Twenty-five hours into Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the game is still handing you tutorials. Most RPGs would be halfway to their credits. This one’s still explaining itself, badly, and then never letting you look any of it up again.
That’s the core problem, and the Switch 2 Edition doesn’t touch it.
The tutorials are the villain here
The original Xenoblade Chronicles is a big game with a lot of complicated systems. Its sequel runs almost completely contrary to Nintendo’s usual stylings in terms of maximalist design, and the cruelest part is how poorly it teaches you its own mechanics.
Combat systems. Combat sub-systems. Character progression, which can carry character-specific mechanics of its own. Exploration. There are tutorials for all of it, and they arrive in a slow drip well past the point where you’d expect to have your footing.
Worse, there’s no in-game reference for any of them. No menu to remind you how Blade Combos differ from Driver Combos, or what those floating orbs above enemies mean, or what happens when they “burst.” For a game this dense, that’s a serious failing, and the update leaves it exactly as it was.
The graphics giveth, and then the graphics taketh
The first time I loaded this up and watched Rex move, I jolted back in my seat. I wasn’t ready for how fluid it looked.
Then a cutscene played and my stomach dropped. Character models inexplicably snap back to choppy, stuttery movement whenever they turn around or pivot in place. It’s noticeable. Call it a monkey’s paw, something to keep the graphics hounds humble about what they’re actually here for.
It sours every cutscene. And the cutscenes have a second problem: the audio editing is off, with music now drowning out dialogue at times. There’s also a glitch in New Game+ where using an Amiibo can erase your party members’ third Item Pouch. As of this writing, none of that has been fixed.
Meet it where it’s at
Keep those flaws in your pocket, because despite all of them, this is still Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Look past them and the maximalism and the hard-hitting story will get you.
The setting is Alrest, an endless ocean of clouds dotted with colossal Titans that entire kingdoms live on top of. The Titans are aging and slowly dying, which has pushed the nations of Mor Ardain and Uraya into a land war. Those battles get fought by Drivers, warriors bonded to sentient weaponized artificial life forms called Blades.
Rex is a plucky kid living in the shadow of all this, worried about nothing bigger than his hometown. A job goes wrong and his life ends up in the hands of the enigmatic Pyra, who is the Aegis, a Blade of untold power. Nations wheel and deal, the terrorist organization Torna plots from the dark, and Rex and his friends stick to their simple mission: get Pyra to the mythical Elysium, said to sit atop the World Tree where the world-forging Architect resides.
Why people love Pyra this much
How much of the story lands depends entirely on how far you’ll meet these characters. Masatsugu Saitō’s designs are far more colorful and stylized than the first Xenoblade. Even after Definitive Edition brought Shulk and company into stylized parity with the sequel, the Blades remain more colorful and more uncanny than any of that.
But the story reaches farther than its ostentatious cast. It’s about redemption, about finding purpose, about living true to yourself. There’s a reason it has resonated the way it has, and a reason people love Pyra (and Mythra) as much as they do.
Rex is closer to an Ishmael here, but it wouldn’t be a boy-meets-girl without the boy. Trite as it sounds, it can take someone who chooses the good in everyone to remind us it’s there.
The dub is uneven and Skye Bennett saves it
The English dub’s direction is spotty, and that hasn’t been fixed either. Bennett’s work as Pyra (and Mythra) steals the show anyway. David Menkin plays the slimy Malos as the perfect guy you love to hate. Al Weaver’s Rex is winsome and charming at his best, a blithe hero with a can-do attitude, though his worst moments make you wish someone in the booth had stepped in.
The Switch 2 Edition adds a handful of new lines for some of the cast, specifically Dromarch and Zeke. The replacement actors are serviceable. They’re also very clearly not the originals.
The small stuff is where it sings
Maximalism pays off moment to moment. The Joycon’s HD Rumble punctuates skill checks with vibrating “ding!”s or “bwomp!”s depending on whether you pull them off. Even the game’s most controversial feature, the in-game gacha, was originally built to take advantage of the Switch’s media sharing.
On that note, I’ve heard anecdotes that the Switch 2 Edition improves the odds on Rare Blades, notably the infamously elusive KOS-MOS. After many attempts, I can’t confirm it. I couldn’t even pull the new Blade, M.O.M.O.
What I can confirm is that going back in, I felt at home with the unique quests that improve each Blade, and with the sub-systems around them: the Shop Deeds that gate useful power-ups, the Salvaging. They’re meaty and they feed the whole. It’s a pity they’re introduced so poorly.
Merc Assault is the closest we’ll get to musou Xenoblade
The new mode is a short real-time sortie that borrows from the main battle system, specifically the Blade Combo mechanics. You mix weak and heavy attacks, recharge specials, mow down waves and grab power-ups that boost your attributes along the way. If you ever wanted to actually control your Blades, this is your mode.
It’s immediately engaging, a little addicting, and fun. The shame is that it only exists in service of the Mercenary Missions. Other unlocks, more costumes, anything, would have gone a long way. Still, it gives you one more option for your Mercenary unit, which feeds back into other systems. If Monolith is testing new battle systems or mini-games, they’re on the right track.
What it would’ve taken
Fix the character stuttering and the volume balancing and this becomes a slam dunk recommendation, even carrying every snag baked into Xenoblade Chronicles 2 from the start. If those get addressed later, I’ll be happier for it.
The graphical improvements are beautiful, Merc Assault is fun, the base game is as fun as it ever was. The graphical improvements also stumble, the base game still has all its old problems, and the voice matching on the returning cast isn’t great.
I can’t tell you whether this is a better game than its predecessor. But warts and all, it’s still an RPG everyone should at least try.
