Like 2.5 stars. "It's okay."

I finally finished the game yesterday, exactly one month after release. I was at 150 hours and there's honestly still a lot that I didn't finish and don't intend to.

The (mainline) Xenoblade series is tied for my favorite game series with Tales of, but this one is not up there for me. I said, "I hate this fucking game," out loud a lot, but I didn't hate it, really. There were just a lot of really annoying aspects to its presentation, mechanics, story, etc.

I also want to say, I never played the original, and after finishing this, I'm REALLY glad that I didn't. The new Definitive Edition extra chapter (in 3 acts) gave it an actual ending, because HOLY SHIT the original game had one of the shittiest, most non-ending endings that answered NOTHINGGGGG. Like, I was sitting there going, "Wait, that's it? What about this, this, this, this, and this that was never explained?" Now that I've looked into it a bit, I see that was a common complaint. People have lived with that hanging over them for 10 years?! Absolutely unacceptable.

I didn't intend for this to be a super long review, but did end up having a lot to say. It's organized to an extent, but I'm also just really wanting to move past this game right now. I've restarted XC3 as of last night (since I never played the DLC when it dropped) and that kept me motivated to get through this game.

Music:

(Taken from my previous status update) There are SO. MANY. VOCAL. TRACKS. in this OST. Nine times out of ten, I'm going to hate a track with vocals in a video game. See: the boss battle track in Blue Dragon. Instant mute. (I'm not talking about choral stuff--like, the field music for Gormott in XC2 is one of my absolute favorite tracks from the entire series, and that's got lots of "ahhh~ahhh~ahhh" in it.) They just always feel really corny, they're never mixed well, they have stupid lyrics, etc. I loathe both the day and night tracks for New LA ("UH UH UH YEAH UH UH YEAH UH"), and considering how much time you spend in the city, it's torture. There are also several battle tracks with vocals, and, worst of all, there's one that has played in a few storyline cutscenes that's INSANELY LOUD, to where you can barely even hear the characters speaking over the god-awful singing.

The Xenoblade OSTs are some of my favorites in gaming, and while there are mostly amazing tracks in this OST otherwise--and the actual instrumental parts of the offending tracks are solid-- the vocals killeddd meeee.

This was my favorite track in the game. Absolutely stunning. I was just running around that area and it transitioned to nighttime, and when it got to the part around 1:05 I was just sitting there open-mouthed. (The daytime version is also great.)

Characters:

There are a lot to love. L and Phog were my absolute favorites, but I also really liked Gwin, Irina, Liesel, Nagi, Celica and Rock, Neilnail and others. Characters, world-building, and fostering relationships between NPCs are some of my favorite aspects of the series, so I'm glad there were a lot of great characters here as well.

This is my character:

(I actually had her in a different top for a large portion of the game, switched from this one, but it's otherwise the same.)

And her next to L:

In the character creator, you pick a character base first. This isn't unique in character creators, but what IS different is that it's not fully customizable after that point. I picked the eyes that I liked once I saw that eye shape was not something you could adjust, just color and pupil style and whatnot. What I didn't realize until later was that some of those bases have different hair style options. I typically like longer hair, which is rarely an option, so I just went with the longest, which was a more medium length. After doing a few quests for this dude in New LA, you unlock a machine to change your appearance, so I was able to change my character base and get the long hair here, which is basically Mythra's from XC2.

Visuals:

Absolutely gorgeous. The landscapes are sweeping, the views when you finally get to fly are incredible, and I have no real complaints in this area.

Gameplay:

There's a lot to tackle here. It's a mixed bag, but it's mostly(?) good points, in the end.

The combat is very much in line with the mainline games. You have the arts on a cooldown bar at the bottom, and all of the usual side/back attacks, buffs, etc. There's a new quick cooldown option, which you activate on an art that hasn't yet cooled down by pressing Y. As you explore Mira, you earn rewards for clearing more of the map with the FrontierNav, and some of those rewards are extra uses of the quick cooldowns per battle.

I liked the variety of classes. I didn't max everything, but I did get through most of them. Your character starts as a Drifter, and then you can pick between Striker, Commando, and Enforcer. Once you've maxed one of those, they branch off into two options with two tiers each (ex. below).

Enforcer --> Psychocorrupter --> Mastermind

OR

Enforcer --> Blast Fencer --> Galactic Knight

I went for Galactic Knight first because, obviously. I would switch to something else while doing various quests, but then usually go back to GK for story missions since it was a maxed final tier class.

Exploration is where things got more than a little hairy for me. Anyone who has played XC1-3 knows that you will sometimes have to sneak by some massive and/or super high level enemies occasionally, but the average enemy level is generally around yours if you're battling regularly and doing quests. The devs apparently really took the idea of "humans are trying to make a home on a new planet and everything wants to kill them" to heart, because you are CON.STANT.LY having to run through groups of enemies that are 20 levels higher than you, just to collect some twig that a person in town wants (and the mission recommends an appropriate level). This wouldn't immediately be problematic if enemy targeting and range weren't absolutely broken and insane. Everything targets you, has seemingly unlimited range, and will chase you across an entire continent. There were times I was being targeted through 50 tunnel walls in a cave, and other times through A MOUNTAIN. I sat in a tunnel's dead end for like 5 minutes one time and the monster just continued to target me through the wall, and so I was stuck with the only choice of leaving to fight it because you can't fast travel or anything when "in battle." I just didn't want to risk being targeted by the 500 other things in the cave, man. You can pull up a withdrawal option, but it's straight up trash because it puts a giant text box and timer on the screen blocking your view, and removes your ability to jump. You have to escape in a given time limit or else it throws you back to your last fast travel point, which is the same thing that just letting an enemy kill you will do. There's no benefit to using it at all. I tried it a few times and never once was able to beat the clock because they just chased me forever. In the mechs that you eventually get to pilot, Skells, it's a lot better, but it was quite a while before that was an option.

The sprint in this game is phenomenal, as is the jump. There's also no fall damage AT ALL, which made just moon jumping off of cliffs and mountains so much fun.

I didn't really enjoy the Skell fights. Skells made exploration more fun and less dangerous, but when a teammate just gets KO'd and immediately loses their Skell when you're trying to fight something in midair, making them useless because even ranged weapons have shit range in this game...well. Yeah. They also just felt slower, and cockpit mode was annoying even though it's supposed to be a good thing to trigger. The camera angles when fighting in midair were also atrocious unless you backed up to just barely in range for guns. You do finally unlock the quick cooldown for Skells once you fully beat the game (including the epilogue), but at that point I was so over this game it meant nothing.

Leveling felt insanely slow. I'm used to quests providing the bulk of experience in Xenoblade. I LOVE doing quests in Xenoblade games...just not this one. I was so sick of everything about the enemies targeting me and whatnot that I just stopped bothering with a lot of them eventually. None of them gave you much of anything for experience, and enemies give much less when you're even a level higher than they are. There was never a great way to grind. Once I was around level 47, I connected my game to the online mode for the first time and recruited 3 level 99 scouts (player-uploaded characters). You pay a certain amount and choose how many hours you want them for. I got to around level 55 by hiring them for 2 hours and exploring areas I couldn't safely explore before. I did this again for one hour when I was around level 58 and heading toward endgame (in the extra chapter, I think), to put me at 62 or so.

Basic missions/quests in the game are pretty much XC standard fare. Affinity quests do a number of things, from unlocking new party members to giving you a glimpse into the background and motivations of the existing ones. Story missions (chapters of the story) are accepted in the barracks, and you can't be in the middle of both an affinity mission and story mission. Many affinity missions were also prerequisites for certain story missions because they involved development of new story-relevant tech, or a specific character, etc. Heart-to-hearts are also in this game, and are found all over the city like the affinity missions. I love affinity quests/heart-to-hearts and that sense of character building, but it felt somewhat stilted here because so much of it was tied to story missions. Most of it was not truly optional if you wanted to just plow through the story itself. There were some that I did leave undone in the end, because I was so over the game, but I might go watch them or something. One for Elma was a rec'd level of 80 and I finished the game at like Lv. 64. Nope.

Story:

There's really not much to gush about here, unfortunately. The original release was meant to stand on its own as far as we know, but when I got to the original ending, I was absolutely baffled. As previously mentioned, it was completely unfinished. Big reveals and "what the fucks" and no real answers. I would have been so pissed if I'd played it back then.

In the beginning of the game, we're made somewhat aware that there was a pilot defending the White Whale every time xenos attacked it in the two years between leaving Earth and crashing on Mira. This is never mentioned again, until you start the epilogue/chapter 13 which is ALL NEW CONTENT, and meet said pilot and get a shitton of lore dump, new big bads, etc., across three very long acts that clumsily try to tie the game into the mainline series.

One of my favorite characters, L, is apparently a native to Mira. I did all of his affinity quests and heart-to-hearts, and still have no idea what race he is or why we never see anyone else like him. His race is listed as "unknown" on the affinity chart to this day. He's included in major plot events/cutscenes with other main characters even when they're not in your party, but he never gets a real background?

The story overall is one of hope and of humans struggling to survive against all odds. This is fine--normal, even. I think a lot of this was addressed really well: trying to explore the planet and make it a home while dealing with the ethics of taking out massive native creatures for safety reasons, discovering new resources and their uses, navigating the complex feelings of all the people in NLA regarding the situation, etc. The system in place to set up probes for fast travel, information, etc., is called FrontierNav, and I found this to be a pretty neat mechanic. You earn rewards for clearing more and more of the map (not just seeing it, but placing the probes in pre-identified areas), finding search points/alien and Skell wreckage/containers in different segments, taking out tyrants (the name for uniques in this game), and so on. There are quests about building a water purification plant, introducing xenos to human culture and traditions, fighting or aiding a dude who wants to kill said friendly xenos, and numerous other ventures that explore what humans would do in this situation. The Xenoblade games are great about giving the player a large role in building a sense of community everywhere they go. Quests are often a lot deeper than just "go find me 10 of these flowers." There's always some greater purpose, and that's one of the things that makes me love the series so much. That's present here, even if I eventually stopped caring enough to do them.

The development of BLADE as a pesudo-military organization that basically everything functions through takes place over like two months. When you start the game, everything has been established in that timeframe since the crash: BLADE divisions, FrontierNav, a form of government, the roles of the people in BLADE, etc. Seems fake, but I can overlook it. Then you have their main goal, which is to find the Lifehold where all of the ship's civilian passengers are in stasis (which itself is another big reveal in the end), and I found it ridiculous that they still hadn't gotten any kind of read on it by the time I was nearing the end of the game. I suppose the fact that Skells couldn't fly until later in the game could be the reason, but the plot was just so weak in this regard.

In regards to the epilogue/extra chapter...what a mess. We meet the aforementioned pilot, learn about the Ares, find out who the real big bad is, get a bunch of multiverse lore, and in one cutscene, see a shard of universe "glass" with Shulk and Fiora and another with Rex and Pyra floating in the background. There's mention of a conduit, but not the same conduit in the mainline games. There's the whole, "We have to abandon Mira because it's going to get wiped out along with this entire universe (oh yeah, and our Earth was in another universe that was destroyed when Earth was 2 years ago), so we're gonna take like a week to make a fully functional ship that uses the Ares Skell as a jump drive based on a bunch of Elma's conjecture about shit." The pilot/new party member himself, Al, annoyed the shit out of me. He has some stupid shtick of asking "what's poppin'?" as a greeting and the expected answer is along the lines of, "Terrible, how about you?" and then him saying, "A lot better than you," or something. They do this like 50 times across the 3 acts of this chapter and it was so forced and stupid. But the WORST PART, the ABSOLUTE WORST SHIT, was what they had the fuckin' nerve to pull in the last act before the final battle. Holy fuck. (This is where I said "I hate this game" the most.) You fight Void, and then he throws your entire party (as in, 20 available party members apart from your played character) into his little special realm of floating structures and islands. You have to find them one by one, find your Skells so that you can get around, fly underneath and inside of these floating landmasses, fight lots of really annoying flying mechs in stupid Skell combat, and also activate these 6 giant spears that will weaken Void in the final final final battle. You don't technically HAVE to do any of this, but unless you look up where specific characters are, you kind of have to until you have your desired party members back. I had already gotten this far, so I found them all, unlocked the spears, and ended the game.

The final story beats were pretty good. The final chapter, while throwing in all of this new lore and shit, also managed to tie up some of the major loose ends from the original ending.

Still don't know shit about my boi L, though.