Notice I didn’t say “finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2” after 90 hours. I’ve been doing sidequests ever since and my save file now reads 99 hours. I know I said last time that I would do all my questing before killing the last boss, but I went into the boss room to check out the situation and it wasn’t so tough. [Last boss] killed me twice, but they were both narrow losses so I regrouped, rearranged my blades and accessories and finished the game. The ending resolves absolutely nothing, just BTW.
The boss may have died 90 hours in, but I still have another 67 hours to go to reach my promised 166 hours. Probably won’t get that far because I’ve decided not to bother with any quest that is too hard to find or too complicated to do. If I can’t get to the spot on the map or I have to use a FAQ to find the requirements then it’s not happening. The only quests I really want to do are Zenobia’s because I love killing unique monsters. I’ll get you yet, Insectivore Malcom!
Final thoughts… I don’t have any because I don’t consider the game finished yet. I said I would spoil the story when it was over but, eh. Can’t be bothered. It wasn’t bad, actually. I thought I paid attention pretty closely during final chapter but I still had some questions about how certain things were supposed to work and what happens after the end of the game but… eh. Can’t be bothered. If any of that stuff is still on my mind after 166 hours I might write something but otherwise, eh. Age is making me a lot more easygoing about certain things.
From the start I wasn’t playing XC2 for the story anyway. I saw the very first trailer and decided to buy the game and that was all I needed, story be damned. Besides, the story only got in the way of my enjoyment. You have to fight the same goons over and over again from start to finish. And every time it’s the same old “Agh! They’re too strong! We can’t take them!” nonsense. And there’s a long CG cutscene with lots of jumping and slashing and then somehow we magic our way through the pinch. Until next time~.
Yah so anyway, more or less finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It took me a while to get into it, but I’m having a great time now. I think the best way to play is to keep sidequests to a minimum until you hit level 40 to 50-ish and chapter 6-ish so you have most of the map unlocked and are high-level enough to take a few hits.
Top 5 things I liked about Xenoblade Chronicles 2
♥Gorgeous game. Lovely graphics, very atmospheric. You could almost feel the heat and dust in Mor Adain and the cool sea breeze in Leftheria and the splashy wateriness in Uraya. The early stages were all really nice to look at.
♥Great soundtrack. I spent so much time in Torigoth that I have the theme song stuck in my head.
♥I wanted to explore a lot of places and fight a lot of monsters and I got to do plenty of that. I even discovered some secret areas on my own, which felt great. I liked the battle system too, especially once I got more blades and party members to play around with.
♥Filling out the affinity chart was more fun than I’d expected. I thought I’d hate it but meeting the various conditions was pretty easy.
♥Putting surplus party members to use through Mercenary Missions was a great idea. It would have been even better with an auto-select option to pick the blades that fit the mission best, but maybe they’ll add that with a future patch.
To 5 things I hated about Xenoblade Chronicles 2
😠Fighting the same bosses over and over again got old. It’s poor writing to keep letting them get away when we have the power to finish them once and for all.
😠Most cutscenes were long, boring and unnecessarily flashy. Square-Enix did the world a great disservice when they taught people that RPG need cutscenes to be good.
😠It took me a long time to get used to Rex’s voice. All the way till the end I thought he sounded like a right idiot whenever he tried to get emotional. “Pyraaaa!” The other voices weren’t bad but the direction/delivery was horrible with unnecessary pauses in every single line. They tried too hard to match the lip flaps at the expense of actually sounding like human beings.
😠The user interface required too many button presses. Especially for stuff like selecting blades, selling items, warping around the map, doing mercenary missions.
😠The later dungeons were boring, ugly and hard to navigate. Spirit Crucible Elpys, Morytha, basically everything from chapter 7 onwards was terrible. Somebody’s budget was running out~~~.
Not really final thoughts but I probably won’t blog about this again
It was fun. It’s still fun. I want to play some more. I want to play Xenoblade Chronicles X too, and if they make an XC3 I’ll play that as well. But I hope the writing will be better. Less repetitive, less of that “we’ll beat them with the power of friendship” nonsense, less holding back on superpowers that could have taken care of certain problems back in chapter 1… Just a better story all around. Everything else about the game I really liked so I have high hopes for future games.
What’s next
Dunno. I want to play an otome game. I also want to play something short and not very serious before starting Tokyo Xanadu. I should probably finish Sorcery Saga too. Oh, and I want to try some Switch demos I downloaded. But really I’m just going to spend the rest of the week playing Xenoblade. The battery should be charged by now, back to Tantal!
