Current Events > is xenoblade 2 a good/great game?

(+) Yeah! (+)

i finished my trails replay and want to start something before reverie comes out on the 7th. should i start xenoblade 2 or just play the remastered version of tactics ogre?

It's good but the gacha thing can be a huge turnoff.

Friends,

I played like 7 times, I got all the little helpers except one.

Its one of my favorite games. its worth the price of the switch for that ONE game.

Pyra, I dream about.

It is a great game that is weighed down by having so many systems that the quality of life suffers. You have to open menus a LOT and navigate through multiple pages within said menus every time you do. The battle system overwhelms a lot of people; NoA released videos before the game launched that explained everything concisely, and it made sense to me, but a lot of people really struggle with grasping it. The game does a poor job of emphasizing many important things while overly focusing on others, and there's some unintuitive concepts like these consumables that last for a limited time only, which the game briefly glosses over in a single quick stage of the tutorial quest, being like actually 100% essential to streamlining the combat, but only like 5% of the ones shops offer are actually useful.

The story is also inconsistent in terms of writing and tension: Chapter 1 is a decent opener, chapter 2 has some good parts and some weaker, chapter 3 is strong, chapter 4 is a weird and awkward sideplot, 5 is almost an intermission, 6 is strong, 7 has pacing issues, 8+ are edge-of-your-seat amazing and emotional, but you have to get there.

You also unlock weapon-slash-party-members (which partner up with your main party to make three pairs of characters during combat) through a random lottery; there are a handful of fixed ones you get throughout the game or from certain sidequests and events, but most are just random chance. This is meant to have players adapt to what they get or be pleasantly surprised when they get unique new Blades, but in practice, the generic ones you get for a failed roll are SO much less interesting and completely lack personality, while the unique ones have their own events, tons of voiced lines, and their own quests, making you want to get them all, so it just leads to frustration with the system for a lot of people.

If you can put up with its quirks, it's a beautiful world with a lot to do. Areas aren't as good as Xenoblade 1, but still solid. Combat is fun and pretty deep with the various ways to trigger huge damage bonuses (which are, again, extremely poorly explained by the game) and doesn't have much downtime once it ramps up after chapter 3 or so. Lots and lots of sidequests, tons of unique monsters to find and slay. It's a great game overall, but opinions are often love/hate based on tolerance for its baggage.

Is 2 necessary to play 3? I own 3 but missed 2.

the_rowan posted...

It is a great game that is weighed down by having so many systems that the quality of life suffers. You have to open menus a LOT and navigate through multiple pages within said menus every time you do. The battle system overwhelms a lot of people; NoA released videos before the game launched that explained everything concisely, and it made sense to me, but a lot of people really struggle with grasping it. The game does a poor job of emphasizing many important things while overly focusing on others, and there's some unintuitive concepts like these consumables that last for a limited time only, which the game briefly glosses over in a single quick stage of the tutorial quest, being like actually 100% essential to streamlining the combat, but only like 5% of the ones shops offer are actually useful.

The story is also inconsistent in terms of writing and tension: Chapter 1 is a decent opener, chapter 2 has some good parts and some weaker, chapter 3 is strong, chapter 4 is a weird and awkward sideplot, 5 is almost an intermission, 6 is strong, 7 has pacing issues, 8+ are edge-of-your-seat amazing and emotional, but you have to get there.

You also unlock weapon-slash-party-members (which partner up with your main party to make three pairs of characters during combat) through a random lottery; there are a handful of fixed ones you get throughout the game or from certain sidequests and events, but most are just random chance. This is meant to have players adapt to what they get or be pleasantly surprised when they get unique new Blades, but in practice, the generic ones you get for a failed roll are SO much less interesting and completely lack personality, while the unique ones have their own events, tons of voiced lines, and their own quests, making you want to get them all, so it just leads to frustration with the system for a lot of people.

If you can put up with its quirks, it's a beautiful world with a lot to do. Areas aren't as good as Xenoblade 1, but still solid. Combat is fun and pretty deep with the various ways to trigger huge damage bonuses (which are, again, extremely poorly explained by the game) and doesn't have much downtime once it ramps up after chapter 3 or so. Lots and lots of sidequests, tons of unique monsters to find and slay. It's a great game overall, but opinions are often love/hate based on tolerance for its baggage.

thanks, this is a really detailed write up and i appreciate it. i have owned the game and the expansion for a long time but never played them for some reason. it seems kind of daunting but i feel like i will like it and the other xeno games were all top tier imo. may wait until i finish trails into reverie before i start since there is no way i will complete it before that comes out and i will be playing reverie hard from launch. probably just start up tactics ogre since i have played through it and save xenoblade for after when i can give it all my attention