Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in 2019

Over a year since its release, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 remains the best JRPG on the Nintendo Switch and comfortably takes the second place position in the Xenoblade series. The top slot will be discussed in a future review, but know that XC2 triumphs over XC1 and XCX.

The battle system is stronger than either previous entry. Arts are now assigned to support characters called Blades, with each Driver (the main party) having one active and two they can swap in and out during battle. Each Blade has 3 Arts and a special attack that powers up as more Arts are used. Being able to swap numerous Blades into battle makes for a very customizable experience.

Blade and Driver combos chain together Arts and Special Attacks across multiple characters for devastating damage.  Chained together attacks, if done properly, spawn a colored orb around the enemy.  Create 4+ orbs, and execute a chain attack to destroy them. Bursting all the orbs will build a combo meter, that multiples the damage affected by the team.  By the end of the game you’ll wipe out 50% of a boss’ health using just a properly executed burst combo.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 battle system is just as difficult to master as the previous titles, perhaps a little more so. The tutorials are better, but far from perfect. 45 hours into the game I consulted Youtuber guides to improve my battle strategy. I had experimented with arrangements, but failed to find some of the more effective combinations of Blades and Arts. Honestly, I don’t think doing that is necessary to finish the game, but I wanted to devastate my enemies and I couldn’t quite get there on my own.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 absolutely smashes its predecessors when it comes to navigating the world, and questing.  Both previous titles had terrible quest trackers and map marking/guiding for the open world. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 fixes both problems.  The quest tracker is clear to read and easily managed. The navigation system no longer points straight to the destination, but updates the mark to lead you along the path to your target. These might seem like small issues, but they provide huge gameplay improvements to the series.

The world design is another high point of the series.  The various races of Alrest live on the bodies of massive creatures called Titans, which make them very similar to Bionis and Mechonis. Originality may be lacking in the setup, but not the execution. Each titan has a unique environment type, and provides an abundance of places to explore and enemy types to defeat.

Monolithsoft helped create Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and both games’ open world share a similar design theory. Head down the well-trodden path and you’ll get to your destination, but along the way you’ll have something to distract you to each side of the path. A visually fantastic setting to the left and what might be a secret enemy base to the right. Which you choose to explore, if at all, is up to the player.  I never once grew bored of exploring the Titans of Alrest. They’re packed with things to do, more so than even the impressive world of Mira.

Visually, the worlds are stunning. The Titans are an aesthetic marvel. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is easily among the most beautiful game worlds I’ve ever explored.  Fantastic beyond imagining, yet each feels real in it’s own way. Take a screenshot in Uraya or Gormott and it’ll make a wonderful wallpaper for your phone or computer.

Sadly the same praise cannot be extended to the character design. There’s some amazing work of character arts in XC2, but there’s plenty of terrible designs that hold it back. Rex, our main character, is rather bland. Tora, a nopon Driver, is nothing special compared to Riki from XC1. The same can be said for a number of unique Blades and all the common ones.

The best character designs are Morag, Brighid, Pyra, Mythra, Zeke and Pandoria. They’re far more creative in design and reflective of who the characters are meant to be. The rest are average designs, with Nia being the perfect example of average. She’s a great character, but her design is standard cat girl.  Dromark, Nia’s Blade is a basic white tiger.

Another aspect of the character work that can’t be ignored when talking about Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is the objectification of its many female characters. The camera frames the female body in an over the top sexual manner. Character designs utilize proportions that would put Heavy Metal magazine and Frank Frazetta to shame. If it had some thematic resonance or narrative component, I could understand, but Xenoblade Chronicles 2 would be largely unchanged as a game with its removal. This is fan service at its worst.

What really drives me up the wall, is that hyper-sexualization overshadows the strong female characters presented in the game. Morag, the Emperor’s sister and Grand Inquisitor, quickly became my favorite character in the whole game. She’s strong, determined, and funny in a dry-sarcastic manner. Yet, the games terrible sexual politics impact her character.

Tora mistakes her for a man throughout the game. Perhaps as a non-human he cannot tell, but this never impacts the rest of the cast.  They conform to traditional gender norms, so the game doesn’t apply the same joke. It could also have been commentary on gender roles, if there was a lesson attached, but the game never makes anything more of it than a cheap laugh.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 would be a better game without the hyper-sexual content. Nothing integral to the gameplay or narrative would be altered by the removal of these fan service elements. I’m not going to argue the game should have been censored upon release. Instead, the argument is the game designers made a poor choice by keeping the content rather than editing it out. Choices are made all the time in game design, and this one negatively impacted the game.

Okay, from low point to a high. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is easily a top 10 best soundtrack of all time candidate.  While no single track is the equivalent of the Mario theme song (what is) the whole OST works to perfectly compliment the game play. The best track in the whole game is Roaming the Wastes, the theme of Mor Ardain. Jazz inspired with a ton of trumps blaring an energetic beat. I could listen to this one song forever and probably never grow tired of it.  The Mor Ardain Titan isn’t the most visually stunning design, but this music made it one of my favorite places to explore. 

From beginning to end the music is a perfect accompaniment to the environmental design and narrative flow. Yasumori Mitsuda, ACE, Kenji Hiramatsu, and Manami Kiyota blow their previous work away, and that’s a high mark of praise considering the previous games work.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a strange mix of great and terrible.  I absolutely adore the game for the most part.  Nobody invests 100+ hours into a game they don’t enjoy (I hope), but it’s not without its flaws.  This same experience keeps happening with the Xenoblade games, but for different reasons.  This go around, ridiculous sexuality was off putting enough to make me cringe at times. On the other hand, the combat and world design is stronger than ever. The plot is average, but strong enough to support a 50+ hour main campaign.

If you own a Nintendo Switch, I do recommend this title if you can stomach terrible anime styled fan service. If you can’t handle that kind of content, play the other games in the series. You’ll have a much better time. You could even pick up the next entry in the series, Torna the Golden Country. I’ll be reviewing it next, so stay tuned for that. It’s everything great about XC2 without this particular problem.