Eribuster

On the character designs: Monolith Soft doesn't have an in-house artist for character design.

• We needed plenty of Blades, so it was already decided on that we’ll need to get help from numerous character designers.

• The reason we request designs from outside is because Monolith Soft doesn’t have a character designer.

• Lately we’ve been told that our modeling has gotten better, but it’s actually the same staff.

• As a result of having the Rare Blade illustrators follow a weapons and attributes guideline document, we ended up with too many girls [laughs].

Read more at http://www.siliconera.com/2017/11/28/xenoblade-chronicles-2-devs-talk-many-female-rare-blades-super-rare/#vr50PtZJU2U5diVx.99

So, they have been contracting or bringing in different artists for the Xenoblade games. In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, you have Torna being designed by Tetsuya Nomura and all the rare Blades being drawn by a different artist. Dahlia, the hot topic on the Xeno socials, was designed by character designer for Macross Frontier, Risa Ebata of Satelight. That's why here 2D art kind of looks like Sherly Nome!

Thus, if you were wondering why Monolith Soft seems kind of shit with designing their characters, it might be because of this set up. Also, maybe because of Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi (and whatever executive staff) let their people go wild and never reined them in toward a more focused vision.

Nice to see some folks here enjoying the game, despite some shortcomings. I don't know if it's because of the short development time (from what I can tell, concepting/development started during Xenoblade X's development and the earliest I can find out is sometime around early 2015) or if Monolith Soft had a lot on it's plate, but there are some really odd decisions and absent functionality in Xenoblade 2. To think of positively, it's really interesting and wild that something this rough is coming from a Nintendo-owned developer. However, playing it requires getting used to some quirky bullshit.

The Skip Travel menu is kind of a disaster (I could swear Xenoblade 1's map was fine). A tip for it is that the right stick activates a cursor that you can move around. It is baffling that you can't zoom in or out, as far as I can see.

Yeah, can't just leave it at idle.

For me, I found the gear you buy from well-invested Arm's Manufacturers are more useful than most of the drops you get from indigens. At the max level of investment, the AM's gear get two additional attributes.

@eddiephlash: The requisite art needed to fulfill a Soul Voice will pulse for the character you're controlling. That should somewhat overcome colorblindness. You can arrange the arts bar to group them by type (damage, debuff, buff, aura, etc) so you can better know what art you need to hit for Soul Voices.

The Hunter support packs are time savers for character experience and skill experience. I can see those being very useful when you have the full cast, picked favorites, but are interested in playing catch-up with others.

That TMS#FE announcement trailer was right when the ink for the deal dried and Nintendo needed something to beg for the life of the Wii U in January 2013. Seriously, take a look back.

Ah, it is such a trip to look at the announcement trailer for Xenoblade Chronicles X.

Anyway, it took a little less than three years for Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE to come out in Japan from it's first announcement. It is fair to say that teams involved in the collaboration didn't have a solid idea for the game at the time.

As an observer that likes looking at the Persona series and a player that enjoyed his run through Awakening, I held no longing torch for Shin Megami Tensei or Fire Emblem. As a lover of when Japan goes or redefines FULL ANIME in their art, I am totally in tune with what Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE has shown me in its first five hours. I understand the disappoint of those who passionately expected a straight crossover a la Super Robot Wars or a turn-based RPG equivalent. For me, I've been wanting a J-pop RPG for a long while, and it looks like Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE will deliver that (sorry, Omega Quintet, but... Compile Heart, Inc.).

(Actually, maybe Omega Quintet is totally fine. I haven't heard much either way on it.)

@quantical: Separate discussion, but this just brought to mind North American (and maybe European?) Video game industry issues with ageism and the lack of knowledge of the history of video games (as relating to design and execution). This was brought up in Austin's stuff a while back.

As for Miyamoto, as others above have said, it's hard to pass such hard judgement when we have such an incomplete picture. That said, looking at the ire caused by Miyamoto's decisions in games such as Paper Mario: Sticker Star and Star Fox Zero, I'm leaning to "yes".

How can anyone forget 2016's Game of the Year?!

For the Wii U, there's still Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE, Paper Mario: Color Splash, and some other stragglers still to be released. Outside of Pokémon Sun/Moon, the 3DS's year of the RPG will be capped off with Dragon Quest games in English.

I think it is important to point out that "#" (Sharp) is part of musical notation. The game's story takes place in Tokyo. The otherworldly beings (i.e. Personas, Demons) are called mirages. The game's battle system (I think?) revolves around Session attacks (looks like a derivative of press turns). Also, "session" is something you hear around music. Finally, the characters are linked to mirages that are fantastical interpretations of Fire Emblem characters.

I am in too deep in the anime hole to see how the bizarre and off putting the titles Japanese video game companies create are. Specifically for this game, I know too much about it for the English-localized title to not make sense for me. All I can give is that, at first glance, it looks like an awkward and weird Japanese game, which I think fits the actual game perfectly.

@technician: Yep! June 24th for NA and EU. Unless something changes, that is.

@madman356647: Oh, I fear for the highly-probable storm that is going to come from the news break that Chapter 2 is heavily edited (teenager strips down to distract a salacious antagonist) and that our release won't get the hot springs DLC. Those won't be fun days.

Maybe Nintendo and Atlus will be able to get away with whatever cuts come up from the final out-of-Japan release by throwing ratings boards under the bus.

With any luck, this game will come out with negligible localization quibbles so we can all focus on the game as a whole.