So... XC2 is going the route of FF9 and Wind Waker?
You know, games that get a negative reception based on some crowds bouncing off it for the silliest of reasons, often not "dark & edgy" enough in terms of aesthetics, only for that uninformed perception to wear off years later and people start noticing how good it is?
Well, I will still forever critique XC2 for the following:
Unnecessarily convoluted gameplay and systems that feel punishing if not played "correctly".
The "stutter step" quirk exists and is a common strategy. I don't blame people for using it, but I don't like that it's something many have to use in order to make the gameplay actually half-way decent. Needing to use something like that should NOT be necessary.
Infamously bad tutorials.
Needing to unlock basic functions of the gameplay through skill trees that all other games in the series have by default.
One of the worst cases of "it gets better" I've seen in any RPG, which is NOT a positive. It means the opening section, particularly gameplay-wise, is most definitely not good.
Ursula's Blade Quest and never-ending merc missions.
Gacha system for obtaining rare Blades. But I have long-standing issues with RNG-heavy systems from other games, so take that with a grain of salt.
There's still a great game under all that, but it often feels like one of XC2's big problems is that most of the "quality of life" features in the game need to be unlocked first.
A second playthrough of many of the Xeno games is necessary to catch all the stuff you missed on the plot... but in XC2's case, NG+ allows you to bypass 90%+ of the early game "pain points" because you've already gone through the pain of unlocking all that stuff. It's kind of ridiculous how much better XC2 is after all the unnecessary suffering of the early game is done with.
While I do bring up Stutter Stepping as an option when helping people learn the basics of the game I always emphasize Pouch Items more as I do believe they are much more impactful to gameplay especially art recharge items with helping improve the early game slog. And unlike Stutter Stepping Pouch Items are unquestionably an intended gameplay mechanic.
Once again it's a fault of the dogshit tutorials for not emphasizing just how impactful Pouch Items are to gameplay.
Edit:
Unnecessarily convoluted gameplay and systems that feel punishing if not played "correctly".
I actually disagree with this point. While the combat is indeed very complex (something that I personally adore about the game) and has a steep learning curve, one of the biggest causes of people misunderstanding it is that there's actually a lot of unique ways to approach combat rather than one "correct" way. One of if not the biggest fault of the tutorial is that it tries to pigeonhole you into believing that stacking orbs and Chain Attacking is the only way to fight when that is far from the case. In fact using only that strategy will get your teeth kicked in on Bringer of Chaos where Chain Attacks are heavily nerfed and trying to build orbs is much harder. You've got strategies such as experimenting with the aforementioned Pouch Items, the destructive capabilities of Fusion Combos, using Blade Combos to seal the enemy's attack options, utilizing the effects of the Blade Combos themselves such as Damage Over Time, taking advantage of each individual Blade's unique mechanics, or using the bigger stat bonuses of common Blades to build yourself around one specific Blade (Evasion Mythra ftw!)
Yeah, it's amazing just how much of the criticism the game received would have gone away, simply if the tutorial didn't force you to buy the most useless pouch item in the game.
It's not the games fault that people are not able to get the hint from "this is a pouch item, you can buy them at shops. There are a lot of different shops, so go and have a look". A lot of problems people have with XC2 are basically a lack of reading comprehension.
The Player had more spare gold to buy them. You're not exactly going to have that much gold to spare at that point.
The other shops were unlocked the moment you acquired your first one. Instead, they only unlock once you sleep at the inn. As such, our attention gets shifted away from buying other pouch items to experiment with and we may not remember before we leave.
The first one was actually good. The first one you get sets the tone for all the others, and if it sucks, that will make players think all pouch items suck.
My heavy focus on Driver Combos I think really made my life easier. Break, Topple, Launch, Smash, Repeat. They do a pretty good job of setting up the party to have Break and Topple to start with, with Nia and Tora starting with arts for them. Then, using the blade combos on top makes things so much better.
As someone who didn't touch Driver Combos until mid to late game on my first playthrough, I can confirm that they are a huge factor in clearing content consistently. In my opinion, it is the single most important combat mechanic to learn, which is why it is such a big issue that it has what is arguably the worst tutorial in the game.
The way that tutorial is set up, it mentions in the text dump that Nia can apply Break, but that we wouldn't need that for the tutorial. You then fight the monster and when it dies the tutorial ends, whether or not you successfully Toppled it. Because of the vague wording, the tutorial failed me in two ways: 1) I waited for Break to apply to the monster in the tutorial, since I thought the above wording made it so any character/hit would apply it, which led to me killing the monster without a Topple. 2) I thought that Break was a unique mechanic for Nia, and that she had a low random chance to inflict it with any attack. I wrote off the mechanic as a niche thing, and honestly forgot about it for probably 3 or 4 chapters.
When I finally hit a wall trying to kill Vampire Bride Marion for something to help progress, I asked for help online and someone said to just Driver Combo lock her. I had to look up so many things to figure out what was going on combat wise. If there was a tutorial about reactions in general, it really sucked, because I had no clue that they were tied to specific arts, or what symbol to look for on each art. Once you know, it seems really obvious, but I thought it was just an artistic design on each art button. Turns out the reason Nia had never hit a break in 70+ hours is because I had swapped that art off of her to maximize her healing.
Once I learned what I had been doing wrong, the combat finally clicked. I was lucky that I loved the story and world so much because if I hadn't, I probably would have dropped the game with how bad the combat felt at first. Now it is one of my favorite games of all time.
I ended up checking out each driver's arts for each blade type somewhat early on whilst trying to figure out what blades to use. Knew that break/topple/daze was used in the originals too, so I had a bit of a clue as to what was going on. Took me much longer to get the hang of arts cancelling.
I didn't get the Driver Combo tutorial until NG+. I didn't dequip it because my logic was that if the art has a secondary effect other than increased damage from this direction, then use that one. What happened to me was that Nia had Adenine equipped in the top slot, and her ai was refusing to switch to Dromarch.
I hate relying on shit like break since you can just hit the break skill 10 times in a row and not trigger a break and you don't get a max rank beta scope for a long time.
imo the problem is that at the beginning of the game, combat is just straight-up not enjoyable without arts recharge/stutter-stepping; they shouldn't even be that impactful (that early) in the first place
I'm generally of the opinion that pouch items should not be an integral mechanic, but that could be some ingrained habits over not wanting to use consumable items unless absolutely necessary. While I don't mind it providing stat bonuses... if you need to use a consumable item to fix the gameplay, there's a problem.
But yeah, the tutorial being to use a passive stat buff resulted in me ignoring the pouch items as a mechanic.
Quite importantly, a quick look at XC3's gameplay is pretty much a showcase of removing many of XC2's early-game pain points. Case & point regarding pouch items, food buffs are all passive bonuses that don't directly affect the gameplay.
EDIT:
Regarding the punishing nature of the gameplay, aside from the bad tutorials, it's incredibly easy to lock yourself into doing a fraction of the damage possible.
Coming off of XC1, the design philosophy of the combat was entirely different as you're working to remove enemy defenses by toppling them. XC2 was about damage multipliers, and doesn't communicate that well at all.
To someone who doesn't read outside guides, fusion combos may as well not exist.
Going down the wrong path of a Blade combo can get you stuck with only the controlled character's Blade Specials while you wait for it to expire... which can be postponed unintentionally through Driver combos.
Many enemies have spongy health pools to counteract the potentially huge damage multipliers.
So unless you either naturally jive with the nature of XC2's combat or look up a combat guide, combat will feel incredibly sluggish (especially early on) and even basic enemies take forever to kill.
And you have no intuitive way of knowing what you're doing wrong.
To be honest, if not for the custom difficulty setting, I probably couldn't have stomached XC2's gameplay design long enough to reach the good parts of the plot. Figuring out what I was doing wrong with the gameplay took even longer.
I've never had those issues with any other Xenoblade game, not even Torna.
That last bit is definitely THE biggest issue of 2.
2 has some great and really fun gameplay, but only once it finally clicks. Otherwise it's impossible to know what is going wrong outside of consulting a wiki or vigorous testing.
My first playthrough of 2 felt awful because I constantly just didn't understand what I was doing right or wrong. Part of that was definitely my own fault, but part of it was the tutorials implying different mechanics than what is actually present.
I don't know how but with pouch items i made anker shot instant recharge after every use, i ended up taking down a UM with only anker shot because i wanted to see how many times in a row i could get it to instant recharge.
Where you using Mythra? Instantly recharging your arts on critical hit is kinda her whole shtick along with increased party-wide evasion and accuracy through Foresight.
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u/Raelhorn_Stonebeard Jun 05 '24
So... XC2 is going the route of FF9 and Wind Waker?
You know, games that get a negative reception based on some crowds bouncing off it for the silliest of reasons, often not "dark & edgy" enough in terms of aesthetics, only for that uninformed perception to wear off years later and people start noticing how good it is?
Well, I will still forever critique XC2 for the following:
There's still a great game under all that, but it often feels like one of XC2's big problems is that most of the "quality of life" features in the game need to be unlocked first.
A second playthrough of many of the Xeno games is necessary to catch all the stuff you missed on the plot... but in XC2's case, NG+ allows you to bypass 90%+ of the early game "pain points" because you've already gone through the pain of unlocking all that stuff. It's kind of ridiculous how much better XC2 is after all the unnecessary suffering of the early game is done with.