Through an in-depth story and aesthetically pleasing landscaped Xenoblade Chronicles 2 by Monolith Studio is a solid example of what an action RPG can be. It's also a bit of a practice in patience.
The Game:
Xenoblade Chronical 2 is a JRPG that takes place in the cloud world where humans live on mammoth monsters called Titans. You will play along in the adventure of a salvager named Rex as he seeks out the rumored world of Elysium. Rex will be accompanied by what is called a Blade. A being that harnesses their energy into their Drivers allowing them to pull off powerful attacks. Along the way you will pick up more Drivers and Blades to journey with you.
The combat is action RPG so you will have more control than the simple pick your move and wait for the enemy to pick theirs. You will have a 3 move auto attack and 3 other stronger moves that are on cooldown. There are also ultimates that correspond to the element of your Blade. These ultimates get pretty deep in that you can chain certain ones for even more powerful attacks.
There is a main quest line and several side quests you can get for experience and loot. As a salvager, you have the skills to drop into the cloud ocean and get loot. After a quick time event you will pull up items and maybe some enemies. There are also nodes across the land that you can farm to gain more items. These items are used for building upgrades for your blade and can be turned in for a reward at certain vendors.
The land is sprinkled with chests and nodes that require certain skills from your blades to access. There are also rare enemies that offer an extra challenge and will help you gain reputation in the lands you kill them in. The worlds are pretty large and offer a lot to explore.
My Thoughts:
As I sit here with the end credits rolling by I have to ask myself the question, how did I feel about this game. While I am filled with the sense of relief and an accomplishment of beating it, it wasn't always the most pleasant experience for a couple of reason that I think are mechanically driven. Flaws aside there is a lot going for this game.The combat system started out feeling kinda slow but it does pick up quite a bit when you start working on a major attack. It felt tight and responsive. Unfortunately, there are quite a few shortfalls in the system as you get into certain areas. The NPCs on your team are just dumb. If there is poison they have no problem standing in it, if you are fighting an enemy that does knockback, the will be sure to stand on the edge to make sure they fly off. There are also some Blades that will immediately block the camera when you summon them, which led to some missteps off platforms when I was trying to get a better angle. These things happened way too often and were a constant source of frustration for me. This is unfortunate because it can get in the way of the action sequences for the higher ultimates, which were enjoyable. For example, times when you get off a combo that takes a boss from half health to do dead you feel like a god.
The quest system was kind of poor as well. The main quests were fine but the side quests were not something I did too much of. I would pick them up and do them if they were convenient but I left most of them behind. There were a few where I was just bored with and skipped through the text only to find myself lost as the instruction were in the conversation and it's not explained in the quest log. Whats the point of a quest log then?
Some features in this game also take too long. When you are summoning a Blade you are able to skip their intro sequence but before having to sit through a lengthy sequence of the Driver trying to summon from the Blade Cores. Sending Blades on quests also starts to become cumbersome as they have an unskippable dialogue when they come and go. God forbid they level up because that is even more shit you have to click through. The game is long enough, these don't need to be there to make it longer especially since you spend a lot of time doing them.
The game's story is enjoyable. I won't get into too much here as I am thinking about writing a post on the parallels this game made to some religious context. It's pretty interesting what points I think they are trying to make. Thankfully there weren't any really cringy scenes with forced attempts at humor but several did fall flat. There are so many though that its really hard to fault those few. In fact, this game is very cinema heavy. It's not surprising to have a good 10-15 minutes worth of cutscenes and animation in between chapters.
The music is only second to the art in this game. Its really well done and does a great job of building the mood. Its capped off by the amazing art direction. I am not just talking about the mostly naked drivers either. There are several scenes and points in the game with some amazing views. The Titans are very much alive and when you are outside you can see this especially well. I cannot appreciate enough when such level of detail is put into a game. There are moments where you can pause and pan the camera and fully appreciate the work. Other then a few slow down, the game ran pretty well.
Summing all of this up, the game was alright. I wouldn't say it's one of my favorites but it definitely scratched an itch and I would easily say was worth my time to go through. It was a solid game with a few quarks but the story, art, and music really bring this game together in a fantastic way. It also feels great to kill that stupid fucking Gorilla in the second area. Made my early game life fucking miserable and now he is dead, and I feel good about it.
TL;DR:
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a pretty decent action RPG in its own right. There are a few mechanics in combat that could make me pull my hair out but otherwise, it was an enjoyable experience. For RPGs fans looking for their next fix or at least a portable one, this is a good one to take a crack at.
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