The original Xenoblade Chronicles is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of my favourite games of all time. A love-letter to everything that makes fantasy and science fiction such compelling genres, its story incorporates so many classic tropes from novels, movies, and games that it comes full circle and becomes stunningly original. It was a heartfelt, breathtaking adventure that is to my mind, despite an ending that I personally found hypocritically underwhelming, still the best thing that ever came to the Wii.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is not as grand or epic as its predecessor but that’s largely by design. Director Tetsuya Takahashi has made a career out of telling stories about religious corruption, existentialist horror, and the meaning of life. His work questions what it means to be human, what freedoms we possess, and how we give our existence purpose. Xenoblade Chronicles 2, on the other hand, is a much simpler, lighthearted story about a boy, a girl, and an adventure to climb the great World Tree that reaches up to the paradise called Elysium. It’s an upbeat tale full of bright primary colours and the power of friendship. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Our story takes place in the world of Alrest, where humanity lives upon the backs of colossal Titans. While people have lived in peace atop these colossi for eons, the Titans have now at last begun to die out. Enter a young salvager named Rex, who makes his living by diving into the Cloud Sea surrounding the Titans and unearthing old ruins and artifacts from the distant past. When a job to explore an ancient sunken ship goes wrong, fate brings him face-to-face with a mysterious girl named Pyra. She asks his aid in climbing the World Tree to find her maker, Alrest’s godlike Architect, and save the world from its slow demise.
Pyra’s a lot more than just your average mysterious girl with pyrokinetic powers, however. As it happens, she’s a Blade; a humanoid entity who can bond with a human to grant them a magic weapon. More specifically, she’s the Aegis – the strongest of her kind – and possesses enough power to destroy Titans and devastate the entire planet. This, naturally, makes her a prime target for all sorts of nasty baddies who want to take advantage of her powers for their own nefarious purposes.
As far as stories go, it’s reasonably standard stuff and it’s something of a shame that Xenoblade 2‘s plot doesn’t have the twists and turns that made the first game such a unique experience. However, I would argue that it makes up for it with better-developed characters.
As much as I love the first game, there’s no denying that it was the protagonist Shulk’s story first and foremost. Xenoblade 2 goes in the opposite direction, focusing a lot more on showing off what its cast can do rather than putting all the weight on the hero’s shoulders. Far from being another submissive little JRPG ingenue, resident healer Nia is a spirited young girl who’s not afraid to undercut Rex’s wide-eyed optimism in a sassy Welsh accent. The party powerhouse Zeke and his Blade sidekick Pandoria seem like a pair of lovable idiots at first glance but turn out to have some very surprising hidden depths. And then, of course, there’s the strict, no-nonsense inquisitor Mòrag and her elegant but strong-willed partner Brighid.
These characters, and more, all get plenty of moments to show their stuff and remind us that Rex isn’t the only hero of this story. Their interactions refreshingly avoid a lot of the tired JRPG tropes. Humour stems from their awkward mistakes and slips-of-the-tongue as opposed to obvious sexual jokes, and the dramatic moments have noticeable impacts on their personalities. If a game is capable of making me feel genuinely upset about a little robot maid’s existential crisis, its script must have done something right.
And that really needs to be stressed, because I feel like the internet gives these actors more stick than they deserve. I’ll be the first to admit that Xenoblade 2 has something of an unevenly-translated script. Some scenes are good, some are awkward, but very rarely would I say that I saw a bad moment in the game. The regional British accents are still a treat and there are plenty of actors, such as Catrin-Mai Huw and Kirsty Mitchell, who do a damn fine job bringing their characters to life with what they have. There are a few actors who struggle, granted. Al Weaver’s Rex’s performance often feels understated during the game’s more dramatic scenes, especially when compared to the character’s Japanese actor, but I’d argue that he can sell his snarky lines quite effectively. Perhaps the actors weren’t all in the same room while they were recording and that made it hard to judge the energy of the scene, perhaps the director wasn’t quite sure what sort of emotions they wanted to convey… there could have been any number of reasons for the problems that the script has and by all means they should be addressed critically. However, that’s doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t also acknowledge the dub’s good parts. Especially when one of those good parts is David Menkin gloriously chewing his way through every piece of digital scenery his hammy villain can get his hands on.
Helping the story along is a a greater focus on international politics and the moral problems that come with them. While the first Xenoblade was about a young hero and his friends taking revenge upon an invading army of machines, this one is about exploring a world and understanding the people that live in it. This brings with it an interesting element of geopolitical uncertainty. The Empire of Mor Ardain is portrayed as an expansionist superpower but the inevitable death of their homeland and desperate need to find new lands for their people makes them surprisingly sympathetic. The Kingdom of Tantal is a corrupt, isolationist society but their reasons for retreating from the world are so valid that it becomes hard to blame them for their cynicism towards outsiders. Even the antagonistic Torna faction turn out to be surprisingly tragic villains once the truth behind their sadistic goals are revealed.
Honestly, it’s shame that such dramas aren’t the main focus of the plot. They’re great background elements and any one nation’s issues could be the focus of a whole campaign, but they don’t come directly to the forefront of the adventure enough for my liking. Perhaps that’s excusable, given the younger, less-politically savvy cast, but it’s still disappointing. What’s worse, however, is the staggering amount of faffing about between the start of the game and all of these interesting moments.
Xeno games are acquiring a reputation for being big, open-world RPGs full of things to do, places to see, and people to meet. While I’m certainly not opposed to the idea of a vast fantasy setting, I do think that this game’s size is its biggest barrier to true greatness.
The Titans of Alrest just don’t feel as grand in size and scale as the ones we explored in the last game. In fact, they feel more like different elementally-themed platformer levels. There’s a grass land, a desert land, an ice land, and then a techno-land for variety. Xenoblade 2‘s visual direction is pretty but ultimately uninspired and the lack of real dungeons doesn’t help. Most of the time, you’re just running around big open spaces trying to find a way your way to the next cutscene, each of which goes on twice as long as it needs to. This isn’t helped by the fact that each map has several areas that you can’t access until you’ve indulged in some truly asinine busywork, like feeding a character their favourite fruit five times so that they can somehow improve their ability to read books. When I got to the game’s end, I was slightly horrified to learn that I’d spent 80 hours in its world. Not because I didn’t like the game, far from it, but because I couldn’t help but think that the campaign simply should not have taken so long for what it was.
Fortunately, the soundtrack does a lot to redeem the overall feel of Alrest. While it’s not quite as good as the first game’s it’s still a lot of fun to listen to. The songs used for the environments and emotional scenes are excellent, with tracks like Father’s Last Gift and Delusions of Grandeur doing a lot to sell the game’s more dramatic moments. While the battle themes have got nothing on You Will Know Our Names, Uncontrollable, or Black Tar Part 2, they’re still highly entertaining. Incoming is a good old-fashioned electric guitar track that’s guaranteed to get you in the mood for boss fights and Torna’s battle theme is a uniquely Japanese-sounding melody that helps to emphasise the unique design of the villains. It’s just a pity that so many of your opponents have such obnoxiously large health bars that fighting them can feel like a chore.
And that’s a damn shame because Xenoblade 2‘s combat is pretty fantastic once you get into it. Like the original game, it runs on a real-time auto-attack system. Characters will automatically strike enemies when left idle but the player can order them to perform special moves called Arts when they build up enough energy. As you deal damage, you’ll fill up a gauge in the top-left of the screen. Once it’s maxed out, all available combatants will be able to perform a Chain Attack that sees them gang up on an enemy and attack their weak point for massive damage.
Each playable character fights using their Blade’s weapon. The more they do so, the more they build up Affinity with their partner. As Affinity improves, characters can tag their Blades in to perform elemental attacks. When two Blades of differing elements use their powers one after another, they can create elemental orbs that allow you to extend the duration of your Chain Attacks. It’s a complicated system, one that isn’t particularly well-explained, but once you get into the swing of things it becomes incredibly compelling. Each playable character can take up to three Blades with them into battle, each with their own unique weapons and attributes, and can switch between them during battle to use different Arts. There’s a lot of room for experimentation, which the game happily encourages.
Xenoblade 2‘s combat system does have flaws, such as its slower pace and inability to make normal attacks while moving around, but I do on balance prefer it to the original game. There’s just something amazingly fun about tripping up enemies with fiery whips before switching to a lightning hammer to block their counter-attacks before finishing them off with a watery katana. What I’m not a huge fan of, however, are how new Blades are acquired.
The story mode only gives each character a single weapon, getting more of them requires you to find Core Crystals scattered about the game’s world. These can then be used on one, and only one, character to create a new Blade. While these aren’t hard to find, and you’ll very quickly have more than you’ll be able to practically use, the problem is that you won’t be able to control which Blades are created. It’s very possible for your designated healer to wind up with a bunch of defensive Blades, or for a character you were developing as an attacker to draw nothing but healing Blades. This might’ve been forgivable if we could develop the stats of each character however we wanted but, just like in every other video game out there, all the male characters are inherently stronger while the women are more geared towards healing and support.
To make matters worse, there’s a low chance that each Core Crystal used will create a rare Blade with unique designs and powers that synergise with specific party members. However, because getting them is an entirely random process, it’s very possible for the right Blades to find the wrong masters. It is an utterly inane attempt to shoehorn lootbox elements into a game that didn’t need them at all. While, to the game’s credit, you don’t have to pay real-world money for the Core Crystals, the random element is still an incredibly annoying element of the game that simply didn’t need to exist.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a good RPG. At times, it’s a very good RPG. The increased focus on characterisation and customisation, coupled with a more interesting and strategical combat system, and a few cute nods back to the first game make it a fun little ride and a worthy continuation of the original story. What stops it from being as good as that game, however, is its identity crisis. The game feels unable to decide whether it’s content to be a smaller, intimate character study or a vast, sweeping epic that will succeed its predecessor. Sometimes, less is more – and that’s a lesson that Monolith Soft could definitely stand to learn. If you’re a fan of the traditional JRPG and have never tried to a Xenoblade game before, it’s a great place to start. If not, you may want to rent it first before making a decision.
samrowett.wordpress.com 