Tag Archives: Xenoblade Chronicles

Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna The Golden Country Review

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Xenoblade is the greatest RPG series of all time and continues to deliver incredible performances with every title. This one is a prequel that is less than half as long as the average game and yet it still managed to be elite. By building into the lore from 2, it feels like you’re jumping back into an old adventure you grew up with. It could have done more to actually fill in the final moments for some characters but I suppose you can still fill in those details yourself. The game certainly didn’t want to be going for the depressing ending either.

The game starts off by introducing us to Lora and her partner Jin. Their partnership isn’t quite legal so they have to be careful to make sure that none of the governments get on their back. It turns out that they have bigger things to worry about though as the Aegis, Malos intends to destroy the world. He wants to reset everything in order to make the world more based on power. A prince and a king intend to stop him along with another Aegis known as Mythra. Lora gets pulled into this struggle for power as she needs to keep the world safe as well. Will this end up getting her into a world of trouble though?

From playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2, you already know which characters will die or suffer from amnesia in the main story. One of the characters was the main villain for a good chunk of the game after all. So you’re here to see the details of what happened exactly. There are also a lot of story development that are completely new here. By the end of it, you can see why a lot of people are so distrustful of Mythra in the main game.

The gameplay is similar to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 but slightly changed which keeps up the tradition of the gameplay being tweaked for literally every Xenoblade game. This time you have elements that are added onto the opponent via orbs for every step of a combo. You then blow them up once your party meter is all the way to the top. Your attacks hit automatically in this game so the idea is to keep on moving to keep your positioning good. Then you use your special attacks as they load up.

It is absolutely necessary to keep on switching characters since that replenishes your meter. Your gameplay is going to be all about strategy here and making sure that you choose the right option in each battle. You are not able to customize your attacks in this game so you better to get used to them. Of course the positive of this is that you are able to really find out the best time to use each individual attack. Haze has a good healing ability so I try to always have her close in the rotation. That does mean keeping Jin out of the action more though and he has the most attack power.

So there are a whole lot of factors to keep in mind here. The gameplay is just as complicated as it sounds so get ready to do some real studying. Even by the end I doubt I was playing in the most efficient way. I had to grind out a ton of level ups in order to beat the final boss and it was a close fight even when I was fairly overleveled. The best way to level up in this game is actually to complete side quests rather than beating enemies.

The whole game is built around doing side quests to the point where you have to complete close to 80% of them in order to beat the main story. It’s not something that you can avoid so you should activate as many of them as possible whenever you pass one by. Sometimes you will clear the conditions as you are doing the main story quests. The reason for this is that a ton of them are collectible based. So you should go ahead and dig everytime you see the harvest symbol lying around.

The game’s a bit infamous for this but because I was doing my best to beat every side quest as I went on, it never felt like a big grind. Additionally, the story is compelling enough where I was just looking forward to seeing what would happen next. It goes without saying that the graphics are top notch. The game got a good amount of budget behind it and the soundtrack is also excellent. You’ll recognize quite a lot of the tunes here but I think a few of them were new for this adventure as well.

Torna may essentially be a story expansion but it’s long enough where treating it like a full game still feels right. I definitely recommend checking it out and you won’t regret the experience. The game really exceled in every category and you’ve easily got over 10 hours of play time here for the story and probably 20-30+ if you’re trying to max out your community level. The prequel serves its purpose well of adding a whole lot of new context to the main game that recontextualizes the whole thing.

Overall, Torna is definitely an elite game and now I’m looking forward to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 even more. It’s time to see how the saga all ends with all of the main characters running around. To be truly complete I would have liked for Lora to return in such a adventure but it makes sense why she would not. There would have to be a lot of plot twists for that to make sense and it would be hard to do that without angering a bunch of the fans. Whether you go ahead to play the other games or not, this one really holds its own as a stand alone adventure as well. Some things will probably confuse you a little bit but you’ll still get all of the major story beats. You may sense some power level issues but that’ll be the case even if you played the main games.

Overall 9/10

Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition Review

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Xenoblade Chronicles is often thought of as one of the all time great RPGs and I would say it lives up to that. The story is dynamite, the gameplay is a lot of fun, and there is just so much to do within the game. It’s the kind of game that you can play for a very long time and not get bored. The content just keeps on going and the Switch version even has a whole epilogue to it. So now you’ve got extra content on top of a game that was already very long. This game is definitely a bargain at any price.

The game starts off by showing us a war between Mechonis and Bionis. After a large scale war, Bionis won and the world was finally at peace. Unfortunately it would not last forever. Several years later, Mechonis has returned and now the fighting is intensifying. Local researcher genius Shulk will now have to wield the legendary Monado Blade to fight back. The blade is so powerful that it cannot be controlled by most people and then injures the people who do wield it for too long. Shulk seems impervious to the effects but for how long? Also while he uses it, he appears to be able to see bits of the future. Maybe he can save the whole universe now!

There are a lot of positives to get into here but the first one has to be just how fast the story gets going. You start the game off with a massive war, and then another invasion a few cutscenes later. The game isn’t trying to bog you down with a long intro, you’re just thrown into the mix. The pacing stays pretty fast throughout the game and well the main tory is around 50 hours to get through so that’s a whole lot of content. There are hundreds and hundreds of side quests to play through as well, and optional bond moments too.

The game is also reasonably difficult so you are really encourages to go around completing a lot of side quests to get stronger. Doing this is the best way to really make sure you are ready for action. I spent many hours just fighting minions to get stronger and let me yell you, it was absolutely needed. The amount of times I was destroyed by a boss was very high. The villains are given a lot of respect in the power levels department so as Shulk you do feel like the underdog. This works well with the story.

The game also handled the future sight really well. It’s generally hard for any character to land a hit on Shulk. He’s much too fast, skilled, and powerful with that ability. Then to counter it, we have enemies who can read minds who turn that against him or other times when Shulk is not doing well and temporarily loses his abilities. It helps to keep things balanced. The story changes a lot throughout the adventure as we meet many different factions and fighters. They’re all well thought out and as always RPGs do have a huge advantage here because of how long you’re with the characters. How could you not grow to like them after being on the journey for so long right?

As for the gameplay, it’s a turn based system with a little auto attacking. Think of it like .Hack. So every second hat you run around and don’t click on anything, you will do an auto attack. This builds up your Monado gauge for powerful attacks. Additionally you can cycle through your signature moves and use any of those at any time. These deal a whole lot of damage and are really good to have in the pocket. They all have a cooldown though so you want to be careful about when you use them.

Meanwhile you can switch characters and use their abilities as well. Then there are combo hits and a lot of other mechanics to go through. This is a very involved game and then you can also level up the attacks when you find the book that activates the upgrade. Most of these are found in shops for lower levels and then at the highest levels you have to find specific enemies to drop them. As a result it can take a while to get the exact item that you want. Quick saving and reloading is probably the easiest way to get around the low percentage drops.

Throughout the game you will be asked to complete tasks which gets you money and exp as well as some good items. I was extremely impressed at the hundreds of missions in the game. That’s pretty much unheard of for virtually any game. It’s a staggering amount and I had to complete nearly all of them in order to become strong enough to beat the game. That’s how I knew that this game meant business. It’s also nice that for all of the fetch quests, the map does show you where to find them. Doing this blind would have been absolutely brutal.

The worlds are absolutely huge after all so these quality of life features were greatly appreciated. Yet another thing that shows why Xenoblade Chronicles is such an elite title. A lesser game would have still had you searching blind the whole time which would have been rough. There are also a few mechanics I didn’t get to try out much like trading materials with different passerbys. I also didn’t do most of the bond missions and just leveled them up naturally by fighting enemies.

There are so many different ways to equip and form your party that the possibilities are nearly endless as well. If hypothetically the levels ups were not enough, then I would have done a lot of tweaking in my party until I found the right balance. It’s another area where trial and error is a good idea. Meanwhile the technical aspects are top tier as you’d expect. The soundtrack is excellent with a whole lot of great rock tunes. The main battle theme is a true all star and all of the other tunes hold their own as well. Meanwhile the graphics are great. I really enjoyed the battles within the cutscenes and of course the effects during gameplay as well. The game never lacked for detail.

Overall, This was a top tier game. It’s just really hard to beat a good RPG! It was also nice to finally see Shulk in action. His personality here is definitely quite a bit different than in Super Smash Bros but you still get the general idea. It always gives me a lot of high respect for how Sakurai really adapted the moves and lines from the game. It really makes his moveset in Smash a true celebration of his character. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is still the best one but this holds its own. I’ll be eager to see how X ends up faring.

Overall 9/10