Xenoblade Chronicles 2

 Switch
User Score
8.5

Generally favorable reviews- based on 2500 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2,077 out of 2500
  2. Mixed: 183 out of 2500
  3. Negative: 240 out of 2500
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  1. Ophenix
    Dec 3, 2017
    4
    Tl;dr : The game isn't as good as it should have been. It has a blatant disregard for the player's time and the mixed bag that's design/characters/story keeps it from being fun.

    I was a fan of the first XBC, I never finished it cos it was wayyyyyy too long for me but the time I spent with the game was fun. XBC2 however seems to throw away most of what XBC was about. The world is still    Tl;dr : The game isn't as good as it should have been. It has a blatant disregard for the player's time and the mixed bag that's design/characters/story keeps it from being fun.

    I was a fan of the first XBC, I never finished it cos it was wayyyyyy too long for me but the time I spent with the game was fun. XBC2 however seems to throw away most of what XBC was about. The world is still gorgeous but a lot less polished. The combat is still MMO-ish but you have a lot less to do in combat and a lot more useless mechanics. The story is, so far, run-of-the-mill Shounen **** Go here, do 3-4 fetch quests, watch a cutscene, do 3-4 more fetch quests, and I'm talking about main story quests, not optional side quests.

    Lets add some examples so people reading this can decide if this game is for them or not.
    I died around 30-40 times to roaming flying mobs that are higher level than me. The initial area has around 5 of them, with another area off the side where you have another 4. You puling mobs cos they look interesting and you wanna fight them? A flying mobs joins and kills you. You grind to become strong enough to kill it? You get the mob low and another on of the **** joins in.
    Like, seriously, who is the idiot who designed the enemies in that world? I'm at the point where I don't want to explore because every area has 5 of these **** killing whenever I try to engage anything. It's like the game doesn't know if it wants me to explore the beautiful world they built, or it wants to **** me over for **** and giggles.

    Story is boring so far, I'm around 12 hours in, it might get interesting but I doubt it. The main protagonist is a blank slate nice guy with no personality and an annoying voice. Pyra, the second protagonist is more interesting and better voiced but her design makes her impossible to take seriously. She looks like she not only doesn't belong to the world but was also designed by a 13 year old boy who wanted to make Tron porn. E.g. at night she glows, which makes her fake looking huge boobs shine with green neon lights. I have no idea who designed her, he obviously never saw boobs in his life, or why he decided that this is the feature he wants to emphasize, but whatever.

    Lastly, the game's combat is, for the most part, boring. You need to time your skills to see the shining blue ring (still don't know what it does) and you need to combine skills for elemental trees (which is arguably the best part of combat) and you need to use skills to make enemies drop potions(?!?!?!?!) but the whole thing only comes together in boss fight where you have the time to build up combo chains. The usual combat isn't just a grindfest, it's a boring grindfest where you wait for icons to fill up. Also, did I mention you have 3 skills per character? Yup, you have 3 skills. 3 on each blade but the transition between blades is on cooldown as well. So you just wait...

    Some of the griped I have with the game are not design flaws but issues that can be patched out (like the **** enemy placement) but a lot of it is part of the way the game was built. They want you to grind and they want you to wait and they don't want you to have any fun.
    I'll try and finish it so I can get my money's worth but I don't recommend others play this.    … Expand
  2. dmax
    Dec 1, 2017
    1
    Despite the amazing music by Mitsuda carrying the game, the rest of it falls flat on its face.

    Filled to the brim with generic anime cardboard cutout characters, otaku pandering tropes. The character designs present range from extremely bland and forgetabble to extremely try hard at "moe". The voice acting is atrocious, do not play it in English at all, use the Japanese voices, and the    Despite the amazing music by Mitsuda carrying the game, the rest of it falls flat on its face.

    Filled to the brim with generic anime cardboard cutout characters, otaku pandering tropes.
    The character designs present range from extremely bland and forgetabble to extremely try hard at "moe". The voice acting is atrocious, do not play it in English at all, use the Japanese voices, and the repetitiveness of the voice clips is grating. The combat is a real mess of useless combat functions, QTEs and needlessly padding itself out to appear more complex than it actually is. The battles take extremely long too, far more longer than they need to and it makes getting through battles a complete slog where you're just wailing down the enemy sponges while watching autobattle play out. You can't even move when doing autobattle either which makes it even more restrictive. The combat is also very slow compared to the two previous Xenoblade games.

    The graphics are vastly worse than Xenoblade X on the Wii U, which is odd considering the Switch is more powerful than the Wii U, and it takes an even bigger hit when on undocked mode, a blurry pixelated mess with FPS issues across the board.

    The use of different artists doing the character designs creates a huge inconsistency design wise, as everything looks like a mismatched hodpodge of characters like they belong to different games. It's utterly jarring, and the overuse of pervy anime tropes got eye roll worthy real quick.    … Expand
  3. dexMax
    Dec 1, 2017
    1
    Not much needs to said that this game is a step down from previous games in almost every regard like. The visuals are generic, the voice acting is sub par, and the gameplay is just a sloppy messy. If you still have a Wii u I would recommend playing Xenoblade Chronicles X instead because it's not like you would want to play Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in handheld mode anyways. Seriously, theNot much needs to said that this game is a step down from previous games in almost every regard like. The visuals are generic, the voice acting is sub par, and the gameplay is just a sloppy messy. If you still have a Wii u I would recommend playing Xenoblade Chronicles X instead because it's not like you would want to play Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in handheld mode anyways. Seriously, the visuals in handheld mode are just awful.… Expand
  4. VivaPalestine
    Sep 2, 2021
    3
    There's a solid foundation here, ruined by the excessive sexualization, obnoxious voice acting, and way too heavy handed "lets appeal to all the weebs!" approach.

    XC1 didn't have this same issue imo, but it made this game completely unplayable to me. If this style appeals to you, you'll absolutely love this game [or, more realistically, probably already do]. If you're not an anime girl    There's a solid foundation here, ruined by the excessive sexualization, obnoxious voice acting, and way too heavy handed "lets appeal to all the weebs!" approach.

    XC1 didn't have this same issue imo, but it made this game completely unplayable to me. If this style appeals to you, you'll absolutely love this game [or, more realistically, probably already do]. If you're not an anime girl obsessed person & are easily annoyed? Give this one a hard pass.    … Expand
  5. night4
    Aug 4, 2018
    4
    Pros:
    - Incredible graphics
    - Original story

    Cons:
    - Combat is extremely repetitive and grindy
    - Some mechanics, like canceled attacks, are poorly named and/or unintuitive
    - Cutscenes are too long and too plentiful
    - Plays like a single player MMO
    - Feels like a boring single player MMO
  6. Mmmmph
    May 25, 2018
    4
    This game looks like a Xenoblade game but once you really start looking at it you can kinda see that this game was shambled together to get it out the door for the Switch. There are plenty of mechanics in this game, but so many of them feel like they were put in then somebody shoved them into the game and refused to let the designer do anything interesting with them.

    Then there is the    This game looks like a Xenoblade game but once you really start looking at it you can kinda see that this game was shambled together to get it out the door for the Switch. There are plenty of mechanics in this game, but so many of them feel like they were put in then somebody shoved them into the game and refused to let the designer do anything interesting with them.

    Then there is the map for this game. The map and waypoint system for this game is beyond useless, one of the MAIN STORY QUESTS for the game requires you to go find "dawnview grotto" which is way up on a mountain with one way up. You want to know where it is? You have to climb a tree root, then climb another tree root so narrow it doesn't look like somewhere you're actually intended to walk then you follow the one linear path up to the five items you need to collect. There is only one way to go up and it's just a crappy fetch quest.

    That is so much of a problem with the game, collectathon RPG but without the movement mechanics to back that sort of gameplay up. You' think you're done with this quest? NO you have to pay for this lady to fix her stove because screw you. No matter what the quest is no matter how tiny and insignificant it seems it generally feels like they plucked it out of Vanilla World of Warcraft, stretched out the distance you need to walk and stapled four or five more quests to the end there.

    As an RPG and especially compared to Xenoblade 1 and even Xenoblade X this game feels like I'm eating packets of unflavored bulk dry instant ramen instead of playing an RPG, because NO LADY I DON'T want to fix your goddamn stove and I shouldn't have to pay to fix YOUR stove, and this quest should have ended when i gave you everything you needed to make a pie. In case you're wondering that isn't the only sidequest that pissed me off, it was just the one that stood out the most for how crap it was.    … Expand
  7. AcerolaOrion
    Jun 10, 2022
    0
    Outrageously awful. I cant believe anyone thinks this is good.

    Possibly the worst writing ever put into a video game. Eeeeveeeryyyyone taaaaalks reeaaalllllyyyy ............. slooooooow ........... aaaaand with draaamaaatic ........... paaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuses. Half the characters (Including the main cast) have outrageously thick accents from various areas of britain. Its so bad    Outrageously awful. I cant believe anyone thinks this is good.

    Possibly the worst writing ever put into a video game.
    Eeeeveeeryyyyone taaaaalks reeaaalllllyyyy ............. slooooooow ........... aaaaand with draaamaaatic ........... paaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuses.
    Half the characters (Including the main cast) have outrageously thick accents from various areas of britain. Its so bad that its not longer good but bad again.
    There is sooooo much time wasted on cutscenes with no facial, awful switch graphics and super slow awful voices.

    Stay far far far away. Possibly one of the worst games ever made.    … Expand
  8. fromis
    Jul 26, 2019
    2
    Just finished this game on my Switch and I have to start off by saying I believe this game is not for everyone. Either you're gonna love it or hate it, there's no middle ground, unfortunately I'm in the latter category. Never played any Xenoblade titles before this one and I believe it will be my first and last.

    The story is interesting and it's what kept me playing, even though it    Just finished this game on my Switch and I have to start off by saying I believe this game is not for everyone. Either you're gonna love it or hate it, there's no middle ground, unfortunately I'm in the latter category. Never played any Xenoblade titles before this one and I believe it will be my first and last.

    The story is interesting and it's what kept me playing, even though it contains typical japanese weeabo/loli themes. The music is actually amazing, Mor Ardain night theme has to be my personal favorite.

    However, the combat is absolut garbage, hated every minute of it. If you've ever played an MMO like WoW, it can be compared to raiding, except solo and you use your blades (kinda like pokemons) to perform elemental combos. Only one problem, it's really bad compared to todays MMO combat standards.    … Expand
  9. Kingdomhear
    Apr 23, 2022
    0
    Un pastrugno come l uno...inizia che sembra una bella avventura ..divertente poi diventa tirato e noioso perché devono fare il gioco da 70 ore...sta fissa di fare giochi Infiniti allungati...campi da calcio vuoti da percorrere fino allo sfinimento..bah
  10. Kirillito
    Feb 9, 2021
    3
    After playing previous two games, this one was an extreme disappointment.
    Pros:
    - Beautiful graphics and colorful visuals. - Amazing and inventive world/location design. - Deep and complex RPG system. For casual players it doesn't require any optimization, but if you're playing on harder difficulties, you might need to spend time tweaking all the buffs, and skill settings, and Blade    After playing previous two games, this one was an extreme disappointment.
    Pros:
    - Beautiful graphics and colorful visuals.
    - Amazing and inventive world/location design.
    - Deep and complex RPG system. For casual players it doesn't require any optimization, but if you're playing on harder difficulties, you might need to spend time tweaking all the buffs, and skill settings, and Blade affinities, etc. There are a lot of challenging enemies that can test your setup and skills.
    - Fun and diverse battle system.

    Cons:
    - Boring story. What's worse - it is a long and boring story. A very generic JRPG plot stretched out way too much. For the game that is so imaginative with it's design, the plot is so unoriginal, it's a crime against Xeno-series fans. At least it was cool to look for plot connections with XC1.
    - Questionable character design. I'm Ok with a step back towards more childish anime-style, but why did they make some female characters with such a huge breasts and exposing outfits? Those are distracting and break the immersion.
    - Field skills everywhere. Field skills were Ok in Xenoblade Chronicles X - the requirements to open containers and do some actions were not as often and added a bit more depths to exploration. In XC2 field skills checks are EVERYWHERE. Almost every side-quest, and some progression in main story quests are locked behind a multitude of field skill requirements that can be a pain in the ass to fulfill. But the worst thing, that probably is my main grudge against this game, is MICROMANAGEMENT. It is ridiculous, how much micromanagement with blade switching you have to do in this game just to match field skill requirements with the proper configuration of Blades. Some quests and locations require you to do the same thing several times in a row just because of several field skill checks one after another. Same mind-numbing steps: go to the menu, spend several minutes looking for a Blade with a proper field skill, assign it to the character, repeat with other field skills, go back from the menu, pass the check, then repeat the same steps for the next check. Seriously, out of more than 100 hours spent in this game, I probably spent 5-10 hours just on Blade micromanagement alone.

    Overall, this game was fun to play for a while just for its battle system and visuals. But boring story hours spent on mechanical Blade micromanagement made it unbearable after a while.    … Expand
  11. Ughduty
    Aug 10, 2021
    3
    This game is by my mind highly overrated because of it’s very bad game design. Following a list of what I disliked the most:
    - E.g. the story tells you the time is pressing because the next day something really bad will happen. Next thing you‘ve been told is that to solve this you have to go on some quests that will take several in game days.
    - Some story elements come over as fabricated    This game is by my mind highly overrated because of it’s very bad game design. Following a list of what I disliked the most:
    - E.g. the story tells you the time is pressing because the next day something really bad will happen. Next thing you‘ve been told is that to solve this you have to go on some quests that will take several in game days.
    - Some story elements come over as fabricated like this:
    You need that extremely rare item and the party is standing in the middle of the town and guess what an unknown NPC comes over to you asking you for help and in return you will get that extremely rare item.
    - You get led by the nose to every quest giver and it‘s solution
    - The world is cluttered with icons showing you the way to everything that is important
    - There is an extra store for every little type of equipment so you have tons of stores in every city and their big icons are cluttering the scenery
    - Convoluted battle system
    - Extremely high level monsters roaming the world killing your party with one hit. E.g.:
    My party was around level 8 and in front of them they have open savanna where wildlife around the same level is strolling around. Some are up to level 18 so the party had to run through the land in a zigzag course not to walk into one of these level 18ish monsters. When the party stopped for a sec they got hit by an unseen foe and all got killed by this one hit. Luckily I had saved a few seconds before that and when I loaded the game and looked around to find what killed my party I found a level 81 monster roaming the world in high speed.
    - Bad tutorials leaving you with questions you can only solve by searching the www    … Expand
  12. oopkp
    Feb 23, 2023
    0
    I haven't played this game, but it basically ruined the Switch and had an immensely negative impact on gaming culture. First of all, Smash got 100 times worse when it got flooded with Xenoblade fans. Pyra/Mythra are not only oversexualized, they are also annoying as **** and the most broken characters ever. If you like eating **** and committing war crimes, this might appeal to you, butI haven't played this game, but it basically ruined the Switch and had an immensely negative impact on gaming culture. First of all, Smash got 100 times worse when it got flooded with Xenoblade fans. Pyra/Mythra are not only oversexualized, they are also annoying as **** and the most broken characters ever. If you like eating **** and committing war crimes, this might appeal to you, but this does not tickle my fancy.… Expand
  13. g940672
    Apr 11, 2018
    4
    It's honestly not a very good game compared to the previous 2 games

    Level progression is super slow so the game becomes impossible to progress if you don't want to grind levels for 2 hours and the extremely slow battles make it a bit worse It's not very polished The main protagonist (rex) is just really childish and has pretty bad voice acting, most of the other protagonists are great    It's honestly not a very good game compared to the previous 2 games

    Level progression is super slow so the game becomes impossible to progress if you don't want to grind levels for 2 hours and the extremely slow battles make it a bit worse
    It's not very polished
    The main protagonist (rex) is just really childish and has pretty bad voice acting, most of the other protagonists are great though. He is mainly just pretty annoying
    There are some good things though like the story is pretty interesting, although I didn't finish it because I didn't want to grind levels for 2 hours like I said before.

    On the other hand xenoblade chronicles x is pretty well polished and xenoblade chronicles had great characters and was also pretty well made    … Expand
  14. GenkiYokota
    Jan 27, 2022
    0
    One of the worst J-RPG's and a disgrace to the original work of its prequel on the Wii console.
    The amount of fanservice it has is obscene and attentive to the intelligence of the player.
  15. BamcoNandai
    Jul 22, 2021
    0
    Bland, tropey, slow to start. Supposedly gets good after 40 hours but it's not worth the time or money. Characters are all one dimensional and what are supposed to be emotional moments just come off as lame. It took me awhile to pick up this game because I was apprehensive but I honestly wish I had never played this.
  16. OpticMaster56
    Sep 19, 2022
    0
    This game is absolutely awful. I find the gameplay and story awful, and don’t even get me started on the female characters.
  17. Terragon
    Jan 28, 2019
    2
    I've played this for about 70 hours now and I honestly can't continue

    In a nutshell, what started as a promising RPG with a unique take on the world, fight mechanics and various complexities that are usually absent in RPGs, turned into a boring chore with a cheesy Japanese storyline and absolutely abysmal game design choices. The story as you are aware, takes places on large titan    I've played this for about 70 hours now and I honestly can't continue

    In a nutshell, what started as a promising RPG with a unique take on the world, fight mechanics and various complexities that are usually absent in RPGs, turned into a boring chore with a cheesy Japanese storyline and absolutely abysmal game design choices.

    The story as you are aware, takes places on large titan like creatures, that are essentially continents, each filled with various missions and monsters to fight. Despite the idea itself sounding great, what you end up having is a bunch of difficult to track and locate fetch quests, some of which suffer from horrible pathing or from map bugs and some end up taking you through areas you're not ready for. The monsters are all mixed, so you'll always find yourself one shotted by random mobs everywhere.
    The quests for the most part are unimaginative and boring and the main storyline feels like it was written by a prepubescent Japanese high school boy.

    Battle mechanics dont' change almost at all throughout the game, so you will actually be fighting the auto battles with even trash mobs until late parts of the game. This means you have to spend at least a minute of just watching your characters doing cheesy moves and shouting their attack slogans even when fighting a monster 10-20 levels below your level. The scaling in this game is non existent and after fighting 100s of these nonsense encounters, I juts feel like it left me numb.

    The worst part of the game for me personally is the constant cheesy waifu intermissions that are literally so cringy and so out of place that I have no idea whose idea it was to put this into this title. Previous Xenoblade games were serious in their undertone and were so much better executed storyline wise, with this one just being so ridiculous that I can't even bother to care.

    So after 70 hours of struggle and not really wanting to finish this crap anymore, I'm just going to leave this here: it's a good JRPG on paper and you may enjoy it for a bit, but it's horribly made, has some of the worst game designs I've seen in years and is just overall a very dull and boring RPG.

    3/10 is all I'm going to give it, +1 for having a complex and potentially interesting battle system -7 for ruining everything else

    FINAL EDIT: I finished this junk and it only gets worse. The game kept trying to teach tutorials until literally last chapter and there were some parts in the game where you can literally get stuck and not be able to advance if you made certain choices throughout the game in terms of your characters. It's abysmally bad in terms of game design and I can only give it one praise - environments and monsters design.
    The actual storyline and gameplay are horrible. There are several half an hour long cutscenes with the clingiest dialogue I've seen in an RPG and at some point I literally just went to watch a TV show while it was playing.

    This game is HORRIBLE!    … Expand
  18. TsukasaHiiragi
    May 13, 2018
    1
    Pro's

    Interesting game concept and plot Cute Characters Feels like playing an MMo* Con's Suffers from all the problems of being like an MMo* Severe grindfest Unfair game/boss mechanics Too many game mechanics in play Janky controls Buggy sometimes Useless map/compass system Very frustrating to play Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is easily one of the worst jrpgs I've played to    Pro's

    Interesting game concept and plot
    Cute Characters
    Feels like playing an MMo*

    Con's

    Suffers from all the problems of being like an MMo*
    Severe grindfest
    Unfair game/boss mechanics
    Too many game mechanics in play
    Janky controls
    Buggy sometimes
    Useless map/compass system
    Very frustrating to play

    Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is easily one of the worst jrpgs I've played to date, and I've played a lot. The reasons are many and unfortunately by the look of the Pfff *user score* alot of paid or fanboi reviews artificially bumping up the score. XBC2 is a beast of a game, tedious, boring and downright frustrating to play, but has charming characters and a great story assuming you can force yourself through the morass of downright obnoxious game designs and flaws.

    XBC2 suffers from having far too many game mechanics in play, the game world being poorly constructed with areas having widely different monsters in them, with extremely huge level gaps which often could pop up and wipe your party at a moments notice if your not paying attention.

    The combat system is unnecessarily and overly complicated with combo after combo after combo being the only real way forward, regular trash mobs often taking several minutes to beat because your arts always reset after each battle making for a substantial uphill grindfest. Consider XBC2 a single player MMO similar to FF14 but with far slower character progression and levelling, this would be the closest explanation on how this game plays out.

    The control system is often janky at best, trying to navigate narrow ledges or jump on certain things often leaves your character bugging out whilst the quest system clearly enforces another very obvious grinder for relatively little rewards, but the player does them anyway because its content even if ultimately time consuming and unrewarding, an early case and point is having to rescue a Nopon from monsters, then fetching wood then going back to the quest giver then finding another Nopon then either paying 30,000 in gold or doing another fetch quest to find rarer wood then going back to the original quest giver for 300g / 200 exp reward and a few measily items, bullcrap like this is unfortunately common.

    The character designs, story plot and sound though are at least par or even above par and for the switch do the system some justice but ultimately are heavily let down by everything else the game has to offer.

    The interesting thing about this game though, it does have the addictive qualities of MMos because it really does feel like your playing on, and that is the only source of fun you'll have most of the time just pretending you'll run into other players to take on a unfair or frustrating raid boss that can cheat or cheese the player resulting in countless wipes until you decide just to overlevel that boss.

    Blade grinding again, is another severe uphill grindfest - not only is there a significant amount of cores to find making it almost like pokemon, you'll have to level and grind them up before they'll even be even remotely useful.    … Expand
  19. Innereye
    Feb 17, 2018
    4
    I was so excited for this game. I was very disappointed with it. The game felt incredibly shallow compared to the first game. The battles are painfully slow and drawn out. They completely removed the premonition system the first game was known for even though they included it in the games story. It felt like they ran out of time, and wanted to include it but fell short. Battles began toI was so excited for this game. I was very disappointed with it. The game felt incredibly shallow compared to the first game. The battles are painfully slow and drawn out. They completely removed the premonition system the first game was known for even though they included it in the games story. It felt like they ran out of time, and wanted to include it but fell short. Battles began to feel like a chore. I wanted to see this story play out, even with all of its faults. But I cannot justify going through 100's of hours of battles when they are so taxing and boring just to see some of the story.

    The characters fall flat and are just shallow. I'm not against tropes, but that is all the characters felt like they had to offer. And if you did not like the voice acting in the first xenoblade, they have done nothing to improve it. The story takes forever to get rolling, and feels padded down with tons of filler. It felt like a cheesy, cringey, first person's anime. Like the most terrible anime you can watch because you just started getting into all of that stuff.

    Don't even get me started on the main character. He felt like he had no emotional connection to the story, and like he is just along for the ride. In all the other games you could see the character struggle and grow from the trauma and loss they experienced. In this one the most he can do is a repetitive "Daaaaamnnn" line.

    Then you'll run into story quests that have a timer. Once in particular either expected you to grind and have great luck in order to get a required skill, or instead send a team of people to do it while you waste away 30 minutes. I don't understand why you would put an app game trapping into a console game like that.

    I wanted to like this game, I loved all of Monolith Soft's previous works in the "Xeno" series. it was my motivation for getting a switch. It was a terrible let down. Do yourself a favor and look into the battle system, watch a few battles online. Watch a trailer or two, and don't just buy the hype. If it still looks fun, then you might have a good time. I was excited, and loved monolith soft's past games, so I really wanted to love this one.    … Expand
  20. Starwolf-001
    Jun 20, 2018
    4
    The result ended with me closing the software and pulling the chip out saying "Why play this when there are more important things to do and many other competent, fun and entertaining games I can play instead."

    Introduction: I was really looking forward to this game and in the end, it's one of the worst RPGs I have ever played in my life. While the game has a lot of good moments to    The result ended with me closing the software and pulling the chip out saying "Why play this when there are more important things to do and many other competent, fun and entertaining games I can play instead."

    Introduction:

    I was really looking forward to this game and in the end, it's one of the worst RPGs I have ever played in my life. While the game has a lot of good moments to keep you going; It is also filled with many frustrating and terribly implemented moments and components.

    Pros:

    * Graphics are visually enjoyable on portable mode for the Switch.
    * Environments and open world terrain is quite beautiful.
    * Like the idea of various accents for the game's characters. Representing how they have come from
    different places in the world.
    * Highly detailed tutorial explains a lot to help new comers.
    * I REALLY like the Empire's soldier's uniform. Looks really nice.

    Cons:

    * Resolution and graphics are painfully terrible and obvious when the Switch is in dock mode.
    Basically up scaling a 720p resolution to a 1080p monitor. ~ Yuck >XP
    * Large open world, once again, filled with nothing with exception to lots of enemies and collection
    points.
    * Who the hell decided to put extremely high level monsters, that move around, right next to batches
    of small, low level monsters? I died so many times simply because I was attacked behind by one of
    these monsters. Really killed the mood and beginning of the game for me.
    * The worst map ever implemented into a game! (Literally the reason why I stopped playing)
    * Game play reminds me of the old auto-attack from Knights of the Old Republic. Just here, it's very
    repetitive and bland. Most enemy engagements take a while to defeat and your selection to
    powers (arts) are limited to 3/4. Not exciting at all.
    * English voice acting is terrible.
    * Subtitles barely ever show up even though the feature is on.
    * Pointless and time consuming quests. Both for the main and side quests.
    * High detailed tutorial is incredibly wordy, numerously appears and still misses important
    components of the game.
    * The humour falls flat. Whether it starts off well or end wells, it always feels mediocre and poorly
    thought out. Worse part is the humour in this game appears way to often and bunch together. One
    joke after another and after another.

    Conclusion:

    I really recommend people save their money instead of playing this. I personally feel like I wasted 13 hours playing this poorly made game when I could have just played Zelda Breathe of the Wild instead which many people love.    … Expand
  21. ReMeredith
    Mar 28, 2021
    0
    One of the worst games I ever played and completed I hoped till the end " maybe it gets better" but sadly no. So there are pöenty of Reviews wich point out all the Problems with the game and I agree witch all of them. The best Thing about this game is that XBC X dosen't Look so bad anymore :D
  22. DolphinReviews
    Jul 21, 2022
    0
    Yeah it’s cringe. Unlikable characters and a boring story. It’s not a very good switch exclusive. You might like it if your attracted to cartoon characters but that’s about it.
  23. mikas323
    Mar 19, 2022
    0
    I loved the graphics but i didn't like the mechanics with blades and voice acting is horrendous...rex is pathetic and with no charm...i hated the main char with all my will...the game is very sexualizated and porn..world map is confuse with alot design flaws....battle is slow and takes alot time to kill normal enemies...
  24. aGrumpyDin0saur
    Mar 4, 2022
    4
    After playing the absolute Masterpiece that is Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition I immediately went out and purchased the sequel expecting it to be not as good as the original but still a great 80/100 time with fluid combat and an epic large-scale story but what I got was a worse experience in every way possible compared to the original. Buckle up because this is gonna be long...After playing the absolute Masterpiece that is Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition I immediately went out and purchased the sequel expecting it to be not as good as the original but still a great 80/100 time with fluid combat and an epic large-scale story but what I got was a worse experience in every way possible compared to the original. Buckle up because this is gonna be long...

    First of all, if you like or even love this game and haven’t played the original on switch then I HIGHLY request you do because maybe you’ll be able to understand where I’m coming from. (This review won’t have story spoilers for the original game).

    To start, combat in this game feels worse, you can no longer identify which enemies are hostile or docile until you get close and see if they attack you or not. In the first game there was a symbol that told you so.
    The game punishes you for moving around an enemy in combat as you can no longer auto attack while moving and not to mention that movement speed in combat is excruciatingly slow making the combat feel sluggish. Normal enemies are complete damage sponges and since they're normal enemies, they're not hard fights. So, I always found myself in easy, unengaging and long fights. however, the boss battles seem fine to me since they actually pose a challenge (sometimes).
    AND DONT GET ME STARTED ON THAT STUPID GACHA MECHANIC! this game feels like its design to be a mobile game with the slow-paced progression and gacha mechanics.

    The story feels like a first draft accompanied by plot holes and unanswered questions. I would like to over them, but I want this to be a spoiler free review. Admittedly I didn’t beat the game (because I couldn’t stand the combat anymore) so I watched the rest of the games cutscenes on YouTube so I might be missing something important story wise, but I doubt it since I was over 80% done.

    To start, the protagonist (Rex) is actually the worst protagonist I have ever witness, he is a reckless baby that gets bailed out of trouble MULTIPLE TIMES by other cast members and instead of facing consequences or reflect on his behavior he gets rewarded by gaining more power to use in combat. Rex’s english voice acting is cringeworthy whenever he's in combat. it would've been nice if Rex's arc was about growing up and owning responsibility but nope, a baby biggening to end with no character arc whatsoever.
    Two more nit-picks about Rex, in combat he’ll sometimes UNIRONICALLY say “We’ll beat them, with the power of friendship!” Like come on. Also type in “bad character design” on google and guess who’ll show up.
    Nintendo must've thought they struck gold with that design considering its in Smash and BOTW.

    I also want to talk about the female lead Pyra for a bit. All I have to say is that she has a personality of a cup of distilled water and she’s the biggest waifu bait I’ve ever seen in a game and judging by the amount of Pyra profile pictures I see on YouTube comments and live streams I can say those people took it hook, line, and sinker.
    I won’t be talking about the over sexualization of women in this review but I what it to be known that because of it I can’t take the majority of the female cast seriously.

    So, what do I think this game did right? Some of the locations are pretty (only on docked mode) (and only some locations because a lot of them are drab looking). The OST is a banger, there are some side characters I actually like aaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnd that’s it. Not to mention the numerous annoyances I decided to leave out. If you learned anything from this review hopefully it’s that you get the original instead.    … Expand
  25. thecasualgaymer
    Feb 16, 2021
    1
    I feel like I'm missing out on an inside joke about why everyone loves this game so much. I was excited to try out its fantastic gameplay I've heard so much about, and yet found myself bored or revolted almost every second of the 25+ hours I put into it, with the single exception of enjoying a beautifully crafted world.

    It's tutorials are awful and endless, but what really killed it for    I feel like I'm missing out on an inside joke about why everyone loves this game so much. I was excited to try out its fantastic gameplay I've heard so much about, and yet found myself bored or revolted almost every second of the 25+ hours I put into it, with the single exception of enjoying a beautifully crafted world.

    It's tutorials are awful and endless, but what really killed it for me was the characters and story. I may have eventually enjoyed combat if I had stuck with it long enough, but I was unable to watch (or listen to) the horrid character designs that looked like they were made by a horny 13 year old and unable to listen to voice acting so bad I'm convinced someone got conned by the actors who did it.

    As a usual fan of JRPGs, I was massively disappointed.    … Expand
  26. aGrumpyDin0
    Dec 7, 2021
    3
    After playing the absolute Masterpiece that is Xenoblade Chronicles DE I went out and purchased the sequel expecting it to be not as good as the original but still a great time with fluid combat and a epic large scale story but what I got was a worse experience in every way possible. Buckle up cause this is gonna be long...

    First of all... if you love this game and haven’t played the    After playing the absolute Masterpiece that is Xenoblade Chronicles DE I went out and purchased the sequel expecting it to be not as good as the original but still a great time with fluid combat and a epic large scale story but what I got was a worse experience in every way possible. Buckle up cause this is gonna be long...

    First of all... if you love this game and haven’t played the original on switch then I HIGHLY REQUEST you do because maybe you’ll be able to understand where I’m coming from. (This review won’t have story spoilers for the original game). To start, combat in this game is objectively worse, you can no longer identify which enemies are hostile or docile until you get close and see if they attack you or not. In the first game there was a symbol that told you so.
    The game punishes you for moving around a enemy in combat as you can no longer auto attack while moving unlike the first game, making the combat feel sluggish.
    The moves you manually use in XBC games are called “Arts”. In the first game you had 8+ different Arts and you can use them immediately at the start of any battle. In XBC2 you can only use three different Arts at a time and you can’t use them immediately until dozens of hours into the game so you can unlock the ability to do so, making the combat feel restricted.
    Normal battles take WAY longer than the original and since the stat boosts from leveling up are not as impactful as the original, it makes the game more grindy and time consuming. So in short, the combat is more sluggish, restricted and grindy. The story feels like a first draft accompanied by plot holes and unanswered questions unlike the first game which tied everything together perfectly an satisfactorily. Admittedly I didn’t beat the game (because I couldn’t stand the combat anymore) so I watched the rest of the games cutscenes on YouTube so I might be missing something important story wise but I doubt it since I was over 80% done. To start, the protagonist (Rex) is awful, he is a reckless baby that gets bailed out of trouble MULTIPLE TIMES by other cast members and instead of facing consequences or reflect on his behavior he gets rewarded by gaining more power to use in combat unlike Shulk in XBC1 who takes great responsibility of his power and considers the consequences before using said power. Rex’s voice acting is cringeworthy whenever he lets out a battle cry and in one cutscene he was talking somewhat calmly but was flailing and panicking in the cutscene ALSO unlike Shulk who’s voice acting is AMAZING! Two more things about Rex, in combat he’ll sometimes UNIRONICALLY say “We’ll beat them, with the power of friendship!”. Also type in “bad character design” on google and guess who’ll show up. I also want to talk about the female lead Pyra. All I have to say is that she has a personality of a cup of distilled water and she’s the biggest waifu bait I’ve ever seen in a game and judging by the amount of Pyra profile pictures I see on YouTube comments and live streams I can say those people took it hook, line, and sinker. I won’t be talking about the over sexualization of women in this review but I what it to be known that because of it I can’t take the majority of the female cast seriously. (Skip ahead a paragraph to avoid vague/minor spoilers) Moving onto the main villain of the game... he was supposed to be a “twist villain” but it was so predictable for me, and later on Rex and friends asks why he’s doing the things he’s doing he says something along the lines of bECaUse iM tHe bAD GuY cAuSE Im bORn BAd BecAuSE IM ThE BAD GUUUUUUUUUY!
    The main villain in the first game was good because they actually had logic and reasoning to go with their plan rather than blind hatred. One of the other villains of the game is too edgy it hurts. Speaking of the same villain, He could’ve killed Rex and any other form of opposition in quick work but just chooses not to until it’s too late because he let Rex get too powerful.

    In short, I don’t like the villains... and that also goes for a TON of the side characters. So what do I think this game did right? Some of the locations are pretty and jaw dropping (only on docked mode) (and only some locations because a lot of them are drab looking). The OST is a banger, there are some characters I actually like aaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnd that’s it. If you learned anything from this review hopefully it’s that you get the original instead.    … Expand
  27. KazutoKirigaya
    Aug 20, 2022
    0
    Come on no body can tell me that the bosses in this game are fair or cool! Every Boss on this game is a piece of **** I The game but the Bosses are trash.
  28. vora_bat
    Jan 1, 2018
    4
    This game is weak .It is weak in so many aspects. The combat is boring and slow. The story-line is simple and blank. Characters are cringe. The game feels like a bad anime. I don't understand how an adult person can like this game.
  29. vape
    Feb 14, 2018
    3
    Yeah this game is not something i'd recomend to a lot of people unless you want to see anime boobs but don't know what a google is. Let's just cut the **** gameplay is a bore, story is very poorly acted by the protagonists, though the antagonists surprisingly had good acting. The music is top notch but you barely hear it in game since your party never stops shouting pointless voicelines,Yeah this game is not something i'd recomend to a lot of people unless you want to see anime boobs but don't know what a google is. Let's just cut the **** gameplay is a bore, story is very poorly acted by the protagonists, though the antagonists surprisingly had good acting. The music is top notch but you barely hear it in game since your party never stops shouting pointless voicelines, The way you unlock blades is extremely boring, the worlds look kindof nice but then you realize the grass renders well within the camera and that looks really bad, exploration is kinda boring as movement in this game is quite slow and uninteresting, the story is good and bad, the bad guys are alright like jin and malos, but then the protagonists are just not well acted and not very well written, pyra is very boring, rex is both boring and annoying, nia is alright i guess but her voice acting is pretty bad. Morag has alright voice acting and brighid is an alright written character, i like the diary thing with her. If you like being bored, you'd probably love this game, but for me i'd much rather just sleep, i finished the game and beat the final boss and i still felt the gameplay was just boring.… Expand
  30. Sharebear420
    Jun 7, 2019
    1
    Too much anime bullcrap and mediocre characters. Not only is there cringe fan service but
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Awards & Rankings

25
#25 Best Switch Game of 2017
3
#3 Most Discussed Switch Game of 2017
3
#3 Most Shared Switch Game of 2017

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
83

Generally favorable reviews - based on 92 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 78 out of 92
  2. Mixed: 13 out of 92
  3. Negative: 1 out of 92
  1. Game World Navigator Magazine
    Mar 2, 2018
    73
    A fight with an ordinary enemy whose level is slightly higher can drag on for minutes, especially if you’re fighting it alone. The combat itself is also rife with problems: sometimes main character even fails to draw his weapon, or locks onto a far-off enemy, while another already is eviscerating him in close combat. [Issue#226, p.64]
  2. Nintendo Force Magazine
    Feb 26, 2018
    80
    Despite some rough patches, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a worthy addition to any Switch owner's library, especially if you have a predilection for RPGs and enjoyed either of the previous entries in the series. [Issue #32 – March/April 2018, p. 75]
  3. LEVEL (Czech Republic)
    Feb 16, 2018
    80
    Extensive and massive JRPG. Although with a rather cliché story and characters, it comes with a beautiful world and a fighting system growing more and more complex with every hour played. [Issue#282]
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