Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Monday Musings 18)

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is Tempting Me To Buy the Switch

My history with the Xenoblade series started with Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii but never finished it when I got stuck at the part after Sharla becomes part of your party and you have to enter a tower. For some reason, I couldn't find where you're supposed to go. I literally went around and around the tower, and couldn't for the life of me find the entrance. I believe at that time, there were no guides or YouTube videos so I quit the game. I was pretty upset as I loved the story, characters and gameplay.

I then played Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Wii U, as I watched Craddoc play the game and it looked incredible with the skells. XCX was my favorite game of the year, even surpassing Bloodborne because of the characters, mechs, gameplay and all the customization you can do. It took awhile to build up the Laila skell (I call her the Laila Queen) and armor to completely demolish Pharsis, who is the hardest enemy as she regenerates very quickly so you need very fast and high DPS. 

As you can tell from that link, the RPG elements are very intense and detailed. Just being in the mech and having that freedom to fly and fall from great heights is an experience I've never had in any other video game, more so than even the Gravity Rush series. Despite being incredibly huge, the level design is such that there are tons of hills, mountains, huge tree roots that you can get lost in--the world has vertical and horizontal depth and variety, and it's definitely not copy and pasted. The music is lovely, here's the Sylvalum area theme music.

In fact, I'll have to revise my top 10 favorite games list to include XCX.

When Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was featured in the initial Nintendo Switch presentation, it looked really bad in terms of the art direction and game concept, so I was rather upset and not at all interested in it. However, recently, the Nintendo Direct showed gameplay, and the game looks fantastic. If you watch the section where you customize the blades, the amount of choices and leveling is an RPG gamer's dream. I dare say that the level of RPG elements seem to be more in depth than one of my highly anticipated RPGs, Ni No Kuni 2.

At the same time, I'm still holding off on buying the Switch. But, because of this game, I actually might get a Switch if and only if:

1. They fix all the issues such as the console bending, dock scratching the screen, left joy-con desyncing and so forth.
2. Drastically reduced price as we're forced to buy a screen protector, memory card and pro controller.
3. There are ways to back-up your files on a USB thumb drive and/or cloud storage.
4. Realize that this is the only game I'll get for the system.

The price will have to be very low, as this game may be the only one I want for the system. Therefore, my previous advice on whether you should buy the Switch still holds true--if you REALLY need that one game, buy the Switch only if the above list holds true.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 will be released on December 1.

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