Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna - The Golden Country is a stand-alone story expansion of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which released a year prior. The game is a prequel set 500 years before the events of the main game in the Kingdom of Torna. You play as Lora, a mercenary, who, together with her blades Jin and Haze, is searching for her mother. On their journey they meet the Tornan prince Adam and his blade Mythra, who are on a mission to stop Malos, who has been ravaging the world ever since he was awoken. Almost immediately Laura and her companions get caught up in their quest.

First off, this is a much shorter game than main entries into the Xenoblade series usually are. After having played for about 20 hours, you will have seen most of the game. Considering the usual play time of a mainline entry of about 60 to 80 hours, this is a very tightly packaged experience in every regard. The story is self-contained, but heavily relies on references to the main game to be properly understood. And while the gameplay is very similar to XC2, it features several quality of life improvements.

For the gameplay, the game features some minor, but very welcome changes, like gathering spots for resources now being grouped and marked by type while exploring. You need some kind of fish item for crafting? Now you know exactly where to look! Speaking of crafting, every character in your party can now craft items around camp fires. These items are either pouch items, that improve your combat stats temporarily, or permanent improvements to all kinds of stats in the game. Previously pouch items were mainly bought, or created at their designated crafting spot (food was made in the kitchen, and so on), but now all of that was unified into crafting around the camp fire. This simplification makes for a much tighter experience. Another such simplification is that your party is now fixed. In the main game, you could awaken team members, called Blades, from Core Crystals, who all have their own abilities, and you would have to switch out depending on what you needed. This party wrangling à la Pokémon wasn’t all that compelling, considering that the story revolved around core party members and everyone else was just a side character, who, at most, sometimes had a compelling side story. Now, with a fixed party, the game can focus on what’s important in the story and avoids you having to spread your attention across dozens of characters.
One major change has been made to how combat itself works. Instead of controlling the driver and having the blade as support, you can dynamically switch between driver and blade as main actors in battle. The game encourages switching regularly by allowing you to undo huge amounts of damage, that were done to the character you currently control, when switching. This results in much more active and engaging combat.
Another huge change is for the final fight of the game, where one of the series’ core mechanic, the chain attack, is changed from how it usually works. This is very compelling, as it highlights the uniqueness of the final fight outside of the pure story context and makes it a very memorable experience.
And finally, one of the major pitfalls of XC2 was that it didn’t explain its complex mechanics very well. Tutorials explained things badly, you had no way of accessing tutorials after the fact, and mechanics that would only become important later on, where introduced much too early. This game outdoes this easily. Tutorials are decently worded, come up when appropriate, and you can look at them later anytime from the main menu. Those tutorials remain in pure text form however, when previous entries into the series illustrated their tutorials better.

Like the rest of the series, this game follows a narrow narrative thread, but sets itself apart by putting an emphasis on side questing. Through helping the people of the world you build a community, similar to the Affinity Chart in XC1. With more and more people joining your community, it levels up. And progressing in the story at certain parts is locked behind having reached a specific community level. Side questing was always a major component of the series, but requiring it for main story progress is new. This is mostly fine, because of the breadth that it encourages the player to engage with the world, and exploring the world like that is mostly interesting. Though, of course, there is the occasional quest that is just blatant filler.
Exploring the world is as fun as it always is with Xenoblade. The desert on Torna making for a great addition in terms of visuals and exploration experience. It makes for a great area that the player will revisit over and over while doing side quests.

Torna - The Golden Country is the first game in the series to feature a female protagonist and manages that transition well. Lora’s warm and caring attitude, together with her harmonious relationship with her two blades Jin and Haze makes for a striking contrast with Rex from XC2. And speaking more generally of the contrast with XC2, female characters are treated much more respectfully by this game. The former had many problems: making sexist jokes about women being overly sensitive about their body weight, an honestly embarrassing focus on the breasts of one of the main characters, and the list goes on. I’m not going to list everything here, but if you’re interested, the video essayist Ludiscere made a pretty comprehensive overview on YouTube.
A lot of things in this game seem to be a direct reaction to criticism of XC2’s treatment of its female characters. The appearance of female characters is no longer exploited by placing the camera a certain, definitely accidental wink wink, way, and Mythra even managed to put on some clothing for the other half of her body! There even is a cooking scene where, very specifically, only boys and men are the ones that end up doing the cooking, as opposed to XC2, where, of course, it’s one of the main female characters. I appreciate this a lot, it was a major turn off from the main game for me. I will say however, that it creates a jarring contrast between this and the main game. What exactly moved the people working on both games to depart from putting this kind of “fan service” into this one? It just leaves a somewhat sour taste in my mouth, having a glimpse of what XC2 could have been, with its much greater scope.

Thematically, Torna - The Golden Country expands on the themes of memory, identity, and partnership set up by XC2. It does what you would expect of a prequel in that regard. Where it shines however, is adding new thematic context to the main game that it was lacking. Xenoblade Chronicles had an overarching idea throughout the game, about forging your own path against the odds—defeating what seems inevitable. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 lacked such an overarching idea, or at least it wasn’t communicated as clearly. Torna - The Golden Country takes one idea from XC2 about life being structured around cycles and extends it greatly.
If you have played XC2 already, you will know that Torna is doomed to die at the end of the game. You know that defeating Malos here will not stop him from coming back 500 years later. Conflict trending towards catastrophe is painted as inevitable. And yet the game expects you to build a community of people there on Torna. In XC2 the kingdom is framed as a paradise where drivers and blades stood on equal grounds, instead of a blade serving a driver. This is doubly communicated by this game’s changes to it’s combat with drivers and blades being equal participants. Clearly there is a message here about living in the moment, enjoying the good things as long as they last, but there is more here than just that.
At the start of the game, there is a scene of a village looted and burned to the ground, only for at the end of the game, Tornan refugees being set up in the same spot, and the military of the Praetorium approaching them for an attack. We are to understand that the same destruction is about to occur again. Similarly, there are multiple instances in this game, where parallels to scenes from the main game are drawn. But these aren’t mere references for fans, they are there to make us understand the similarities in Rex’s and Adam’s journeys. With one key difference: where Adam fails, Rex succeeds. This transforms the overall gloomy message into rejecting the seeming inevitability of the cyclical “nature” of life—fight against catastrophe no matter how inevitable it seems and by working together we might be able to overcome it. This is a very clever synthesis of a minor theme from XC2 and the overarching theme of XC1. This is cheapened only by XC2’s unconvincing storytelling of how Rex superseded Adam, but this attempt at elevating its predecessor is very impressive and, makes for some interesting meta-commentary.

If you want to play this game, I would heavily recommend playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2 first. Playing these games in the order they were released will allow you to directly see the improvements that Torna - The Golden Country brings to the table, and appreciate the story expansion a lot more with the provided context of the main game.
Ultimately this is a good improvement on its predecessor. It recaptures some of the charm of XC1, that XC2 unfortunately squandered, and even extends the somewhat lacklustre thematic messaging of the predecessor. On the surface, this seems like a game with a small scope, but it is much more than that.

In summary: 8/10

And this game fixes almost every problem the main campaign had. A fixed party means there's no need for odd party movements while also adding a different strategy on how to confront battles. The pacing of the game is fixed by better (or at least more consistent) writing, which makes travelling across regions not odd. The crafting system and rarity of collectible points also makes easier to know what you're getting and obtaining ingredients never felt like a chore. Main battles were probably on the easy side, but that's not an issue. And the story is again very good and explained a lot of things from the core game that were maybe not necessary, but are good additions to finally understand the motives of some choices. The small additions to the gameplay, community, for example, are a nice touch and it really adds to the overall feeling of the game try to make Torna the best country while knowing that everything was going to be destroyed and in the bottom of the cloud sea by the end of the day.

Overall, definitely better than XC2 and might be on par with XC1. I feel like revisiting this game later on and trying to get 100%, something I didn't do nor want to do on the original campaign.

If you saw my review for Xenoblade Chronicles 2, you'll know that I didn't like it. So why play this? Because many people seem to love the Xenoblade series, and I felt like I needed to give it a second shot.

I do have to say that I liked this one better. The DLC did work hard to simplify the battle system, which was a major problem for me in the main game. I feel like its various components were explained more slowly than in the main game, so it was easier to grasp and to use. They also got rid of both the random Blade system and the class system, which makes it a lot easier to modify the party to your needs.

I did still have a lot of issue with the story. Again, as in the main game, cut scenes are long and frequent. I know it's a JRPG, I know it's kind of conventional to have these convoluted story lines, but it's really frustrating to play for 15-20 minutes, then watch a 10-minute scene, then play for only another few minutes before you have to watch another one. I actually skipped scenes this time which is something I never, repeat NEVER, do. I just couldn't stand it anymore.

The story component of the game was even more frustrating because the DLC was a prequel. Having played the main game, I already knew how this would end. You would think that mean that they would focus parts of the story on less-explored areas of the world, but they don't. So that made a lot of the scenes boring, as well as frustrating.

And it was doubly frustrating because the story isn't even that good, in my opinion. No spoilers, but a lot happens in this DLC, and it's difficult to make that much narrative happen in a small space. I particularly feel like Mythra's character development was not completely earned by the end of the game. The story line with Gort also could have been completely removed and would have made the narrative that much neater.

Also, I'm really sick of the boob shots and skimpy outfits for no reason and other ways this game exploits the feminine body for fan service. It's childish and disgusting and doesn't belong in a game that came out in 2018.

If you haven't read my review of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, you should read that first. Almost everything there still applies, and if you weren't into the core game there's nothing here that will change your mind.

But for those of us who really liked the core game, there's a lot in this DLC to love. It's nearly 20 hours of new gameplay! While a portion of that is padded by mandatory sidequests (is that even a sidequest?), I found these more rewarding thanks to the new community aspect where your reputation is positively impacted by what you complete.

There's no blade collecting in this DLC. While I thought I'd miss that mechanic (I'm a fan of Pokémon and Persona, after all), I feel it actually focuses the game. Humans and blades are now treated as equals, with either being able to switch positions. It gives you a lot more options and makes the battles feel more equal and dynamic.

The story isn't groundbreaking, but it does help explain what transpired prior to the main game and it's fun to see some of those mysteries solved. In particular I found Lora to be a more endearing protagonist than Rex (nothing against Rex, he just took a while to grow on me). It doesn't all fit together perfectly... I still don't really get why some of the characters changed allegiances between this and the main game... but if you enjoyed the world the first time, it's a welcome chance to revisit.

Overall, the Torna DLC doesn't just expand the game... it actually improves on it in a few small ways. It exceeded my expectations.

If the score isn't enough of an indicator, I did enjoy my time with this game. The already lush environments of the original have been a joy, and here is the dlc with the land of torna, an equally lush and gorgeous large land to explore, seeing how the land is interconnected made it even more wonderful. The music went from being a typical JRPG affair to a big band jazz delight, it was honestly the best part of this dlc. The story is a prequel to the main game and so it does run into the same annoying tropes but at least I enjoyed it more due to the more condensed, shorter experience. Overall this DLC helped me appreciate the main game even more, and the change in game mechanics and the addition of item making at campfires was cool but also hurt the game's economy system since there wasn't a reason to get any money at all anymore, thus leading to me having over 3m by the end of the experience. Now I need to talk about the main flaw of the game: The community system. It's a good idea, but the forced implementation of it at the end of the game is just so damn stupid, and while I didn't mind it because I went for 100% anyways, I think it'll be a little too much for people who aren't big fans of these often monotonous tasks.

• Visuals: 9/10 Extremely impressive even for this series' standards, but some animations still look really weak and the backgrounds have extreme resolution downgrades which doesn't bother me too much but it's noticeable
• Music: 10/10 Really good and the Torna field theme is still stuck in my head, as well as the jazzy battle theme, I highly recommend giving the ost a chance
• Story: 7/10 It's alright, it does get slow by the end but it's not too noticeable and it does tie really well to the main game so I'm satisfied
• Mechanics: 7/10 It's alright, it just got really stale by the end, I still enjoyed doing full bursts but I was able to break the difficulty like a twig by the end of the game, it was funny seeing level 50 Malos fight against my level 80 team
• Overall: 8.5 It's a very satisfying DLC that gave me exactly what I signed up for, and while the new additions or changes were fun, they didn't hold up well by the end of the game where they broke and became boring or null.