Meh-meh-meeeh! Kina can’t decide whether she likes Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or not. On one hand I’ve been playing it almost non-stop for the past two days and having a great time. On the other hand, the “story” is pissing me off and the battles have gotten a bit stale.
I hate stories where people stand around muttering cryptic stuff they refuse to explain. And eeeeverybody knew eeeeverybody 500 years ago except Rex so they’re always talking over his head. Today I’m going to bide my time and go easy on the spoilers but just you wait until I learn the whole story. I will spoil it all, oh how I will spoil.
But I suppose it’s not much of a spoiler to mention that Rex and his not-girlfriend Pyra are still trying to get to Elysium 40 hours after the game started. And everywhere they go it’s the same story: “Thank you Pyra, but your Elysium is in another castle. Oh, and wasn’t it fun 500 years ago when we blah blah blah…. *long cutscene* Anyway if you go over to Place X they’ll definitely be able to help you.” Of course they won’t, they’ll just repeat the same sequence of long cutscenes and dark hints and send you over to Place Y.
And it’s not like it’s a quick process either. You’ll have to jump through a load of hoops just to get a big fat “I dunno, ask this guy” at the end. No wonder people report 100+ hours of play. I just wasted hours trying to meet this ruler in this huge palace. “Go to your room.” Trek 3 miles. “Go to the audience chamber.” Another 3 miles. “Go back to your room.” 3 more miles. “Back to the audience chamber.” Yuuup. “Now back to your room.” I’ve been sent to my room more times in the past five hours than in my entire life to date. At least we’re finally getting out of there.
But disliking the story while liking the rest of the game is how I played the original Xenoblade Chronicles too, so it’s nothing new. At least the battle system is getting more interesting now that I’ve unlocked some rare blades and picked up some new party members. I’m bored with using Rex all the time so I’m going to try Nia and some of the new recruits for a bit, see if I can rustle up some new combos. Is it just me or are ice and light blades super-rare? I don’t have a single one so far.
There’s plenty more I want to write about the lengthy, unrewarding quests and the random ambushes by high leveled enemies and the ugly designs of the generic blades and how quickly I ran out of Merc Group quests to do, but all that can wait till next time. Because the story has barely progressed, I feel like I’m just pressing buttons and running from place to place instead of playing a proper RPG. I’ll be back to post again once something interesting happens to draw me in. Either that or whenever I finish the game, whichever comes first. See ya later!
Think of this game more like a Bethesda kind of game where the game itself is the crazy amount of things you can do. It takes 100h+ because the sidequests are long and there are many. In general people want to grind their blades (and there are human-friendly methods to do that) and explore. If you are not liking the exploration then i dont think you will like this game at all. The story does get better but its still ways off and its just not that worth it xD. About the merc, the more ***** you get from a place, the more merc missions you will get (that and the merc lvl itself) so… get those deeds.
Yeah… about that… I kind of gave up on everything except finishing the game right now. I’d love to do sidequests the way I did them in XC, but the distances are so vast, the maps are so confusing, everyone and everything is so hard to find. Maybe when I reach the last dungeon I can go back and fool around a bit before the end. In the meantime I’m busy dodging enemies in the Spirit Crucible.