1.12.2017

This game to me deserves 5 stars but I don't think it is for everyone. This is a traditional Japanese RPG (JRPG) so if you are into these then go ahead and give this a go but if not be very warned, this may not be for you. I was lucky to receive the game 4 days before launch so have clocked in 20+ hours at the time of writing this. This is also the very first game in the Xeno series that I have played and I can confirm that there is no need to have played any of the others as this is a self contained story although if you are fans of the series I have seen that there are nods to the previous games.GraphicsThe graphics in docked mode are fairly good, they are colourful sharp and vibrant,due to the anime style artwork they have gotten away with not having as much detail, but it's when the fighting starts that the graphics start to show how great the art style is. Due to the various different elemental attacks you can utilise there are bright colourful effects all over the screen. In handheld mode the graphics take quite a bit of a hit but it doesn't make it unplayable by a long shot, in fact I have spent more hours playing in handheld as this is just more convienient for me.SoundThis is one of the areas that the game really excels to me; the music is phenomenal. There has been a lot of work go into the musical score for this game and I hear there are a very high number of unique tracks for this game. It really does set the mood for the game and I would say the game is worth it just for the soundtrack. There is a potential negative here for some though with the voice acting; I'm absolutely fine with it and have no issues at all but I can see some being put off by it, aparently there will be a day 1 update option for Japanese language with English subs but I personally won't be using this as have no issues with the voice acting. So far there has been a fair few accents from all over the UK, I won't go into details and let people experience this for themselves.GameplayThis is were it will be hard to describe, the exploration part of the game is in a huge open world (after a fairly linear start which acts as a tutorial) with huge beasts roaming around, there are small creatures as well. Most of these are fairly placid and will not be aggressive towards you but there are some that will attack on sight! You can engage any of these at any time and some of these fights are really challenging to absolutely impossible until you have levelled up, due to this I believe there will be a lot of replay to this. The fighting itself is kinda like a MMORPG just with single player. On the surface it looks fairly basic does the combat; you approach an enemy and then the auto attack starts, these auto attacks slowly build up your Arts which in turn when used build up a special meter to unleash a really powerful attack thats effectiveness is determined by a button press on a quicktime event. These specials can be chrged up further if you don't activate them straight away, with the level 4 special being a lot more powerful so worth saving up your specials. Further to this you can also chain specials together with your other members of the party, although for standard enemies it's unlikely that you will get to unleashing these specials regularly.StoryThe story is fairly straightforward so far and I won't go too much into it here as thats for the player to discover however I will say that for me it's engaging and fun with a good level of humour but some serious story as well. Pretty much the standard for a JRPG in that the world is possibly on brink of dying and it is your responsibility to make everything good again. So far I'm feeling the same emotions as I did when playing Final Fantasy 7 or The Secret of Mana, which are my 2 favourite RPG's of all time.OverallFor a big fan of the JRPG this was a no brainer buy for me and a definate 5 star game however this is not for the faint hearted. There is a huge amount of customisation that I have not even touched upon so far and wouldn't know where to start writing about it, it's things like this that really give a great feel for replayability and uniquness to the characters. I'm sure it will take me over 100 hours to finish this game and there is also a season pass being released for this that is looking to add a lot of content to the game throughout next year. I'm not a very big fan of season passes as a whole but with Zelda and now this I'm fairly confident that Nintendo have put enough content into the main game that it is not required and the amount of extra content will be more that worth it.I hope that this will help you decide if this is for you or not, I wouldn't want anyone buying this game thinking it is something it is not though once you have played for several hours and got a goodd handle of the combat system I think most RPG fans could appreciate how many levels of depth are in the combat.07/10/18 UpdateAfter over 140 hours I have finally completed the main story. What a great experience this was? For me this has been one of the best JRPGs I've ever played. So much content and I haven't managed to do anywhere near everything. I have started new game plus to try to get more of my blades affinity charts complete. I've also put nearly 20 hours into the expansion and can confirm that this is also very worthwhile buy. The graphics have had an upgrade, although only small and the battle system has been overhauled to simplify it somewhat.Can't wait for the next Xenoblade game!

7.12.2017

JRPGS normally consist of beautifully designed worlds, amazing sound tracks, fantastic characters, fantastic animation, brilliant lore. I mean what's not to like right?Well I don't know why, but I just cant get on with them. I put the disk into my console anticipating a true epic, but for some reason it ends up on the shelf where it gathers dust, becoming a figment of my imagination.Sound familiar?Well not with this little beauty!! Wow. What a game. I don't know where to start. Apparently the voice acting reviewed badly, it's definitely different but certainly isn't bad! Perhaps a little cheesy at times, but that's more of a JRPG than thing than a problem with the game.You could certainly do a lot worse.It took me around 100 hours to complete this game, that's focusing mainly on the story and doing hardly any of the side quests by the way! It's a BIG game which I'm sure most of you know is typical of the JRPG genre.There were many surprises and plot twists in this game which is sentiment to it's writing. You'll find yourself laughing, crying and getting angry throughout the entire game... and you definitely know you're onto a winner when you don't want it to end. This will be one I revisit in years to come.Buy it, you wont regret it.***COMBAT STRATEGY GUIDE***It introduces you to combat slowly over many hours at the start of the game. It probably took me around 15 hours of gameplay to fully appreciate it all.To get the most out of the game and do a lot of damage you need to understand "specials", "combos", "chain attacks" and "elemental orbs". I will try and explain it as simply as possible.(1) Using "SPECIALS" to create "COMBOS" and "ELEMENTAL ORBS"In the top right hand corner of the screen, after you have carried out a special attack are certain elemental symbols and attack names.The combo has to be carried out in the correct order if you want to create an elemental orb (more on orbs later). What do I mean by combo?Well…When you or any other blade uses a special attack, it will create a display in the top right hand corner of the screen. This is the FIRST stage.The SECOND special used has to be the SECOND element displayed in the top right and a level TWO special by any of the parties blades.The THIRD special used has to be the THIRD element displayed in the top right and a level THREE special by any of the parties blades.If you did this correctly, the third blade conducting the level three special will create an invisible “elemental orb” of their element. So if pyra attacked on the third stage it will be a fire orb.Practice doing this if you can because it’s important in the longer boss fights if you want to do high damage.Still with me?(2) CHAIN ATTACKS AND BURSTING ELEMENTAL ORBSNow in order to see this "invisible elemental orb" you just created you will need to conduct a chain attack by pressing “+” when your party gauge is full (top left of the screen).As soon as you press "+" and enter the chain attack STOP and TAKE YOUR TIME! You will need to select a character in the bottom right to conduct the first part of the chain.Look beneath the enemy, if you successfully created an elemental orb you will notice it beneath the enemies health bar.If possible you will need to select a blade with the same element as this orb to help burst it. You get three attacks per go, one with each driver. If 2/3 of your attacks match the element of the orb you created it will burst and allow you to attack again for more damage.If you find you aren’t matching the element of the orb very often, there is an item you can give your blades that will help burst the orb even if they are a different element. I have this item on at least one blade from each driver. This will guarantee I can burst orbs and keep attacking for massive damage.I hope this helps you out in game and made sense. Any questions feel free to ask here and I will reply if I can.The only other thing, is check out your drivers arts in the menu and take note of what they do "effect". Some weapons can "BREAK", "TOPPLE", "LAUNCH" and "SMASH". Try and include a variety of these on your different drivers. If you can pull them off in the order I just mentioned whilst building your party gauge it allows you to do big damage. It also looks really cool with great animation on screen.

12.2.2019

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was a game I didn't think I'd like. The voice acting seemed really off putting from the trailers, I never played any of the other games in the series, and I wasn't sure if I'd like the gameplay itself (standing around, hitting enemies with numbers).After eventually deciding to give it a go, I quickly found out that the game does indeed deserve the scores and ratings it gets. The highs are high and the lows are low.It's a JRPG so you would except a very story focused game, and XC2 definitely has that going for it. It begins pretty simply with your young protagonist getting great powers and essentially embarking on a trip to save the world. However, as I played,the more I realized that the plot went into different themes and brought in various elements I wasn't expecting, which was a major plus. It's definitely one of the most memorable stories I've played through in quite some time.The combat system is where it shines, despite being infamously complicated. That is simply untrue however, as the real issue lies in how it instructs you in it. Tutorials pop up as they become relevant, giving you a comprehensive description of what each mechanic does, but then those handy tutorials are gone forever. I had to look up on Youtube a guide to the combat (of which there are numerous) to really get an understanding. Once I watched a few, I could really begin to enjoy its depth and simplicity.Each character during combat does a three hit auto attack. Hitting enemies with the auto attack builds up 3 driver arts that, when filled, allow the character to use a move that has various effects, from doing more damage from behind, or healing the party. Using driver arts, much like auto attacks, builds up a special meter, which can be filled up to 3 stages. Using a special will begin a combo with that character's element. A chart appears in the corner of the screen showing you what other elements can be used in each combo. For instance:Fire special level 1 can lead into a fire special lv 2 OR a water special lv2. The fire special lv 2 can then branch into a fire lv3 or a dark lv3, and the water lv 2 can go into electric lv3 or earth lv3 (these vary greatly in game so these elements might not be correct, but the fundamentals are the same).Hitting the enemy with a lv 3 special deals massive damages, but gives them a buff that reduces the damage to that particular element, encouraging the player to use a variety of different elements. Once you have a bunch of those buffs on the enemy, you can use a chain attack to attack in sequence to try to remove those buffs by attacking with the opposite element (a fire buff will be removed by a water character attacking). Removing these buffs deals tremendous damage.There is more to the combat with driver combos, accessories, selecting different driver arts, etc, but the above is the meat and potatoes of the combat.The main place that the game falls down is with the atrocious side quests. While I feel I could have beaten the game without the need to complete many of them (I never really desired for exp or anything that the quests gave), it's a damn shame that doing little side tasks in this game tend to devolve to "go here for me and collect 10 X".One such quest had me go off and collect 10 X and 10 Y, which were fairly easy to find. When I came back, the guy asked me to do another favour for him, that being (you guessed it) finding 15 Y. He THEN wanted me to go to two other regions to specific spots to dig up some of his old gear, and THEN when I brought them back, he made me deliver them to each of his kids scattered around the world. When I returned after all that, the reward was insignificant compared to the amount of work put in. The fetch quest tedium is real.Overall, I would high recommend this game. The story is brilliant and mindblowing, the characters were either very funny, very cool, or a hybrid of both, the graphics are nothing special but are fitting for the switch, the music is top notch with battle tracks having great variation for the wide variety of different battles you can get into, and finally the post game blade collectathon is rewarding to complete. If you're on the fence like I was, just go for it. It's what I did and I'm glad I gave it a chance.

7.2.2018

After nearly 200hours on this game and completing it finally I feel I should write a review -reasons I love this game:-It's massive, you will definitely get your money's worth if you like the gamethe combat is fun, if not a bit long winded in the beginning of the gamestory richa lot of optional content that doesn't seem to drag and is easy to leave and pick up laterCan be a slight challenge sometimes but not over punishing you when you mess upit's pretty nice to look at graphics wise, and with large text that's easy to read if you play handheld mode it's not going to wreck your eyes like some games.the music is impressive and sometimes makes up for the bad voice actingI haven't played any ofthe previous xenoblade games and it was nice to pick it up and not feel like I was missing a bit chunk of the story like with some other gamesreasons I didn't give it 5 stars:-At the beginning, it's very tutorial heavy and to view the information again you have to buy the information from "informants" in the game, rather than them adding a help section to the game. pretty weird way of helping you remember certain mechanics. the information is also pretty vague after the initial explanation. It can take a while for you to fully understand what is going on with the combat.the AI on your party members is bad, they don't seem to adapt to what blade you have out (each blade is either a tank/healer/damage). they seem to switch based on elemental weakness and elemental combos rather than if you are dealing damage. they don't seem to care if you are getting your face smashed in, if the main character dies without any party charges left - the combo ends and you get sent back to a checkpoint. you have to give them blades from 1 role only for them to really be effective. A minor annoyance.The voice acting, particularly for the English translation is appalling apart from a few characters, annoying and unskippable ( monolith have since patched this and is much less painful now) and in a lot of points I feel doesn't add much to the game. I would recommend turning off the combat voices through the menu to save some of your sanity, and perhaps switch to Japanese voices.the mechanic of receiving blades is too random, you can use items to increase your chances of getting a particular element but it seems to make no difference when it comes to the blades that matter (there are rare blades that have a low chance to appear). the fact that the blades are bound to a single driver and overdrive items (let you switch drivers) are very rare is frustrating. hopefully monolith will think to add a vendor for overdrives at some point since this is just annoying, especially as you reach the latter parts of the game with a certain character ( I won't spoil it for you). you just seem to end up with good blades on characters you don't want them on, which just ends with them not getting used - which is disappointing.Tiger Tiger. the fact poppi is only upgradable with this game is a dumb move, and one of the reasons Tora is benched for me as early as possible.All in all if you like big, sprawling story-rich RPG's then I would recommend this game to you, it's not without its faults but I think that the good parts of the game outweigh the bad by a fair bit to make this a worthy purchase. monolith is also fairly keen with updating and fixing bugs and quality of life issues in the game which is nice to see, as well as adding DLC sometime in the future with new game plus around the corner.

16.1.2018

Xenoblade Chronicles 2's highly flexible and customisable battle system has a very deep learning curve which can take some time to pick up. It's one of those games where you start off dying a lot wondering, "Why can't I win...?" or "Why are these fights dragging out so much?" but, once you've learned about timing attacks, how to chain specials battles can be very satisfying. Those who are used to spamming skills right off the bat and making quick work of enemies for level grinding however, may not like its pacing as much.Just like its previous game on the Wii (and New 3DS port), it has a huuuge beautiful open world to explore and with an equally engaging story to boot.

22.6.2018

This is one of the best collectors editions I have seen in a while, especially if you consider what you get for the price. Nice artbook, steelbook + standard game box, a selection of tracks all in a package that is special on its own. Yes, you do put it away and rarely/never go back but the same can be said about most stuff that people collect.Now onto the game itself. Just play it. Regardless of what one might say about the story (which I think is fantastic and polished), it is filled with those moments of awakening hidden power that make the player feel awesome. All of this accompanied by a great soundtrack to set your heart racing. In other words: this game offers great action cinematics,

6.12.2017

I hesitated on reviewing this game until I’d spent a good 20 hours on it, and in doing so may miss out on early day helpful vies, however I feel a game of this scope and magnitude deserves the reviewer to show it a certain amount of respect.Firts off, let me point out that this game is not for the casuals. This is a fully fledged AAA JRPG, and as such you will be dedicating many tens of hours, if not hundreds into this adventure.Whilst I won’t comment on the story, for want of spoilers, I will say the voice acting is generally very solid, and whilst it may grate on some, others will find it very well delivered.The game runs at a fairly solid frame rate and so far,

18.12.2017

For anyone who's played the original Xenoblade Chronicles(XC) and Xenoblade Chronices X (XCX), buying this game is a must. For anyone who hasn't played either XC or XCX, then you owe it to yourself to play all three! (Unless of course, you don't like JRPGs).You can buy the normal edition of this for around £40. It's a fair price for a game that can eat up anywhere between 60-100 hours. (I put in over 100 hours in XC, and over 200 in XCX). This collectors edition is a lot harder to get hold of and retails around £70. For that you get the game plus a bunch of extras: A gorgeous steel-book case, a detailed art-book and CD soundtrack. The box/book measures about 26x34cm. As a fan of the series,

10.12.2017

For anyone who's played the original Xenoblade Chronicles(XC) and Xenoblade Chronices X (XCX), buying this game is a must. For anyone who hasn't played either XC or XCX, then you owe it to yourself to play all three! (Unless of course, you don't like JRPGs).You can buy the normal edition of this for around £40. It's a fair price for a game that can eat up anywhere between 60-100 hours. (I put in over 100 hours in XC, and over 200 in XCX). This collectors edition is a lot harder to get hold of and retails around £70. For that you get the game plus a bunch of extras: A gorgeous steel-book case, a detailed art-book and CD soundtrack. The box/book measures about 26x34cm. As a fan of the series,

4.12.2017

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a great Game for the Nintendo Switch Consolewith some Small Problems here and there. BUTThe game has A Great Vast Open world too Explore with a good to great Story,it also has lots of interesting characters at range from average too great with a mix of Scottish and English voice actors Dubbing the English release of this game,the game use's standard definition Graphics when in hand held mode and upscale it to 520p-720p in docked mode, and back ground music Great overall .now the problem with XC2 the Combat Menu/UI fells a little bit lazy/simplified with it limited move set for each blade and not being able to swap out/buy other moves for the blade you use the most and

8.2.2018

cannot praise this special edition enough - it is much larger than you would expect and the box itself is a creation Apple themselves would be proud of, the way it slides part to reveal its contents. the art book is substantial and interesting without spoiling anything in the game itself. the steelbook looks great and the cd soundtrack whilst greatly appreciated is a little underwhelming with only 13 tracks. this is especially frustrating since there does not appear to be a full soundtrack to buy at the moment and the music is one of the highlights of the game, reminiscent of previous games in the series and the genre but catchy and perfectly suited to the area it represents.

9.7.2020

Great story. Great music. Great game.I'm a huge fan of Chrono Trigger, Zelda series, Star Ocean 3, wild arms, FF6-10, Secret of Mana, Monster Hunter, Grandia, Legend of Legaia, Fire emblem, etc. What did all those games have in common? Great sound, story and gameplay.The game takes some getting used to as the combat system is not what most people will be used to but it gets better and better and more rewarding. There is a lot to take in and maybe a Youtube video without spoilers could be of some assistance.The music, especially Gormont daytime, is simply breathtaking the battle tunes get your heart racing and the unique monsters when you hear their theme you know it's time to run for your

3.12.2017

I LOVED the first Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii released here in 2011 and although I liked Xenoblade Chronicles X on Wii U in 2015 it just wasn't quite the same. I am so happy to say this the proper true follow up (hence the 2 denomination!) and it is a worthy sequel as far as I have played so far.If you are on the fence with this game because of playing Xenoblade X, this is a better game with more traditional RPG storyline unlike X which was more about exploration that story.If you are unsure because it is called Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and you have never played a xenoblade game before, there is nothing you need to know before hand. Think of it more like Final Fantasy series,

1.12.2017

Personally this is my most anticipated game of the year, and I ordered my collectors' edition copy right away and spared a whole day in my schedule to play it day one. But Amazon DIDNT EVEN SHIP IT up to this point, with only one apology email sent last minute. Seriously, screw you. You do not understand the value of playing games day-one, and do not bother to make up for the loss of buyers. I chose Amazon for its reliability of self-owned shipping system and the price, but they are of no use if Amazon doesn't even try to deliever. Luring people in with relatively low price and do not fulfill the duty is degenerate money-thirst. Screw you again. Thanks.I could not bear with this that much,

5.6.2018

I have been playing videogames for around 28 years.To date, after countless RPGs, my favourite was Skies of Arcadia on the dreamcast. Zelda Breath of the wild was a close second, just a bit bland.Xenoblade chronicles 1 was good but at the time the graphics upset me, a lot of jaggies, and I never liked the wii controls that much.Xenoblades X was OK, I never finished it, I never liked the wiiU controller much and I played on holiday without a TV, that game was not made for the gamepad (writting was very tiny, barely could read stuff) and some songs were terrible.Final fantasy 15 was beautiful on the xbox X, but I didn't like the combat, and the world was not really open,

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