AxelPuma

A touching story, amazing music, long interesting and complex game. While it follows the known path of "the hero's journey" the story has many faces and moments. Sometimes it will make you laugh, others make you shed a tear. If this is your first JRPG XB2 is kind in the middle of the scale for your first experience, otherwise you'll enjoy it very much. Depending on how many side quests and grinding to level up you want to take the game may last you from 80 to more than 120 hours. The game presents you tons of mechanics to learn at least the first 10-15 hours that are built on top of others. This allows you to play the game in many different ways. You can either grind a lot and buff your team purely leveling up, you can master the chain attacks, you can use a lot of items or ignore them, get experience from battles and/or quests, find all the secrets of the world, and a long etc. You're the hero in a land where humans, blades and titans live peacefully. Humanity lives in giant titans, but the titans are starting to die. The hero sets his journey to Elysium, searching for a way to help humanity survive. Along the way you meet lots of characters, some of them even join you on your quest. Some titans are bigger than others, the environments are varied and most of them have very challenging areas to move. Some titans have unbalanced zones where you can fight against level 10-20 monsters and then catch the attention of a level 90 monster that knocks you in one hit. That is annoying but not a game breaker because each time you're knocked down you appear in a nearby point and lose very little time to reach the same spot. You have blade partners, each blade have a role (fighter, healer, tank) and have a kind of weapon (sword, hammer, ball, katana, etc.). You can switch blades in battle to chain special attacks. There are unique monsters that are much tougher to take down than the regular ones. To kill some of those or some of the bosses you need to level up and grind a lot. There are a couple of times where you need to grind even more than usual to conquer some bosses, delaying the story. The music is amazing, it sets the mood just perfect on the different places and environments. The game is packed with cut-scenes that tell most of the story. While the English voice acting is great, the animations are a little under-performing and the lip sink fails now and then. The game runs fine most of the time, the framerate has its drops specially at the biggest and most packed places but it's not a game breaker. The drawing distance for some NPCs is weird. The visuals are much better when docked, the resolution drop is noticeable when in portable mode. As every JRPG you need to have patience and grind a lot. I loved the story and the game lasted me more than 120 hours with lots of things still to do (leveling, quests and unique monsters). This game had me hooked and I enjoyed a lot my time with the game. You don't need to have played Xenoblade Chronicles 1 to enjoy this game, it's not a sequel and you will learn what links both games near the end. Very few games touched like this one and the end even made me shed a tear. I really recommend this game. Is one of the best Switch exclusives.

A nice indie game, a little short and could improve the controls in certain situations. This game is specially built for speed and momentum. You are a small boy that casts a magical box multiple times in the air to reach higher or further platforms. Your task is to look out for a group of gods and save a tribe in the land of Numbra. An old owl joins you at the start of your journey and acts as a guide and narrator. The controls are well designed to jump and move as fast as you can, casting the magic block and moving through the multiple platforms, however, the controls don't support fine movements when walking or jumping and you'll die multiple times because of the imprecise controls. The game is a little short and the story is nice but moves too fast, some events can be easily disregarded. The owl's voice acting is great and helps setting the mood throughout the levels. The levels are set in varied environments from plains, forest, marsh. Different sizes and lengths, some are quite tough and others are for pure storytelling. There are multiple checkpoints at every level and usually you loose just a couple of seconds if you die. You can find two types of crystals, yellow (lore) and blue (rescue people) cleverly hidden behind false walls or moving a little further to the other side. The last levels really test your platforming skills, they are quite challenging but you can also die multiple times due to the poor fine movements or leaps of faith. The bosses are challenging, especially the final boss. You need to master the use of the magic block to survive the hazards and attacks. The music goes along very well during those battles. Unfortunately the final boss disappoints in the background and motives categories. It fails to show you how and why he gets there, so he feels just like a generic bad guy you need to defeat instead of a true nemesis. The game is not lengthy, even if you 100% complete it, you can take somewhere around 4-5 hours with the game, a little more if you decide to play it in hard mode. I enjoyed more the history found on the yellow crystals even more than the game story. It's a nice game, the controls can surely benefit from some tuning, very interesting piece for speed runners, it's very cheap and I liked the story. Not the best platformer but it's good enough for the price. It's worth your time, has it's flaws but I do recommend it.