Xenoblade Chronicles 2
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Around 30 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles 2, we begin to wonder if the design document was simply a list of ideas with a tick next to every one. With a substantially shorter development cycle, it would be perfectly natural to assume Monolith Soft had forgone the series’ sprawling scope for something more compact and focused. Heavens, no. It’s positively bursting at the seams – but while it’s hard not to admire the mad, bug-eyed ambition of Tetsuya Takahashi and his team, it’s come at a cost. Once again, we have an adventure that’s been built for a console that can’t quite contain it, and a few too many compromises have been made to ensure it just about fits.
The number in the title is a clue that this is closer in style to the Wii original than its Wii U successor. Once again, we find ourselves in a world where communities live atop (or even inside) huge beasts known as Titans. These gargantuan beasts roam a cloud sea surrounding an Yggdrasil-like tree, with earnest young salvager Rex eking out a living by retrieving scraps from beneath the surface. Before long, he takes on one dangerous job too many, and via a plot contrivance we shan’t reveal here, he ends up partnered with a Blade, Pyra, a living weapon who empowers him to fight.
Their bond seeds a combat system that seems to be pulling in two different directions, striving at once to be more accessible, yet more elaborate, than previous entries. Rex will attack automatically as long as he stays still, with a basic three-hit combo that deals more damage with each consecutive blow. It’s bolstered by an initially limited palette of Arts, special techniques bound to three of the face buttons, with boosts for well-timed inputs that cancel auto-attacks into them. These feed into a meter governing special attacks, which grow in power the longer you wait – but can you afford to hold off that long?
That’s one question you’re forced to consider during these skirmishes, and there are plenty more: just as you’re acclimatising to one system, a new one is introduced. After a while you’re juggling two sets of face buttons, as you accrue more Blades and their individual Arts, and switch between them to counter an enemy’s elemental strengths or attack patterns. There’s risk involved with every command, whether you’re inviting your two fellow party members to activate one of their Blades’ specials, or daring to launch a devastating chain attack that means you won’t be able to revive any fallen colleagues for a while. Pinning the latter to the little-used Plus button is an awkward stretch in a literal sense, all but proving it’s trying to do too much at once. That’s before you factor in the difference positioning makes to certain Arts, not to mention a combo system that encourages you to break, topple, launch and smash enemies – in that specific order – for more efficient damage-dealing.
There’s a lot to take in, then, but at times, and particularly when your team is working in unison, it’s exhilarating stuff. In boss battles or encounters against lone, gigantic beasts, where each team member sticks to their designated role and the combos are flowing, it’s thrillingly kinetic, bubbling with colour and noise. Just as easily, it can feel messy and cacophonous. You’re beholden to the whims of your AI partners, who can suffer from inexplicable lapses, and there are too many moments where you find yourself filling in as the group’s tank or healer as well as attacker-in-chief.
Meanwhile, any interruptions can easily take you back to the attritional early stages of an attack string. As such, should a wandering enemy or two decide to join in the fight, a comfortably winnable battle can become alarmingly difficult, and though you can encourage your allies to focus on individual targets, that doesn’t prevent them from being broken, toppled, or, worse, shackled – where you’re restricted from attacking and you can’t switch Blades – by the rest. Just as you feel you’ve cracked it, a chastening encounter comes along to suggest otherwise. Your strategy may have been fine, but your luck was out – just as it sometimes is during exploration, when a Level 90 bird swoops down from nowhere and kills you with one shot, mere metres from a checkpoint. Granted, this was an issue in Xenoblade Chronicles X, but that doesn’t make it any more palatable this time. The improved draw distance might give you more of a chance to see such threats coming – unlike X, you won’t get deadly creatures suddenly popping into existence ten yards in front of you. Yet we’re not convinced the trade-off in performance is worth it. As a portable RPG, it’s no doubt a big step up from Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, but at times it looks surprisingly rough, the resolution downgrade in large outdoor areas meaning that environments designed to inspire wonder are reduced to impressionistic smears. Perhaps it’s a symptom of that shortened dev cycle, but either way it’s less of a visual achievement than its Wii U predecessor. That extends to the character design. The cast may be more expressive than their stiff, waxy counterparts in X, but they could be ripped from any other generic anime-inspired JRPG.
Otherwise the bumps are relatively small. The combat, sporadically delightful in the opening chapters, grows more frequently so as you progress. The cast is easy to warm to: Rex’s good-heartedness wins you over, as does the earthy Nia. It doesn’t quite match the outof-nowhere brilliance of the first game, nor is it as bold as the daring, but flawed, follow-up. Still, those seeking a game large and enveloping enough to carry them through the holiday season and beyond will find that particular box well and truly ticked.
The combat, sporadically delightful in the opening chapters, grows more frequently so as you progress