"I'm So Glad to Have Met You": XC2 & JRPGs in Current Year

As 2018 started kicking into full gear for me, with spring on the horizon, a previously silent obligation started to crescendo in the back of my head. Yes, it was about that time… about time to suffer through the experience of a single player video game. While I've become a bit distanced from this pasttime in recent years, I try to make it a point to at least consume one each year, at least to see if anything has changed. Last year's endeavor (NieR: Automata) left me hopeful for what was to come in the story-driven space for video games, so going all in on the narrative seemed to be the appropriate choice. Since this yearly dive is done purely in the interest of loathsome performance art in order to cultivate a smug sense of superiority about media, the longer and more obtuse the game, the better. It was at that point I remembered the hype around a certain game: a JRPG that released in the holiday of the previous year, of a series I was all too familiar with. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 ticked each box, and not just with a small mark either. Every one, a giant green checkmark that extends outside of the bounds of the input, meeting every expectation with enthusiastic approval. To capitalize on this decision before my better judgment snatched it away, I grabbed the nearest Nintendo Switch, rubbed my credit card on it, and downloaded the game. Like every time I've done this, there was a sense of excitement that I'll be able to recapture those feelings I had as a child, and with a JRPG those feelings had reached a new fever pitch. This was the genre I grew up on, from classics like Final Fantasy VII to handheld gems like Golden Sun. XC2 was going to bring me all the way back, back to the sense of wonder and adventure that I grew up with… or at least, so I'd hoped.

 That brings us to today. The journey I want to bring you all on through the Cloud Sea is not one easily traveled. It's littered with medium-specific tropes, tired genre conventions, and of course, a heavy amount of grinding for experience. Like any game of this ilk, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was an absolutely massive experience, and this adventure will likely be the same. While I will be explicitly discussing the specifics of XC2, I also need to get some things out about JRPGs in general. These sentiments are not only in relation to my history with the genre, but also where JRPGs stand in the current "space" of video games. By using XC2 as a mouthpiece, I hope to not only provide insight into the game itself, but also the changes the genre as a whole has experienced over the years.

For the Uninitiated




If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, let's take a step back and clear the air on our topic. The Xenoblade series is the spiritual successor to the other many Xeno series, such as Xenogears or Xenosaga, but even within their own "names" rarely does the series boast any continuity between games (just like Final Fantasy). What each game does share is the core battle system, a system that does its best to emulate what playing an MMO would be like if you were playing alone. The worlds are expansive and open, and exploring of any given area is largely free-form. However, they're not ever truly what I'd consider open-world, and that's one of the series greatest strengths. The illusion of freedom in expansive games like this is a powerful effect, still allowing for massive free-roaming playspaces while always pushing you onwards towards the next plot-focused goal. Other than those two mainstays, the only other constant between games is usually a thematic focus. Everything else is fair game for new systems and content, and thankfully each game so far has done a bang-up job of distinguishing themselves from one another. In terms of comparison to its genre contemporaries, there's not too much deviancy from the norm; you are still going to be grinding for experience to reach new levels, collecting new party members, and overcoming obstacles using the powers of friendship and love. The series as a whole opts to value execution while embracing the tropes that JRPGs are known for, and this new entry into the Xeno pantheon is little different in that regard.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 dumps us into the shoes of Rex, a young orphaned salvager and soon-to-be Driver. In this world, adventurers called Drivers contract the help of practically immortal humanoid beings called Blades who act as sentient weapons. Humans and Blades coexist upon the backs of Titans, massive country-sized creatures that have cities and infrastructure built on top of them. In the center of it all exists the World Tree, a mysterious structure that reaches to the heavens that is rumored to hold the Architect, the creator of this world of Alrest. The Master Aegis Blade, Pyra, is awakened bound to Rex, and his rag-tag band of merry fellows has to travel to the top of the World Tree to reach the eden of Elysium, and eventually save the world. If any of this sounds familiar, you've probably played the original Xenoblade Chronicles, and yes, that's by design. Out of any Xeno game I've played, this is the first to be so thematically congruent to its predecessor while being touted as "not a sequel". That's not to say the content follows the same congruency though; XC2 is wildly different from "Shulk's Monado Powah Romp", building on a lot of what XC1 tried to do narratively and cranking the systems complexity to eleven. Before I get into the nitty-gritty of those mechanics and the gameplay itself, I'd like to dive headfirst into one of my favorite things…

The A E S T H E T I C


Full disclosure, this is the first time I've picked up the Nintendo Switch to play anything more than a few minutes of Breath of the Wild or Mario Odyssey. I made the hard change to pure PC gaming pretty long ago, so I was prepared to be woefully underwhelmed by the graphics but ended up coming out pleasantly surprised. While the visual quality itself is nothing to write home about, Nintendo really has a knack for squeezing the most out of its hardware with superb artistic direction. Saying "Nintendo" is a little disingenuous here as this is a fairly independent Monolithsoft production, merely leveraging the big N for some first party licensing perks a la Intelligent Systems. Still, Nintendo's reputation for creating timeless-looking graphics through superior art direction shines through here yet again… even if that direction might not make everyone happy.
I'll just come out and say it: if you hate the anime art style, you are going to loathe this game. While that's true for a lot of JRPGs these days, I think that Xenoblade is a particularly "bad" offender. Unlike Fire Emblem, which has slowly slipped into weebery over the years culminating into full out waifu-bait with recent 3DS titles, Xenoblade started there and has only fallen even farther from whence it came. The original Xenoblade Chronicles, while not out-of-line for the genre, didn't come off as overtly "anime" or even remotely novel barring the impressive effort the developers made in overcoming the limited hardware of the Wii. The WiiU's Xenoblade Chronicles X started to show a bit of slip, going all-in on a futuristic mecha visual style but retained a minimum level of deniability for the normies out there. XC2 has no such safety net, fully embracing the anime aesthetic and shoving it forcefully into every nook and cranny of the game.
Many of you, especially on a blog with this kind of content, are probably confused why I'm even mentioning this as a possible negative. Millions of kids worldwide have fond memories of 16-bit classics like Chrono Trigger, their favorite Final Fantasies, or even more niche titles like Tales of Symphonia. They also probably don't know about much of the anime that exists beyond DragonBall Z and Sailor Moon either. And that's totally alright and expected; JRPGs are just video games, and owning a Japanese-made Nintendo console doesn't exactly predispose people to becoming a fervent otaku. I know plenty of these non-weeb JRPG fans personally, and you likely do as well; it's exactly this that makes recommending Xenoblade Chronicles 2 as a JRPG more and more difficult. Visually, XC2 slides very far into the modern anime trend of creating an increasingly more "moe" (萌え, pronounced [mo.e]) product at every opportunity. If you're not Nippon-savvy, that means softer character visuals, cutesier designs, and a push towards a pander-first-humanize-later approach to creating characters. Seriously, just look at some in-game character art from XC1, XCX, and XC2 side-to-side:
This is a huge point of contention to some people, even to some of those who greatly enjoyed the first two games. Even if the settings are lush, varied, and gorgeous, filled with fantastical and intriguing creatures that are as far from "anime" as they could be, I don't blame a single soul for turning-tail at the first sight of Pyra's character design. For all the hard work and effort that Monolithsoft put into those very environments, the actors within that space will be too much for some to bear. I wish I could say this is a localized instance of this moe-ization affect, but it's been a growing force throughout JRPGs in the past decade. Just look at Fire Emblem, I mentioned it above briefly, but that series went from a tactical game loved by many to now a strictly otaku product, full of nothing but waifus and blank-slate, self-insert main characters with a side-helping of dating simulator. Although it could be argued that it's a response to anime becoming more mainstream and the market simply reacting to a larger possible audience, it's driving away a lot of the fans that loved these games for the games they were and not how many moe points they racked up. Ur-weeb I may be, I'm self-aware enough to know that this direction is negative to the genre, and unfortunately XC2 is a massive blight in this regard.
Alright, reeling it back to some positivity here. Obviously, the modern anime styling of XC2 didn't bother me in the slightest, and the variance present throughout the unique Blades makes for some pretty impressive character art. That freedom does translate into some pretty out-there stuff, and although there's some lack of congruency there I feel it helps break up the eventual monotony of the core cast's designs. Monolithsoft also did a pretty damn solid job in adapting the anime aesthetic into 3D. That is unfortunately a notable feat even today, as 3D anime art still regularly looks like it was dragged through a meat grinder and left to marinate in a dumpster. I'd rate the 3D models a very strong 7, where a 10 is Love Live!: Sunshine dances and a 1 is the entirety of Berserk 2017. While the cel-shading affect is a little too heavy for my taste, it makes the characters pop hard from the backgrounds, something that is probably necessary given the complexity of the combat and detail of the environments. Speaking of combat, the many different visual effects that attacks create can be downright stunning, and give a flashy and hyper-active feel to fights that might otherwise feel like a bit of a slog. Unfortunately, there is a huge glaring problem that comes from not only these effects but a lot of the visuals, and that's some damning performance issues.
The expansive and highly-detailed environments regularly tank the frames-per-second down into what looks to be the mid-teens, which in 2018 is completely unacceptable. The game doesn't even run at a smooth sixty to begin with, topping out at thirty during play and twenty four in cutscenes, so these drops are all the more jarring. To make matters even worse, combat in XC2 is heavily dependent on rhythm-based quicktime events that are used to initiate specials and cancel attacks. I've been cheated out of countless amounts of damage by framedrops, and have died because of them almost as many times. Even the Wii's original Xenoblade didn't have such terrifying performance problems, so these issues are a huge black mark on XC2. I understand the sentiment to push onwards and upwards graphically after XCX on the WiiU, but at a certain point developers need to acknowledge the limitations of console hardware. I figured that Nintendo of all companies would have a hand in ensuring the importance of a smooth-running product, but I guess Xenoblade is the exception to the usual rule.
Keeping with animation-related issues, the last gripe on my list has to do with character animation, both in-game and in cutscenes. While the combat animations are mostly good, with a fair bit of personality in them (particularly the special move attacks and celebrations), there is a fair bit of model clipping and shoddy texturing on Blades that aren't part of the core cast. This is a bit of a slap in the face, especially when non-story Blades are particularly hard to come by and should reward you visually for your time. When the game goes close-up for special moves or chain attacks, these visual issues just become more apparent, front-and-center to the player. This is pretty embarrassing when the rest of the cast is pretty well-detailed, but not nearly as bad as some of the cutscene animation. While the facial animation is fairly impressive for 3D anime graphics, doing a surprisingly good job or displaying emotion, the movement in cutscenes is the same wooden, inorganic garbage that JRPG fans have been dealing with since the genre went into three dimensions. Some of it is laughably bad, wrapping back around to a certain kind of nostalgic charm that reminds fans of their childhood, but unfortunately nostalgia can't erase these blatant problems.

Sound of Voice


Speaking of cutscenes and animation, we're going to have to talk about the audio, or more specifically the dialogue. Anyone who's played a console JRPG knows that accurate lip syncing in any language, even the source Japanese, is laughably bad. Even the most garbage fire of anime do a better job at syncing mouth movements to their original seiyuu's voice work than any triple-A JRPG. While this is basically a fact of life at this point for fans of the genre, that doesn't make it any better and XC2 is no exception. Throughout my playthrough, I regularly switched between the English and Japanese sound files, and I can tell you with extensive experience with both that neither does a good job of making the characters seem like they're actually talking eight times out of ten. The Japanese is slightly better, and by slightly I mean barely noticeable; it shouldn't have any bearing on your choice to consume either language. No, that's a question that's better answered by something much different than their objective qualities.
I'd be lying if I didn't say that the marvelously posh English dub of XC2 wasn't a huge factor in me deciding to pick up the game. My playthrough of the original Xenoblade Chronicles was done purely in English, not out of preference but out of stupidity as I had no idea that Japanese voices were even an option. Still, there's a certain charm to the novelty of a European dub rather than an American one, and the endless amount of Shulk and Reyn memes that litter the internet to this day speak to that. In the spirit of breaking through the localization barrier and flexing some of my "weeb muscles", I switched between English and Japanese throughout XC2 until finally settling on one option at around the mid-game climax. What this revealed was an absolutely glaring difference between the two: tone. This Xenoblade in both languages is noticeably "lighter" than both the original and X, but the dub takes that to another level. If the characters aren't in the utmost life-and-death situations, then an air of levity exudes from every performance. To me, this is a welcoming feature that helped carry me through my return to the genre, and created some absolutely hilarious moments.
By comparison, the Japanese VA is bone-dead serious from beginning to end unless Tora is on screen, which although silly in its own way runs smack up against the visual direction of the characters. Oh, it's also worth mentioning that there is only one subtitle track, and it's a straight-up transcription of the dub script. You aren't going to get any more serious meaning or additional plot details by choosing the Japanese VA unless you can understand Japanese enough to synthesize meaning from the differences. This is disappointing, as I'm someone that can't even stand when honorifics are scrubbed from subtitles, but it is what it is. I'd be interested in a possible fansub injection mod in the future, but it would be more of a masturbatory, "Ah yes, my weebanese ear was correct"-experience than a transformative "new story" one. Another point, you remember when I mentioned the moe-ization of the character visuals, right? Yeah, that trickles down to the audio as well. If you're someone that can't handle the high-pitched, cutesy female Japanese voices that are common throughout modern anime, then the Japanese VA of XC2 is going to be nails on a chalkboard for you. While it never bothered me personally, I know that for some people the fake-sounding, near pitched-up voices are a huge turn-off.
So around chapter six, I stopped switching between languages and settled firmly into the English dub. The lighthearted and comedic nature of it, combined with the European accents and (mostly) superb performances made for a greatly enhanced experience for me personally. However, the Japanese voice pack is free on the Nintendo E-Shop, so you're free to choose whichever you want. While I won't say that one or the other is better for the game in context of the story, I will say that I think the English dub does have a lot more attention to detail than many will give it credit for. A big thing that the dub does that the sub doesn't is apply regional accents throughout the world. An array of European dialects like Scottish, Welsh, Cockney, and more are ascribed to each Titan's (country equivalent) populace, and by the end of the game you have a very colorful and varied cast of voices. The difference is furthered by the decision to firmly cast Blades as exclusively American voice actors, an affect that greatly enhances the mystical other-ness of Blades. The Japanese VA doesn't do this at all, and in fact, regularly does the opposite. I'm fairly good at picking out different dialects in Japanese, but the differences that do occur don't have any rhyme or reason to them; they're just there to serve as a purely casting decision for the individual character and don't serve to give any context or flavor to the world of Alrest. This is the product of a deeper problem rooted in the Japanese marketing strategy for otaku products, trying to check boxes on consumer's "moe point" boxes until they dump thousands of their hard earned yen into specific character merch, but that's a discussion for another time. Still, if you feel the Japanese VA fits the characters better, you won't lose or gain anything from switching, except for a tonal shift and a growing need for you to learn Japanese.
Alright, enough about voices. Let's get into the music, a huge draw for many fans of the Xenoblade series. While X was a bit of a departure from the well-loved original Xenoblade Chroniclessoundtrack, XC2 is right back at it with more of that lovingly crafted Japanese butt-rock that fans of Sonic The Hedgehog eat up like candy. Screeching guitar riffs with distinct lack of key-changes are the norm here for combat, and although they can feel a little samey from fight to fight, I'd be remiss if I didn't say they did a good job of making you feel the tension in more important battles. The symphonic pieces that litter the overworld environments are far more my speed though; some of these tracks are more than good enough to be listened to alone and perfectly fit the atmosphere of each varied environment. Music used for story beats and cutscenes is very powerful albeit standard faire for an emotional RPG or even anime, but some of them are very good standing alone. I'm not one for the localized lyrics of the one or two tracks that utilize them, but in a similar fashion to the subtitling, changing the language doesn't seem to change the music either. It wouldn't be right to say that XC2 came anywhere near to surpassing the music of the original XC, but it certainly did a better job than what I've heard of X. There is no "I need a bigger gun," or equivalent lyric throughout the game, and that's a great thing to (not) hear.

Mechanics, Mechanics, Mechanics


The Xeno series are known for being incredibly mechanically complex even compared to other JRPGs or even some MMOs, and XC2 is probably the most detailed yet. When I said earlier that playing Xenoblade is akin to playing an MMO by yourself, I was being dead serious. You can expect a similar level of asinine, trite levels of detail and tiering that are enough to make even the most staunch of JRPG fans' heads spin. To get into both the highlights and downfalls of these systems, I'm unfortunately going to have to explain them. My hope is that by explaining how all this stuff works, it should shed a lot of light on just how ridiculously (and needlessly) complex this game can be. This is not going to be an easy (or quick) task, so I ask all of you to bear with me as I try to give the most concise rundown I can.
Let's start from the ground floor: our core party members are "Drivers" and their sentient weapons are "Blades". Blades grant Drivers special magical abilities as well as comically oversized and gaudy physical weapons. Drivers can resonate with an unlimited number of Blades, born from "Core Crystals" that can be collected as loot throughout the world or through story progression. Drivers have stats that raise on level up, and are your standard JRPG faire of strength, defense, agility, and so on. Blades also have their own set of unique statistics, having both that same standard spread that the Drivers do as well as more weapon-esque ones. These don't improve on level-ups though; no, you have to upgrade an individual Blade through costly weapon mods. "Core Chips" upgrade a Blade's weapon statistics that directly determine a Driver's attack, block, and critical-hit statistics, while "Aux Cores" give more directed bonuses such as "X% more damage against Beast creatures". Individual Blades can typically equip two of these Aux Cores at once, while Drivers have an analogous option available in "Accessories" that give a practically identical class of benefits. Blades and Drivers also both each have their own specific talent trees called "Affinity Charts" that can be filled out through different means. Driver talent trees are filled out through the acquisition of "Skill Points", which are granted along with experience upon defeating enemies. You can allot those points into bonuses however you want… so long as you follow the progression of the chart by level.
In any Affinity Chart, you can't "purchase" a skill of a higher level unless you have the surrounding prerequisites for it first. This isn't much of an issue for Drivers; their charts fill out pretty naturally throughout the game so long as you keep up after them yourself. And for Drivers, you're going to want to do it, as the rewards are practically endgame necessary and essential to leveling out the power curve both in-party and towards enemies. Blades are subject to this same leveling rule though, and have much more detailed (read: obtuse) chart. While Blades do have to follow a certain progression, their skill tiers are locked by a level of "Trust", a ranking of affinity that each Blade has for their Driver. This Trust value can be raised by simply keeping your Blade equipped, battling with them and using items on them. Rather than be purchased with Skill Points, Blades receive Affinity Chart skills upon completing vacuous and meaningless chores, such as "Collect 4 insect collectibles" or "Use 10 of Y's favorite Pouch Items". The Blades' benefits are a bit harder to place, as some of them can be wildly powerful while others are quite literally useless. Still, you're going to have to fill out and keep after these Affinity Charts as well, so ignoring the mechanic is unfortunately not an option (more on this later). Oh, speaking of "Pouch Items": Pouch Items are consumable trinkets that give temporary bonuses to your party and exist on a level between "absolutely necessary for having any fun with the game" to "completely and utterly worthless". These items are assigned to "pouches" on the Drivers in your party, and can have special affects if they fall within the class of item that Driver's equipped Blades like. Blades have favored item classes (like fish or desserts), as well as specific favorite items, so keeping track of your Blade's preferences throughout the game is essential to getting the most out of this feature.
Going back to the party structure though, you can have three Drivers active for battle at any given time out of your pool of personalities, and each of those Drivers can have three equipped Blades. Blades fall into three different classifications: attack, healer, and tank, and you're typically going to want a balanced party consisting of one of each. You can mix-up and play with this however you want though, as a Blade itself is what determines a Driver's different skills and abilities; there is no rule that says that only Rex should equip attacking Blades while only Nia should equip healing ones. It's possible to control any Driver in your party directly, so feel free to command your group however you want. However, playing to the role of your Blade is basically a necessity. Tanks need to draw enemy aggro to give attackers free-reign over positioning to get extra damage, and healers need to be pumping out a constant stream of life force so that everyone else can keep fighting. Those skills and abilities that are granted to Drivers by Blades also have their own progression system in the form of "Weapon Points". Blades are further classified by weapon type, which includes everything from giant cannons all the way to the humble sword. By using Blades of a certain weapon type, you'll get more Weapon Points to increase the effectiveness of individual skills for that type of Blade. These skills carry over from Blade to Blade of the same weapon type, as they are linked to the Driver, so it's worth putting time into a worse "Axe"-type Blade even if you get a better Axe-type Blade later on. You can also freely assign the mapping of three of these skills for each Driver, as well as choose to swap out a fourth skill for that weapon type that you prefer to one of the other three. I'll touch more on skills later when we finally get to talk about combat, but there's a lot more ground to cover first.
Remember how I said that Blades are born from Core Crystals? Well that's a giant monolithic system in and of itself. Drivers can resonate with Core Crystals, awakening the Blade held within. Core Crystals have three levels, Common, Rare, and Legendary, and each gives a successively higher chance of awakening better Blades. Yes, awakening rare Blades (of which there are 28, including story Blades and not including DLC Blades), noted by unique character designs, is based on a "gatcha" system. A gatcha is the Japanese term for systems of loot boxes, but XC2 opts to use this kind of system as a game-completion-necessary mechanic. XC2's gatcha is calculated by the following formula:
Probability% = max((sqrt([LUCK]) * 0.01 * 1.3) + 0.95, 1) * 0.01(100 + 5*[Idea_Multiplier]) * [Core Rarity] * [Base_Probability]
Base Probability is the natural rate of occurrence of a given Blade, which is variable based on which randomized "group" your save file exists in. You have no way of influencing this group, and it's never divulged to you as the player, but you can figure it out pretty easily after using the system for a bit. Luck is pretty simple: it's just your summoning Driver's luck stat crunched through some math, ending in a value ranging between 1.0 and 1.36. Core Rarity is also pretty easy, with the numerical value of Common, Rare, and Legendary being 1.0, 1.5, and 3.0 respectively. Rare and Legendary cores do have an added benefit however, as they will always add a rare Blade to the "pool" of summonable Blades from a given attempt, where as Common cores will only add rare Blades to the pool 25% of the time. The Idea Multiplier is based on a per-Driver statistic called the "Idea Cloud", which has different points called Bravery, Truth, Compassion, and Justice. Each of those corresponds to two elemental types, of which all Blades adhere to one of. Only the highest one of these points will be used as the multiplier, unless of course you use a "Booster" that will override the highest-metric and only apply the point type that you selected. Following that formula through will output the probabilities of you pulling any given rare Blade, and the random roll be skewed based on these probabilities to determine which Blade is actually summoned. On top of all this, there's also a Pity Timer. If you're not familiar with the term, it's a system in place within gatchas that ensures that even the unluckiest of people still pull rare rewards sometimes. In XC2, the timer is guaranteed to give you three rare Blades based on your group, and they'll occur after you've accrued 100, 200, and 300 pity points. Pity points are handed out every time you summon a blade, with 5 for Common cores, 25 for Rare cores, and 50 for Legendary cores. You can also use these pity rare Blades to easily determine which group of the possible 5 you are in, letting you calculate the probability of pulling future rare Blades for yourself.
The is one Blade that throws all of that out the window, and that's Poppi. Poppi is an artificial Blade, so she can't utilize any of the above systems to improve herself sans the Affinity Chart and using Core Chips. Instead of equipping Aux Cores, Poppi uses a special mechanic where her body can be augmented to fit many different roles. She can be an attacker, healer, or tank at any time if you have enough "Ether Crystals" to create the parts necessary to improve her statistics. You get these Ether Crystals by playing an 8-bit minigame called "Tiger-Tiger", and you can possibly have millions of Ether Crystals at any point in the game if you play enough. To combat this, you can only make certain parts if you have the schematic to create it, which are either found throughout the world or granted on Tora's level-ups. Poppi's alternative forms, Poppi QT and Poppi QTPi, have separate configurations, so be prepared to play a lot of Tiger-Tiger if you want to develop them all completely.
With that out of the way, we can finally talk about how these mechanics relate to the field. Remember the Blade Affinity Chart? Well every Blade, even common ones, have a set of 2 or 3 field skills that are typically based in their elemental ability. These work similarly to HMs in Pokemon games, giving you access to areas you otherwise wouldn't, but in the same way they are also necessary for story completion. These skills can range from anything like leaping or flying all the way to "girl's talk" and "Nopon wisdom", and they're leveled up through the same random task completion that all Blade features are. When you approach a field skill obstacle in the field, engagement with it will reveal the necessary level your party's combined field skills must reach in order to successfully overcome the obstacle. These levels are additive across all Blades your party current has equipped, even if those Blades aren't equipped to the group of three Drivers that are currently active. If you meet or surpass the requirement, you successfully overcome the obstacle and are able to move forward. Some field skills, like "Botany", allow you to harvest bonus or higher rarity collectibles, which you can use to complete challenges where you collect complete related sets, rewarding you with gold and experience. These collectibles can also be won by participating in the "Salvaging" minigame, which utilize an item called "Salvaging Capsules" to generate loot from your timed button presses. You can also simply liquidate these collectibles for cash to fund the purchase of Core Chips and Accessories.
Now, finally combat. Combat in XC2 is very similar to the first but with the addition of several new systems. Those basics include free-roaming within the environment and the ability for additional enemies to aggro into the fight if it moves in a poor physical direction. Every Driver has an auto-attack that completes in a series of three separate strikes or varying speeds based on their stats and weapon types. Drivers also have three chosen skills for every weapon type, called "Driver Arts". Driver Arts have special properties such as doing additional damage based on position, such as attacking the side or rear of enemies, or having a percentage chance of spawning health potions. Getting the most of these features is paramount, as all Driver Arts work on a cooldown system. You can reduce these cooldowns by performing cancels, such as initiating Driver Arts as an auto-attack strike completes or even upon the completion of other Driver Arts (if you have the prerequisite Affinity Chart skill). Like in XC1, Arts can combo in set ways, following a stacking of status affects that must be performed in correct succession. By imparting the sequence of "Break", "Topple", "Launch", and "Smash" status effects in that order, you can keep your enemies unable to attack while continuing to tack on damage so long as you can perform the given arts quickly enough. As you perform all Driver Arts, you increase your "Special Gauge" and then unleash a special attack at four different increasing levels of strength, so long as you correctly complete the quicktime events. Special attacks are always made with the single element of a Driver's currently equipped blade, and can do additional or lessened damage based on the enemy's current elemental type. The Special Guage doesn't decrease if you choose to switch between your three different equipped Blades throughout combat, so feel free to switch in order to maximize damage. Be careful though, switching back to your old Blade has a cooldown as well.
As your three-Driver party battles, you'll notice a branching tree in the top right corner of the screen. This is the "Elemental Burst" tree, and it can be filled out multiple times per battle to perform many "Blade Combos" if you've composed your party of Drivers and Blades correctly. Blade Combos start by performing level 1 Special attacks of a given elemental type. Then, the tree will display which of two specials need to be performed in order to advance to the next level of the combo. If a level 2 Special of one of those elemental types is performed before the time limit runs out, the tree advances. A level 3 Special of one of the next given types completed in time will complete the combo, resulting in a cinematic special move and the placing of an "Elemental Orb" circling the enemy. This orb gives the enemy resistance to the Blade Combo's completed type until it is bursted in a "Chain Attack". To perform a Chain Attack, you'll need to fill the "Party Guage" in the top left corner of the screen by completing auto-attacks, Driver Arts, and Special moves successfully. Once it's filled, you can choose to enter a Chain Attack, where you party will unleash Specials consecutively in a state of time-stop. Any Orbs you've applied before initiating the chain attack will be listed on screen, and it's up to you to burst them and keep the Chain Attack going. The longer the Chain Attack goes on, the higher the damage and experience multiplier will rise, so it behooves you to stack and burst as many Elemental Orbs as you can. Orbs can be bursted either through repeated strong attacks with correct execution, or instantly by using a special of the opposing element's type. A burst will result in the round extending, initiating another quicktime event that successfully completing will allow your same Blade to perform their special again. A Chain Attack with four or five Elemental Bursts can take down even the strongest, max-level endgame enemies with only one shot, so making the most out of this mechanic is practically a necessity.

Damage Control



If you made it through all of that, I applaud you. If you checked out just a little bit of the way in, I don't blame you. Explaining those mechanics is a unfortunate necessity, as I believe it's important for people to know just how ridiculous the level of unneeded complexity and detail that XC2 has, and that's made even worse by the game's insistence on you exploring all of its mechanics. Throughout my playthrough, I was only able to successfully shun one mechanic, and that was Poppi's configurations/playing Tiger-Tiger. Having a fairly deep understand of all other mechanics is basically necessary for just completing the main quest, and that's not including the literal thousands of hours of side-quests and gatcha-rolling that would be necessary to do a completionist run of the game. I have no idea how a child is supposed to be able to complete this game, making its rating of "T" fairly misleading. This game should surely be rated "M", as I don't think that the fragile mind of a developing child should be exposed to such torturous levels of meaningless bullshit, even if they could manage to wrap their heads around this game's systems.
While I feel the Driver and Blade mechanics themselves are well-realized in concept, their execution is laughably poor. Having two pools of points that must be manually kept up after for each Driver is ludicrous, especially when the benefits are always either so important that they are necessary to complete the game or completely wortless. The Driver Affinity Chart skill to cancel Driver Arts with successive Driver Arts is 100% necessary to complete the main game; high level enemies, even if your party is overleveled, are unbeatable without getting the cooldown-reduction bonuses that this reward can impart if you execute right. By comparison, the small stat bonuses that cost equivalent amounts of Skill Points, like increasing Luck by 20, are useless and easily offset by the purchase of better Accessories or Aux Cores. The Driver Art upgrade system using Weapon Points should not exist, as the entire system is just a meaningless waste of time and nothing but a chore to manage. It's supposed to reward you for putting time into specific weapons types, but at the end of the day it does nothing but restrict you to the weapon types that you've been lucky enough to pull from the gatcha. If this mechanic was removed wholesale, and Driver Arts simply scaled naturally with your level, it would have went a long way to making the gatcha mechanic seem like less of a time sink.
Oh, and the gatcha in this game, dear God the gatcha. The Blade summoning system is the equivalent of shoving Overwatch loot boxes into an offline, single-player game. There is nothing worse in XC2 than this, and it's the games biggest flaw by a wide margin. You can choose to not use this mechanic, but be prepared to strugglebus your way through the last third of the game if you do. The problem lies in the existence and worthlessness of common Blades; yes, they may have some necessary field skills and the ability to not be terrible, but their grotesque and stamped-out character designs as well as their lack of originality and character compared to the core cast Blades makes every one feel like a kick in the shin. That's not saying most of the rare Blades are that great either, but rare Blades also have unique field skills and even special side-quests associated with them. To experience all that XC2 has to offer, you have to sit there and dump your playtime and effort into rolling the gatcha until you get every rare Blade that you want, which could take literal months if you're unlucky. Not to mention, you'll also have to farm for cores, which is something many have resorted to rubber-band-on-controller automation to perform. Even hitting the three levels of pity timer is no easy feat, and if you're unlucky enough to be in a bad "group", then your rare Blades will be just as useless as the common ones. No mechanic that encourages this kind of gameplay is healthy, not for the players, the genre, or obviously the game itself.
Right after the gatcha on the "worst mechanics" tier list is the field skills, which as it turns out are necessary to complete the game. In the game's final hours, you will regularly be required to stop what you're doing, leave the current plot-relevant area, and grind useless metrics on Blade Affinity Charts until you get the correct level of certain field skills in order to progress. To make matters worse, some of these necessary field skills are only possessed by rare Blades, so you might have to grind the gatcha roll just to be able to complete the main story! If field skills were implemented just like HMs are in Pokemon, then I think they'd be fine and probably enrich the environments overall, but their current design just drags XC2 down hard. They're the perfect storm of dragging you away from plot-focused elements, forcing you to interact with randomness, and requiring you to perform boring, repetitive actions. Some of the instances of this were so bad, I considered dropping the game entirely, at one point not returning to the game for almost two weeks because of one particularly egregious field skill challenge. Monolithsoft should honestly patch these requirements out of the game, replacing the current level requirements with the lowest possible level of skills all story-given Blades possess. I can't be the only one to have felt like quitting the game at those points, even after 40 hours of playtime, and I'm sure that plenty of people really did hang up their controllers because of it.
Other than those standouts, I think the rest of XC2's mechanics ranged from "mildly annoying" to "really cool" with a large degree of variance inbetween. The problem with most of these remaining mechanics is not the mechanics themselves, but rather that the game is really bad at teaching you about them. The tutorials are practically worthless, with cursory Google searches be both far more effective and educational than anything built into the game. A big one for me was the Pouch Item system; never once in the game is it revealed just how powerful these effects are. Seriously, just enabling any "Dessert" Pouch Item in a tutorial would have gone miles in teachng players how crazily they can change the flow of combat. If you thought that XC2's combat was a little slow at any point, roll back through the Argentum Trade Guild and do a buyout on their best dessert item. The differences are night and day, and first learning about it after 35 hours in felt really bad even if it did end up increasing my enjoyment for the final third of the game. The Elemental Burst system is also incredibly confusing, and I didn't even attempt to understand how it worked until the last 10 or so hours of the game. While a lot of that is likely my own stupidity, much could be done to show you just how massive the damage increase is for investing in the completion of Blade Combos. Even the game automating a combo for you, and having you watch, would have been amazing for teaching players just how important it is. These pitfalls are all the more embarrassing when the game still gives you tutorial pop ups even 45 hours in, which although will always be annoying even if they are useful, could have still been utilized much better across the board.

An Endless Sink


I mentioned some of my playtime by-hour earlier, so let's talk a little bit more about that specifically. While JRPGs have always been long, expansive adventures, they've trended both longer and longer throughout the past 10 years, but not in the way you'd expect. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is no exception to this trend, and is a pretty good milestone for how I believe JRPGs will be changing in the coming years. My playthrough of XC2 clocked in at a fairly unimpressive genre-average of 55 hours. Mind you, this was a laser focused playthrough of the main questline that consisted of regular violent rejection of all optional content. I ended the game firmly at level 65, which I can surmise from some online digging is pretty much right smack in the middle of the average range. I collected 4 rare blades outside of the story ones through the "gatcha" system, 3 of which were directly due to the pity timer. I didn't have a single pouch size upgrade, and I think total I may have completed two or three side-quests, all of which were inadvertent.To give you a better idea of how my playtime stacks up, my playthrough of the original Xenoblade Chronicles took me about 70 hours with the same sort of focus. Databases of self-reported completion times report similar playtimes for both games, but I believe all these reporters to be cowards: XC2 felt considerably faster than XC1, and that's because it is.
Compared to it's parent, the story of XC2 was massively reduced in breadth. The difference in chapter count alone supports this, with a 10 vs. 17 chapter count for XC2 and XC1 respectively. The average length of chapters was basically identical between games including all mandatory cutscenes. The answer as to why this was the case in XC2 is actually the answer to the earlier question as well: a shift in the design of JRPGs to become more replayable. The amount of optional content in XC2, even without counting the unattainable goal of gatcha rolling every Blade, is many factors greater than that of the main quest. In fact, the main quest often feels like a vehicle to unlock more areas and side-content rather than be the focus of the game itself. While this is a bit concerning going forward, especially when the side-content is so comparatively weak as in XC2's case, a greater emphasis on concision for JRPGs might be a good look going forward. The attention span of a typical player is decreasing due to changes in the technological landscape both in and outside of video games, so reacting with a more tightly-contained story in this long-standing genre might be a chance worth taking.
Still, while the amount of purposeful side-content in XC2 does outweigh that of the main story, I think my difference in playtime between it and its predecessor are mostly due to other factors. For one, XC2 is accelerated a great deal by having a large amount of avoidable encounters compared to its parent, even in the very directed plot-focused environments. With mechanics such as Chain Attacks and Elemental Burst being so strong, bosses and other mandatory combats for advancing the story are easily "gamed" while underleveled. Now, in no way does this mean that you don't have to grind, because you always will, even if its form may change. You might have to engage with the same boss 5 or 6 times to be able to finally move forward, but with how incredibly slow base leveling is, its far faster than actually trying to grind for levels. Yes, there are some strategies for farming experience, but even with Chain Attacks granting a huge amount of bonus "Overkill" experience, it pales in comparison to the amount of seemingly free "Bonus Experience" that you'll accrue for no reason at all. Every time you take a nap at an inn, you'll be able to level up your party for no cost at all with experience points that seem to flow from ether. This is a nice way to alleviate that which would otherwise amount to a huge bit of grinding, but it ends up feeling like a cheap sidestep to what was otherwise a poor system of granting experience.
This isn't the only system in XC2 that tried to get "patched" by the inclusion of another system either: the entire "Merc Group" feature where you can send off your excess Blades to complete tasks feels like a cheap way to make Blade Affinity Charts feel less gross. However, it fails horribly because of how much time it takes, and because its impossible to get a large amount of Blades worth keeping without investing weeks into rolling the gatcha. You can also use the Merc Group feature to raise the "Dev Level" of cities and outposts, but all that does is grant you access to more side quests and some slightly more powerful items that are made obsolete in the next area anyway. If anything, all it really does is increase the time it would take someone to 100% this game, which is unfortunately a feeling that I get from most features in XC2 in general. It's almost like Monolithsoft was constantly looking to "pad" their game, with meetings every week where the first question was always, "Well, how do we make this part of the game harder to finish?"
While this approach for XC2 ended up creating some unbearably worthless mountains of extra stuff, I don't think that focusing on bolstering replayability or expanding optional content is a bad thing for JRPGs. Hell, even here I have to say that Monolithsoft's post-mortem patch-in of New Game+ mode was very well done, especially with a game that lends itself so much to 100%-ing every part of it. If developers add a lot of meaningful side-content to a JRPG, then every player can have vastly different experiences despite all playing through the same main quest. Just because I didn't indulge in a single piece of content related to Poppi, nor complete the optional side quest to unlock her third form, doesn't mean that someone else didn't put in the time to max out all her stats and pilot her directly all the way through to the final boss. By giving players options in a genre that has classically been so rigid, I think there's a lot to be gained there going forward. I can remember the joy I felt completing FFVII with Yuffie and Vincent in my party, because I knew some other people who had "completed" the game had never done it with those characters, never participating in that optional content. If XC2 had done a few things better, and some other things a lot better, maybe I could have felt something similar when completing the game with a certain team of Blades. Just because XC2 didn't succeed in this regard for me personally, it's still a worthwhile direction to push the genre in, purely in the interest of keeping it fresh for possible new fans.

Drivers and Blades



Just because some of those optional rare Blades didn't leave a Yuffie-sized impact on my play experience doesn't mean that the characters of XC2 are bad. If anything, for all the issues I had with the mechanics and systems of the game, it was the characters that were constantly dragging me back for more. Our core cast has a delightfully lighthearted chemistry about them, but that's pretty standard for how "shounenized" XC2 is if you compare it to previous entries in the series. Now, JRPGs always fall back on shounen tropes, but I think XC2 embraces the more light, often comedic side of them better than many do. While being a bit generic, Rex is still a great protagonist to play the part of the shounen hero, even if I think I have to hand a lot of this to the performance of his English VA. Pyra and Mythra also show up strong, but that's more to do with the differences between their personalities despite sharing the body of the Aegis Blade. Them constantly switching back in forth while sharing the same VA (in both languages) makes for some really powerful moments when the game decides to get serious, but also provides a good bit of comedy as well (mostly with Mythra's larger-than-life tsundere attitude). Rex, Pyra, and Mythra show an interesting dynamic by being a "pair" of three rather than just two, and the story does a good job of leveraging this to help Rex grow into his new status as the Master Driver while also helping Pyra and Mythra come to terms with their split personalities.
Outside of our true main characters, Nia is probably the most interesting and developed character in the game. Don't discount her just because she rocks a cat-girl aesthetic; she's far from just a notch in the game's waifu belt. Above anything else, Nia has the most hard-headed, confrontational personality of the group by far, and that's welcome in a party where Rex is a bit of a doormat, Tora is barely capable of speaking, and the rest are too self-absorbed in their backstories to care. She has a bit of a dark past that Rex helps break her out of, and her arc of coming to terms with that past and what it means for her life going forward is probably the most emotional and fulfilling bit of those in XC2's main questline. She also has the mushiest Scottish accent I've ever heard, which is not only endearing but really lends an edge to her snappier moments compared to the rest of the core cast. Tora, the Nopon party member this time around, stands out for other reasons, and that's for being "the stupid weeaboo bullshit" character. Everything about Tora is designed to check off boxes on the Annoying Anime Sidekick chart, which unfortunately also includes his Blade, Poppi. Both of them regularly act "out of character" for the group at any given moment, and while it can be hilarious when the moments are light, it never fails to kill the mood when things do get serious. A lot of this has to do with the continual choice to make Nopon sound like brain-damaged six year olds, which might just be slightly annoying in Japanese but is nigh unbearable in English. I hated these things in the original XC, and XC2 didn't do them any favors either, especially not with the weird obsession with otaku maid culture this time around.
As for the rest of our core cast, I can't say I felt much attachment to Morag and Zeke, nor their Blades, Brighd and Pandoria. Morag and Brighd are both the strong type of few words, and I can't say that they fit very well into XC2's lighter atmosphere. Zeke is a false chuunibyou-type character, and although pretty charming in his own right just comes in too late in the story to make an impact. Pandoria doesn't do Zeke any favors either, coming off as a bit annoying and never once sounding very sincere, although this might be due to her English VA. Still, even if I didn't include them in my party ever, they made for some pretty good moments throughout cutscenes, and acted well as almost side-party members. If anything, I think the main enhancement that both of these pairs brought to the table was making Rex's party feel more politically relevant within the world of Alrest. Both Morag's and Zeke's status gave Rex's actions a bit more weight, where they might otherwise feel like the crazed terrorism of an uncontrollable, outlawed third party. Brighd and Pandoria also help bring some interesting story bits to light as well, highlighting some of XC2's darker themes.

Just because I say that XC2 is "lighter" than the original XC doesn't mean that its incapable of looking into some more sinister and difficult things. Rex's journey to Elysium is fraught with trials and hardship despite the jokes scattered along the way, and a big one of those is reconciling the differences between humans and Blades. Humans die after their lifespans expire or are snuffed out, but Blades can never truly die, simply losing all their memories and falling asleep back within their Core Crystals if their masters are defeated. This theme of what it truly means to be "you" is central to XC2's plot, with many of the core conflicts being traceable back to it. Many Blades strive to not lose themselves by keeping journals or trying to etch their legacy into the world around them, with the anxiety of being unable to know who they "were" in their previous lives eating away at them. Blades sometimes even perform the taboo ritual known as "flesh eating" to extend their lives past that of their dying Driver, becoming a hybrid being of Blade and human, sometimes awakening terrible powers. At the same time, many Blades feel as if humanity abuses them, rather than coexisting in a state of partnership. The combination of these two factors is what drives much of the drama behind XC2's plot, and it's up to Rex and the Aegis to rally against the terrorist group Torna and lead both humanity and Blades to the promised land of Elysium.
Like I said earlier, XC2 is very heavily a shounen story. The power of friendship is going to prevail, and even though we know that, what we hope is for the ride to at least pull a couple fast ones along the way. For the most part, I'd hazard to say that XC2 does a fairly decent job of keeping up that end of the bargain. If any part of it falls flat, it's certainly not Rex's party or the politics driving the world of Alrest behind the scenes: it's actually most of the villains. XC2 tries really hard to make it seem like "no one was really the villain, we are just all confused and emotional", but that sentiment comes far too late after actors like Malos and others are put up to be massive boogeymen. Torna's actions throughout the game don't do much to support what is eventually asked of us, regularly performing unbelievable acts of carnage that are sometimes nigh impossible to forgive them for. I don't think is out of the realm for JRPGs though, and even if I can't exactly write that off, I guess I at least understood that I wasn't going to get out of the genre norms this time either.
XC2 really tried to do a lot within its main quest to try to sell itself of as a truly epic and massive tale, but in the end it felt like nothing was truly explored enough to make much of an impact past some resolution for differences between humans and Blades. It was inevitable that when the time came to wrap it all up, things might start to come out feeling a little cheap. Any sort of twists and turns in XC2 are very heavily backloaded; nearly the entirety of the game's last six hours are plot twist after plot twist until it's fairly hard to understand much of what is happening anymore. While it doesn't make up for that breakneck corkscrew, the eleventh hour connection to the original Xenoblade Chronicles was a more than welcome inclusion, finally revealing as to why the game feels so thematically and effectively similar. For me personally, resolution of Rex's and Pyra's relationship was far more engaging than the outcome of the story in relation to Alrest, and I'd hazard that was the thought of many others as well. It's not that I didn't care about the implications of the grand adventure itself, but rather that what it meant for Rex, Pyra, and the rest of the party was far more intriguing to me than any impending, world-ending doom. And to be fair to XC2, for all of the shit in pulls in the final stretch, I have to say that it delivered beautifully on that note especially for a "quick" 55-hour JRPG.

How Far We've Come



So in the end, after all this, did I actually enjoy playing through Xenoblade Chronicles 2? Real fans know that the answer to that question is an undeniable "yes", but it's a bit more complicated than that. For every dumbass mechanic that was overcome, there is always another thought that rises up alongside the frustration, and that's that "things are so much better now". Even if I am sitting here, rolling away on the gatcha to try to get every blade in the game, it's still such a more well-put-together experience than the games I grew up on in this genre so long ago. The product might not always be assembled exactly to my liking, but some of the games that I love from my childhood, even FFVII and Golden Sun, definitely have some glaring problems and "age" that makes going back and playing them so much more of a pain than dealing with some of XC2's ass-backwards systems. If anything, games like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 help me experience the kind of gaming I grew up on, and leave me hopeful for someone out there getting it right in the future: a game that's put together with modern polish without all the "bleh" that marred games like this one. Also, in the effort to be as honest as possible, I just straight up like JRPGs. I'm willing to put up with some garbage in order to grind some levels and complete a fairly decent story, and XC2 more than delivered in that department.
Now, for the answer to our other big question, it gets a little bit harder. While I don't think that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is the super special hit that a lot of people expected it was going to be, I do think that it's a good "marker" for what's to come. JRPGs really are going to trend toward this open-world, MMO-like structure with a lot of content; there is a reason why the original Xenoblade Chronicles was such a cult hit, and why that translated into XC2's market success. People still love this genre, they just want something a little more open-ended and easily digestible than what they played through in their youth. With a game like XC2, someone can sit down, play a few side-quests, and turn off the console, still feeling fairly fulfilled. It's hard to sit down and grind your way through a massive 100+ hour quest sometimes. Sometimes you just want to have a shorter, more digestible burst of that same sort of game, just without some of the rails. Even if XC2 might have tried a little too hard to deliver on a wealth of extra content and systems, it's a good example of the possibilities in this approach. Being on the Switch, a portable console, makes the reasons for these design choices all the more obvious.
So what's the final say then? Was Xenoblade Chronicles 2 something worth playing? Something worth paying $60 for? If you're someone who grew up on JRPGs like me, then yes, I think it might be worth your time, but take everything I've said into consideration. If that list of mechanics seems like too much to bear, you won't be missing out on the "next big thing" by giving this one a pass. However, for those of you with an iron will and a love for the level-up, you'll find an enjoyable romp through a gorguous world with a cast of very lovable characters, and at the end of the day, I think that's more than enough to say that my 55 hours were more than worth it.