Author Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?  (Read 12396 times)

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Offline Evan_B

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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?
« Reply #25 on: January 21, 2018, 10:02:38 PM »
So, I finished my first story playthrough at just over 210 hours, I definitely spent around 30 of those grinding Legendary Cores for getting every Rare Blade.

It may come as a surprise to all of you, but I absolutely adore this game for a number of reasons. However, I can understand that it's not something for everyone, but I'm already a huge fan of Monolith's style and this just had so many great improvements on a lot of their previous concepts.

I'm going to be writing a rather extensive analysis of the game over the next two weeks or so, which will likely be posted somewhere...
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Offline Enner

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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?
« Reply #26 on: January 25, 2018, 02:05:33 AM »
Gratz on the game completion! I'm still chipping away at my game bit by bit as I progress through Chapter 9. The game goes UNLIMITED ANIME starting at (for me) the middle of Chapter 7, and I adore it for it.

Still miffed about the gacha system of the Core Crystals as a whole, but it's on me that I decided to open 99 Common Core Crystals in one sitting. I really do hope Monolith adds a pity rate (e.g. Fire Emblem Heroes increases the percentage chance of summoning a 5-star hero in a gacha banner as you fail to summon a 5-star hero) to the Core Crystal system. Ah, I guess I should take advantage of the systems in this game and just spend the time to grind out Legendary Core Crystals.

Offline Evan_B

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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?
« Reply #27 on: January 25, 2018, 09:21:56 AM »
I’ve been grinding Legendary Cores in order to get my final four unique Blades. It has been tedious, but the final two I need are Justice Booster fodder so I think I have a good rhythm going. By the time I had reached the endgame, I only had six unique Blades left to get, so all in all, I don’t think the facts system reall got the best of me until I started going out of my way to try to pull uniques. I do hope, however, that the DLC Blades are obtained through quests rather than pulls...
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Offline Enner

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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?
« Reply #28 on: February 09, 2018, 01:36:58 PM »
Ver. 1.3.0 details [Spoilers]
https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/xenoblade-chronicles-2-director-takahashi-reveals-new-update-information

The amount of new things and options are exciting, even outside of New Game Plus. More sorting options are really welcome!

Alas, I see no hint of improving Portable Mode performance or a pity rate for Core Crystals.

Offline Evan_B

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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?
« Reply #29 on: February 09, 2018, 01:51:17 PM »
The draw rate isn’t that bad- unless you think all the Rare Blades in ththe game are unlocked via using it. There are a number of spots where you can grind Legendary Core Crystals, and with the Blade Bonding animation now skippable, it’s going to go a lot faster for people who haven’t finished the game/summoned all the Blades.

But I do warn you, as of right now only 21 of the 38 Rare Blades that exist are drawn from Core Crystals. Don’t drive yourself mad and beat your head against the wall for all of them.
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Offline Enner

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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?
« Reply #30 on: February 10, 2018, 10:41:15 PM »
I already did some reading to know which Rare Blades can be drawn from crystals and which are from quests.

And if you want to get at the heart of my (minor) frustration, it's that I saw a friend draw a KOS-MOS before me after I reminded him to use Justice Boosters before using his Legendary Core Crystal.

I have yet to grind hard for Legendary Core Crystals, so please take my frequent gripes with the system as tiny sour grapes! Well, outside of the iffiness of including a system from free-to-play mobage in to a full-priced JRPG with an expansion pass.

I haven't played much of the game, but I did manage to play enough "Tiger! Tiger!" to properly power up all of the Poppis. QT Pi is something else!

Offline Evan_B

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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?
« Reply #31 on: February 11, 2018, 01:03:01 AM »
I am not a huge fan of the system either, trust me. While I think its still somewhat bearable, it really has no place existing in a game of its kind. What's worse, I can think of a number of ways that it could have been improved in order to work somewhat more reliably while still offering plenty of variation.
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Offline TOPHATANT123

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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?
« Reply #32 on: June 24, 2018, 02:07:13 PM »
Ok 185 hours to credits, I think I'm done with the game now until the expansion.

The Good
+ A good trimming of the fat from the past two Xenoblade games, I'm glad they changed up the affinity tree, armour system and the collectopedia with it's unique descriptions of every item in the game (which I felt obligated to read). We've done that twice already and I'm glad they focused their attention on other areas.
+ Although I think I prefer the old style battle system I'm glad they changed it for the sake of variety.
+ Rex is a likable protagonist on par with Shulk
+ I enjoyed the different motifs they had running through the music.
+ There's sooooo much music and music variety
+ A return to really well choreographed fight scenes that were lacking in X's cutscenes
+ Great economy in this game, you are tangibly rewarded for buying things and I didn't feel like money was basically no object like in Chronicles and X.
+ Voiced heart to hearts are great.
+ The return of English voice acting + Welsh + Scottish + Australian
+ Fonsett Village gave me Xenogears vibes.
+ The land of Morytha was an unexpected curve ball, I'm glad they managed to tie the two games together.
+ When Amalthus brings all the titans together near the end and you can go to those titan's and see them fighting from different angles.
+ Vandham's chapter and the end when the vocals kick in, too good.



The Bad
- General quality of life stuff. Questing feels really slow and much more of a chore than both Chronicles and X even though it's clear they put more effort into them this time round.
- Field skills are a fun idea but the way they are implemented is so annoying. Unequipping and equipping blades is just the worst.
- The music isn't as distinct as Chronicles or X, to be fair it's a very high bar.
- I love a good credits song, compared to Chronicles and X the credits were weak.
- Movement feels slow compared to even Chronicles.
- Forced to quick travel breaks immersion.
- The game was really lacking when it came to world building, Chronicles and X have some of the best worlds in video games but 2 had too much ambiguity for my liking. What is a blade? Are they like Pokemon and you keep them in your bag or is it implied that you have an army of blades hanging out at the mercenary camp? Do blades need to eat and sleep, if they can't die that would imply that they don't? Why do some blades look like humans and others looks like big monsters?
- Exploring the titans isn't as interesting as in Chronicles. For example you never get to go up onto the Gormotti titan's head, in Mor Ardain you only get to go on the titan's shoulder, in Leferia you never even see the titan. In Chronicles they really emphasise the fact that you are exploring a Titan and I feel in this area 2 didn't really do as well.
- I find Rex and Pyra/Mythra's relationship to be really weird. The cast keep pushing him to be like "Eh eh Rex you're in love with them right!", but the game never sets any precedent for blade/human relationships and never really goes into detail to what a blade actually is. It just doesn't sit right with me, Rex is a kid and they're like a 500+ year old super computer processor or whatever.
- You spend the ENTIRE game trying to reach Elysium but when you get there the game never goes into detail as to what Elysium actually was, why the hell was Klaus under a church?
- How does Azurda transform back into a titan at the end of the game? If Pyra reawakened his titan abilities or whatever why didn't they do that ages ago?
- It's implied that Mythra and Pyra still remember Rex at the end of the game, again never explained and if they do remember him there was no sacrifice whatsoever making the whole ending sequence redundant on the space station redundant.
- Malos has really poor motivations and I don't even understand Jin's motivations, Torna in general needed more development.
- Looking at the artbook Nomura's designs look awesome in 2D but in the game Torna just look out of place, I wish they had stuck with one art design for the human characters.


All in all Xenoblade is my favourite series and I'm glad that because of the Switch's success the game has started to hit the mainstream with it's 1.31 million sales, I still really enjoyed it even if I have some gripes. There's still Torna: The Golden Country to come and then hopefully (fingers crossed) at some point Xenoblade Chronicles X-2.

Offline Evan_B

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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?
« Reply #33 on: June 24, 2018, 09:35:58 PM »
The more information I see about Torna: The Golden Country, the more impressed I am by the amount of improvements and changes made to XC2's already solid fundamentals.

That being said, many of the cons you listed are the same problems I had with the game, although I thought side-quests were a fair bit more brisk, at least in comparison with XCX. I did not appreciate having to have specific Blades equipped in order to trigger cutscenes and side-quest starting points, however.

I can also say with confidence that this game has some moments of very good voice acting and some of the worst examples in the entire series.
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Offline TOPHATANT123

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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?
« Reply #34 on: June 25, 2018, 02:33:36 AM »
With X so long as you were strong enough if you had a quest you could complete it, in 2 a lot of the time I would play a side quest up until the game blocked me from continuing because I didn't have the right field skills. So I suppose sitting down and just wanting to work on quests wasn't as satisfying because of all the stopping and starting.

Offline Shorty McNostril

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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?
« Reply #35 on: June 25, 2018, 04:08:47 AM »
I can also say with confidence that this game has some moments of very good voice acting and some of the worst examples in the entire series.

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Offline Enner

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Re: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: How is Monolith Soft so Monolithic?
« Reply #36 on: June 28, 2018, 01:58:59 AM »
They over explain so much in the end, that it's easy to blank on some details that might explain a thing or two.

I saw credits on the game a while back and started a little bit ways in to New Game+. I enjoyed my time with it, but come away a little frustrated. There's a lot of ambition in XC2, perhaps a bit too little refinement, and maybe a bit too much male-otaku-demographic late night anime (not that I would complain about that, but that aspect might grate on some).

More than anything, a tiny sense of general exhaustion has set on me as I did my rounds through the game. This is my third go around of Xenoblade, and I feel I've had a lot of how these games move and feel.

Whatever Monolith Soft is working on next, I pray it is something completely different. And shorter.

Oh, as for the run speed, I thought you go fast enough after you take care to buy the shop deeds that increase movement speed.