0wls

As a big fan of XC2 I was fairly disappointed with Torna. This review is aimed at people who played XC2 and are deciding on whether to check out Torna. What I loved about XC2: -Deep and complex combat system -Customizability -Music -Incredible locations -Options to play as you see fit with many tasks In all 5 of these areas, Torna is a watered down version of XC2. Yes I know it's a less expensive game, but the amount of things that are poorly executed made me choose not to finish it, even though it's a much shorter game. Let me go through each point. Combat: There are no different options for blades, so you can't do things like in XC2 like choose whether to give Rex a healing blade or go full fighter, so the roles are blurred and your focus on what you should be doing in combat isn't clear. Blade combos are now anything combos into anything, so there is much less strategy. Every blade special attack adds an orb to the enemy (at level 1, 2 and 3 specials rather than just level 3) so the excitement and strategy of building up to a big chain attack is dumbed down. Customizability: One of my favorite things about XC2 was collecting core crystals and hoping to find a way to make a team that had ideal balance of healing blades on Nia, tank blades on Morag and fighter blades on Rex, to be able to create all 8 elemental orbs and also do driver combos (break, topple, launch, smash). This game gives you no say in your team, you get 3 drivers who each have 3 blades, you got each element represented and you have your driver combos, so no challenge or strategy there. Music: I loved the soundtrack to XC2. This game's new tracks are mostly forgettable, and it recycles a lot of XC2 or in at least one case, just remixes XC2 music. If you've finished XC2 you've probably spent 80 hours or so listening to those amazing songs so the effect has worn off a bit, and there is not much here to recreate the excitement of that score. Locations: Torna's environments are nowhere near as expansive, graphically beautiful or impressive as they are in XC2. Again, I know it's a cheaper game but there was not one area that was a "wow" moment for me, it's a lot more linear and a lot of the textures seem likely recycled from XC2 so they don't have the same impact on someone who completed that game. Also, much fewer titans (I won't spoil the number). Options: In XC2, I love that on top of customizing your blades and your team, you can then choose whatever you want to do with progression. Go straight through the story? Great. Focus on leveling up your blades' affinity chart? Do it. Sidequests? Go for it. Community level? Sure! Torna fails the most severely in this category. The game literally stops you from continuing the story unless you do sidequests and raise community levels. And not just a few. A TON. I just wanted to go through the story, so I ignored sidequests. Big mistake. At a certain point, the game told me I had to complete 15 sidequests before continuing. I hadn't even added that many to my quest log. The majority of these are very boring. An example: someone is hungry for a certain dish. So you have to go to a campsite to see if you can make that dish. Nope, don't have the ingredients. So I have to Google where I can find that ingredient. Then I fast travel to that location, look around, walk over and press A to grab the ingredient. Oh, but I need 5, and I only have 2. So I fast travel away, and fast travel back 2 more times to get enough. Then I fast travel back to my campsite, create the dish and then fast travel back to the NPC to give him the dish. He decides he wants a different dish. I repeat the boring process that has no sense of progression or excitement. Ok, now I have 1 sidequest done. This is about the average effort needed for sidequests, some are quicker and some are *shudders* longer. So I spend many hours frustrated that the energy of the game is being spent on fetchquests and finally complete 15. But THEN. I Google just to make sure this is the only time this will happen. NOPE. You're gonna have to complete 40ish slow sidequests to finish the game, in a game that doesn't dazzle with combat, music, or character options in a very limited number of locations. If you absolutely need more XC lore, this game has some but didn't dazzle me with story or characters. Everything that I loved about XC2 is worse in this game and while I completed that game twice I dropped this game at about 75% completion and don't care to finish it. Pretty disappointed.