The first Xenoblade Chronicles was a niche role-playing game for the Wii that was dragged, kicking and screaming, to North America almost two years after it had been released in Japan. It received a 3D remake on the 3DS and a spiritual sequel on the Wii U in the form of Xenoblade Chronicles X, but it's remained a very odd property that appeals to a very specific audience. Now, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is available on the Switch, bringing the JRPG series to Nintendo's newest system and letting you play at home or on the go. This $59.99 game will satisfy JRPG fans, especially those who already loved Xenoblade Chronicles, but its dense mechanics and cute anime aesthetic may turn off gamers who are unfamiliar with the series.
A Xeno Saga
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 takes place on the world of Alrest. It's a cloud-covered land that features entire nations built on the backs of gigantic creatures called Titans. The beasts slowly circle the World Tree that is said to reach into Elysium, where the creator of the world lives. On Alrest, warriors are bonded with Blades, magical weapon-creatures. You play Rex, a young salvager who makes a living diving into the cloud sea and fishing up junk. A salvage mission goes wrong, and Rex finds himself bound to a Blade named Pyra, who wants to get to Elysium.
The story gets more complicated from there in a predictably JRPG way. Pyra is a special Blade, various forces want to use her, and Rex meets a variety of colorful friends who fight alongside him with their own Blades as they try to protect Pyra and get to Elysium. There are some interesting beats and twists through the story, but ultimately it doesn't feel too different from a Tales Of title. It lacks some of the epic desperation and intriguing mysteries of the first Xenoblade Chronicles and in Xenoblade Chronicles X ($19.99 at GameStop) , though the latter had its own problems of an unfocused, poorly defined narrative and pacing.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 isn't a dull story, and the various characters are charming and interesting. At least, the protagonists are; the villains feel like bog-standard anime villains who want to destroy/reshape everything for philosophical reasons and personal traumas. The story doesn't do anything particularly new, which is a bit jarring after the wild tangents Xenoblade Chronicles ended up going on, and the extensive metaphysical and philosophical questions raised by the series' spiritual predecessors, Xenogears and Xenosaga.
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Big, Colorful, and Anime
Alrest is visually striking, with the various Titans offering very different ecosystems to explore. Gormott is a traditional land of plains and forests with towering trees. Uraya consists of underground swamps and tiered pools. Mor Ardain is an arid wasteland ruled by a technologically advanced empire. Every area is distinct and attractive, with extensive use of verticality to produce sprawling areas to explore that don't just extend north, south, east, and west. Instead, areas wind up towards cliffs and down into caverns.
The character designs, however, are much less ambitious, with a fairly standard anime aesthetic. They don't look bad, but the big, expressive eyes and simple facial features look much more cartoony than the character designs in Xenoblade Chronicles. If Shulk is Terry Bogard, Rex is Pokemon Trainer Red.
The Switch can make Xenoblade Chronicles 2 look great when it tries. Big, sweeping landscapes are impressive, and some cutscenes are very crisp and well animated. Texture pop-in is a big issue when you travel between locations, though, and entire objects can take a few seconds to pop in depending on where the camera is and how the scene starts. A few cutscenes jarringly featured foreground or background elements that materialized while characters were talking.
Complicated Combat
Mechanically, the game is very similar to Xenoblade Chronicles, focusing on action-RPG elements combined with limited, customizable banks of special moves called Driver Arts. Playable characters can be bonded with multiple Blades, each with their own weapon type, elemental (fire, water, light, ice, and so on), role, and moves. A character can switch between three different Blades at a time (additional blades are stored passively, like Pokemon), each with three out of four available moves.
There are at least four sets of meters to keep track of on top of player health, and that's before you even try to pay attention to elements. There are the meters to change blades, the meters for each Blade's Driver Arts, a meter for each Blade's Blade Arts, and a separate party meter for the really big attacks. The result is a strangely complex combat system that offers a lot of options, the majority of which you'll likely ignore in favor of a small handful of favorites. I relied on a fire-fire-light Blade Arts combination to trigger nuclear explosions for massive, reliable damage through a good part of the game. Combat is more complicated than it has to be, but it's easy to pick up a good rhythm and just use the tools that are useful to you.
In combat, the X, Y, and B buttons let you trigger Driver Arts as their meters fill, which happens as you perform auto-attacks. The more moves you perform, the more you fill another meter which enables special elemental attacks called Blade Arts, triggered with the A button. These Blade Arts are determined by how many times you fill this meter, increasing the level and power of the Blade Art.
As you fight, you can switch between your three active Blades by pressing Up, Right, or Down on the direction buttons. Each Blade has a cooldown timer, so you can't constantly flip between them. On the bright side, each Blade has its own Driver Arts meters, so switching to a new Blade will often give you three Driver Arts you can immediately use. The Blade Arts meter is shared between Blades, so you can trigger different elemental special attacks with flexibility.
The elements and levels of Blade Arts let you use increasingly powerful special attacks. A level one Blade Art affects the target with that Blade's element. After that, a level two Blade Art with a complementary element can put a twist on it, like adding water on top of fire to give Steam Bomb status. Once that's set up, you can trigger a level three Blade Art that complements the level two twist, you can use a very powerful attack that causes a great deal of bonus damage, like putting fire on top of Steam Bomb to trigger Steam Explosion. Not all elements work well with each other, but the screen shows what combinations you can use as you fight, based on your active Blades and their Blade Art meters.
All this adds another layer of combat: Chain Attacks. Fighting builds up a separate party meter, which shows how well your three party members (each with up to three Blades they can switch between) are working together. The meter has three sections, and if someone falls you can burn a section to revive them. If all three sections are lit, you can trigger a Chain Attack that gets every character piling onto an enemy with Blade Arts.
Leveling Up
These complicated layers of combat are paralleled by complicated layers of player advancement. Each playable character has their own experience level, which defines their basic attributes. A combination of the blades' roles (attacker, healer, and tank) define each characters' class and enhance some of those attributes with class bonuses. Accessories add more bonuses, and character points earned on top of experience let you unlock permanent buffs in each character's skill tree. Also, in addition to combat experience, you accumulate bonus experience you can cash in by resting at inns, like in Final Fantasy XV ($20.80 at Amazon) .
Each Blade also has its own skill tree, the nodes of which are unlocked by accomplishing tasks like blocking a certain number of times or simply fighting together long enough. You can modify Blades with core chips and aux cores, which respectively change their combat characteristics (like equipping a stronger sword) and provide additional bonuses (like improving fire defense). There are also weapon points, which let you upgrade each character's Driver Arts, earned as they fight with each Blade.
For a consistent party of three, that's 12 skill trees, three equipment types, and weapon skill upgrades to deal with, not counting remembering to visit the inn every so often to make sure your level is as high as it should be. And you get more than three party members total, each of which can have more than three Blades. This is complicated and clunky, with a lot of menu diving. I enjoy this sort of wildly diverse, incremental micromanagement, but it will turn off many. Fortunately, menu navigation is quick, so it's easy to flip between different skill trees and equipment lists to make sure you're ready.
Random Blades
Every character has at least one major, five-star Blade they work with (and act as their own characters in the plot, albeit characters reliant on their respective player characters). You can get additional Blades by bonding core crystals you pick up through the game. These are random loot boxes with new Blades to collect. The vast majority of Blades are one, two, or three-star Blades with common, shared designs and personalities. Their skill trees are smaller and simpler, and they're easy to collect and forget. In fact, at one point in the game you can start sending your unused Blades out on their own missions, to make them stronger and find resources.
Occasionally, you get rare five-star Blades from core crystals. These are Blades with their own unique designs, personalities, and skills, and often with their own side quests to pursue. I found almost ten five-star Blades in addition to the Blades my party came paired with. Each one felt and looked distinct, and was a very pleasant surprise reward to find among dozens of common Blades.
The core crystal system is very loot box-like, but don't worry. All core crystals, common and rare, are obtained entirely through gameplay. There are no microtransactions to worry about. And a few notable core crystals are even found through additional means like exploration and side quests, so you don't always have to rely on random chance.
Oh, you can also upgrade entire regions' development levels by completing side quests, talking to NPCs, and selling salvage you collect at salvaging points, which prompt quick little minigames to get items. Higher development levels mean lower prices and better selections in shops, and more side quests.
Size and Scope
With so many things to keep track of, you'll have to run all over the game if you want to do everything. This can be difficult, because the different regions are massive MMO-like zones with lots of ground to cover. Fortunately, you can instantly fast-travel between landmarks all over the world at nearly any time. Pressing X brings up the Skip Travel menu, which lets you pick where you want to go instantly.
This is very handy mechanically. It's also completely bonkers narratively. No matter the situation or what time constraints you're under, you can teleport anywhere for some item farming, level grinding, and side quest completion. It makes absolutely no sense that when you're given a three-hour time limit (narrative, not literally timed) before an entire continent sinks, you can still leisurely wander around, as long as you want, anywhere in the world.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is simply huge, like the first Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles X. There are multiple regions, each with multiple zones, each loaded with side quest goals, resource points, and entire sections level-gated by much more powerful monsters you can't beat until much later in the game. Add dozens of voiced cutscenes and you have an adventure that can easily hit 50 to 60 hours without even trying to do everything. The amount of things you can do around Alrest is really impressive, and should satisfy JRPG fans looking for lots of content in a single package.
There are no multiplayer or online features in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. This isn't surprising for a JRPG, and considering how much you can do on your own it isn't really missed.
For Fans, Not First-Timers
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 isn't the best game on the Nintendo Switch, but it's certainly among the biggest. While it's paced and structured very differently, Alrest in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 easily feels as big as Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild ($79.88 at Amazon) , and the more traditional JRPG quest structure gives the adventure a much more epic feel compared with the physics puzzles and lone-character exploration of Zelda. If you're a fan of the genre, this game will certainly satisfy.
If you aren't a JRPG fan, though, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 will feel like an imposing game with byzantine layers of mechanics that can be hard to crack. It isn't the pick-up-and-play wonder of Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Odyssey , but it doesn't try to be. It's a sequel to two already niche games, and its very existence is a mild surprise. If you liked Xenoblade Chronicles or just want a JRPG on the Switch, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 will please you. If you aren't particularly sold on the concept or the genre to begin with, you can give this strange, impressive, satisfying, and oddly complicated game a pass.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for the Nintendo Switch is a massive JRPG you can play at home or on the go, but if you aren't already familiar with the Xenoblade series, its design and scope can be bewildering.
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