I did it! One month later I beat this game! And now it's time for an incredibly late review!

I'll try to break this review up into parts so I can collect all of my thoughts without forgetting anything from this massive game. This is going to be incredibly long so let's get right into it!

Don't worry about spoilers, I'll only be talking about story up to Chapter 2. So I won't go through any major spoilers.

The Overview.

So let's talk about what exactly Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is. The game is a JRPG where you run around gigantic Titans and fight tons of crazy monsters and enemies.

The combat might seem simplistic but there's a lot of depth that keeps you engaged in battles at all times. You have three attacks you can use that have multiple effects like knock back, break, and topple. To charge these attacks you have to wait and use your auto attacks.

The more powerful an attack the longer it takes to charge. Meanwhile you take lots of damage from the enemy and you slowly whittle down their health.

There are attacks that have a passive effect by healing your entire team, or dropping a potion which you have to run over to grab.

When you use your special attacks you charge up your finishing moves, which have 4 levels. Then after you use the finishing move you start a massive combo that requires you and your allies to use two more special moves to finish it and do massive damage.

After that you also have two other blades. Wait what's a blade? The blades are basically your combat tools. You can have up to three equipped in battle, you can switch between them after they charge up a little bar.

You have to plan out your finishing moves so your allies are set to help you use an extremely powerful combo that can obliterate your foes.

Next you have two allies in battle who can heal you, help you fight, set up combos, etc. typical JRPG things. So that's the basics of the battle system.

The Titans.

Outside of battle you run around these gigantic titans exploring the world and collecting all kinds of loot. Money, bugs, plants, Aux Cores, and core crystals.

This is so much fun. You get to see monsters in their natural habitats and there's a ton of variety in the worlds.

The lands are massive and breathtaking, the side quests do a great job at taking you around most of the world. Even then there's places I still haven't been to in all of the Titans.

The designs are all elaborate and make use of field skills which are basically HMs that every blade has and you have to level up slowly.

There's tons of exploring to do and it could've been the game on its own. I especially loved getting to explore Argentum and doing all these jumps to get in the weirdest places.

The Titan designs are all creative and full of monsters do it isn't just running around mindlessly. I always looked forward to discovering a new Titan for all the exploration. Gormott especially because it's so darn huge. There's so many places to visit in it at many different points in gameplay.

The enemies.

All of the monsters around the world are creative and unique to fight. They have different behaviors and actions so you have to get to know each type of monster.

Now they do reskin some monsters and slap a new name on them but they always add new monsters to supplement the old ones.

The best monsters are the Unique Monsters. Which are monsters that are incredibly strong and hard to defeat. They always make you think and cause maximum interaction.

You can even rematch them if you're so inclined to. They're one of the best parts of the game.

The Complex Battle Stuff.

So you can also level up every single one of your special attacks to deal more damage, then you can equip each blade with an aux Core to add a special effect to their power.

To further throw things into crazy you can give your character accessories to give them more power, health, or special abilities.

After that you can upgrade a blade's auto attack power for an absurd price if you buy one for every character and all three of their blades.

You can also upgrade an affinity chart to give yourself more health, defense, or weird powers.

Blades also have affinity charts that you upgrade by completing specific tasks like giving them an item or killing a certain type of enemy.

Oh yeah also blades have an element. Fire, water, ice, wind, light, dark, earth, and lightning. If you hit an enemy with the opposite element your damage is higher. You also need to know the type of your blade and your friend's blades so you can set up a combo.

Blades also have different weapon types. Rare Blades have unique weapons sometimes or just the generic weapons like hammers, gloves, swords, guns, basketballs, katanas, lances, axes, and all kinds of other weapons.

These weapons can determine the type of attacks you have. Basketballs are normally healers, axes are really heavy hitters, guns tend to have AOE moves, and katanas hit fast and hard.

Every weapon feels unique and further makes each blade entirely different from another.

So after you do a combo you attach a burst orb to the enemy of the element you finished the combo with. Then if you have the three bars in the top left corner filled up you can hit plus and you'll go into an attacking frenzy.

You have all of your teammates pick a blade to use a finishing move. If you break an orb while doing this you upgrade the level of the move. If you plan it out correctly you can do absurd damage to your victim.

I'm not done yet though. You can resonate with a core crystal that you get from chests, enemies, and side quests. This is how you get more blades. If you're lucky you'll pull a rare blade which have unique voices and character models.

The worst one is Ice Basketball Lady.

Depending on how you build your team can change the course of the battle. I play Rex with a team that can hit hard but also provide massive healing to the whole team. Then my other party members are the real killers.

That's just how I play though. Because if you don't pay attention then you'll be creamed.

Now what if you or an ally get knocked out? Well you can run over to them and use one of the three bars in the top left to revive them.

These bars fill up pretty slowly depending on what you do. Finishing moves and special moves are normally the best ways to fill it up.

Then there's the combo that obliterates enemies. Every attack has an effect and one of the effects is break. It's a timed effect that can add damage to a finishing move.

You can combine this with another special move called topple. This knocks the enemy over. Then there's an attack with the launch effect that throws them into the air. Finally smash will send them flying into the ground for massive damage. While you do all this you get tons of potion drops.

So it's worthwhile to get a team that can do this four move combo. It's very much worth it to smash tough enemies into the earth.

I'm still not done! You can rest at Inns to exchange bonus EXP for even more levels. This is normally the easiest way to level up.

The entire game is pretty forgiving with levels. I never had to grind for levels even once. I was always able to strategize around a tough enemy.

The Story.

The story is amazing! I encourage anyone to look up the cutscenes online and watch the story of you don't like JRPGs or don't think you'll get you hands on the game for a long time.

It's worth waiting for but the story should be experienced by everyone. The characters are all interesting and have motivations. Jin is my favorite villain of all time.

There's a lot of comedy and a silly undertone but god damn is this game unforgiving at times. I won't say what but this game really doesn't pull any punches. They will beat the characters down and flip off your expectations.

The story has a lot of really interesting themes that leave you with a lot to think about.

Furthermore the lore of the world is so deep and amazing that they're still telling you about it during the final chapter.

The creativity is very clearly there and I really love how everything the game explains ends up being used. Nothing is a plot device because it all feels like it fits and both sides use it.

The story is basically like this. Rex the salvager is hired to help a group of strangers named Jin, Malos, and Nia to fish something out of the water. They journey through a giant ship and find a girl and a sword. Rex gets stabbed in the back and murdered but the girl revives him by revealing she's a blade. This girl is Pyra.

They beat the crap out of Malos and Jin while Nia helps Rex escape alive. They land on Gormott and encounter Brighand. Nia is captured and Rex is saved by a Nopon named Tora.

Tora wants to build an artificial blade because he isn't capable of using real blades. So they help him and in return the group rescue Nia and escape.

The voice acting and dialogue is great and helps further each character's personalities establishing them each as different. Rex is also an amazing chapter.

The story is full of plot twists and is an amazing tale. Even the villains are all amazing! This darn game is too good!

The Bonus Content.

Where do I begin? First of all there's Tiger Tiger. A fun mini game that lets you upgrade Poppi and her forms with special powers. It's a great distraction and a fun little game.

Then there's Salvaging. Time the button presses to pull up great loot which you can trade for money. Salvaging is pretty fun and I enjoy going it when I can.

Mercenary Missions are ways you can make use of your blades that you never use in battle. They can also net you new items to put in your pouch for gaining new skills on your blades, as well as upgrading the blades, and giving you money and items.

The best of the bonus content is Heart to Hearts. These are voice acted moments with characters that give you some character development and some funny moments between characters who don't normally interact with each other. Rub a dub dub is the best thing ever.

The Bad.

Oh god there are some problems. First of all is the lip syncing. The voice acting is great, the lip syncing not to much. It doesn't match up with what the characters are saying at all and sometimes the lips move without there even being any dialogue.

Next is the randomization of blades. It's often really hard to pull rare blades towards the end of the game and you waste hundreds of Core crystals trying to collect all the rare blades.

Frame rate is another issue. I'm surprised it can run on the switch in handheld and sometimes the game slows down. Even when docked the game slows down.

A weird problem is when you fast travel to a new Titan the textures aren't loaded in for a second. The worst instance of this is during a cutscene the textures wouldn't load in for a moment, it really ruined the intensity of the moment.

Chapter 5 also has a lot of cutscenes but I enjoy them so that's fine with me, especially because it's only in the second half of chapter 5.

The biggest problem however, the worst part of the game, is in the late game. There are two instances of this. One in Chapter 7 and one in Chapter 9.

Now normally there are parts of the game you need a field skill to unlock but the blades you get from the story can get past these roadblocks. Normally it just makes you want to resonate with a specific core crystal you get from the story.

The problem comes when you aren't given everything you need to beat a roadblock. You have to either grind and level up your skills or you have to hope you pull a rare blade with that ability because regular blades are garbage and only have mastery abilities.

I had to stop for a whole hour to level up a field skill in Chapter 9 out of 10 chapters! I had to stop during an incredibly important story moment in one of the most intense parts of the game for no reason! It was just stupid!

It's the one thing I hate about this game. The one problem that is really hard to forgive.

The Cutscenes.

The cutscenes are action packed and amazing. They're all fully voice acted so you can really be engrossed in them. Sometimes there are some really great fights like the end of Chapter 1.

All the battling is well choreographed and interesting. I love the cutscenes for the amazing fighting an action.

The Music.

The music is catchy and awesome. One song from one of the Titans sounds like it should be in a musical. All of the music is expertly crafted to match the moments.

One song is one of my favorite songs in gaming. It's just so perfect, it matches the tone of the battles but also doesn't interrupt the voice acting and the action.

The Bosses.

The bosses are all unique and challenging. They're fun to see and for the most part I really enjoyed them. The only real problem is how a bunch of the final boss battles get cut off right in the middle.

Then you get a super powerful upgrade and cheese the fights. Although the final 3 chapter bosses are purely merciless. You just have to use all the skills you've accumulated over time.

Conclusion.

In conclusion I think everyone should get this game if they have a switch and like JRPGs. It doesn't tie much into the original game story wise and does a great job at easing someone who has never played a JRPG before into the genre.

The game is incredibly well made and I loved almost every single part of it. The story is something special and I really think you should look at the gameplay and see if you like it. It's not for everyone but nothing it.

Thanks for reading and have a great day! Bye!