god, someone finally says it. i appreciate you speaking about the flaws of this game, its surprising no one points them out given how many of them there are. good work
I don't get anyone who likes xenoblade 2 more than one and claiming that the characters in 2 are better than 1's which is wrong because the characters are grating stereotypes unlike the complex human like characters of one and how naturally they grew over the course of the game instead of being too sudden. Its like what melia said " even so we change little by little". The story is also much more complex than "Boy gets sword and kills god"
"Claps" this is one of the best videos i have seen in a while finally someone has the balls to criticize this mediocre jrpg instead mindlessly praising it like fanboys do,agreed with almost all of your criticisms especially the plot convenience part,vandhalm's lame death and the weak characters
I was so excited for this game. I avoided as much promotional material so I could experience it as blindly as a I could, and I quit after chapter 1 and have only just picked it up again because I heard so many people praising the game, but I just hate everything about it. Music and environments are not enough to fix everything else with this game
Especially when said environments are nowhere near as well-thought out and maticulously designed as in previous games. The music also feels derivative of the first game, rather than fitting this new one.
When people compare this game to 1, I go insane. Did we play the same game? Did you people even touch Xenoblade 1? It made you cry? How? Have you played any other RPG before? The combat may have a lot of elements to it, but it doesn't flow well at all, and ends with the same strategy every battle. The combat is WIDE, not deep. The environments are tedious as heck to explore, and with the exception of a few beautiful areas, most of them are in-closed and ugly. The story has no direction to it, its just meaningless wandering for a large time, and then it ends just as soon as it becomes remotely interesting. The cast is bloated, there are few characters with any depth at all, and even then most of them are just walking tropes. The villains are the absolutely horrendous, Jin's backstory is in direct conflict with his motives, Malos has no motive he's just evil for the sake of being evil, and Amalthus is just generic evil religious guy number 908283. There are no major plot twists besides Nia being a blade (which is cool, but reduced in value since practically EVERY other character is revealed throughout the course of the game to be a blade or a blade eater.) and the fact that the game takes place on the real world which has been done before in literally every single Xeno game ever. Sure, it connects to the first game, but it has to HARD retcon it in order to do so. That's not a good way to connect to a previous title. Which is insulting considering that the game just takes what Xenoblade 1 does right and turns it into something so laughably meh. And then you have the poor voice acting, boring camera work (the first game's camera work in cutscenes is so, so, so good), highly inconsistent tone, and just a lack of ambition and grandiose. I mean, sure, I'm fine with people liking Xenoblade 2. More power to you, but... but again, what is it that makes it special? What is it that makes people connect to these characters that are about as relatable as a rock and have the depth of a puddle? It has really, really good music, but... every other facet of the game is either flawed, rushed, or just plain bad. And then to say that its better than 1... just no. You can prefer 2 over 1, of course, but to say 2 is in any form (besides music) better than 1? That's just... factually wrong. Believe it or not, there IS such a thing as objective quality of story telling, character writing, environment design, and gameplay. And Xenoblade 2 is just, very, very, flawed.
Damm why didn't i find this video earlier this felt cathartic especially after me hearing people mindlessly praise this game to no end i agree with every point in this video especially the part about the missed potential of the games villians (i think even Jin somewhat suffers from this problem though less so then Akhos and Malos ). also this is may be somewhat unrelated to the video but am i the only one who finds it kinda stupid how they semi retconned Zanza's/Klaus's motivaitions in the final act(also on another note what was the deal with mythras second aegis blade like why was it apperently so hard to controll?)
This is hands down the best video analyzing whats wrong with xenoblade 2. And your explanation of what makes xenoblade 1 an absolute classic is the best ive seen. Good work man.
This was actually really respectful and mature when critiquing Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Then again, I may be a little biased since I agree with you a lot in this video. Xenoblade Chronicles is one of my favorite video games ever, and I was also disappointed by the story specifically in Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
Finally someone said it. FINALLY. SOMEONE FUCKING SAID IT (or rather finally I found someone who said it since you’ve posted this quite a while ago). After looking through countless threads to try to find people who felt the same as me. I’m so tired of people mindlessly praising such a mediocre game. Xenoblade 2 isn’t terrible, but as a sequel to honestly one of the greatest JRPG’s out there that puts so much care into its world building, characters, story, and game mechanics, it’s so DAMN disappointing with so much missed potential. Love all of your points you make.
The most disappointing thing about the game to me is that it's a lot of missed opportunities and potential. [SPOILERS] A game happening alongside Xenoblade 1 with parallel situations and characters is a great idea to start from, especially if you are curious about Zanza and Alvis' backstory. The problem is though, as much as this game loves parallel situations (Rex/Pyra and Malos/Jin for example) it's just... Almost always handled poorly. The fact they crammed so much of the story in the last four/five chapters instead of having something more balanced like the first game. I swear, all the padding happening through the first chapter could have been spent giving Tora, Mòrag and Zeke a more pivotal role and balancing all the plot reveals so that they don't happen all at the World Tree. I feel like a could write a book on how much this game disappointed me, so I'll try not to go overboard and mention the other thing that disappointed me: The main love story between Rex and Pyra is so bad. Aside from the characters being boring themselves, there is never any doubt coming from Rex in regards to Pyra, not to mention his blindness to her feelings make it so he never really gives us any opinion on her aside from "I like Pyra, she is my friend!", and Pyra just blindly loves him like everyone else does because he's hopeful to the point of feeling like a non-human character to me (more like a paragon of virtues who is also a self insert for everyone who wants to have a harem of blades). It's like they wanted to be poetic (I'll bring Pyra to Elysium!) but give us no reason to care about it, unless looking as attractive as Pyra does counts for romance at all. Feels like they REALLY want the player to self insert as Rex and fill in the blanks... He barely has any opinion on her aside from what I mentioned before. That just makes for awful romance. This should not be a dating sim, this is a story driven, character driven game. I don't want to self insert as anyone in a relationship, I want to see a relationship between two characters develop and unfold before my eyes. Let's not even mention Rex/Mythra: it's like it's there just for tsundere fetishists who love to have pointy objects thrown at them. That one is even more painful to watch because it's just comic relief after comic relief. And Mythra barely gives any reason why she loves Rex. She just does because she must give the player a boner, that's why. What a shame, especially since the game does show more interesting relationships, like Zeke/Pandoria, who actually show they deeply care for eachother, and Malos' affection for Jin (that does play a part in his desire to destroy the world). I'd even say Nia is a better love interest than Pyra. But that scenes shows that Rex and the writers have no balls for rejection.
Hello, I am Erico. I was thinking of doing an honest review of XB2 myself this morning, and XB1 is also my favorite game. I find this stuff relatable. I agree with everything except what I'm going to say here. So, if it's not below, I agree and thank-you. - You said Vandham did not get brought up at all for the rest of the game. This is not true, because it is kind of brought up with Nia when she reveals her true form. The message is given across that she would not repeat the mistake of not showing her true form, which is something she learned from this fight. - Apparently, when Vandham appeared wanting to take the Aegis, he was not being serious. This is why Pyra is like 'I don't detect hostility' and why Vandham did not actually finish Rex and crew off. Even though it sounds and seems weird, it is supposed to be that all he wanted was to fight against the Aegis, which I suppose kind of makes sense for his character, since he likes fighting. Anyways, this is what you were using to say that Vandham sacrificing himself was out of character, so I don't think it was necessarily out of character. - You asked in text where Malos's blade was for the rest of the game: he died in the Mythra / Vandham scene but was around until then. - Finally, it's interesting the parallels you draw between XB1/XB2 and how they were trying to mimic it. I can see your point for some of the connections (like Morag is Dunban, Nia is Melia, Zeke is Riki) but I'm not sure about some of the other connections. - Unrelated to XB2 story, but could you not fade out the cutscenes so early? That kinda was annoying. Otherwise, I agree, and Xenoblade 2 was largely disappointing. Thank-you!
When you've played the 1st game the second feels like a downgrade the voice acting was great in the 1st game you can explore like atleast 20 regions the combat was pretty solid the blades felt a bit out of control with rng & field skills.
I'm right there with you. Xenoblade Chronicles is also my favourite game of all time, and with that in mind, I wasn't expecting 2 to be better, but still a fantastic game. What I ended up with was a... good-ish game. Like, maybe a 7/10 at best. And to me, that's very disappointing. While I don't think the main character artstyle is inherently bad, it's a very poor fit for the Xenoblade franchise, made even worse by the tropes they throw in and the overabundance of blatant fanservice. It takes away the identity that 1 and X to some extent set up, and makes the game come across as just another generic clique moe anime game, which are a dime a dozen on the market. Not saying all of them are bad, but I don't go to a Xenoblade game for this crap. If Monolith are going to abandon anything from this game moving forward, it needs to be the anime cliques. The story also suffers for the same reason, most of which you already pointed out. It hurts, because I know Monolithsoft can do better. They already HAVE done better, in the games that predate this. Say what you will about X's botched main storyline, it had a solid start and side-quests that more than made up for it in my opinion. While I don't think XC2's story is as bad as X's main story, I can't see it as anything but mediocre and done-to-death, with nothing new to bring to the table, and overall just a lazy attempt by a development team that can and have done so much better. While the elements and blade systems are satisfying enough once you get the hang of it, there's no excuse for making regular battles take as long as they do. And the chain attack is gimped to shit now, only serving to get more rewards out of a single foe by overkilling them. Honestly, I'd much rather gain less rewards from the enemies if it means I can switch between attacking multiple foes within a single chain attack, because at least that's more pragmatic and less time-consuming compared to XC2's incentive to play the game in the most unenjoyable way imaginable just for more item drops. And why didn't they include some of the QOA improvements X made, like sprinting to cut down on wasted time, or individual body part/targeting? And all of that isn't even getting into this game's garish UI design. Having played the game for 400+ hours and gone back to the first, It's honestly shocking how cumbersome it is just to swap out blades in your party or upgrade stats. It makes the whole game come across as ameaturish, sloppy and unpolished, which really puts into perspective how much better off the past two games were. The only things that prevent me from calling the game anything less than good are the afformentioned element systems, the way Break > Topple > Launch > Smash can be done in conjunction with blade combos, the still gorgeous environments that reward exploration and smart traversal, and stellar music for the most part. Progressing through each questline and developing each nation was also rewarding, but a lot of tedium gets in the way of the experience, and when I know it can be done better, it makes this game an utter failure as a sequel.
Hahhahaha. XC1’s story is honestly far worse than XC2’s story in so many ways. Xc1 starts with you think shit is serious, before the plot armor kicks in to unbelievable levels and the game ends with a care bear stare. XC1 doesn’t hold up as a story. It holds up as a set piece.
There's a few wrong things in this video, Amalthus is able to use Fan's core crystal because he is a blade eater which isn't explained but is still the reason. Nia is a FLESH eater not a BLADE eater, she was originally a blade that is now part human by eating a human's heart, which is why she is both a blade and driver, flesh eaters are also unstable and have multiple forms like Jin which is why he collapses in Chapter 5, flesh eaters are imperfect and can die at any moment (they don't though due to plot convenience however the game presents it as such). The Aegis is special and can summon blades (also convenience), however ANY blade can be by themselves they are just stronger when with their drivers, Pyra/Mythra is the same they just choose to stay with Rex. I do agree with the rest and believe this game would be far better if it was just a completely unconnected game to the first.
In all honesty this game is separated enough with 1.. The only thing connecting this to Xenoblade 1 was Spoiler: Klaus and the trinity processor.. But even if you don't know thst stuff it still makes for a cohesive story.. Since we get to see Klaus better in this game. The only thing that this game does wrong is bearing the number "2" in the title.
Malos is one of the worst villains I’ve ever seen in a video game. On the same level as Luxxar. He has such a forgettable design. It’s also hilarious how Vandham’s speech about how nothing is black and white is thrown out the window. Malos’s element is DARK. Mythra’s is LIGHT. BLACK VS WHITE. WTF. It’s possible to make an irredeemably evil character. Look at metal face. He does some horrible things, and motivates the heroes to press on. Also, he has an unforgettable design, and is intimidating as hell. Malos has no presence, and really does nothing until the last few chapters.
The idea was, what hes bort as pure destruction, but question why he is like he is. The pay of is just terrible and he himselfe is, like you said such a non presence. Jin at least looks like Final Bossmaterial.
Thank you so much. I tried so hard to love this game. I really did. I ignored the badly translated jokes, the horrendous and downright paradoxical character design, the unexisting character motivations, but in the end it was all too much. I couldn't bring myself to like this game. And now I have to deal with the rest of the world talking about the great "masterpiece" this is. Pyra is joining smash, Chuugaaconroy is making a let's play of it without even criticizing the game a bit, it's all too much. At least I know there's someone here who understands.
What “compelling character motivations” did 1 really had? Seriously, the motivations in that game are far more shallow, 2-dimensional, and depthless beyond the flair of war, bombs, and blood. When you reflect on anything in 1, you realize that Zeke is actually more mature and compelling than any of those main cast characters combined. You realize that Shulk really doesn’t have a path for himself while Rex is brought into considering his future, what he wants to be, and didn’t depend on a OP god sword to give him all of his strength. Rex also didn’t get told on what to feel or do on most occasions. The fact that the little amount of time Vandham had with Rex mattered so much more to Rex himself than Dickson’s entire relationship with Shulk only makes Shulk even emptier as a character. And oh fucking please, don’t bother with “character motivations” when the character with the most shocking plot twist character that raised Shulk himself, Dickson, has no real character motivations whatsoever. Nor, gives Shulk any motivations to be a strong and intelligent man. Like Shulk, Alvis, Zanza, and Mayneth, he’s just a plot device with no real background the writers given a shit about. With what little background Rex had, we can tie him way back to Addam himself and his allure to Vandham, a man who dropped off from royalty after losing his son. Sometimes, he has some lines where Vandham says to Rex “you remind me of my boy.” All XC1 has as for “context” is “oh boy, so that is the foreshadowing moment.” “Oh boy, Dickson was a bit cheeky on his false heroism.” “Oh boy, Fiora didn’t really die on this scene and gets back to normal from pure shit writing. That doesn’t matter since the voice acting is so good in this scene.” Don’t bother with the stupid ass backstory. Egil and Zanza in general are far stupider than any villain in 2 and Zanza’s lines/motivations barely make sense with it. Whenever people bring up the best elements of 1, it’s always the fucking plot twists and only them. With vague statements that “Shulk is a great character”. I have seen Xenoblade shitters admit that Rex is an actual chad protagonist as they shit on Shulk being a complete bitch in comparison. All with paragraphs and viable examples to go with it. 2 was rushed to shit and somehow it feels like 1 was the game where they rushed the story and characters just from how carelessly written it all is.
I love the xenoblade series and I feel that Torna the Golden country sort of has a better story but I am hoping they will improve with Xenoblade 3. Xenoblade 2 tried to be too anime for my liking, but not the good kind either.
Seeing as this month is the game’s one year anniversary, and now that I’ve played the game a lot more (probably more than most fans), I thought I’d return (as if anyone else is still reading these comments). After watching Joseph Anderson’s play through of this game, I am genuinely convinced that this game is a parody of the worst parts of anime/jrpgs/games in general. There’s just too much evidence to this. If I saw people praising this game as a parody, I would understand why everyone loves this game, but I don’t. People seem to think this game is an unironic masterpiece, and I cannot for the life of me understand why. Bad voice acting Bad dialogue Bad writing Bad character designs Bad- no, terrible- no, abysmal game design. Almost anything about this game is majorly flawed. I’ve been replaying xc1 recently, expecting it not to be as good as I remember, but I was delightfully surprised to find that it’s about as good. I found some terrible moments, but overall it simply didn’t have as many flaws (I haven’t finished my play through, so maybe this doesn’t hold true for the whole game). This is unacceptable for a sequel. The series should be improving. This is not an improvement. I’m sure some of these can be chocked up to a smaller development team, but it blows my fucking mind how some of this stuff got past testing. I’m not even going to bother going into detail of all the terrible design choices, I just can’t list them all. The updates only mitigated the issues. They patched “think you can take me”, but there’s still no combat dialogue frequency slider. They added more menu sorting options, but it’s still clunky. They added the ability to skip blade bonding scenes, but you’ll still spend over 100 hours grinding for blades. As for the writing, it’s just stupid. So stupid. Stuff like “I can move at the speed of light” and “absolute zero” sounds like kids rp-ing, coming up with reasons why they won. Despite the mediocre at best main game, I really enjoyed the dlc. I thought it improved upon the main game story and gameplay wise, if it was the main game it might have been as good as xc1. I don’t understand why everyone loves this game. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t fully know if this was an attempt at a genuine experience or a parody. I don’t know how I feel about the future of xenoblade, seeing how well xc2 sold. The torna dlc has me a bit more confident though. If xc3/xcx2 uses xc2 as an example instead of golden country, I will be extremely disappointed. I desperately hope monolith takes their time on xcx2 and xc3, with a bigger team as well. Xc2 could have been amazing, but we know how that turned out.
If I'm not mistaken, a lot of the developers from Torna were busy with other projects during XC2's development (which does explain why XC2 is such a disappointing, mediocre, sloppy mess). I think Monolith learned their lesson regardless of sales numbers though, hence why Torna was so well-crafted on its own, so fingers crossed that they continue to improve their craft and learn from their amateurish mistakes with base-XC2.
@@rubenestradavalencia3306 Just a fyi xenoblade chronicles 1 was developed by monolith soft and I wouldn't be surprised if all the talented employees who worked on the first xenoblade were the ones who worked on zelda.
Xenoblade 2 is irredeemably bad. Combat is non tactical and entirely based around doing the same boring dps rotation to achieve the same meta mechanics for each fight. Character designs are embarrassing and impossible to take seriously. The story is a cliche. The game sucks.
This is such an underrated video. I wish more people would see this and realize how garbage XC2 is compared to the original. Maybe even XCX. The dislikes are absolutely not deserved.
Vandham’s death actually affected Nia in some way because it reminded her that she could have used her powers to save him but she was too afraid to do it in fear of judgement so when Niall almost died she decided she needed to do it.
I have many issues with XC2, chief of which is the extremely lazy reused character model animations in almost every single in-game cutscene. Not only are they reused, but they're awkwardly stiff as well. Kills the immersion for me.
Captain astronaut once said this game's story felt like a first draft. I mean it didn't help that xc2 was developed with a smaller team comapred to the previous games.
personally the reason I liked xenoblade 2 was because everyone was criticizing it, so when I got it, I had lowered my expectations, but it ended up passing my lowered expectations, mainly because the gameplay wasn't as bad as i thought it was, but i still found some of the story to be a bit odd at times which is what i agree with you.
Exactly. How did we go from a seamless world that immersed the player in being a member of BLADE, improvements made to XC1's combat, overall fun, polished and exciting gameplay with so much freedom to tackle missions in whatever order, and flying mechs that act as an extension of what you can do and accomplish, to a watered down plagiarism of XC1 with nothing that made that game so enjoyable?
@@MM-gb3sv not realy. there are some basic standards wich you can compare different things to each other. Writing. Dont do dramatic deaths just for shockvalue, and then revive them instandly and whitouth in World logic. Xeno did this two times and it made similar terrible design and writingchoices. But even if the game itselfe is in fact bad, you can have fun whit it, enjoy it, ignore the flaws and have a good time. But objectivly other games are way better. And they deserve to be called such, because there did something very right and there worked hard to be good and deserve to be called superior. And in the end, whats so bad about enjoying something stupid, finding value in flawed things?
@@Sunaki1000 I know, I was just answering how anyone could enjoy it. It's opinion. Different people find different flaws more noticeable and impactful. I didn't really think about how well constructed the story was when I first played it because I was too invested in it. In the same aspect I could criticise Xeno X because I didn't care about the characters. It doesn't mean they weren't good. It's just what you find yourself liking about the game.
@@MM-gb3sv Not just the Story. lv 80 Enemys who spot you from the other side of the Map, the low number of battlecrys and how often there trigger, and on and one.
@@Sunaki1000 the first one is explained and while the second one is left up in the air there are explanations for it “Objectively other games are better”.... okay what’s your point, you can say this about literally any game. This isn’t even an argument or something worth saying because no one is arguing this is the best game ever made so I’m not even sure what you hoped to achieve by pointing this out because there isn’t a game that you can’t apply that to But you’d need a lot more to be able to just write off the game as “stupid”, you don’t have to like but you’re going to need to point out more than fake out deaths which this game has more actual deaths than fake out ones anyway
Don't ask how I managed to stumble onto this video 6 years later, but here I am! I can't think of one single valid point made in this video, though I feel like there might have been one somewhere in the first half - eff it, I'm not going back to see if I can find it (if there even was one). Did you actually play the game? Vandham never tried to take Pyra, that part was explicitly explained in the next cutscene. Malos *does* have motivations for what he's doing, he explicitly states them in the ending cutscene. Mythra is not all-knowing and has a very different way of thinking and perceiving the world, and as such, just because she can't understand/doesn't know his reasons doesn't mean that they don't exist. She doesn't speak for him, she is merely answering Niall's question to her best abilities (that is to say, not at all). It is also explicitly stated that Malos was - as all Blades are - affected by who the first Driver to awaken him was, in Malos' case that was Amalthus. Zeke can't change into a Blade form because he's a human with part of a Blade's core implanted into him - like Amalthus and Mikhail, he is a Blade Eater. Nia is a Flesh Eater - a Blade fused with human cells. The game explicitly tells you this, as well as explaining what the difference is. Flesh Eaters can also be Drivers. It is never mentioned if Blades can be, though my guess would be no. Aegises can function perfectly without a Driver. Malos has worked separately from his Driver for centuries, Pyra never returned to her core despite her original Driver dying. She chose to bond with Rex as her new Driver because having a Driver makes her stronger. Azurda turned large in the end because Pneuma, as the Master Blade, programmed his core crystal into allowing it. This isn't explicitly stated, but it is openly shown in the cutscene. The writers trusted the players to actually follow the story and use their brains to figure some things out on their own without explaining every single thing in excruciating detail. Pyra and Mythra transferred the entirety of their core crystal to Rex to heal his heart, which made them finally die. We clearly see the core crystal glow and then resonate with Rex once again in the end of the cutscene, which is how they come back - the game has repeatedly told you throughout the game that this is how Blades work. When they die, they return to their crystal, only to later be reawakened again. We don't know with finality (to my knowledge) why both of them return in separate bodies, my guess is that it is the gift granted to them by the Architect, though there is no proof of this theory. Some of the things you wonder about are made even more clear in Torna the Golden Country, but nothing is left completely unexplained in the main game. I can't remember every issue you had, those where the most egregious ones that I felt the need to address. In any case, sorry you didn't like the game. Hope you enjoyed the third one. Cheerio!
I'm so glad I've decided to wait for Xenoblade Chronicles to come to the Switch first before playing this game. I knew there was something wrong when the character designs weren't anything different from the generic crappy modern anime we have today.
Alright this is interesting I agree with you about Vandams death, but that's pretty much it. Jin killing Haze got explained in Torna the Golden Country (which wasn't out at the time of this vid I know), Malos's intentions were explained to be from Amalthus, Pneuma gave Gramps the ability to change back to his titan form, Pyra and Mythra returned because Rex had the core crystal... You were on to some things but it seems like you missed a lot of things in the story.
@DarkSonic180 They did tho. Half of the 'conviniences' either got explained in other cutscenes or just requires logical thinking to understand them. Not trying to hate on this guy, I do think he had some good points like Akhos and Vandham
I think Pyra and Mythra coming back also doesn't make much sense though. Since the core crystal had to be truly awakened once more (she only went to sleep after beforehand, after all), if anything it would have made sense to have it summon Pneuma and with no memories of her previous life, perhaps because those memories (which are data for the cloud sea) were used to bring the titans back into one huge living land mass. But even without this explanation and without the fact that the Aegis can do whatever the heck the story wants them to (be it Pneuma or Malos), I simply find the idea of Pneuma finally reuniting her personalities as a whole and accepting all of her life much more satisying than just "lol now Rex gets to fuck two hotties+Nia at the same time!".
@@XelchanTheBrave for one it would not make sense for her to show up with no memories because the only reason blade lose their memories is because it’s sent to the aegis as data the cloud sea has nothing to do with that it’s only their to break down matter also “Pneuma” is just mythra’s original name before she was awakened but pyra isn’t just another side of mythra she’s literally an idealistic version of herself that mythra created to be just that so it would actually be a lot less satisfying because it would basically just be mythra getting all of the traits she wish she had and ahh yes I love it when people interpret a loved one attempting to sacrifice themselves to save ending up okay in the end as “lolololol now you fuck three waifus”
Hold up, you’re bringing up how Malos’ motivation is shallow? This is hilarious, aside from Egil, every villain in 1 is actually 1 dimensional. Mumkhar : « I want the monado » ok but why? Same with Zanza, just evil for the sake of it. Actually 2 retroactively makes Zanza a better character. And while Malos would seem one dimensional at first, not only is it the point that he has no free will, but he at least clearly explains why. Mankind is disease, men are pests, who keep on destroying each other, he’s from the divine so he thinks it’s his role to eliminate them. Vandham’s death is the first warning to Rex, who does nothing about it until chapter 7, losing Haze and Pyra/Mythra in the meantime. Vandham’s last words are also what Rex needs to do to better himself. Of course at first he misinterpreted his words (explaining to Pyra that he’ll fight his war with her, but because she has the power to « save everyone ». By chapter 8 he clearly understood his words, « I’m living for them! » (Pyra/Mythra). His motivation isn’t this naive and childish « I’ll save everyone » anymore, it’s « I’m doing all of this for you ». And Vandham channeling ether through his body is foreshadowing for blade eaters. His introduction when he says he wants the Aegis was meant to test Rex’s skill and resolve. Why do you think he teaches him so many things about life and blades. He sees that Rex being the kind of person he is, has the potential to make a change in this world. And throwing everything away to save others is exactly what kind of person he is, he’s like an older Rex. Why do you think he created his firm in the first place? (He was from the nobility before that). You pick up a single moment from 2 and explain how flawed it is, without ever considering everything that came before and after, its build up. While that’s exactly what you do when talking about 1. The problem with this video is obvious. Did you miss the whole point of chapter 4 and the artificial blades? Chapter 5 shows character progression, and does more world building, with the culmination of every war preparations we’ve see so far etc... Everything fits into the themes. Also Jin is trying to buy some time. And yeah, it really feels unrealistic how Jin could enter the Titan weapon when he is more powerful than a regular Aegis, and when it’s shown before how effortlessly he can defeat an entire crew of a ship and it’s soldiers. Nothing ever just comes out of nowhere in 2. If you missed foreshadowing or set up or world building (which 1 seriously lacks) that’s on you. And unlike 1’s cast, every party member in 2 embodies the themes of the story. The most 1’s cast has is in relation to loss (everyone but Ricky experiences loss, though unlike Tora Ricky barely has a character and motivation) yet they never bond over that or bring anything interesting about it. There’s just Shulk bonding with Dunban over that (and they’re literally mourning the same person). Anyway you clearly missed the point of Tora (self worth and achieving your dream), Morag (moving on from duty and freely seeking purpose) and Zeke (accomplishing his full potential when he had given up). The whole Mythra and Pyra dynamic is a personality split (because of her trauma), similar to some Xenogears characters. Mythra can’t see into the future, it’s just an immediate prediction. This is important as this shows how Rex gets carried by her through everything with that, without ever getting better himself. And when someone has the ability to counter that (Jin) it is obvious how helpless Rex is on his own. Haze’s death is only truly meaningful to Jin. But it still shows how so far Rex hasn’t changed. And it foreshadows how he will eventually lose Pyra/Mythra. Nia, like everyone in Torna can wield blades because they are flesh eaters, not blade eaters. Amalthus isn’t one dimensional. He hates people, because of mankind’s nature and his past. He is like Zanza but better written. And there were plenty foreshadowing of how he is evil. Malos isn’t with his driver and that’s why he’s so much weaker than Mythra with Rex. Mythra could also fight without Rex, she’d just be weaker. Azurda doesn’t change form out of nowhere, Pneuma, who holds the data of all living things and incredible powers just made it possible. And if her coming back out of nowhere is being criticized (and really it’s obvious how she came back, through her core crystal), then Fiora should be as well. The total ass pull of giving her old body comes from nowhere (even the short story released later about how there’s a machine or whatever is b.s). And no, this game isn’t trying to be the original, far from that. 1 is the least Xeno of all the Xenogames (it wasn’t even meant to be one). The most you can say is that it’s trying to be Xenogears (Its essentially Xenogears light). It’s continuing what X started, bringing back the Xeno themes, plot element etc...
@DarkSonic180 Mumkhar was never written to be deep nor did they act like he was. Dunban even says that his reasons are childish. But mumkhar was memorable unlike 2's cast.
I believe the reason why Vandham was pretending to want to take Pyra is because he wanted to fight with the Driver of the Aegis and said those things so Rex can fight all out so he can see how powerful Pyra really is
Recks (I refuse to call him by his real name because memes) is a really bland protagonist. His voice acting was mediocre at best and JOOOIIN MEEEEE at worst. His design makes sense in the context of his job, but those shorts, over saturated blue armor, and his painfully generic anime face just are not appealing to the eyes. He is the most played out and generic jrpg/anime protagonist I’ve ever seen. I’m not going to act like shulk was a masterpiece of storytelling, but at worst he got the job done. Recks just doesn’t grow as a character. When Prya was taken by Jin and Malos, Recks just gives up. If Brighed (that slap was SO satisfying) and Poppi hadn’t knocked some sense into him, the deaths of Vandam and Fan would have been for nothing. Like the antagonist, his motivation is just “I’m gonna take Pyra to Elysium”. It never changes. The end of chapter seven loses a lot of it’s impact when Recks just restates his goals. Shulk goes from wanting to destroy all mechon to just wanting peace between the two titans. Also, his battle dialogue is incredible. “We’ll beat them, with the powa of friendship!”.
I agree so much. Shulk felt like a relatable protagonist and his growth is constant. Not to mention the party is always, always giving him sound advice that shape him further. Even his reaction towards defeating the boss before the final one is honest, a sincere act from the writers for giving him relatable, flawed emotions of anger and disappointment. Rex stays the same through all the game and other characters love him for his unbelievable always positive attitude (only broken once in a thirty minutes or less segment). His words don't feel sincere, just a blind trust given by his age. He is just a pitiful self insert in a story that dwells too much into superficial gratifications. He, unlike Shulk, feels dishonest. If he were in Shulk's shoes and was against the pre-final boss, he would try to forgive him and make peace before the dude dies. He would give some half assed speech on friendship and human kindess without any real weight to them. He'd be, unlike Shulk, flawless. And the flaws the game pins on Rex are forgotten and left to rot right after they are posed by the illusory party members. Also, "I love you, and all of you guyz!!!1" still makes me mad.
XelchanTheBrave Yeah, his character is pretty much just cringy kid, beginning to end. After looking into recks’ character even more, I realized something I can’t believe I didn’t realize at first. You could say his character development is “learn to let go” (as zeke tells him), but that’s pretty much thrown away after pyra and mythra come back, because of course he has to have his waifus. You know, despite recks being a mediocre protagonist at best, what really made me despise him was there are other characters that would have been better protagonists. Zeke and Pandoria’s relationship feels more genuine than recks and pyra, they’re probably my favorite of the main cast. I think Jin and Lora would have made a much better pair, too. They have an interesting backstory, and a potentially interesting chemistry. They feel really underutilized. I honestly love “I love you and all you guys”, it makes me laugh every time I see it. It’s so bad it’s good (xc2 in general is so bad it’s good), It’s a meme on my discord server. recks telling Klaus “the salvager’s code” pissed me off, though. He’s talking to GOD! You do not meet god and say something like that, wtf. The tone of this game is a mess.
@@shslvisionary6980 Have you ever played Tales of Symphonia? I feel like Rex is a copy of that game's protagonist, Lloyd. Lloyd even has his own set of vows, the Dwarven Vows, which he quotes from time to time much like Rex does with the Salvager Code... Also yes... Pyra and Mythra at the end are nothing more than a feel good otaku harem fantasy.
XelchanTheBrave I’ve never played a tales game, but Lloyd can’t be as bad as Rex. I heard someone compare Rex to sora. I’ve never played kingdom hearts either though. I always hate it when in media they heavily imply a relationship between 2 characters, but never do anything with it. I mean, what even was the point of establishing a relationship if they aren’t gonna kiss, hug, or even say “I love you”? The scene could have at the very least been cute, but all we get is an implied “I love you”. Unbelievable
XelchanTheBrave Also, funny thing. I got your reply a few days after someone replied to me saying, and I quote, “Rex is the best protagonist among all xenoblade games”, and “xenoblade 2 is the best xeno game since xenogears”. I just...don’t have the energy to respond. Even if you get past the bad plot, the gameplay has some really terrible design. Btw, someone replied to him saying “aaaaaaiyah”. Absolutely perfect
I agree the story isn't as well written as the first game's but a lot of criticism you bring up seem to be very nitpicky or have already been implied/explained. The strength of the first game's story mainly came from the impact and delivery of the plot twists (which XC2 lacks) rather than good character development (most characters don't really change in the first game either). Also the game makers did say they wanted to make a more 'fun' and 'lighthearted' story which is probably why the game doesn't do things like remind you of Vandham's death every chapter after or turning the plot into some sort of revenge story -I partly agree with Malos not being a very good villain but to say he just wants to destroy the world because he's a generic villain is wrong, because it's noted by several characters that Malos got his destructive impulses from Amalthus, and the fact that drivers influence blades which they awaken was shown many times in the story. -Lorithia is not Melia's stepmother, you're confusing her with Yumea. Lorithia was just the head of research of the High Entia. I don't get why you thought she was a good villain considering her only motive for following Zanza was the fact that he promised her immortality. Likewise Dickon's betrayal was also basically out of nowhere and in the end his only motivation was he wanted more power, same for Mumkhar really. Even Zanza's motives were only briefly touched upon by Alvis after he died and he was a evil god pretty much 'just because'. Only Egil had any motives and complexity at all. -It makes little sense to criticise Amalthus for being 'evil out of nowhere' when the same thing applies much more to most of the villains in XC1 (Lorithia, Dickson, Zanza). The guy was presented as shady from the beginning and got about 15 flashbacks explaining his motive of hating the world-his mother was killed by bandits when he was a kid and he murdered her killers in their sleep; he grew up witnessing more tragedies reinforcing his view that the world was a shitty place; when he climbed the world tree to meet god all he found were two massive weapons of destruction leading him to think god wanted the world to burn. Amalthus was also somewhat confused and jealous about the fact that he was not 'the Architect's chosen' despite being literally pope and dedicating his life to religion which I thought was a nice touch because it felt like a realistic motive. -Mythra's foresight abilities makes sense because we find out at the end of the game (or at least it's heavily implied) that she's the same type of being as Alvis, who was the Monado in the first game. This is also why Malos could use the Monado. Unlike Shulk however Rex can only see like 2 seconds into the future, but this is consistent with the fact that Mythra/Malos's powers are much more limited compared to Alvis somehow. It seems Alvis had 'administrative rights' to the Conduit's powers and Zanza/Meyneth/Shulk were given limited access to it whereas in this game it's reversed, where Klaus had all the access and Mythra/Malos only limited access. This isn't explicitly explained anywhere but it's still consistent. -The whole 'blades can be drivers thing'. The only blades that were shown to be drivers were all partly human, so either flesh eaters (Jin, Nia, Akhos, Patroka) or blade eaters (Mikhail, Amalthus, Zeke). Malos is the only exception but the plot explains earlier on that Aegises are already exceptions to almost every rule anyway. So Nia can be a driver and blade at the same time makes perfect sense because she is part human and part blade. -Malos's blade was destroyed by Mythra like Obrona was, rewatch that cutscene. -Jin's AIDs happens multiple times, like when he fell down to Morytha, and again after fighting Rex the last time. The reason for it was also explained through Cole-Flesh eaters lose the blade's immortality so they die after living for too long. Even Akhos's offer to cure Cole made some sense since they had the technology to treat Jin (albeit not fully).
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I appreciate it! I really would argue that most of the cast changes or expereiences some emotionally relevant event in XC1--maybe excluding Riki. I always cite the scene when the party is split up after Mumkhar's death and everyone has their little heart-to-hearts on the beach side as being a big affirmation to why the party members are in the game and how their side stories are intertwined with Shulks. Here, I can barely see why most of the party, excluding Nia, decide to tag along, or what they contribute to the story. Sure there's that scene where Poppi is talking to Pyra near the end, or how Brighid tagged along during Rex's talk with Jin because she wanted to understand her past , but I would have liked more active involevement from the cast in this story. That doesn't nessecarily mean someone has to die, but just having more seeds planted as justification for why they're follwing Rex would have sufficed or some involved backstory. I agree with you about the impact thing, that mostly had to do with the way the story is presented in 1 vs 2. Also, I noticed that the series director did say he wanted to make a more light-hearted story (didn't include it in the vid though), but I feel like that led to some conflict in direction. I think that the game wanted to be light-hearted and take itself super seriously at the same time and that kinda hurt it. A good example: It's hard for me to get involved with Vandham's death when Akhos throws out a cringey line about it being a cliche the second after he dies, or the fact that Malos is making jokes about "hitting girls" when he's fighting pyra. Rex is bawling his eyes out during this scene, so you're obviously supposed to feel an emotional reaction. It just seemed conflicting to me. - I can see where you're coming from here, but I still think that the entire goal of "wanting to wipe out humanity" is just generic. It's not ot that Malos is nessecarily. I do think he could have been presented better as a villain, though. They should have made him more present throughout the story. - I must have mixed up Lorithia and Yumea. I wouldn't say that Dickson and Lorithia's motives were just power, considering they're Zanza's Disciples and wanted immortality. Dickson's betrayal made sense to me, since he was presented throughout the story as Shulk's protector. I'd even say he showed himself to be the Monado's protector in the opening scene when he tries to temper dunban. - My criticism of amalthus being evil out of nowhere mostly comes from the way in which the revelation of him being a villain is presented. He does nothing to antagonize or hurt the party at any point in the story before, nor is there a moment in the present time where he does anything to allude to an evil plan or behavior. But once Jin gives his backstory, he immeditaly starts acting transparently evil to the cast. Once that happens, the first thing Amalthus does on screen is attempt to use Mythra's powers against Rex's wishes despite having no indication of wanting to do that prior, plus the whole "using the other half of fan's crystal" thing just came out of nowhere. I actually loved Zanza as a villan, since he had a narssasistc, god-complex and that was his motive for wanting to reset life in the world. Yeah he was rushed in near the end, but he was simple to understand and made sense. - My point about foresight was moreso that it was implemented poorly, not that it made no sense. She barely uses it in the story in any way--let alone a significant way. Yet it's presented as this huge thing that's going to be a major ability in the story in that scene. My implication in this part was that the game doesn't do a good job of highlighting what's important and what isn't. That's why I felt so confused throughout the story. - I still don't get why Nia has a whole transformation scene and can switch between being a driver and a blade as a flesh eater, when no one else in the game does something remotely similar to that. I also really don't like the plot excuse of Malos being able to do something becuase he's an Aegis. Even if they do share similar abilities to characters from XC1, other excuses--like being able to wield a blade--doesn't make much sense in the context of the rules the game sets up--and if they were just gonna kill Malos's blade off, why did they even include him in the first place? Also, it still confuses me as to what Mythra can do and what Malos can do, what abilities they do share and what they don't when it comes to things that weren't in XC1. Having no cannon for the Aegis is a bit of a misstep--at least it was made clear what the Monado does throughout XC1's story. - I know Malos's blade died there. My comment was mostly just meant to be a joke in the sense that he was really prevalent early on and then they just killed him off for no reason. - Is it actually called AID's? lol. I also thought that he fell during that last fight because we beat the crap out of him. Didn't know it had to do with his condition.
@the gaming chronicler "Here, I can barely see why most of the party, excluding Nia, decide to tag along, or what they contribute to the story." That's quite an easy one: Nia joins because she connects with Rex emotionally during their time looking for Pyra; Tora joins the adventure becomes he wants to learn how to gain aptitude as a blade driver and believes he could learn how to do so from Rex (it's part of his character arc, which sort of comes into its own around chapter 4). Morag joins because she's the inquisitor of Mor ardain. She is compelled by her duty to investigate the potential of the Aegis and her curiosity of Rex's potential in succeeding Addam's role as the original Aegis driver (throughout the journey, she learns to stop using orders as an excuse to follow the gang around and decides to do so because she feels a responsibility as a person who is strong to guide Rex; simultaneously, the relationship between her and her cousin Niall is explored a bit). Zeke joins the party because he wants to Rex help change the world. Zeke understands what it's like to have a huge responsibility on one's shoulders and wants to help Rex through his troubles. Zeke has traveled the world a lot and knows of the woes of alrest. As a result, he's hoping that being able to guide Rex to Elysium can help change the status quo of the world. The motivations of the cast members are made pretty clear in the narrative; I'm not even grasping at straws here. "and if they were just gonna kill Malos's blade off, why did they even include him in the first place?" why does it matter whether Malos's blade was killed off or not; the blade is never presented as an important character. Malos is literally only using the blade because he's still weakened at this point in the game. That's the whole reason why they were looking for pyra in the first place. As a processing unit that holds all information about blades, information from elysium, and the ecosystem of alrest, Malos needed the information in Pyra's core crystal so that he could regain his aegis powers and open the gateway to elysium himself. This is why we dont see Malos weilding a blade anymore during chapter 7; he has no need for one. The blade he was using earlier was just a supplementary way for him to be effective in battle until he recovered his original abilities. Malos ability as an Aegis means the ability to manipulate blades as well as using artifices. "I still don't get why Nia has a whole transformation scene and can switch between being a driver and a blade as a flesh eater, when no one else in the game does something remotely similar to that." Amalthus is a blade eater and he has a transformation. We are meant to believe that certain blades can disguise themselves; I don't find it a hard pill to swallow that Nia could learn to disguise herself to look more like "her sister" given the circumstances. What Nia does is pretty similar to what Mythra and Pyra do when they switch between each other. "She barely uses it in the story in any way--let alone a significant way. Yet it's presented as this huge thing that's going to be a major ability in the story in that scene." The game's story never illustrates foresight as this major plot relevant ability; it is simple demonstrated as one of Mythra's signature techniques. The cutscene frames her foresight ability as one that is powerful and makes Mythra a formidable foe and nothing more; it's an asset to her in battle. If anything, foresight is nothing but an extension of Mythra's insane analytical abilities, something the game make consistently salient throughout the journey. She's able to gauge the integrity of her surroundings and the capabilities of her enemies through her processing capabilities; foresight is just of function of that inherent characteristic of hers "plus the whole "using the other half of fan's crystal" thing just came out of nowhere." That was heavily foreshadowed in chapter 6; blatantly so to the point that i wished the writing wasnt so obvious about it. I would have appreciated a bit more subtlety there I disagree that the tones in this game are conflicting; the game strikes a nice balance between being light-hearted and being serious. If I had a criticism however, it would be that because the game wanted to be a bit more lighthearted, it lacked the deep exploration of some of the more darker themes that are present in the game; an exploration that could have made some of the themes the game explores a bit more compelling. Still, i think the story does a satisfying enough job presenting the seriousness when it needs to and being jocular when necessary. I find your example of Ahkos' cliche line as a moment that undercuts the drama to be a poor example of the game's "conflicting tones." if anything, you should have used chapter 3 being immediately followed by chapter 4 as an example; that would have better supported your point and i could have seen where you were coming from. Chapter 4 is probably the most lighthearted and goofy chapter in the game, which coming straight off chapter 3, probably wasn't the best move. I do think the writing manages to avoid making this a complete tonal shift by letting Vandham's death linger long enough in the earlier parts of the chapter so as to exemplify the importance of his passing; at just enough before things start getting silly. Keep in mind though that when it comes to storytelling, it's not about the weight of the hand, but about how you use it. Chapter 4 is silly, serving as an homage to mecha anime, gainax, super sentai shows, astro boy, etc. but it also rounds out Tora's backstory, serves to contextualize Poppi's importance to him, as well as show Poppi's dedication to Tora and her badassery when all is said a done. It was a very fun chapter and yet another example of how XC2 uses the light-hearted scenarios of its narrative to allow the personalities of its cast shine and interact in the way characters should
@Moises Cabasquini I have to disagree with your reasoning for the characters of XC2 sticking around in the party. I do think that Nia is the only character that had a non-confusing reason for why she joined Rex, and it’s not the reason you stated. -The reason Nia joined up with Rex and Pyra was mostly because she didn’t have anywhere else to go, seeing as she had been alone for most of her life, excluding Dromarch, and had only really found her place with Jin and Malos. The game did try to push more towards her joining the party because she was interested in the talk about elysium, but that seems to contradict Nia’s character due to her being portrayed as realistic and untrusting. I say untrusting because of the events that have happened in her past and even the events between her and Torna. Saying that she joins out of curiosity throws those character points out the window, it’s sad that’s the direction they went seeing as they had something they could have worked with while still keeping those character points. -On regards to Tora I do think that you have some good points. He joins the group because he wants to learn more about being a “real” driver. That is all that seems to drive him in the beginning though, not to say that simple motivations are a bad thing. -Morag is a big difference however. It makes sense in chapter 4 when they join forces, because they have a common enemy at the time, but after that when they were to part ways Morag’s motivations got very uninteresting. Saying she went along with the party because she was interested in how Rex and the aegis will grow is not very believable. You could say that she went with them because the knowledge gained by being around them would be beneficial to Mor Ardain, but we later learn that she decides to go with the party for personal reasons. Her personal reasons, being curiosity, make little sense. If she were following the aegis around because she admired the strength it had it would make more sense. Is she followed them because she wanted to keep tabs on how strong they got for her own reasons out of jealousy, that would make sense because she is known to wield the “strongest” blade. Seeing as she doesn’t follow them for these reasons and instead joins the party for “convenience,” it makes her character more one dimensional. -It saddens me to have to write about Zeke, in my opinion he had the most potential for being a really good character to the point where the writers were almost able to pull his character off, until they ended up not. Zeke first follows the group because the praetorian asked him to, that makes sense from the backstory you learn Zeke has with him. Once they make it to Tantal things seem to get better for his character. You learn his was cast out due to his behavior, how he traveled the world and had seen the ugliness in peoples actions. Most importantly you learn that Zeke’s family was not actually decedents of Addam, but instead took his name for their own survival. This gives Zeke’s character all he needed to develop and have his own reason now for sticking with the party. However, Zeke seems to have a revelation about himself and where he stands and ends up breaking out Rex and Pyra for his own reasons. After the later events of keeping Genbu from sinking and Pyra being taken, Zeke just sticks around. That’s where Zeke’s character ends for the most part and we don’t get anymore insight on why he sticks around. There was a line during the Tantal chapter after Zeke learns about his family where he says how Rex’s good heartedness would be his downfall, and how it was the duty of the adults to guide the innocent kids like him. This isn’t word for word what Zeke said but it is what he meant. We never see much of Zeke doing any guiding though, from what you can tell not much focus if put on Zeke anymore, besides exposition. As such Zeke never really gets a full chance to really develop and his reasoning for joining the party feels unfulfilled and hollow. -On a side note about Rex’s character. From the looks of things every character for some reason or another sticks around Rex in the belief that he is some amazing driver and will completely change the world. As far as things go, Rex is one of the most poorly constructed characters I have seen. Throughout the entirety of the story Rex never has any real moments of development and stays as the over optimistic, blissful, ignorant character he is. He says he will take Pyra to Elysium for the sake of because he said so, and that’s all the story ever does about it. You could argue it was because Pyra saved his life, and that’s the direction the game try’s to take this reasoning. This reasoning is fairly one dimensional seeing as how when all these other events happen around Rex, events that would make normal people somewhat think about either the consequences of the actions around them and their own actions and make someone possibly have any sort of difference in opinion over time. That’s where Rex falls short, throughout every event that happens throughout the entire story Rex never changes. It’s so bad to the point where the little quirks Rex has feel annoying instead of endearing. The flaws and quirks of a character are needed in order to better understand the character, the characters actions, and how the character reacts to change. When you have a character like Rex who doesn’t have any of their flaws properly brought out, and has an overly one sided opinion on everything with little reason, you get an annoying, unchanging, character which no one can relate to or enjoy watching develop. I encourage those of you who think that Rex is a good character to prove me wrong. If there is some information that can completely contradict or disprove my reasoning, I would greatly appreciate it if you would bring it to my attention.
I might be here a bit late, but as a Xeno series veteran, I decided that I wanted to get in on a respectful discussion about Xenoblade 2, so if anyone wishes to respond to this comment, I fully welcome you.
Xenoblade 2 is a real step down from the original, and even X to some extent. Story is badly written, art style is generic anime, combat is fine, but I prefer the first 2, and the blade system just is not good. In any way. The only main characters I really enjoyed were Nia (because character development), Zeke/Pandy (because comedy), and Jin (because he was the most sympathetic villain in the game). Everyone else is just really bland or useless. The VA never reaches above passable. I can find some enjoyment from this game, but knowing it’s from the xenoblade series, I can’t help but be disappointed. I wasn’t expecting it to give me the same experience as the original ( a game like that comes once in a lifetime). X wasn’t amazing, but it was still a solid experience, I’ll never forget that opening scene. The atmosphere was on point. Xenoblade 2 has nothing particularly amazing in it.
Sundel also, the clipping is terrible. Christ, just look at Sheba and Mythra. It’s unforgivable. In xc1 and X, it was slightly more forgivable because they had multiple costumes, and were on inferior consoles. but this was made on the switch. And each character only has one costume. With only one costume, you only have one design to animate. It just comes off as lazy.
Okay let's talk about this video and how he absolutely does not pay attention to the details in this game and completely blames flaws that xenoblade one did. 9:41 doesn't establish akhos and Patroka's relationship after she dies, it they establish there sibling relationship long before that and multiple times he calls her his sister in the game. 10:54 the entire sequence of events would have happened the same way if vandham hadn't died. no it wouldn't if vandham hadn't died and they just ran away then Mythra would never had awakened and never felt the need to. Not to mention she is terrified of using her own power which is an established Character trait of her 11:55 plot convenience. Let's ignore the fact that ether flow is going through the weapons but let talk about every single time shulk got a power out of literal nowhere because plot demanded it, shield, speed, purge, cyclone, among the others. 12:18 a yes because 1 he was only testing rex,. B. Rex reminds him of his dead son that he never got a chance to save. 13:38 except you give Rex a new blade that he is actively shown using at later points in the story when he doesn't have Pyra visual story telling this guy actively fail to notice. Not to mention the actively mention roc acts like vandham. 14: 37 he tries to compare it to fiora's death FIORA'S, the one that ruins the rex and Egil dynamic because it gets undone halfway through the story a death that truly doesn't have a true lasting effect 17:34 the Vandham scene the power is not chekovs gun in that scene it's Nia holding her chest 17:36 except to establish the blades bots on the final act and to establish the threat of Jin and the reveal that he is a flesh eater 20:22 that is not a convenience that is literally established later that Mythra created Pyra because she was scared of herself and her own power so she created Pyra to seal that power away. 20:41 yes it established in that scene that Mythra doesn't draw power from ether, so she created a self who does and could not access the power Mythra draws from 21:35 at this point he never got to the Klaus reveal which explains why she can see the future 24:08 calling akhos showing up to save Jin when a they establish Jin needing ether treatments, and b. Malos's caring of Jin has also been established he would send someone to watch him encase his weekness acted up again 24:54 okay literally the scene after haze's death they show the fact that he core crystal was different the entire time they knew her as fan la norne 25:31 maybe the fact they establish she is a flesh eater a blade with human cells and have shown other flesh eaters to be able to resonate with blades. 26:16 she can she chooses not to 28:22 he didn't just suddenly become evil he always was it again shows Amalthus's influence on malos when they show rex seeing malos over Amalthus, it's the main reason why malos is evil, there is a side quest that actively shows this kind of relationship the the crystal clear saga That entire video just shows how this guy didn't pay attention to the story nor did he pay attention to the visual storytelling.
I feel like a lot of his point get debunked by actually playing the game like the vandam sacrifice when he was trying to *take* pyra, but legit the next cutscene they explained he has no killing intention and was just testing his might then spends time building a bond with the main cast (and saying a bond cant have formed cuz *its only been a few days* is just baffling, how long should he have been with them before it would have made sense heck they even peg him as a huge hearted giant to the point he even schooled rex on how terrible he is using pyra and showing him ways to fight rex has never thought of (showing he knows a lot more about blades then rex, so him knowing that ether flows from your blade to you and how to counter someone blocking that makes sense, heck he even starts the explanation before he does the thing but just saying he could have found a better way with no examples makes me think you missed those important context clues that you seem to hang on for the first game) overall tho great video (not mad nor do i think your opinions are dumb just feel like there are explanations to a lot your stating)
Actually it’s revealed that Akhos and the other Torna members never resonated with their blades so it answers that question of how they can wield blades
This sentence literally sounds like my 13-year old self explaining my Final Fantasy fanfic. I think they literally based the "uhm, ACKchewally" meme on you, right here from this comment.
It is weird you didn't talk about that malos's character development is more than just doing it because he wants to, he did it because he thought it was his duty as the other aegis, and in the last few chapters he founds out he doesn't only need to do that and finds his real meaning in himself.
Thanks for commenting! I would have liked Malos a lot more if I knew more about him other than his status as an Aegis. I didn't add his revelation during the last chapter in the vid because I feel the same with him as I do the Praetor. He does learn to gather a different meaning in his existence once he's defeated by the party, but I just wished that he had more of a backstory and some tangible motivator for wanting to do the things he did. Idk. To me, him thinking that wiping out humanity was his duty pretty much means that he just wanted to do it. At least Jin had lost somebody and had a soilid realistic reason to.
The Gaming Chronicler thank you for replying! I really liked the video and i respect your opinion although i don't really agree, i can see where you come from but i feel like there were alot of little details that do show he is doubting himself, although they are very soubtle and almost meaningless, and the same is for the preator, i do agree with the points that give abilities to people just to keep going with the cutscene itself instead of the complete story but the character development in most is great in my opinion, even morag got the things she needed as she became a little bit more open to the characters slowly, though not much, this it did happen and i think that was the best they could do with her. For the part of the characters not thinking about van and ham's death i kinda agree but not too much as most of the main characters dealt with loss and death (i still think they needed to put a lil more effort into making it a worthy part of the story). And for mythra creating pyra the answer is pretty easy: mythra knew that torna or another person/organisation would try and take her and use her powers so she created another identity inside her with limited power that she could switch between her so that no one could use the aegises full power unless she actually wanted him to. But that's only my opinion and i totally see where you come from, i also think you deserve alot more attention and subs.
Thank you so much for taking the time to watch my rambling musings on this game. I honeslty wish I could love Xenoblade 2 as much as other people do. My only hope going forward is that Xenoblade 2 reached out to someone in the same way that the original did for me. I hope that was the case for you.
The Gaming Chronicler The Gaming Chronicler thank you for making the content you make, i did really enjoy the game and it is probably in my top ten games already, as this game is only my 2nd jrpg (my first one was xenoblade chronicles x, wich i loved but there were alot of things that made me pretty annoyed in that game) and i put almost 200 hours into the game, as i found myself enjoying the combat and story better than x (i felt like the story in x was a mess, one of the reasons were the level restrictions for the story missions) and the story in this game made me cry and laugh like no game this year, last year and maybe even ever, i loved most of the characters because i knew what they were and what role and development they would have already as it is not hard to guess, but i think zeke AND tora as "funny guys" is a bit too much.
Huh..funnily enough its xenoblade chronicles that i think is lacking a bit more in the characters writing. Xenoblade chronicles 2 doesnt quite elevate the character writing to astounding levels, but it definitely succeeds in making most of the cast feel like they have arcs whereas Xenoblade 1 fails to do that as effectively. It keeps the entire cast feeling relevant throughout the journey while XC1 sort of tapers off and lets shulk and Fiora mostly take center stage. Don't get me wrong, the cast of XC1 are highly enjoyable to watch from beginning to end; the pace of the story is brisk, the cinematography and storyboarding is great, and the writing does a phenomenal job at establishing every characters motivations (simple as they may be for most of the cast) in the story; however aside from that, most of the cast do not really evolve in a way that is compelling. Sure, shulk becomes a more competent leader and makes some tough decisions in the game, but his moral compass is so clear throughout the entire story that it never feels like his ideals were ever truly challenged; as such, it feels like we are going through the motions of his typical character archetype. We know how he was going to feel doubt about attacking faced mechon after the fiora reveal so none of his reservations in attacking them come of as much of a surprise nor does the writing ever seriously challenge him with this moral dilemma. And then since we know that Shulk is this kind and rational kid, he would not kill egil. Shulk doesn't feel like he necessary earns his character growth; it's more like he already was the kind of character that had the fortitude to make the right choices. What i give the game credit for (and why Shulk's straightforward writing doesn't bother me as much) is because the game does such a wonderful job of framing events around him that illustrate his simple but effective growth from a passive scientist into an intelligent, capable, and determined man. As for the other cast, Fiora doesn't evolve past being the basic heroine who stands by the male protagonist through thick and thin; Sharla's arc with Gadot feels rushed and falls flat in the end; beyond her drive to protect her colony, she herself does not experience any compelling characterization. Riki, while we see he is not as daft as he comes off, doesn't go beyond that one scene with him being conscientious of Melia's fatigue when the gang is separated in mechonis field. Reyn throughout the game questions his ability to protect Shulk, but none of it goes beyond him simple doubting himself here and there. Dunban's scene regarding his temptation to kill Mumkhar, while a well-directed scene and effective from a narrative standpoint, doesn't go beyond anything else. Dunban is the typical cool, hardened warrior who is not as naive and pure hearted as the naive male protagonist (been there done that; nothing gripping occurs with Dunban's character writing that feels distinctively his own; something that defines this character as his own entity that has not been executed or written in this similar fashion. Dunban has some good moments in the game like his scene on mechonis field where he is coming to terms with his role as a guardian to Fiora and shulk; that scene has more character texture than the scene you chose to exemplify Dunban's depth; and that is a better example of a moment in the story that makes Dunban as a character feel distinct. Regardless, Dunban doesn't really have an arc and not much could be critically explored upon analysis of his characterization. He's a strong man who wants to protect the people he loves; shulk stopping Dunban from killing mumkhar didnt really affect his character significantly beyond him just not killing Mumkhar. That's ultimately my slight gripe with a lot of the character writing in XC; most of is just what it is; there nothing more beyond that. See, this is the kind of shit that separates decent character writing from good, great, superb, and masterful character writing. Most of the cast of XC1, while an enjoyable group of people, never feel like they are these truly layered people beyond certain moments in the game. Take FF7 for example; one of the strengths of that game is its superb character writing. The cast aren't just defined by their archetypes plus 1 or two standout moments like in XC1; each of their behaviors, their psychological dilemmas and personality are contextualize by every action they have made in the past, what do in the present, and how those actions affect them and those around them emotionally and physically. In turn, those actions provide us with so much rich information about who these characters are as people and what conflicts they are dealing with; which in turn also reveals more about their mental attributes and the cycle continues. The ability for writing to establish such an axiomatic relationship between character action, psychology, behavior, thematic exploration, and consequences is the essence of great writing, something that FF7 achieves. XC1 never reach this level of character writing, which is why i usually can't agree with some fans go about touting how layered the character writing is;...it's kind of not. It's okay for characters to not be intricately layered human beings and still be extremly effective in their respective stories. Again, if it wasnt for the strong execution and directing of the main narrative, a lot of the cast would feel generic. What made the cast of XC1 engaging enough for me was that they were a rag tag team of optimistic, dependable, and competent people. no one dragged each other down as they were all self-sufficient and capable. The narrative expertly establishes the core personality traits of the cast members and makes their goals and aspirations very salient. The game shows us that our cast is willing to struggle to achieve what they believe in and that in turn inherent compels you, the viewer, to naturally care for and want to root for them. Besides that, their personality traits aren't really built up all that intricately and that's were the writing loses points for me. What i also found to be lacking was the chemistry between the cast and effectively making them feel like a big family (as most casts in great JRPG's end up feeling). Melia is by far my favorite character in the game,and huge part of that comes from the fact that she is legitimately one of the only characters in the game who feels like she had a fleshed out character arc. I'm not the only one who feels that way as fan consensus seems to feel like melia was probably the most fleshed out party member of the cast (and probably the most tragic). Here's where my opinion of XC2 comes in and why i think it does a better job with the characters. For 1, it focuses on making the characters banter with each other a lot more beyond details that have to do with the plot. As a result, the cast feels more humanized through communication, like a group of friends who jostle each other lovingly and bounce their personalities off each other. One of the best parts of the first chapter of XC2 is watching Nia slowly warm up to Rex so as to justify her switch of alliance, a feat the game expertly accomplishes by establishing their personalities, showing Rex and Nia bump heads a few times, letting them have a significant heart-to heart cutscene where they come to understand each other, them learning to respect each other in battle, and showing them genuinely laughing to illustrate their closeness right before Jin abruptly kills Rex. This lays the foundation for Nia being appalled by Jin's decision to kill Rex and at this poinnt, we as the player can believe that Nia would genuinely feel this way, enough to question her allegiance. All of this is done with so much thought and care, which granted, is not academy awards winning writing but this is indeed an example of careful, deliberate, character-centric interaction that contextualizes the behavior of these two cast members, which goes a long way in effectively making their friendship throughout the story feel genuine. This is how you organically make two characters become friends and bond in a way that can actively convince the audience of why one of them would be become so attached so as to switch sides. This my friend, is a good example of character writing beyond just archetypes. The writing paradigm displayed within this one chapter sequence beats most of the character writing in XC1; we see characters behaviors being influenced by previously established actions, which in turn reveal more about the character's personalities. And it doesn't stop there; we see Rex continue to prove to Nia why he is considers her his friend and the bond continues to build throughout the narrative until the very cathartic moment in chapter 7. And that the thing that elevates the character writing in XC2 over XC1, the emotional arc build across the narrative and flesh the characters out in ways that the writing in XC1 did not do.
Actually Nia is a flesh eater and sense she has human DNA it’s possible for her to resonate and Malos lost most of his power during the Aegis war so that’s why he needed a blade because he’s too weak and Amalthus had a horrible life with extreme hatred towards the world and when he gained Malos he thought of it has a way to seek vengeance on the world by using Malos’s power and that hateful nature Amalthus had corrupted Malos. And Azurda returning to his full Titan form it was because Pyra touched his core accelerating his growth. And Pyra and Mythra returning was because she gave Rex her core crystal and a blade will regain its form when a Driver resonates because whatever happens to the body as long as the Crystal is intact they will come back
Landon Dotson In what Chapter did Pyra touch Gramps' Core Crystal to accelerate his growth. This was never said in game if I recall. Also yes if the core is intact the Blade can come back, but this would take at least about a week (from traveling to various Titans chasing the thief) for the Core Crystal to regenerate, as this happened with Roc. But also if Pyra/Mythra removed her Core Crystal wouldn't she become inactive and not able to function. The emphasis on their death fails because the come back a few minutes after the cutscenes where they die.
12:00 No he wasn't. Pyra even states that he wasn't trying to kill them at the end of the fight. He was just testing Rex. 20:52 Amalthus is Malos' driver. The game also says that Aegis' can survive without drivers. 24:37 Yes they do. There are multiple cutscenes following this showing Rex being heartbroken about her death. (Even though he only knew her for a few days max.) 25:27 Because she's a flesh eater. Just like how Akhos and Patroka are able to use blades. 25:49 Killed in the Mythra vs Akhos and Malos fight. 27:12 There are multiple cutscenes that cut to Amalthus' perspective, such as the one after Pyra is taken that shows some foreshadowing to his villain arc. Literally everything following 28:31 is extremely forced, like you were trying to look at every detail to find a parallel to Xenoblade Chronicles. This part objectively wasn't needed at all. 30:08 Pneuma literally touches his ether crystal, and a blue light shines for a split second. This isn't random. Just actually pay attention in cutscenes. 30:13 Because... Blades return to their core crystals after dying? (Unless the core crystal is destroyed, of course.) I'll gladly link you to the cuteness in which all of the above are told, or eluded to.
As a hardcore XBC2 fan I respect your opinion even if this video is 4 years old. I’m willing to listen to criticisms for a game I love instead of just ignoring the other side of the spectrum. I think comparing XBC2 to XBC1 will inevitably create discourse in the community considering XBC2’s vastly different approach to its storytelling in terms of tone and structure. With that being said, I’m going to have to disagree with you saying Mythra’s self construct(Pyra) was purely there for plot convenience. If you’ve played Torna you would get much needed back story to Mythra since she gets very little opportunity to delve into her character in base game making her out to be a one dimensional “Tsundere” archetype. She’s much deeper and complex character than Pyra, the events that transpired in old Torna really scarred Mythra to the point of sealing herself away and creating a self-construct of what it means to be “perfect” hence Pyra was born. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is not flawless nor is it a masterpiece, but it’s still one of my favorite games I’ve played on my Switch of all time! Personally, I’ve tried to get into XBC1, but trying to play a dated game that came out in 2010-2011 really shows its age in Definitive Edition. That’s not to say it’s a bad game, far from it, I envy the people that are able to get into it and enjoy it more than I can. The combat and the monotonous side quests really hamper my ability to play XBC1 unfortunately, that’s not to say I won’t ever go back and try to replay it in the future, but I’m more excited to play XBC3 that’s coming out very soon as of typing this and I can’t wait to play it! I hope XBC3 solved the major problems people had with 2 and expand its innovation to attract newer people to this amazing franchise!
After playing Xenoblade definitive edition yea Xenoblade 2 sucks. So yea xeno 1 and x were better games than this lame boring game and a sorry excuse of a Xenoblade game.
I personally liked Xenoblade Chronicles 2, it's actually my favorite game from Switch (after Breath of the Wild), but I respect your opinion. Honestly, I wouldn't know to say if this game is underrated, overrated (I don't think this one is), or in a fine place.
Pyra and Mythra came back because he had the core Crystal and Azurda changed forms because Pyra did something with his core earlier on in the cutscene.
XC2 tries so fucking hard to be XC that its painful. It doesnt tick any single box better than XC. Ever. Even the music is not as good. Even the fucking music is a rehash. Gormott is essentially Bionis Leg. Uraya is essentially Satorl March, it even has the same music almost, same color lighting, and same ruins and Urodels. Jesus fuck. XC1 was incredible in everyright. No one wanted a reboot. If at least the gameplay was cool, why not, but its painfully slow as shit. Even random no name enemies are a chore and a half and you just try to avoid them at all costs cos you know youll be there for a while with little to no reward. Also XC2 lacks of a hook moment. Rex discovering the Aegis on the ship has no where even near the impact Fioras death had. Its just some lame anime moment. To be fair, this game is excrutiatingly anime. Arkhos is the embodiement of everything I hate about anime. Ill stick to XC1 thanks. XC2 is a letdown and I,ve come to terms with that. And thats coming from a guy who fucking wants to love XC2 a lot, but I cant. Even XCX for all its flaws had better writing than this. At least it wasnt cliche anime bullshit.
I stopped watching when you brought up the idiotic excuse of "how did vandham know to stab his chest with his weapons" out of nowhere as justification the game was poorly written. I mean duh, vandham is a grown adult driver with years of experience being a driver and leading a town of mercenary drivers, of course he's gonna know a trick like stabbing his chest to make his ether like that. how idiotic can you be to not think that through? instant dislike. the game isn't bad, this example proves you're just biased towards the first game and overly critical about everything to the point you interpret things wrongly and then you being overly critical dampens your experience playing it. that's not the game's fault, that's yours. mic dropped.
"I'LL KILL YOOOOOOOU!" > Every Emotional Line in Xenoblade 2
Nintendo Nation how did we go from that to “JOOOOOIIIIIN MEEEEEEEEE”?
@@shslvisionary6980 "Joiiiin miiiiiiiii~!
FoR VaNdHaAaAaAaAm
MEH MEH MEH..
I hate that
god, someone finally says it. i appreciate you speaking about the flaws of this game, its surprising no one points them out given how many of them there are. good work
I don't get anyone who likes xenoblade 2 more than one and claiming that the characters in 2 are better than 1's which is wrong because the characters are grating stereotypes unlike the complex human like characters of one and how naturally they grew over the course of the game instead of being too sudden. Its like what melia said " even so we change little by little". The story is also much more complex than "Boy gets sword and kills god"
sweepintime 56 but we couldn’t do that in 2 because we had to zoom in on every fem blades ass and tiddies every few moments
"Claps" this is one of the best videos i have seen in a while finally someone has the balls to criticize this mediocre jrpg instead mindlessly praising it like fanboys do,agreed with almost all of your criticisms especially the plot convenience part,vandhalm's lame death and the weak characters
@@Hey-ki1nu I'm unsubscribing
This video needs soooo many more upvotes
I was so excited for this game. I avoided as much promotional material so I could experience it as blindly as a I could, and I quit after chapter 1 and have only just picked it up again because I heard so many people praising the game, but I just hate everything about it. Music and environments are not enough to fix everything else with this game
Especially when said environments are nowhere near as well-thought out and maticulously designed as in previous games. The music also feels derivative of the first game, rather than fitting this new one.
So glad I found this video. I felt like I was going insane.
Yeah especially with so many people defending this game. Dumb coombrains.
@@JuanJimenez-pt3dn ong
@@JuanJimenez-pt3dn fr
When people compare this game to 1, I go insane. Did we play the same game? Did you people even touch Xenoblade 1? It made you cry? How? Have you played any other RPG before? The combat may have a lot of elements to it, but it doesn't flow well at all, and ends with the same strategy every battle. The combat is WIDE, not deep. The environments are tedious as heck to explore, and with the exception of a few beautiful areas, most of them are in-closed and ugly. The story has no direction to it, its just meaningless wandering for a large time, and then it ends just as soon as it becomes remotely interesting. The cast is bloated, there are few characters with any depth at all, and even then most of them are just walking tropes. The villains are the absolutely horrendous, Jin's backstory is in direct conflict with his motives, Malos has no motive he's just evil for the sake of being evil, and Amalthus is just generic evil religious guy number 908283. There are no major plot twists besides Nia being a blade (which is cool, but reduced in value since practically EVERY other character is revealed throughout the course of the game to be a blade or a blade eater.) and the fact that the game takes place on the real world which has been done before in literally every single Xeno game ever. Sure, it connects to the first game, but it has to HARD retcon it in order to do so. That's not a good way to connect to a previous title. Which is insulting considering that the game just takes what Xenoblade 1 does right and turns it into something so laughably meh. And then you have the poor voice acting, boring camera work (the first game's camera work in cutscenes is so, so, so good), highly inconsistent tone, and just a lack of ambition and grandiose.
I mean, sure, I'm fine with people liking Xenoblade 2. More power to you, but... but again, what is it that makes it special? What is it that makes people connect to these characters that are about as relatable as a rock and have the depth of a puddle? It has really, really good music, but... every other facet of the game is either flawed, rushed, or just plain bad. And then to say that its better than 1... just no. You can prefer 2 over 1, of course, but to say 2 is in any form (besides music) better than 1? That's just... factually wrong. Believe it or not, there IS such a thing as objective quality of story telling, character writing, environment design, and gameplay. And Xenoblade 2 is just, very, very, flawed.
@@wozthescott2804 no cap
Damm why didn't i find this video earlier this felt cathartic especially after me hearing people mindlessly praise this game to no end
i agree with every point in this video especially the part about the missed potential of the games villians (i think even Jin somewhat suffers from this problem though less so then Akhos and Malos ). also this is may be somewhat unrelated to the video but am i the only one who finds it kinda stupid how they semi retconned Zanza's/Klaus's motivaitions in the final act(also on another note what was the deal with mythras second aegis blade like why was it apperently so hard to controll?)
So you're mad that the majority of people like a game
They didn't retcon anything
This is hands down the best video analyzing whats wrong with xenoblade 2. And your explanation of what makes xenoblade 1 an absolute classic is the best ive seen. Good work man.
This was actually really respectful and mature when critiquing Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Then again, I may be a little biased since I agree with you a lot in this video. Xenoblade Chronicles is one of my favorite video games ever, and I was also disappointed by the story specifically in Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
A tip: watch series at flixzone. Me and my gf have been using it for watching a lot of movies these days.
@Alexander Amos Definitely, have been watching on flixzone for months myself :)
Finally someone said it. FINALLY. SOMEONE FUCKING SAID IT (or rather finally I found someone who said it since you’ve posted this quite a while ago). After looking through countless threads to try to find people who felt the same as me. I’m so tired of people mindlessly praising such a mediocre game. Xenoblade 2 isn’t terrible, but as a sequel to honestly one of the greatest JRPG’s out there that puts so much care into its world building, characters, story, and game mechanics, it’s so DAMN disappointing with so much missed potential. Love all of your points you make.
The most disappointing thing about the game to me is that it's a lot of missed opportunities and potential.
[SPOILERS]
A game happening alongside Xenoblade 1 with parallel situations and characters is a great idea to start from, especially if you are curious about Zanza and Alvis' backstory.
The problem is though, as much as this game loves parallel situations (Rex/Pyra and Malos/Jin for example) it's just... Almost always handled poorly. The fact they crammed so much of the story in the last four/five chapters instead of having something more balanced like the first game. I swear, all the padding happening through the first chapter could have been spent giving Tora, Mòrag and Zeke a more pivotal role and balancing all the plot reveals so that they don't happen all at the World Tree.
I feel like a could write a book on how much this game disappointed me, so I'll try not to go overboard and mention the other thing that disappointed me:
The main love story between Rex and Pyra is so bad. Aside from the characters being boring themselves, there is never any doubt coming from Rex in regards to Pyra, not to mention his blindness to her feelings make it so he never really gives us any opinion on her aside from "I like Pyra, she is my friend!", and Pyra just blindly loves him like everyone else does because he's hopeful to the point of feeling like a non-human character to me (more like a paragon of virtues who is also a self insert for everyone who wants to have a harem of blades). It's like they wanted to be poetic (I'll bring Pyra to Elysium!) but give us no reason to care about it, unless looking as attractive as Pyra does counts for romance at all. Feels like they REALLY want the player to self insert as Rex and fill in the blanks... He barely has any opinion on her aside from what I mentioned before.
That just makes for awful romance. This should not be a dating sim, this is a story driven, character driven game. I don't want to self insert as anyone in a relationship, I want to see a relationship between two characters develop and unfold before my eyes.
Let's not even mention Rex/Mythra: it's like it's there just for tsundere fetishists who love to have pointy objects thrown at them. That one is even more painful to watch because it's just comic relief after comic relief. And Mythra barely gives any reason why she loves Rex. She just does because she must give the player a boner, that's why.
What a shame, especially since the game does show more interesting relationships, like Zeke/Pandoria, who actually show they deeply care for eachother, and Malos' affection for Jin (that does play a part in his desire to destroy the world).
I'd even say Nia is a better love interest than Pyra. But that scenes shows that Rex and the writers have no balls for rejection.
Hello, I am Erico. I was thinking of doing an honest review of XB2 myself this morning, and XB1 is also my favorite game. I find this stuff relatable. I agree with everything except what I'm going to say here. So, if it's not below, I agree and thank-you.
- You said Vandham did not get brought up at all for the rest of the game. This is not true, because it is kind of brought up with Nia when she reveals her true form. The message is given across that she would not repeat the mistake of not showing her true form, which is something she learned from this fight.
- Apparently, when Vandham appeared wanting to take the Aegis, he was not being serious. This is why Pyra is like 'I don't detect hostility' and why Vandham did not actually finish Rex and crew off. Even though it sounds and seems weird, it is supposed to be that all he wanted was to fight against the Aegis, which I suppose kind of makes sense for his character, since he likes fighting. Anyways, this is what you were using to say that Vandham sacrificing himself was out of character, so I don't think it was necessarily out of character.
- You asked in text where Malos's blade was for the rest of the game: he died in the Mythra / Vandham scene but was around until then.
- Finally, it's interesting the parallels you draw between XB1/XB2 and how they were trying to mimic it. I can see your point for some of the connections (like Morag is Dunban, Nia is Melia, Zeke is Riki) but I'm not sure about some of the other connections.
- Unrelated to XB2 story, but could you not fade out the cutscenes so early? That kinda was annoying.
Otherwise, I agree, and Xenoblade 2 was largely disappointing.
Thank-you!
When you've played the 1st game the second feels like a downgrade the voice acting was great in the 1st game you can explore like atleast 20 regions the combat was pretty solid the blades felt a bit out of control with rng & field skills.
I'm right there with you. Xenoblade Chronicles is also my favourite game of all time, and with that in mind, I wasn't expecting 2 to be better, but still a fantastic game. What I ended up with was a... good-ish game. Like, maybe a 7/10 at best. And to me, that's very disappointing.
While I don't think the main character artstyle is inherently bad, it's a very poor fit for the Xenoblade franchise, made even worse by the tropes they throw in and the overabundance of blatant fanservice. It takes away the identity that 1 and X to some extent set up, and makes the game come across as just another generic clique moe anime game, which are a dime a dozen on the market. Not saying all of them are bad, but I don't go to a Xenoblade game for this crap. If Monolith are going to abandon anything from this game moving forward, it needs to be the anime cliques.
The story also suffers for the same reason, most of which you already pointed out. It hurts, because I know Monolithsoft can do better. They already HAVE done better, in the games that predate this. Say what you will about X's botched main storyline, it had a solid start and side-quests that more than made up for it in my opinion. While I don't think XC2's story is as bad as X's main story, I can't see it as anything but mediocre and done-to-death, with nothing new to bring to the table, and overall just a lazy attempt by a development team that can and have done so much better.
While the elements and blade systems are satisfying enough once you get the hang of it, there's no excuse for making regular battles take as long as they do. And the chain attack is gimped to shit now, only serving to get more rewards out of a single foe by overkilling them. Honestly, I'd much rather gain less rewards from the enemies if it means I can switch between attacking multiple foes within a single chain attack, because at least that's more pragmatic and less time-consuming compared to XC2's incentive to play the game in the most unenjoyable way imaginable just for more item drops. And why didn't they include some of the QOA improvements X made, like sprinting to cut down on wasted time, or individual body part/targeting?
And all of that isn't even getting into this game's garish UI design. Having played the game for 400+ hours and gone back to the first, It's honestly shocking how cumbersome it is just to swap out blades in your party or upgrade stats. It makes the whole game come across as ameaturish, sloppy and unpolished, which really puts into perspective how much better off the past two games were.
The only things that prevent me from calling the game anything less than good are the afformentioned element systems, the way Break > Topple > Launch > Smash can be done in conjunction with blade combos, the still gorgeous environments that reward exploration and smart traversal, and stellar music for the most part. Progressing through each questline and developing each nation was also rewarding, but a lot of tedium gets in the way of the experience, and when I know it can be done better, it makes this game an utter failure as a sequel.
I agree with about everything you just said.
Hahhahaha.
XC1’s story is honestly far worse than XC2’s story in so many ways. Xc1 starts with you think shit is serious, before the plot armor kicks in to unbelievable levels and the game ends with a care bear stare. XC1 doesn’t hold up as a story. It holds up as a set piece.
There's a few wrong things in this video, Amalthus is able to use Fan's core crystal because he is a blade eater which isn't explained but is still the reason. Nia is a FLESH eater not a BLADE eater, she was originally a blade that is now part human by eating a human's heart, which is why she is both a blade and driver, flesh eaters are also unstable and have multiple forms like Jin which is why he collapses in Chapter 5, flesh eaters are imperfect and can die at any moment (they don't though due to plot convenience however the game presents it as such). The Aegis is special and can summon blades (also convenience), however ANY blade can be by themselves they are just stronger when with their drivers, Pyra/Mythra is the same they just choose to stay with Rex.
I do agree with the rest and believe this game would be far better if it was just a completely unconnected game to the first.
In all honesty this game is separated enough with 1.. The only thing connecting this to Xenoblade 1 was
Spoiler:
Klaus and the trinity processor.. But even if you don't know thst stuff it still makes for a cohesive story.. Since we get to see Klaus better in this game. The only thing that this game does wrong is bearing the number "2" in the title.
Malos is one of the worst villains I’ve ever seen in a video game. On the same level as Luxxar. He has such a forgettable design. It’s also hilarious how Vandham’s speech about how nothing is black and white is thrown out the window. Malos’s element is DARK. Mythra’s is LIGHT. BLACK VS WHITE. WTF. It’s possible to make an irredeemably evil character. Look at metal face. He does some horrible things, and motivates the heroes to press on. Also, he has an unforgettable design, and is intimidating as hell. Malos has no presence, and really does nothing until the last few chapters.
The idea was, what hes bort as pure destruction, but question why he is like he is. The pay of is just terrible and he himselfe is, like you said such a non presence.
Jin at least looks like Final Bossmaterial.
Thank you so much.
I tried so hard to love this game. I really did. I ignored the badly translated jokes, the horrendous and downright paradoxical character design, the unexisting character motivations, but in the end it was all too much. I couldn't bring myself to like this game. And now I have to deal with the rest of the world talking about the great "masterpiece" this is. Pyra is joining smash, Chuugaaconroy is making a let's play of it without even criticizing the game a bit, it's all too much. At least I know there's someone here who understands.
What “compelling character motivations” did 1 really had?
Seriously, the motivations in that game are far more shallow, 2-dimensional, and depthless beyond the flair of war, bombs, and blood. When you reflect on anything in 1, you realize that Zeke is actually more mature and compelling than any of those main cast characters combined. You realize that Shulk really doesn’t have a path for himself while Rex is brought into considering his future, what he wants to be, and didn’t depend on a OP god sword to give him all of his strength. Rex also didn’t get told on what to feel or do on most occasions. The fact that the little amount of time Vandham had with Rex mattered so much more to Rex himself than Dickson’s entire relationship with Shulk only makes Shulk even emptier as a character. And oh fucking please, don’t bother with “character motivations” when the character with the most shocking plot twist character that raised Shulk himself, Dickson, has no real character motivations whatsoever. Nor, gives Shulk any motivations to be a strong and intelligent man. Like Shulk, Alvis, Zanza, and Mayneth, he’s just a plot device with no real background the writers given a shit about.
With what little background Rex had, we can tie him way back to Addam himself and his allure to Vandham, a man who dropped off from royalty after losing his son. Sometimes, he has some lines where Vandham says to Rex “you remind me of my boy.”
All XC1 has as for “context” is “oh boy, so that is the foreshadowing moment.” “Oh boy, Dickson was a bit cheeky on his false heroism.” “Oh boy, Fiora didn’t really die on this scene and gets back to normal from pure shit writing. That doesn’t matter since the voice acting is so good in this scene.” Don’t bother with the stupid ass backstory. Egil and Zanza in general are far stupider than any villain in 2 and Zanza’s lines/motivations barely make sense with it.
Whenever people bring up the best elements of 1, it’s always the fucking plot twists and only them. With vague statements that “Shulk is a great character”. I have seen Xenoblade shitters admit that Rex is an actual chad protagonist as they shit on Shulk being a complete bitch in comparison. All with paragraphs and viable examples to go with it. 2 was rushed to shit and somehow it feels like 1 was the game where they rushed the story and characters just from how carelessly written it all is.
I love the xenoblade series and I feel that Torna the Golden country sort of has a better story but I am hoping they will improve with Xenoblade 3. Xenoblade 2 tried to be too anime for my liking, but not the good kind either.
@@cypher838 no for what?
@@skyriotAndKadeGaming torna was still no where near as good as 1. It only fixed some of 2's problems, but still has a lot of the problems 2 had.
@@cypher838 i never said that, its just better than 2s
@@skyriotAndKadeGaming I must've misinterpreted.
@@skyriotAndKadeGaming 1 was awesome. 2 was anime bullshit.
Seeing as this month is the game’s one year anniversary, and now that I’ve played the game a lot more (probably more than most fans), I thought I’d return (as if anyone else is still reading these comments).
After watching Joseph Anderson’s play through of this game, I am genuinely convinced that this game is a parody of the worst parts of anime/jrpgs/games in general. There’s just too much evidence to this. If I saw people praising this game as a parody, I would understand why everyone loves this game, but I don’t. People seem to think this game is an unironic masterpiece, and I cannot for the life of me understand why.
Bad voice acting
Bad dialogue
Bad writing
Bad character designs
Bad- no, terrible- no, abysmal game design.
Almost anything about this game is majorly flawed. I’ve been replaying xc1 recently, expecting it not to be as good as I remember, but I was delightfully surprised to find that it’s about as good. I found some terrible moments, but overall it simply didn’t have as many flaws (I haven’t finished my play through, so maybe this doesn’t hold true for the whole game). This is unacceptable for a sequel. The series should be improving. This is not an improvement. I’m sure some of these can be chocked up to a smaller development team, but it blows my fucking mind how some of this stuff got past testing. I’m not even going to bother going into detail of all the terrible design choices, I just can’t list them all. The updates only mitigated the issues. They patched “think you can take me”, but there’s still no combat dialogue frequency slider. They added more menu sorting options, but it’s still clunky. They added the ability to skip blade bonding scenes, but you’ll still spend over 100 hours grinding for blades.
As for the writing, it’s just stupid. So stupid. Stuff like “I can move at the speed of light” and “absolute zero” sounds like kids rp-ing, coming up with reasons why they won.
Despite the mediocre at best main game, I really enjoyed the dlc. I thought it improved upon the main game story and gameplay wise, if it was the main game it might have been as good as xc1.
I don’t understand why everyone loves this game. I don’t think I ever will. I don’t fully know if this was an attempt at a genuine experience or a parody. I don’t know how I feel about the future of xenoblade, seeing how well xc2 sold. The torna dlc has me a bit more confident though. If xc3/xcx2 uses xc2 as an example instead of golden country, I will be extremely disappointed. I desperately hope monolith takes their time on xcx2 and xc3, with a bigger team as well. Xc2 could have been amazing, but we know how that turned out.
If I'm not mistaken, a lot of the developers from Torna were busy with other projects during XC2's development (which does explain why XC2 is such a disappointing, mediocre, sloppy mess). I think Monolith learned their lesson regardless of sales numbers though, hence why Torna was so well-crafted on its own, so fingers crossed that they continue to improve their craft and learn from their amateurish mistakes with base-XC2.
This video rules.
I bought the game played 20 hours and wasn't into it anymore started playing zelda again
you cannot believe how exactly the same I felt. It just made me want to play XC again and Zelda again which I did and had a much better time.
You want to know something sad? I loved Xenoblade chronicles and changed zelda botw for Xenoblade 2... the worst change ever
@@rubenestradavalencia3306 worst decision ever lol
@@rubenestradavalencia3306 Just a fyi xenoblade chronicles 1 was developed by monolith soft and I wouldn't be surprised if all the talented employees who worked on the first xenoblade were the ones who worked on zelda.
Xenoblade 2 is irredeemably bad. Combat is non tactical and entirely based around doing the same boring dps rotation to achieve the same meta mechanics for each fight. Character designs are embarrassing and impossible to take seriously. The story is a cliche. The game sucks.
I didn’t even know the chapter 5 boss had spike damage until now.
This is such an underrated video. I wish more people would see this and realize how garbage XC2 is compared to the original. Maybe even XCX. The dislikes are absolutely not deserved.
I guess that's your opinion
Vandham’s death actually affected Nia in some way because it reminded her that she could have used her powers to save him but she was too afraid to do it in fear of judgement so when Niall almost died she decided she needed to do it.
I have many issues with XC2, chief of which is the extremely lazy reused character model animations in almost every single in-game cutscene. Not only are they reused, but they're awkwardly stiff as well. Kills the immersion for me.
Captain astronaut once said this game's story felt like a first draft.
I mean it didn't help that xc2 was developed with a smaller team comapred to the previous games.
personally the reason I liked xenoblade 2 was because everyone was criticizing it, so when I got it, I had lowered my expectations, but it ended up passing my lowered expectations, mainly because the gameplay wasn't as bad as i thought it was, but i still found some of the story to be a bit odd at times which is what i agree with you.
Coming from XCX, it felt like a huge downgrade.
Exactly. How did we go from a seamless world that immersed the player in being a member of BLADE, improvements made to XC1's combat, overall fun, polished and exciting gameplay with so much freedom to tackle missions in whatever order, and flying mechs that act as an extension of what you can do and accomplish, to a watered down plagiarism of XC1 with nothing that made that game so enjoyable?
@@NintendanGX I know right yet ppl love this game and called x garbage.Xenoblade 2 is the real trash game here.
I really don't understand how people could enjoy this game.
It's all opinion mate. Loved it to death
@@MM-gb3sv not realy.
there are some basic standards wich you can compare different things to each other. Writing. Dont do dramatic deaths just for shockvalue, and then revive them instandly and whitouth in World logic.
Xeno did this two times and it made similar terrible design and writingchoices.
But even if the game itselfe is in fact bad, you can have fun whit it, enjoy it, ignore the flaws and have a good time.
But objectivly other games are way better. And they deserve to be called such, because there did something very right and there worked hard to be good and deserve to be called superior.
And in the end, whats so bad about enjoying something stupid, finding value in flawed things?
@@Sunaki1000 I know, I was just answering how anyone could enjoy it. It's opinion. Different people find different flaws more noticeable and impactful. I didn't really think about how well constructed the story was when I first played it because I was too invested in it. In the same aspect I could criticise Xeno X because I didn't care about the characters. It doesn't mean they weren't good. It's just what you find yourself liking about the game.
@@MM-gb3sv Not just the Story.
lv 80 Enemys who spot you from the other side of the Map, the low number of battlecrys and how often there trigger, and on and one.
@@Sunaki1000 the first one is explained and while the second one is left up in the air there are explanations for it
“Objectively other games are better”.... okay what’s your point, you can say this about literally any game. This isn’t even an argument or something worth saying because no one is arguing this is the best game ever made so I’m not even sure what you hoped to achieve by pointing this out because there isn’t a game that you can’t apply that to
But you’d need a lot more to be able to just write off the game as “stupid”, you don’t have to like but you’re going to need to point out more than fake out deaths which this game has more actual deaths than fake out ones anyway
It’s because xenoblade 2 only cares about making your peepee happy while 1 tells an epic story with developing characters
Yup that's the only thing they care about.
Don't ask how I managed to stumble onto this video 6 years later, but here I am!
I can't think of one single valid point made in this video, though I feel like there might have been one somewhere in the first half - eff it, I'm not going back to see if I can find it (if there even was one). Did you actually play the game?
Vandham never tried to take Pyra, that part was explicitly explained in the next cutscene.
Malos *does* have motivations for what he's doing, he explicitly states them in the ending cutscene. Mythra is not all-knowing and has a very different way of thinking and perceiving the world, and as such, just because she can't understand/doesn't know his reasons doesn't mean that they don't exist. She doesn't speak for him, she is merely answering Niall's question to her best abilities (that is to say, not at all). It is also explicitly stated that Malos was - as all Blades are - affected by who the first Driver to awaken him was, in Malos' case that was Amalthus.
Zeke can't change into a Blade form because he's a human with part of a Blade's core implanted into him - like Amalthus and Mikhail, he is a Blade Eater. Nia is a Flesh Eater - a Blade fused with human cells. The game explicitly tells you this, as well as explaining what the difference is. Flesh Eaters can also be Drivers. It is never mentioned if Blades can be, though my guess would be no.
Aegises can function perfectly without a Driver. Malos has worked separately from his Driver for centuries, Pyra never returned to her core despite her original Driver dying. She chose to bond with Rex as her new Driver because having a Driver makes her stronger.
Azurda turned large in the end because Pneuma, as the Master Blade, programmed his core crystal into allowing it. This isn't explicitly stated, but it is openly shown in the cutscene. The writers trusted the players to actually follow the story and use their brains to figure some things out on their own without explaining every single thing in excruciating detail.
Pyra and Mythra transferred the entirety of their core crystal to Rex to heal his heart, which made them finally die. We clearly see the core crystal glow and then resonate with Rex once again in the end of the cutscene, which is how they come back - the game has repeatedly told you throughout the game that this is how Blades work. When they die, they return to their crystal, only to later be reawakened again. We don't know with finality (to my knowledge) why both of them return in separate bodies, my guess is that it is the gift granted to them by the Architect, though there is no proof of this theory.
Some of the things you wonder about are made even more clear in Torna the Golden Country, but nothing is left completely unexplained in the main game. I can't remember every issue you had, those where the most egregious ones that I felt the need to address. In any case, sorry you didn't like the game. Hope you enjoyed the third one. Cheerio!
Malo's doesn't feel the need to suppress his strength because he is evil.
I think you can play off Jin Encasing her in Ice is just him trying to preserve her body.
I'm so glad I've decided to wait for Xenoblade Chronicles to come to the Switch first before playing this game. I knew there was something wrong when the character designs weren't anything different from the generic crappy modern anime we have today.
I love how this game is hated and it's worth all the hate it gets.
I dont think so. I like it more than the first one
Alright this is interesting
I agree with you about Vandams death, but that's pretty much it. Jin killing Haze got explained in Torna the Golden Country (which wasn't out at the time of this vid I know), Malos's intentions were explained to be from Amalthus, Pneuma gave Gramps the ability to change back to his titan form, Pyra and Mythra returned because Rex had the core crystal... You were on to some things but it seems like you missed a lot of things in the story.
@DarkSonic180 They did tho. Half of the 'conviniences' either got explained in other cutscenes or just requires logical thinking to understand them. Not trying to hate on this guy, I do think he had some good points like Akhos and Vandham
I think Pyra and Mythra coming back also doesn't make much sense though. Since the core crystal had to be truly awakened once more (she only went to sleep after beforehand, after all), if anything it would have made sense to have it summon Pneuma and with no memories of her previous life, perhaps because those memories (which are data for the cloud sea) were used to bring the titans back into one huge living land mass.
But even without this explanation and without the fact that the Aegis can do whatever the heck the story wants them to (be it Pneuma or Malos), I simply find the idea of Pneuma finally reuniting her personalities as a whole and accepting all of her life much more satisying than just "lol now Rex gets to fuck two hotties+Nia at the same time!".
@@XelchanTheBrave for one it would not make sense for her to show up with no memories because the only reason blade lose their memories is because it’s sent to the aegis as data the cloud sea has nothing to do with that it’s only their to break down matter also “Pneuma” is just mythra’s original name before she was awakened but pyra isn’t just another side of mythra she’s literally an idealistic version of herself that mythra created to be just that so it would actually be a lot less satisfying because it would basically just be mythra getting all of the traits she wish she had and ahh yes I love it when people interpret a loved one attempting to sacrifice themselves to save ending up okay in the end as “lolololol now you fuck three waifus”
Hold up, you’re bringing up how Malos’ motivation is shallow? This is hilarious, aside from Egil, every villain in 1 is actually 1 dimensional. Mumkhar : « I want the monado » ok but why? Same with Zanza, just evil for the sake of it. Actually 2 retroactively makes Zanza a better character. And while Malos would seem one dimensional at first, not only is it the point that he has no free will, but he at least clearly explains why. Mankind is disease, men are pests, who keep on destroying each other, he’s from the divine so he thinks it’s his role to eliminate them.
Vandham’s death is the first warning to Rex, who does nothing about it until chapter 7, losing Haze and Pyra/Mythra in the meantime. Vandham’s last words are also what Rex needs to do to better himself. Of course at first he misinterpreted his words (explaining to Pyra that he’ll fight his war with her, but because she has the power to « save everyone ». By chapter 8 he clearly understood his words, « I’m living for them! » (Pyra/Mythra). His motivation isn’t this naive and childish « I’ll save everyone » anymore, it’s « I’m doing all of this for you ».
And Vandham channeling ether through his body is foreshadowing for blade eaters.
His introduction when he says he wants the Aegis was meant to test Rex’s skill and resolve. Why do you think he teaches him so many things about life and blades. He sees that Rex being the kind of person he is, has the potential to make a change in this world.
And throwing everything away to save others is exactly what kind of person he is, he’s like an older Rex. Why do you think he created his firm in the first place? (He was from the nobility before that).
You pick up a single moment from 2 and explain how flawed it is, without ever considering everything that came before and after, its build up. While that’s exactly what you do when talking about 1. The problem with this video is obvious.
Did you miss the whole point of chapter 4 and the artificial blades?
Chapter 5 shows character progression, and does more world building, with the culmination of every war preparations we’ve see so far etc... Everything fits into the themes. Also Jin is trying to buy some time.
And yeah, it really feels unrealistic how Jin could enter the Titan weapon when he is more powerful than a regular Aegis, and when it’s shown before how effortlessly he can defeat an entire crew of a ship and it’s soldiers.
Nothing ever just comes out of nowhere in 2. If you missed foreshadowing or set up or world building (which 1 seriously lacks) that’s on you.
And unlike 1’s cast, every party member in 2 embodies the themes of the story. The most 1’s cast has is in relation to loss (everyone but Ricky experiences loss, though unlike Tora Ricky barely has a character and motivation) yet they never bond over that or bring anything interesting about it. There’s just Shulk bonding with Dunban over that (and they’re literally mourning the same person).
Anyway you clearly missed the point of Tora (self worth and achieving your dream), Morag (moving on from duty and freely seeking purpose) and Zeke (accomplishing his full potential when he had given up).
The whole Mythra and Pyra dynamic is a personality split (because of her trauma), similar to some Xenogears characters.
Mythra can’t see into the future, it’s just an immediate prediction. This is important as this shows how Rex gets carried by her through everything with that, without ever getting better himself. And when someone has the ability to counter that (Jin) it is obvious how helpless Rex is on his own.
Haze’s death is only truly meaningful to Jin. But it still shows how so far Rex hasn’t changed. And it foreshadows how he will eventually lose Pyra/Mythra.
Nia, like everyone in Torna can wield blades because they are flesh eaters, not blade eaters.
Amalthus isn’t one dimensional. He hates people, because of mankind’s nature and his past. He is like Zanza but better written. And there were plenty foreshadowing of how he is evil.
Malos isn’t with his driver and that’s why he’s so much weaker than Mythra with Rex. Mythra could also fight without Rex, she’d just be weaker.
Azurda doesn’t change form out of nowhere, Pneuma, who holds the data of all living things and incredible powers just made it possible.
And if her coming back out of nowhere is being criticized (and really it’s obvious how she came back, through her core crystal), then Fiora should be as well. The total ass pull of giving her old body comes from nowhere (even the short story released later about how there’s a machine or whatever is b.s).
And no, this game isn’t trying to be the original, far from that. 1 is the least Xeno of all the Xenogames (it wasn’t even meant to be one). The most you can say is that it’s trying to be Xenogears (Its essentially Xenogears light). It’s continuing what X started, bringing back the Xeno themes, plot element etc...
(ignoring the bug) Oh my god... This video ACTUALLY gets worse!?
@DarkSonic180 Mumkhar was never written to be deep nor did they act like he was. Dunban even says that his reasons are childish. But mumkhar was memorable unlike 2's cast.
I believe the reason why Vandham was pretending to want to take Pyra is because he wanted to fight with the Driver of the Aegis and said those things so Rex can fight all out so he can see how powerful Pyra really is
Recks (I refuse to call him by his real name because memes) is a really bland protagonist. His voice acting was mediocre at best and JOOOIIN MEEEEE at worst. His design makes sense in the context of his job, but those shorts, over saturated blue armor, and his painfully generic anime face just are not appealing to the eyes. He is the most played out and generic jrpg/anime protagonist I’ve ever seen. I’m not going to act like shulk was a masterpiece of storytelling, but at worst he got the job done. Recks just doesn’t grow as a character. When Prya was taken by Jin and Malos, Recks just gives up. If Brighed (that slap was SO satisfying) and Poppi hadn’t knocked some sense into him, the deaths of Vandam and Fan would have been for nothing. Like the antagonist, his motivation is just “I’m gonna take Pyra to Elysium”. It never changes. The end of chapter seven loses a lot of it’s impact when Recks just restates his goals. Shulk goes from wanting to destroy all mechon to just wanting peace between the two titans. Also, his battle dialogue is incredible. “We’ll beat them, with the powa of friendship!”.
I agree so much. Shulk felt like a relatable protagonist and his growth is constant. Not to mention the party is always, always giving him sound advice that shape him further.
Even his reaction towards defeating the boss before the final one is honest, a sincere act from the writers for giving him relatable, flawed emotions of anger and disappointment.
Rex stays the same through all the game and other characters love him for his unbelievable always positive attitude (only broken once in a thirty minutes or less segment). His words don't feel sincere, just a blind trust given by his age. He is just a pitiful self insert in a story that dwells too much into superficial gratifications.
He, unlike Shulk, feels dishonest. If he were in Shulk's shoes and was against the pre-final boss, he would try to forgive him and make peace before the dude dies. He would give some half assed speech on friendship and human kindess without any real weight to them. He'd be, unlike Shulk, flawless. And the flaws the game pins on Rex are forgotten and left to rot right after they are posed by the illusory party members.
Also, "I love you, and all of you guyz!!!1" still makes me mad.
XelchanTheBrave Yeah, his character is pretty much just cringy kid, beginning to end. After looking into recks’ character even more, I realized something I can’t believe I didn’t realize at first.
You could say his character development is “learn to let go” (as zeke tells him), but that’s pretty much thrown away after pyra and mythra come back, because of course he has to have his waifus.
You know, despite recks being a mediocre protagonist at best, what really made me despise him was there are other characters that would have been better protagonists.
Zeke and Pandoria’s relationship feels more genuine than recks and pyra, they’re probably my favorite of the main cast.
I think Jin and Lora would have made a much better pair, too. They have an interesting backstory, and a potentially interesting chemistry. They feel really underutilized.
I honestly love “I love you and all you guys”, it makes me laugh every time I see it. It’s so bad it’s good (xc2 in general is so bad it’s good), It’s a meme on my discord server.
recks telling Klaus “the salvager’s code” pissed me off, though. He’s talking to GOD! You do not meet god and say something like that, wtf. The tone of this game is a mess.
@@shslvisionary6980 Have you ever played Tales of Symphonia? I feel like Rex is a copy of that game's protagonist, Lloyd.
Lloyd even has his own set of vows, the Dwarven Vows, which he quotes from time to time much like Rex does with the Salvager Code...
Also yes... Pyra and Mythra at the end are nothing more than a feel good otaku harem fantasy.
XelchanTheBrave I’ve never played a tales game, but Lloyd can’t be as bad as Rex. I heard someone compare Rex to sora. I’ve never played kingdom hearts either though.
I always hate it when in media they heavily imply a relationship between 2 characters, but never do anything with it. I mean, what even was the point of establishing a relationship if they aren’t gonna kiss, hug, or even say “I love you”? The scene could have at the very least been cute, but all we get is an implied “I love you”. Unbelievable
XelchanTheBrave Also, funny thing. I got your reply a few days after someone replied to me saying, and I quote, “Rex is the best protagonist among all xenoblade games”, and “xenoblade 2 is the best xeno game since xenogears”. I just...don’t have the energy to respond. Even if you get past the bad plot, the gameplay has some really terrible design.
Btw, someone replied to him saying “aaaaaaiyah”. Absolutely perfect
I agree the story isn't as well written as the first game's but a lot of criticism you bring up seem to be very nitpicky or have already been implied/explained. The strength of the first game's story mainly came from the impact and delivery of the plot twists (which XC2 lacks) rather than good character development (most characters don't really change in the first game either). Also the game makers did say they wanted to make a more 'fun' and 'lighthearted' story which is probably why the game doesn't do things like remind you of Vandham's death every chapter after or turning the plot into some sort of revenge story
-I partly agree with Malos not being a very good villain but to say he just wants to destroy the world because he's a generic villain is wrong, because it's noted by several characters that Malos got his destructive impulses from Amalthus, and the fact that drivers influence blades which they awaken was shown many times in the story.
-Lorithia is not Melia's stepmother, you're confusing her with Yumea. Lorithia was just the head of research of the High Entia. I don't get why you thought she was a good villain considering her only motive for following Zanza was the fact that he promised her immortality. Likewise Dickon's betrayal was also basically out of nowhere and in the end his only motivation was he wanted more power, same for Mumkhar really. Even Zanza's motives were only briefly touched upon by Alvis after he died and he was a evil god pretty much 'just because'. Only Egil had any motives and complexity at all.
-It makes little sense to criticise Amalthus for being 'evil out of nowhere' when the same thing applies much more to most of the villains in XC1 (Lorithia, Dickson, Zanza). The guy was presented as shady from the beginning and got about 15 flashbacks explaining his motive of hating the world-his mother was killed by bandits when he was a kid and he murdered her killers in their sleep; he grew up witnessing more tragedies reinforcing his view that the world was a shitty place; when he climbed the world tree to meet god all he found were two massive weapons of destruction leading him to think god wanted the world to burn. Amalthus was also somewhat confused and jealous about the fact that he was not 'the Architect's chosen' despite being literally pope and dedicating his life to religion which I thought was a nice touch because it felt like a realistic motive.
-Mythra's foresight abilities makes sense because we find out at the end of the game (or at least it's heavily implied) that she's the same type of being as Alvis, who was the Monado in the first game. This is also why Malos could use the Monado. Unlike Shulk however Rex can only see like 2 seconds into the future, but this is consistent with the fact that Mythra/Malos's powers are much more limited compared to Alvis somehow. It seems Alvis had 'administrative rights' to the Conduit's powers and Zanza/Meyneth/Shulk were given limited access to it whereas in this game it's reversed, where Klaus had all the access and Mythra/Malos only limited access. This isn't explicitly explained anywhere but it's still consistent.
-The whole 'blades can be drivers thing'. The only blades that were shown to be drivers were all partly human, so either flesh eaters (Jin, Nia, Akhos, Patroka) or blade eaters (Mikhail, Amalthus, Zeke). Malos is the only exception but the plot explains earlier on that Aegises are already exceptions to almost every rule anyway. So Nia can be a driver and blade at the same time makes perfect sense because she is part human and part blade.
-Malos's blade was destroyed by Mythra like Obrona was, rewatch that cutscene.
-Jin's AIDs happens multiple times, like when he fell down to Morytha, and again after fighting Rex the last time. The reason for it was also explained through Cole-Flesh eaters lose the blade's immortality so they die after living for too long. Even Akhos's offer to cure Cole made some sense since they had the technology to treat Jin (albeit not fully).
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I appreciate it!
I really would argue that most of the cast changes or expereiences some emotionally relevant event in XC1--maybe excluding Riki. I always cite the scene when the party is split up after Mumkhar's death and everyone has their little heart-to-hearts on the beach side as being a big affirmation to why the party members are in the game and how their side stories are intertwined with Shulks. Here, I can barely see why most of the party, excluding Nia, decide to tag along, or what they contribute to the story. Sure there's that scene where Poppi is talking to Pyra near the end, or how Brighid tagged along during Rex's talk with Jin because she wanted to understand her past , but I would have liked more active involevement from the cast in this story. That doesn't nessecarily mean someone has to die, but just having more seeds planted as justification for why they're follwing Rex would have sufficed or some involved backstory. I agree with you about the impact thing, that mostly had to do with the way the story is presented in 1 vs 2. Also, I noticed that the series director did say he wanted to make a more light-hearted story (didn't include it in the vid though), but I feel like that led to some conflict in direction. I think that the game wanted to be light-hearted and take itself super seriously at the same time and that kinda hurt it. A good example: It's hard for me to get involved with Vandham's death when Akhos throws out a cringey line about it being a cliche the second after he dies, or the fact that Malos is making jokes about "hitting girls" when he's fighting pyra. Rex is bawling his eyes out during this scene, so you're obviously supposed to feel an emotional reaction. It just seemed conflicting to me.
- I can see where you're coming from here, but I still think that the entire goal of "wanting to wipe out humanity" is just generic. It's not ot that Malos is nessecarily. I do think he could have been presented better as a villain, though. They should have made him more present throughout the story.
- I must have mixed up Lorithia and Yumea. I wouldn't say that Dickson and Lorithia's motives were just power, considering they're Zanza's Disciples and wanted immortality. Dickson's betrayal made sense to me, since he was presented throughout the story as Shulk's protector. I'd even say he showed himself to be the Monado's protector in the opening scene when he tries to temper dunban.
- My criticism of amalthus being evil out of nowhere mostly comes from the way in which the revelation of him being a villain is presented. He does nothing to antagonize or hurt the party at any point in the story before, nor is there a moment in the present time where he does anything to allude to an evil plan or behavior. But once Jin gives his backstory, he immeditaly starts acting transparently evil to the cast. Once that happens, the first thing Amalthus does on screen is attempt to use Mythra's powers against Rex's wishes despite having no indication of wanting to do that prior, plus the whole "using the other half of fan's crystal" thing just came out of nowhere.
I actually loved Zanza as a villan, since he had a narssasistc, god-complex and that was his motive for wanting to reset life in the world. Yeah he was rushed in near the end, but he was simple to understand and made sense.
- My point about foresight was moreso that it was implemented poorly, not that it made no sense. She barely uses it in the story in any way--let alone a significant way. Yet it's presented as this huge thing that's going to be a major ability in the story in that scene. My implication in this part was that the game doesn't do a good job of highlighting what's important and what isn't. That's why I felt so confused throughout the story.
- I still don't get why Nia has a whole transformation scene and can switch between being a driver and a blade as a flesh eater, when no one else in the game does something remotely similar to that. I also really don't like the plot excuse of Malos being able to do something becuase he's an Aegis. Even if they do share similar abilities to characters from XC1, other excuses--like being able to wield a blade--doesn't make much sense in the context of the rules the game sets up--and if they were just gonna kill Malos's blade off, why did they even include him in the first place? Also, it still confuses me as to what Mythra can do and what Malos can do, what abilities they do share and what they don't when it comes to things that weren't in XC1. Having no cannon for the Aegis is a bit of a misstep--at least it was made clear what the Monado does throughout XC1's story.
- I know Malos's blade died there. My comment was mostly just meant to be a joke in the sense that he was really prevalent early on and then they just killed him off for no reason.
- Is it actually called AID's? lol. I also thought that he fell during that last fight because we beat the crap out of him. Didn't know it had to do with his condition.
@the gaming chronicler "Here, I can barely see why most of the party, excluding Nia, decide to tag along, or what they contribute to the story."
That's quite an easy one: Nia joins because she connects with Rex emotionally during their time looking for Pyra; Tora joins the adventure becomes he wants to learn how to gain aptitude as a blade driver and believes he could learn how to do so from Rex (it's part of his character arc, which sort of comes into its own around chapter 4). Morag joins because she's the inquisitor of Mor ardain. She is compelled by her duty to investigate the potential of the Aegis and her curiosity of Rex's potential in succeeding Addam's role as the original Aegis driver (throughout the journey, she learns to stop using orders as an excuse to follow the gang around and decides to do so because she feels a responsibility as a person who is strong to guide Rex; simultaneously, the relationship between her and her cousin Niall is explored a bit). Zeke joins the party because he wants to Rex help change the world. Zeke understands what it's like to have a huge responsibility on one's shoulders and wants to help Rex through his troubles. Zeke has traveled the world a lot and knows of the woes of alrest. As a result, he's hoping that being able to guide Rex to Elysium can help change the status quo of the world. The motivations of the cast members are made pretty clear in the narrative; I'm not even grasping at straws here.
"and if they were just gonna kill Malos's blade off, why did they even include him in the first place?"
why does it matter whether Malos's blade was killed off or not; the blade is never presented as an important character. Malos is literally only using the blade because he's still weakened at this point in the game. That's the whole reason why they were looking for pyra in the first place. As a processing unit that holds all information about blades, information from elysium, and the ecosystem of alrest, Malos needed the information in Pyra's core crystal so that he could regain his aegis powers and open the gateway to elysium himself. This is why we dont see Malos weilding a blade anymore during chapter 7; he has no need for one. The blade he was using earlier was just a supplementary way for him to be effective in battle until he recovered his original abilities. Malos ability as an Aegis means the ability to manipulate blades as well as using artifices.
"I still don't get why Nia has a whole transformation scene and can switch between being a driver and a blade as a flesh eater, when no one else in the game does something remotely similar to that."
Amalthus is a blade eater and he has a transformation. We are meant to believe that certain blades can disguise themselves; I don't find it a hard pill to swallow that Nia could learn to disguise herself to look more like "her sister" given the circumstances. What Nia does is pretty similar to what Mythra and Pyra do when they switch between each other.
"She barely uses it in the story in any way--let alone a significant way. Yet it's presented as this huge thing that's going to be a major ability in the story in that scene."
The game's story never illustrates foresight as this major plot relevant ability; it is simple demonstrated as one of Mythra's signature techniques. The cutscene frames her foresight ability as one that is powerful and makes Mythra a formidable foe and nothing more; it's an asset to her in battle. If anything, foresight is nothing but an extension of Mythra's insane analytical abilities, something the game make consistently salient throughout the journey. She's able to gauge the integrity of her surroundings and the capabilities of her enemies through her processing capabilities; foresight is just of function of that inherent characteristic of hers
"plus the whole "using the other half of fan's crystal" thing just came out of nowhere."
That was heavily foreshadowed in chapter 6; blatantly so to the point that i wished the writing wasnt so obvious about it. I would have appreciated a bit more subtlety there
I disagree that the tones in this game are conflicting; the game strikes a nice balance between being light-hearted and being serious. If I had a criticism however, it would be that because the game wanted to be a bit more lighthearted, it lacked the deep exploration of some of the more darker themes that are present in the game; an exploration that could have made some of the themes the game explores a bit more compelling. Still, i think the story does a satisfying enough job presenting the seriousness when it needs to and being jocular when necessary. I find your example of Ahkos' cliche line as a moment that undercuts the drama to be a poor example of the game's "conflicting tones." if anything, you should have used chapter 3 being immediately followed by chapter 4 as an example; that would have better supported your point and i could have seen where you were coming from. Chapter 4 is probably the most lighthearted and goofy chapter in the game, which coming straight off chapter 3, probably wasn't the best move. I do think the writing manages to avoid making this a complete tonal shift by letting Vandham's death linger long enough in the earlier parts of the chapter so as to exemplify the importance of his passing; at just enough before things start getting silly. Keep in mind though that when it comes to storytelling, it's not about the weight of the hand, but about how you use it. Chapter 4 is silly, serving as an homage to mecha anime, gainax, super sentai shows, astro boy, etc. but it also rounds out Tora's backstory, serves to contextualize Poppi's importance to him, as well as show Poppi's dedication to Tora and her badassery when all is said a done. It was a very fun chapter and yet another example of how XC2 uses the light-hearted scenarios of its narrative to allow the personalities of its cast shine and interact in the way characters should
@Moises Cabasquini
I have to disagree with your reasoning for the characters of XC2 sticking around in the party. I do think that Nia is the only character that had a non-confusing reason for why she joined Rex, and it’s not the reason you stated.
-The reason Nia joined up with Rex and Pyra was mostly because she didn’t have anywhere else to go, seeing as she had been alone for most of her life, excluding Dromarch, and had only really found her place with Jin and Malos. The game did try to push more towards her joining the party because she was interested in the talk about elysium, but that seems to contradict Nia’s character due to her being portrayed as realistic and untrusting. I say untrusting because of the events that have happened in her past and even the events between her and Torna. Saying that she joins out of curiosity throws those character points out the window, it’s sad that’s the direction they went seeing as they had something they could have worked with while still keeping those character points.
-On regards to Tora I do think that you have some good points. He joins the group because he wants to learn more about being a “real” driver. That is all that seems to drive him in the beginning though, not to say that simple motivations are a bad thing.
-Morag is a big difference however. It makes sense in chapter 4 when they join forces, because they have a common enemy at the time, but after that when they were to part ways Morag’s motivations got very uninteresting. Saying she went along with the party because she was interested in how Rex and the aegis will grow is not very believable. You could say that she went with them because the knowledge gained by being around them would be beneficial to Mor Ardain, but we later learn that she decides to go with the party for personal reasons. Her personal reasons, being curiosity, make little sense. If she were following the aegis around because she admired the strength it had it would make more sense. Is she followed them because she wanted to keep tabs on how strong they got for her own reasons out of jealousy, that would make sense because she is known to wield the “strongest” blade. Seeing as she doesn’t follow them for these reasons and instead joins the party for “convenience,” it makes her character more one dimensional.
-It saddens me to have to write about Zeke, in my opinion he had the most potential for being a really good character to the point where the writers were almost able to pull his character off, until they ended up not. Zeke first follows the group because the praetorian asked him to, that makes sense from the backstory you learn Zeke has with him. Once they make it to Tantal things seem to get better for his character. You learn his was cast out due to his behavior, how he traveled the world and had seen the ugliness in peoples actions. Most importantly you learn that Zeke’s family was not actually decedents of Addam, but instead took his name for their own survival. This gives Zeke’s character all he needed to develop and have his own reason now for sticking with the party. However, Zeke seems to have a revelation about himself and where he stands and ends up breaking out Rex and Pyra for his own reasons. After the later events of keeping Genbu from sinking and Pyra being taken, Zeke just sticks around. That’s where Zeke’s character ends for the most part and we don’t get anymore insight on why he sticks around. There was a line during the Tantal chapter after Zeke learns about his family where he says how Rex’s good heartedness would be his downfall, and how it was the duty of the adults to guide the innocent kids like him. This isn’t word for word what Zeke said but it is what he meant. We never see much of Zeke doing any guiding though, from what you can tell not much focus if put on Zeke anymore, besides exposition. As such Zeke never really gets a full chance to really develop and his reasoning for joining the party feels unfulfilled and hollow.
-On a side note about Rex’s character. From the looks of things every character for some reason or another sticks around Rex in the belief that he is some amazing driver and will completely change the world. As far as things go, Rex is one of the most poorly constructed characters I have seen. Throughout the entirety of the story Rex never has any real moments of development and stays as the over optimistic, blissful, ignorant character he is. He says he will take Pyra to Elysium for the sake of because he said so, and that’s all the story ever does about it. You could argue it was because Pyra saved his life, and that’s the direction the game try’s to take this reasoning. This reasoning is fairly one dimensional seeing as how when all these other events happen around Rex, events that would make normal people somewhat think about either the consequences of the actions around them and their own actions and make someone possibly have any sort of difference in opinion over time. That’s where Rex falls short, throughout every event that happens throughout the entire story Rex never changes. It’s so bad to the point where the little quirks Rex has feel annoying instead of endearing. The flaws and quirks of a character are needed in order to better understand the character, the characters actions, and how the character reacts to change. When you have a character like Rex who doesn’t have any of their flaws properly brought out, and has an overly one sided opinion on everything with little reason, you get an annoying, unchanging, character which no one can relate to or enjoy watching develop.
I encourage those of you who think that Rex is a good character to prove me wrong. If there is some information that can completely contradict or disprove my reasoning, I would greatly appreciate it if you would bring it to my attention.
0:03 ...and Final Fantasy 7 😨
I might be here a bit late, but as a Xeno series veteran, I decided that I wanted to get in on a respectful discussion about Xenoblade 2, so if anyone wishes to respond to this comment, I fully welcome you.
Xenoblade 2 is a real step down from the original, and even X to some extent. Story is badly written, art style is generic anime, combat is fine, but I prefer the first 2, and the blade system just is not good. In any way. The only main characters I really enjoyed were Nia (because character development), Zeke/Pandy (because comedy), and Jin (because he was the most sympathetic villain in the game). Everyone else is just really bland or useless. The VA never reaches above passable. I can find some enjoyment from this game, but knowing it’s from the xenoblade series, I can’t help but be disappointed. I wasn’t expecting it to give me the same experience as the original ( a game like that comes once in a lifetime). X wasn’t amazing, but it was still a solid experience, I’ll never forget that opening scene. The atmosphere was on point. Xenoblade 2 has nothing particularly amazing in it.
Sundel also, the clipping is terrible. Christ, just look at Sheba and Mythra. It’s unforgivable. In xc1 and X, it was slightly more forgivable because they had multiple costumes, and were on inferior consoles. but this was made on the switch. And each character only has one costume. With only one costume, you only have one design to animate. It just comes off as lazy.
Okay let's talk about this video and how he absolutely does not pay attention to the details in this game and completely blames flaws that xenoblade one did.
9:41 doesn't establish akhos and Patroka's relationship after she dies, it they establish there sibling relationship long before that and multiple times he calls her his sister in the game.
10:54 the entire sequence of events would have happened the same way if vandham hadn't died. no it wouldn't if vandham hadn't died and they just ran away then Mythra would never had awakened and never felt the need to. Not to mention she is terrified of using her own power which is an established Character trait of her
11:55 plot convenience. Let's ignore the fact that ether flow is going through the weapons but let talk about every single time shulk got a power out of literal nowhere because plot demanded it, shield, speed, purge, cyclone, among the others.
12:18 a yes because 1 he was only testing rex,. B. Rex reminds him of his dead son that he never got a chance to save.
13:38 except you give Rex a new blade that he is actively shown using at later points in the story when he doesn't have Pyra visual story telling this guy actively fail to notice. Not to mention the actively mention roc acts like vandham.
14: 37 he tries to compare it to fiora's death FIORA'S, the one that ruins the rex and Egil dynamic because it gets undone halfway through the story a death that truly doesn't have a true lasting effect
17:34 the Vandham scene the power is not chekovs gun in that scene it's Nia holding her chest
17:36 except to establish the blades bots on the final act and to establish the threat of Jin and the reveal that he is a flesh eater
20:22 that is not a convenience that is literally established later that Mythra created Pyra because she was scared of herself and her own power so she created Pyra to seal that power away.
20:41 yes it established in that scene that Mythra doesn't draw power from ether, so she created a self who does and could not access the power Mythra draws from
21:35 at this point he never got to the Klaus reveal which explains why she can see the future
24:08 calling akhos showing up to save Jin when a they establish Jin needing ether treatments, and b. Malos's caring of Jin has also been established he would send someone to watch him encase his weekness acted up again
24:54 okay literally the scene after haze's death they show the fact that he core crystal was different the entire time they knew her as fan la norne
25:31 maybe the fact they establish she is a flesh eater a blade with human cells and have shown other flesh eaters to be able to resonate with blades.
26:16 she can she chooses not to
28:22 he didn't just suddenly become evil he always was it again shows Amalthus's influence on malos when they show rex seeing malos over Amalthus, it's the main reason why malos is evil, there is a side quest that actively shows this kind of relationship the the crystal clear saga
That entire video just shows how this guy didn't pay attention to the story nor did he pay attention to the visual storytelling.
This is really accurate
That was awesome. Had me laughing for a minute. If only i had. Wii u to play the first game.
Xendov if you have a 3ds xl you can play it on that.
Well Definitive Edition is coming out 2020
I feel like a lot of his point get debunked by actually playing the game like the vandam sacrifice when he was trying to *take* pyra, but legit the next cutscene they explained he has no killing intention and was just testing his might then spends time building a bond with the main cast (and saying a bond cant have formed cuz *its only been a few days* is just baffling, how long should he have been with them before it would have made sense heck they even peg him as a huge hearted giant to the point he even schooled rex on how terrible he is using pyra and showing him ways to fight rex has never thought of (showing he knows a lot more about blades then rex, so him knowing that ether flows from your blade to you and how to counter someone blocking that makes sense, heck he even starts the explanation before he does the thing but just saying he could have found a better way with no examples makes me think you missed those important context clues that you seem to hang on for the first game) overall tho great video (not mad nor do i think your opinions are dumb just feel like there are explanations to a lot your stating)
When is Blue Dragon Part 3 coming out ?
Actually it’s revealed that Akhos and the other Torna members never resonated with their blades so it answers that question of how they can wield blades
This sentence literally sounds like my 13-year old self explaining my Final Fantasy fanfic. I think they literally based the "uhm, ACKchewally" meme on you, right here from this comment.
Lorithia isn't Melia's stepmom; you've combined her with Yumea
It is weird you didn't talk about that malos's character development is more than just doing it because he wants to, he did it because he thought it was his duty as the other aegis, and in the last few chapters he founds out he doesn't only need to do that and finds his real meaning in himself.
Thanks for commenting!
I would have liked Malos a lot more if I knew more about him other than his status as an Aegis. I didn't add his revelation during the last chapter in the vid because I feel the same with him as I do the Praetor. He does learn to gather a different meaning in his existence once he's defeated by the party, but I just wished that he had more of a backstory and some tangible motivator for wanting to do the things he did. Idk. To me, him thinking that wiping out humanity was his duty pretty much means that he just wanted to do it. At least Jin had lost somebody and had a soilid realistic reason to.
The Gaming Chronicler thank you for replying! I really liked the video and i respect your opinion although i don't really agree, i can see where you come from but i feel like there were alot of little details that do show he is doubting himself, although they are very soubtle and almost meaningless, and the same is for the preator, i do agree with the points that give abilities to people just to keep going with the cutscene itself instead of the complete story but the character development in most is great in my opinion, even morag got the things she needed as she became a little bit more open to the characters slowly, though not much, this it did happen and i think that was the best they could do with her.
For the part of the characters not thinking about van and ham's death i kinda agree but not too much as most of the main characters dealt with loss and death (i still think they needed to put a lil more effort into making it a worthy part of the story).
And for mythra creating pyra the answer is pretty easy: mythra knew that torna or another person/organisation would try and take her and use her powers so she created another identity inside her with limited power that she could switch between her so that no one could use the aegises full power unless she actually wanted him to.
But that's only my opinion and i totally see where you come from, i also think you deserve alot more attention and subs.
Thank you so much for taking the time to watch my rambling musings on this game. I honeslty wish I could love Xenoblade 2 as much as other people do. My only hope going forward is that Xenoblade 2 reached out to someone in the same way that the original did for me. I hope that was the case for you.
The Gaming Chronicler The Gaming Chronicler thank you for making the content you make, i did really enjoy the game and it is probably in my top ten games already, as this game is only my 2nd jrpg (my first one was xenoblade chronicles x, wich i loved but there were alot of things that made me pretty annoyed in that game) and i put almost 200 hours into the game, as i found myself enjoying the combat and story better than x (i felt like the story in x was a mess, one of the reasons were the level restrictions for the story missions) and the story in this game made me cry and laugh like no game this year, last year and maybe even ever, i loved most of the characters because i knew what they were and what role and development they would have already as it is not hard to guess, but i think zeke AND tora as "funny guys" is a bit too much.
Huh..funnily enough its xenoblade chronicles that i think is lacking a bit more in the characters writing. Xenoblade chronicles 2 doesnt quite elevate the character writing to astounding levels, but it definitely succeeds in making most of the cast feel like they have arcs whereas Xenoblade 1 fails to do that as effectively. It keeps the entire cast feeling relevant throughout the journey while XC1 sort of tapers off and lets shulk and Fiora mostly take center stage. Don't get me wrong, the cast of XC1 are highly enjoyable to watch from beginning to end; the pace of the story is brisk, the cinematography and storyboarding is great, and the writing does a phenomenal job at establishing every characters motivations (simple as they may be for most of the cast) in the story; however aside from that, most of the cast do not really evolve in a way that is compelling.
Sure, shulk becomes a more competent leader and makes some tough decisions in the game, but his moral compass is so clear throughout the entire story that it never feels like his ideals were ever truly challenged; as such, it feels like we are going through the motions of his typical character archetype. We know how he was going to feel doubt about attacking faced mechon after the fiora reveal so none of his reservations in attacking them come of as much of a surprise nor does the writing ever seriously challenge him with this moral dilemma. And then since we know that Shulk is this kind and rational kid, he would not kill egil. Shulk doesn't feel like he necessary earns his character growth; it's more like he already was the kind of character that had the fortitude to make the right choices. What i give the game credit for (and why Shulk's straightforward writing doesn't bother me as much) is because the game does such a wonderful job of framing events around him that illustrate his simple but effective growth from a passive scientist into an intelligent, capable, and determined man.
As for the other cast, Fiora doesn't evolve past being the basic heroine who stands by the male protagonist through thick and thin; Sharla's arc with Gadot feels rushed and falls flat in the end; beyond her drive to protect her colony, she herself does not experience any compelling characterization. Riki, while we see he is not as daft as he comes off, doesn't go beyond that one scene with him being conscientious of Melia's fatigue when the gang is separated in mechonis field. Reyn throughout the game questions his ability to protect Shulk, but none of it goes beyond him simple doubting himself here and there. Dunban's scene regarding his temptation to kill Mumkhar, while a well-directed scene and effective from a narrative standpoint, doesn't go beyond anything else. Dunban is the typical cool, hardened warrior who is not as naive and pure hearted as the naive male protagonist (been there done that; nothing gripping occurs with Dunban's character writing that feels distinctively his own; something that defines this character as his own entity that has not been executed or written in this similar fashion. Dunban has some good moments in the game like his scene on mechonis field where he is coming to terms with his role as a guardian to Fiora and shulk; that scene has more character texture than the scene you chose to exemplify Dunban's depth; and that is a better example of a moment in the story that makes Dunban as a character feel distinct. Regardless, Dunban doesn't really have an arc and not much could be critically explored upon analysis of his characterization. He's a strong man who wants to protect the people he loves; shulk stopping Dunban from killing mumkhar didnt really affect his character significantly beyond him just not killing Mumkhar.
That's ultimately my slight gripe with a lot of the character writing in XC; most of is just what it is; there nothing more beyond that. See, this is the kind of shit that separates decent character writing from good, great, superb, and masterful character writing. Most of the cast of XC1, while an enjoyable group of people, never feel like they are these truly layered people beyond certain moments in the game. Take FF7 for example; one of the strengths of that game is its superb character writing. The cast aren't just defined by their archetypes plus 1 or two standout moments like in XC1; each of their behaviors, their psychological dilemmas and personality are contextualize by every action they have made in the past, what do in the present, and how those actions affect them and those around them emotionally and physically. In turn, those actions provide us with so much rich information about who these characters are as people and what conflicts they are dealing with; which in turn also reveals more about their mental attributes and the cycle continues. The ability for writing to establish such an axiomatic relationship between character action, psychology, behavior, thematic exploration, and consequences is the essence of great writing, something that FF7 achieves. XC1 never reach this level of character writing, which is why i usually can't agree with some fans go about touting how layered the character writing is;...it's kind of not. It's okay for characters to not be intricately layered human beings and still be extremly effective in their respective stories. Again, if it wasnt for the strong execution and directing of the main narrative, a lot of the cast would feel generic.
What made the cast of XC1 engaging enough for me was that they were a rag tag team of optimistic, dependable, and competent people. no one dragged each other down as they were all self-sufficient and capable. The narrative expertly establishes the core personality traits of the cast members and makes their goals and aspirations very salient. The game shows us that our cast is willing to struggle to achieve what they believe in and that in turn inherent compels you, the viewer, to naturally care for and want to root for them. Besides that, their personality traits aren't really built up all that intricately and that's were the writing loses points for me. What i also found to be lacking was the chemistry between the cast and effectively making them feel like a big family (as most casts in great JRPG's end up feeling). Melia is by far my favorite character in the game,and huge part of that comes from the fact that she is legitimately one of the only characters in the game who feels like she had a fleshed out character arc. I'm not the only one who feels that way as fan consensus seems to feel like melia was probably the most fleshed out party member of the cast (and probably the most tragic). Here's where my opinion of XC2 comes in and why i think it does a better job with the characters. For 1, it focuses on making the characters banter with each other a lot more beyond details that have to do with the plot. As a result, the cast feels more humanized through communication, like a group of friends who jostle each other lovingly and bounce their personalities off each other. One of the best parts of the first chapter of XC2 is watching Nia slowly warm up to Rex so as to justify her switch of alliance, a feat the game expertly accomplishes by establishing their personalities, showing Rex and Nia bump heads a few times, letting them have a significant heart-to heart cutscene where they come to understand each other, them learning to respect each other in battle, and showing them genuinely laughing to illustrate their closeness right before Jin abruptly kills Rex. This lays the foundation for Nia being appalled by Jin's decision to kill Rex and at this poinnt, we as the player can believe that Nia would genuinely feel this way, enough to question her allegiance. All of this is done with so much thought and care, which granted, is not academy awards winning writing but this is indeed an example of careful, deliberate, character-centric interaction that contextualizes the behavior of these two cast members, which goes a long way in effectively making their friendship throughout the story feel genuine. This is how you organically make two characters become friends and bond in a way that can actively convince the audience of why one of them would be become so attached so as to switch sides. This my friend, is a good example of character writing beyond just archetypes. The writing paradigm displayed within this one chapter sequence beats most of the character writing in XC1; we see characters behaviors being influenced by previously established actions, which in turn reveal more about the character's personalities. And it doesn't stop there; we see Rex continue to prove to Nia why he is considers her his friend and the bond continues to build throughout the narrative until the very cathartic moment in chapter 7. And that the thing that elevates the character writing in XC2 over XC1, the emotional arc build across the narrative and flesh the characters out in ways that the writing in XC1 did not do.
Actually Nia is a flesh eater and sense she has human DNA it’s possible for her to resonate and Malos lost most of his power during the Aegis war so that’s why he needed a blade because he’s too weak and Amalthus had a horrible life with extreme hatred towards the world and when he gained Malos he thought of it has a way to seek vengeance on the world by using Malos’s power and that hateful nature Amalthus had corrupted Malos. And Azurda returning to his full Titan form it was because Pyra touched his core accelerating his growth. And Pyra and Mythra returning was because she gave Rex her core crystal and a blade will regain its form when a Driver resonates because whatever happens to the body as long as the Crystal is intact they will come back
Landon Dotson k bro but the story was still odd
Welcome to xenoblade
What I just heard was "things happened because super powers." This story is bad
Landon Dotson In what Chapter did Pyra touch Gramps' Core Crystal to accelerate his growth. This was never said in game if I recall. Also yes if the core is intact the Blade can come back, but this would take at least about a week (from traveling to various Titans chasing the thief) for the Core Crystal to regenerate, as this happened with Roc. But also if Pyra/Mythra removed her Core Crystal wouldn't she become inactive and not able to function. The emphasis on their death fails because the come back a few minutes after the cutscenes where they die.
12:00 No he wasn't. Pyra even states that he wasn't trying to kill them at the end of the fight. He was just testing Rex.
20:52 Amalthus is Malos' driver. The game also says that Aegis' can survive without drivers.
24:37 Yes they do. There are multiple cutscenes following this showing Rex being heartbroken about her death. (Even though he only knew her for a few days max.)
25:27 Because she's a flesh eater. Just like how Akhos and Patroka are able to use blades.
25:49 Killed in the Mythra vs Akhos and Malos fight.
27:12 There are multiple cutscenes that cut to Amalthus' perspective, such as the one after Pyra is taken that shows some foreshadowing to his villain arc.
Literally everything following 28:31 is extremely forced, like you were trying to look at every detail to find a parallel to Xenoblade Chronicles. This part objectively wasn't needed at all.
30:08 Pneuma literally touches his ether crystal, and a blue light shines for a split second. This isn't random. Just actually pay attention in cutscenes.
30:13 Because... Blades return to their core crystals after dying? (Unless the core crystal is destroyed, of course.)
I'll gladly link you to the cuteness in which all of the above are told, or eluded to.
So glad I found this video. I see so many people praise this shit lol.
As a hardcore XBC2 fan I respect your opinion even if this video is 4 years old. I’m willing to listen to criticisms for a game I love instead of just ignoring the other side of the spectrum. I think comparing XBC2 to XBC1 will inevitably create discourse in the community considering XBC2’s vastly different approach to its storytelling in terms of tone and structure.
With that being said, I’m going to have to disagree with you saying Mythra’s self construct(Pyra) was purely there for plot convenience. If you’ve played Torna you would get much needed back story to Mythra since she gets very little opportunity to delve into her character in base game making her out to be a one dimensional “Tsundere” archetype.
She’s much deeper and complex character than Pyra, the events that transpired in old Torna really scarred Mythra to the point of sealing herself away and creating a self-construct of what it means to be “perfect” hence Pyra was born.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is not flawless nor is it a masterpiece, but it’s still one of my favorite games I’ve played on my Switch of all time! Personally, I’ve tried to get into XBC1, but trying to play a dated game that came out in 2010-2011 really shows its age in Definitive Edition. That’s not to say it’s a bad game, far from it, I envy the people that are able to get into it and enjoy it more than I can.
The combat and the monotonous side quests really hamper my ability to play XBC1 unfortunately, that’s not to say I won’t ever go back and try to replay it in the future, but I’m more excited to play XBC3 that’s coming out very soon as of typing this and I can’t wait to play it! I hope XBC3 solved the major problems people had with 2 and expand its innovation to attract newer people to this amazing franchise!
After playing Xenoblade definitive edition yea Xenoblade 2 sucks. So yea xeno 1 and x were better games than this lame boring game and a sorry excuse of a Xenoblade game.
I personally liked Xenoblade Chronicles 2, it's actually my favorite game from Switch (after Breath of the Wild), but I respect your opinion. Honestly, I wouldn't know to say if this game is underrated, overrated (I don't think this one is), or in a fine place.
I hate this game so much.
Pyra and Mythra came back because he had the core Crystal and Azurda changed forms because Pyra did something with his core earlier on in the cutscene.
/v/ & twitter got butthurt at the video, I see.
Worst map in a whole game industry :)
Great review and all that shit but really man... I've played through all of xenoblade 2 and I figured the spoilers would be exclusive to 2, not 1.
FatMorton it says in the beginning of the video there are spoilers for both games
XC2 tries so fucking hard to be XC that its painful. It doesnt tick any single box better than XC. Ever. Even the music is not as good. Even the fucking music is a rehash. Gormott is essentially Bionis Leg. Uraya is essentially Satorl March, it even has the same music almost, same color lighting, and same ruins and Urodels. Jesus fuck. XC1 was incredible in everyright. No one wanted a reboot. If at least the gameplay was cool, why not, but its painfully slow as shit. Even random no name enemies are a chore and a half and you just try to avoid them at all costs cos you know youll be there for a while with little to no reward. Also XC2 lacks of a hook moment. Rex discovering the Aegis on the ship has no where even near the impact Fioras death had. Its just some lame anime moment. To be fair, this game is excrutiatingly anime. Arkhos is the embodiement of everything I hate about anime. Ill stick to XC1 thanks. XC2 is a letdown and I,ve come to terms with that. And thats coming from a guy who fucking wants to love XC2 a lot, but I cant. Even XCX for all its flaws had better writing than this. At least it wasnt cliche anime bullshit.
relability is OVERRATED
Huh what where why HUH?
I agree that XC2 is trash but maaan your voice drags. It was hard to listen to you to be honest.
You do realize the vandam sticking the weapons in his body was foreshadowing to blade eaters and probably explains why their so strong?
They explain several times that when human and blade cells fuse that’s what happens I think you just missed a lot of the subtlety
Also nia is a flesh eater not a blade eater like zeke so that’s answers that question
I stopped watching when you brought up the idiotic excuse of "how did vandham know to stab his chest with his weapons" out of nowhere as justification the game was poorly written. I mean duh, vandham is a grown adult driver with years of experience being a driver and leading a town of mercenary drivers, of course he's gonna know a trick like stabbing his chest to make his ether like that. how idiotic can you be to not think that through? instant dislike. the game isn't bad, this example proves you're just biased towards the first game and overly critical about everything to the point you interpret things wrongly and then you being overly critical dampens your experience playing it. that's not the game's fault, that's yours. mic dropped.
There's so much that is wrong with this video like did you even play the game?
Completely disagree, I actually preffered XBC2 to XBC1.
xc2 is obectively betteri in any possible way.
Xc1 was a good attempt though
@Zenith you have a good shulk
Garbage taste but ok