Quick Look: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Ben is good

Oh ok if it's important to gameplay then sure but it sounds bad when everyone is trying to talk over each other.

Game seems cool until you get into the combat which seems terrible, and i'm sure like most rpgs you spend most your time doing it.

Are there mechs in this game...?

Wow, the music playing during the cutscene around 35-37 minutes in this video is surprisingly close to Mario music. Ben comments on the final stinger, but the whole song mirrors Mario.

@dr_insane: The Mario & Luigi RPGs are basically this.

I'm right there with Brad. I love JRPGs from the 90s to mid '00s but can't get into any of them anymore. I can appreciate the Persona games but even those don't really do it for me. Every JRPG I try these days is either full of fetch quests in giant empty worlds (Xenoblade), low budget cliches (I Am Setsuna) or confined to a really small area and filled with grinding (Persona). Wouldn't say I think these games are bad and I even feel Persona 3 - 5 are great. But nothing pulls me in, in the way those old Square RPGs did and still do. Even playing Shining Force 1 and 2 for the first time a couple years ago pulled me in unlike any JRPG from recent years.

All the anime.

The combat system (when properly played) looks pretty great. Reminds me a lot of playing a cat-druid in WOW raids, when managing combo's, positioning, buffs and debuffs.

Also have no clue why people are bothered with the character design, and am quite into most of the voices/accents. The delivery is quite stilted at times, but I do get a Mr Drippy vibe from a few characters.

Just 9 more days to unwrap that package the size of a switch case under the tree!

I feel bad for the Welsh. Americans seem almost completely oblivious to them beyond the fact that there is a place called Wales.

I watched my roommate play through this game, and the story definitely gets crazy and existential in the way that every Xeno game does. Watching all this secondhand, I actually found myself legitimately interested in seeing what happened, even if there were some anime-ass JRPG moments along the way (which I am more than tolerant of but can definitely see as being a turn-off.)

I'll say that the English VA grew on me after a while. I really like that it doesn't sound like your typical JRPG/Anime dub with all the UK accents, despite some dubious line reads every now and then.

This seems like a really hard game to QL, but I think Brad picked a great spot and did as good a job as I've seen on a QL for a while.

Fantastic game. Would really really really like an option to turn down the battle voiced (like amount not volume which is in the game) but the VO is fantastic. I need to find an British/Welsh/Irish wife

Never played X, but I got the 3DS version of Chronicles. It took me a year and a half, but I really enjoyed it as a game I'd pick up every once in a while for a few hours and then put away. It's a bummer that the handheld mode of this game seems as compromised as the 3DS version of the first game, because if I was ever getting it, I was planning on playing the majority in handheld mode.

Nia's voice alone makes the English dub worth it. Replacing her with a meowing Japanese girl would be so wrong.

Although the nopons are truly awful. The way the speak idiotic pidgin English in childish home counties accents is horrific. If there was a way to replace all of their spoken dialogue with Animal Crossing style mumbling I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Great game though. the story really goes some places and the music is incredible. The meta combo system with your team mates is really fun and satisfying

Most of the people at Square who were responsible for Super Mario RPG have either left or lost their fucking minds in the last 20 years, so.... yeahhh....

Since you said you enjoyed FF12 recently I wanted to share my thoughts on how I relate Xenoblade Chronicles to FF12. I hope this makes some sense, I have a difficult time putting my finger on what exactly I mean, but know that I love both FF12 and Xenoblade Chronicles 1.

When I played through XC1 a few years ago I saw lineage of FF12 in it. Saying the XC1 was inspired by FF12 would be going too far, but the way I have come to describe it was XC1 is informed by FF12. What I mean is both games can fairly be described as MMO inspired, taking the trappings of an MMO and putting it into a single player JRPG form. As far as my knowledge goes FF12 was the first big JRPG to do this and XC1 was the second, this may not actually be true but it is why I see this lineage. So in my mind FF12 came out and was great and did a lot of amazing things, then several years later Monolith was making XC1 and I think they drew inspirations from FF12 about how to do world building, area design, monster encounters, managing cool downs in battle, story pacing and so on. They put a very different spin on the single player MMO, but as I went through XC1 I saw many hints of FF12. It would not be accurate to call XC1 a successor or spiritual successor to FF12 and as far as I know there is no game that picks up the mantel of FF12, but I feel FF12 and XC1 are kindred spirits and on the JRPG spectrum they would be adjacent to each other in a very small single player MMO niche. I have not played XC2 yet but from what I have seen that FF12 informed legacy looks to have carried through. This is a long way of saying if you enjoyed FF12 I think you would find a lot to like in the Xenoblade Chronicles series.

I'm so ambivalent about this game because I love it and can't believe it exists in 2017, but it's hard to recommend. Between the heavy dose of anime tropes, gacha system, lackluster UI straight out of a PS2 game (also missing basic things like a bestiary), and important mechanics locked behind 20+ hours, I can't blame anyone for losing interest.

All I can say is if you're only hung up on the combat, it becomes much more fast-paced than just patiently waiting for auto-attacks. You start slinging skills and weapon switches so fast it becomes a juggling act to manage buffs and debuffs for max damage, and some skills come with additional effects like active evasion which allow you to dodge lethal attacks.

For me though, things like everyone shouting over each other the name of their attacks and the overall Saturday morning cartoon nature of the humor and story are actually part of why I can enjoy XC2 despite its glaring flaws. Also, the JP battle announcer sounds like something out of a fighting game like CvS2, it's so good.

This is a pretty good game. I give it Anime/10.

The mech in the game is Poppi, who Brad unlocked roughly halfway through the video. He didn't equip her with anything in the QL, but if you go into her equipment page it's super different than the other characters. You can equip chips to customize her a lot more than you can the other blades. You can change her role (she starts as a tank but can be a DPS or healer), her element (she starts as earth but can be whatever), etc.

The logistics around equipping Poppi is also quite different. You upgrade her memory and CPU, etc.

Welsh. Welsh cat girl

@white: It's not a Xeno game without mechs. There's your answer.

Sooooo... was the first Xenoblade Chronicles this pandering in the sexual character designs? The only things I know about the first game is that it starred a British sounding dude named Shulk (this protagonist also has a British accent in the English dub) and he has a red sword. I don't remember the first game having any too obvious sexy designs. Game looks well made but I don't think I can have the time to complete a super meaty JRPG like this.

The simplicity and wholesomeness of the character interactions reminds me of cartoons for six or seven year old children. It makes the sex jokes and sexualized characters seem really creepy...

It's cool how we're 125 posts in and we still have people making the same banal correction about a freaking accent as if Brad and Ben are expected to be experts on telling apart all forms of European accents. At the very least, if people are going to nitpick, they should make sure someone else hasn't already done it first (or, in this case, like, 6 other people haven't done it first).

Yeah, the problem remains that JRPGs largely haven't figured out how to do variable amounts of content or to tell a proper story in a reasonable amount of time. I don't think I've played a single one in the last decade where I haven't either dropped it halfway through because the pacing was abysmal or felt after finishing it that the game wasted 10+ hours with meaningless cruft. I still love the idea of them - a sweeping story, interesting characters, fun battle/upgrade systems, building a party over time - but the overall design is incredibly lacking.

Most games tend to tell stories in 5-15 hours. And if there's more than that, it's optional content that you can engage with if you're enjoying it. JRPGs still operate on the scale of 30+ hours minimum, if not 2-3 times that. I'm not sure if I changed or the games changed - most likely both - but it's very rare that the game and story stand up for that long. The Tales games are filled with overlong dungeons, giant boring areas, and tons of meaningless middle fetch missions in between the bigger plot points. The Persona games are incredibly well-made in a ton of ways, but every scene and dungeon feels about twice as long as it needs to be. The Final Fantasy games have ballooned in length since the 8/16-bit era, with a desire to force players to run through these epic 3D spaces.

I don't think it's an accident that Chrono Trigger, one of the most revered JRPGs of all time, is far shorter than the average JRPG and almost nothing feels wasted in terms of the primary story. There are a couple fetch-mission type sequences, but even those tend to send you to new, interesting areas or revolve around pivotal character moments.

beat the game yesterday after about 140 hours, fantastic game. Probably going to play through again with JP voices to see what they are like.

@brad you can force your party members to attack your target by pressing the left dpad button

also, poppi is best girl

Brad is into it but trying to spin and this is a JRPG from the 90s to the mid 00s with late 10s tech.

Yea, IDK this just doesnt look at all interesting to me. Especially the combat.

I just bought this, been in the mood to play a jrpg. Hopefully it doesn't look too bad in handheld mode. I don't really like the way the controller feels playing it on the tv.

Brad and Ben should do more RPG QL

Brad likes to take time playing games, and Ben is patient .

This is good QL

That's kind of amusing to hear as someone who hasn't played this game yet but has Blade Xenoblade Chronicles X. That game had some CHEESY ass music. The main battle theme is a perfect example.

Even so I liked the soundtrack for that game, even if "cheesy" is definitely the word that comes to mind for me for it.

Even though I'm not the biggest fan of it, I think Undertale came close to mirroring CT's tight pace. Problem is that Undertale isn't much of a JRPG nor does it try to be. Mother 3 is probably the last amazing JRPG I played. That game is as tightly pace as CT, has fantastic writing and the combat is enjoyable. I hope Nintendo returns to that series while the key developers are still alive.

Well for me the english voice acting is amazing. Absolutely loving the game.

@backstabuuu:

A: Cheesy

B: Masterpiece

C: Cheesy Masterpiece

Looks like a nice colourful game with some real bad mistakes.

That enemy acquisition looks random in a way that's busted. One soldier won't attack as you stand on his toes, while another aggros with a wall in between. Especially when you don't have control over your party that sucks. His partymember got him involved in this 2v6 situation because of it.

Having a overhead map that's more like diablo2's map than an typical RPG overhead map that shows questmarkers on it, is a missed opportunity. Especially in a 3d game with height differences. No reason why this can't have more than 1 saveslot neither.

I do like the size differences in monsters though. Gives it a FF12 feel.

"Irish" catgirl......killed me every time lol. High Lord Drippy is disappointed.

Ok so here's the deal: I'm 82 hours in and I'm guessing I'm a dungeon or two away from the ending of the game. I hated the first 10 hours, as it established itself and the mechanics, loved the next 60 hours, then started turning on it in the last 10 I've played.

The biggest problem is that the areas are too gigantic. They want you to explore these rolling hills and expansive environments, but that describes nearly every area. That wears you out! Also factor in that any fight with a monster lv40+ is going to take a hot minute to kill. This includes me being lv60+ on my main party.

As an anime fan: this game is TOO anime in most of its story beats and character design... to the point that I tell people to treat this like an episode when choosing language options (i.e. choose dubs if you watch dubbed anime). Sometimes it's funny and light hearted, but most of the time I'm calling out the lines before they're even said.

If you have 140-180 hours to explore each area to your heart's delight and collect the absurd amount of blades so you can do all your post game goodies: get it immediately at full price. If you're looking for a 50~ hour experience: grab it when it's $40. If you go into this game thinking you'll purely main line it, do no side quests, and just experience the main story with no exploration: don't get this. There are no difficulty options and you'll get boxed into a frustrated corner real fast.

@joedangerous: As a Xenoblade fan, this is an accurate curve.

I've soured myself a little bit with XC1 and XCX at their ends when I did some end game stuff. A lot of grinding in massive worlds.

This looks great!

Im pretty sure when poppy was born, anime version of green days time of your life started playing

Sorry when I said mechs I meant pilotable mechs. Like Xenogears.

I get where Brad's coming from with the "ehhh" response to the gameplay, but that's because it doesn't really start introducing all its systems very early. That's definitely a very valid criticism that it takes a little too long to warm up (think I was 30 hours in when I had every aspect of combat open to me) but it's not really representative of the game, to be fair.

Not a complaint, Brad can't be expected to get 30 hours in for every game he plans on doing a quick look, just a note to anyone watching.

Is the pink haired girl a robot? There is no emotion to the lines she delivers.

Combat looks awful. Never was a fan of real-time, MMO-ish style of combat in my JRPGs. >_>

Doesn't really matter where the accents are from because of course True Gamers play it in Japonaise anyways!

It was hard watching the end fights Brad was dying in because that was the fact that he doesn't know the many, many systems the combat has beating him--not the enemies or being underleveled or anything.

If you're into this game, you'll know all the combat systems and it can be fun to engage with them. But if you're just kind of playing it on the side and never get really familiar with the combat systems, it's not going to be fun!

@backstabuuu: I don't know that strike me as less cheesy than just a cool song ruined by cringy vocals

though to be fair it did give me this reaction