Narafed

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

I play dancing games to burn calories, this game pauses in between the songs and advertises "Just Dance Unlimited", and forces you to click continue in your playlist of songs. If you don't have Unlimited, you will be paying for that if you want it, and also the Nintendo switch online fee. Why pay for songs when games like Beat Saber do not charge you for songs, or interrupt you game-play with annoying advertisements.

UPDATE AS OF 12/23/2017 Many things have been patched (Previous score was a 7). Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a good game riddled with technical issues and poor game design choices. Never have I played a game so frustrating, and yet found myself coming back, I would imagine that some do not ever want to play this game again. Let's dive into the issues of the game. The party AI: The AI in this game, particularly the hero characters in your party, are extremely stupid. Tanks will try to run around enemies, and run off of cliffs. Healers will stand in environmental poison/fire and die; when you res them they don't move from the spot, and die again in the same spot. I've never played any previous Xenoblade games but if these issues were in the past games it should have been fixed by now. Hardware and Software Issues: Nintendo advertises a Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Pro Controller, which is cool and all, but it doesn’t work with the game undocked (THIS ISSUE HAS NOW BEEN FIXED AS OF 12/23/2017 VIA UPDATE). This game also has major issues rendering parts of the game particularly when you fast travel to certain areas, like Tora’s house. The UI map interface/quest design: The map in this game, in its current state, is terrible. Not only is it hard to figure out where you are due to the enormous sub menu you must dig through, the quest indicators at the top provide little to no help, especially later in the game. The quest design from a gameplay perspective could also use a little tweaking; after hours of doing a chain quest only to find out the final part is gated behind your blades field skills seems like a low blow. Not only that but you have to hope you have the right field skills because if you don’t, it’s time to open core crystals for an hour looking for blades that have the skill you need to complete the quest. This is particularly annoying in a couple of the MAIN STORY quests, because you cannot progress until you have certain field skills and level them to certain levels. Thankfully there is an update that will happen for some of these issues (like the map UI) late December. (UI MAP HAS BEEN FIXED SLIGHTLY VIA UPDATE 12/23/2017). Save your game often: There is a random crash which is happening to many people in the later chapters of the game. As many people know this game doesn’t have “save points”, like so many other JRPG’s do, to remind you to save. So, if you’re mid-dungeon and have to leave the game for whatever reason don’t forget to save. If you do forget to save you’ll find yourself wanting to flush this game down the toilet; have fun slogging through the previous hours of your life leading up to that dungeon all over again if you die at the boss or anything else. Despite it’s many frustrating technical issues, and design choices, it still manages to be a good game from a story, and exploration perspective. It’s worth a try, but don’t be surprised if you put this game on the shelf and start playing something else for a while; especially after your tank runs off a cliff side just before you’re about to kill a monster for the first time.

To be fair, the game is extremely fun. But when you have these deep cinematic elements to advertise a game, that's usually what people think they are getting with it. The story is in the advertisements, and that's a problem because there is no story to be found in the game itself. There is no reason to feel like a "Hero" as the most recent cinematic implies when there are 3 of the same character running around on the map blowing each-other up for no reason. Titanfall had an effective online story campaign in which ending scenes depended on who won the match for that scenario. Titanfall doesn't have the character appeal of Overwatch, which baffles me that there isn't a story mode at all for Overwatch. Overwatch feels like an updated version of Team Fortress 2 with Smash Attacks borrowed from the Smash Brothers, and skills you can use reminiscent of a MOBA. They integrate all of the abilities seamlessly, and it works so well that it's currently holding the entire game together. Overwatch is a good team-based FPS, but for it's own longevity it simply needs more content to explore.