Switch Adventures #5: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Well, this has been a long time coming, but I've put this off for long enough. I wanted to see if I could bring myself to get past the point I was at in this without completely getting ragey and dropping the game. I am sorry to say that I was enjoying the game, until one specific point, which I could not get past, and after trying many strategies, including looking online, I could not get past the boss I was stuck at, so I am dropping this game.

Now, I think that this game is totally fine, and think that there is a lot of redeeming value to it, especially in the story and character interactions. The story is very sweeping, like you'd expect from a JRPG. It involves a bunch of titans that live in the clouds, acting as the continents of the world, known as Alrest, and the story focuses on a young salvager named Rex, who ends up finding a mythical sentient blade known as the Aegis, although her human avatar usually prefers to go by the name Pyra. The Aegis is being sought out by a villainous group of terrorists known as Torna, who plans on capturing her and using her for unknown purposes. Along the way, Rex meets a bunch of colorful characters as they journey to find the one who created the Aegis, the Architect.

Story is great, as you can see. Combat is very good as well. If you've played an MMORPG, the combat is very similar, in that it plays out automatically and in real-time, but you can control when they use special moves. It was surprisingly fun, especially coming from someone who absolutely hates MMORPGs. It was in-depth enough that I had to think while fighting, instead of being hands off like many other battle systems can be.

The music and visuals are also great, although the lip syncing is not very good and made everyone look like muppets when they talked. I didn't like how you could find different blades in the world, but they were a randomized gacha style thing. I dislike gacha, so having it be a main mechanic in a game just made me want to ignore it, which I usually did.

Why did I stop? Well, I ran into a very obnoxious boss, and once I got it to half health, it killed my entire party. There is no special story spell to get through the fight, and every strategy I tried to get past it ended up in failure. Even grinding to gain more levels got me killed. I was between a rock and a hard place. After seven or eight tries against this thing, I had had enough, and my desire to continue this game was gone.

Overall, I think this game was still good, from what I played. I would say that the gacha mechanics go a bit too hard, and that one boss was just...very poorly designed, but those were my only complaints. I would still say check this one out despite me not finishing it, since maybe you'll get more out of it than I did.

Next time, a pink puffball fights against an evil doomsday cult. That's right! I'll be playing Kirby Star Allies next time on Switch Adventures.

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