very muddy. There are many many textures that look like placeholder for final 3D modelling. Lots of incomplete/missing/disjointed animations. Balancing was also quite bad in XC, it has some of the worst spikes in the history of the franchise (maybe only topped by Xenosaga Episode 2); but also battle lengths were longer than any Xenogame - a good 50-75% longer than XC2, although XS Episode 2 battles may have been more excessive.

I don't recall Xenoblade 1 ever spiking me to the degree of Jin in Chapter 9 nor did Xenoblade 1 ever glitch out on me like Xenoblade 2 did a couple of times.

I didn’t find the game had any difficulty spikes after chapter 7. The biggest difficulty spike for me was Chapter 4, the giant robot at the end of the factory (mostly because that’s where I was forced to learn the systems, all other spikes just needed a stay at the inn to use the bonus XP; even chapter 4 was NOWHERE near as Xord from XC, which requires a ton of grinding, even on my third play through it required more grinding than any point in XC2; and then there were bigger ones such as Lorithia, Gadolt, and Zanza at the end of the game - which (if you were as grossly under leveled for the point I was) required you to turn off the game and return to the save point - a while back, in order to grind out levels - extra annoying because you need to set aside a significant amount of time in order to get past that portion, and if something comes along (and you need to turn off the game) you lose all your progress, which could be quite substantial. There is nothing like that in XC2. XC2 is much better balanced, but it’s also a shorter game.

Still, I think the worst difficulty spikes of any Takahashi game are still Xenosaga Episode 2. Even on my second play through it took me about ten attempts to get past the Patriarch. That boss is the most brutal I have come across in a post early-16-bit RPG (You have to go back to games like Phantasy Star 2 and Seventh Saga to see spikes like that)