Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Spoilers ahead, i guess the story had some better points than the predecessor while being weaker in other parts. I guess, making your entire adventure to find Elysium is way better than spending the best part of the game seeking revenge.

While XB1 emphasis is creation and religion, XB2 hit a home run when it digress about how perishable is life and memory. Also, depicting the driver/blade concept, it also is amazing how the portrait the entwine of two lifeforms, one being eternal another being short and ephemeral. This thematic resonate deeply in me nowadays, because when both opposite sides are linked, the real message is to treasure life, and thats great.

The weak parts i guess are due the attenpt to make this game more children friendly, resorting to many shonen elements. In that sense, i prefer Shulk and troupe for being more mature, though i think Rex is more interesting char, as is Pyra/Mythra and Nia compared to any other girl in XB1. The antagonists are kinda uninteresting though. By the end, it seemed like they lacked final boss material, and sent Malos to perfom a role that would be more fitting to Amalthus or the Architect, if they wanted to go for a plot twist route. Instead, they decide to make the rational Malos goal to simply destroy the world. Zero creativity here.

Finally, combat-wise, Monolithic tried to make a more dynamic system where players needs to constantly input commands instead a more automatic fight or slow fights with turn based system. Again, mixed feelings here, there are some interesting aspects in the combat but at higher lv, it all boils down to smashing buttons.

Also, there isnt that much room for customization given they decided to have 2 gear slots for each character (being the third limited to new game). Most of effective customization is through blades, that in turn are behind a gacha system, making the entire game a gacha coins farming system. Most grinding is basic that: farming some core crystal, and once you grab all blades, like 99% of the enemies becomes useless aside other minor drops.

In contrast, i prefer a lot more XB1, one because there are so many gear slots distributed in so many mobs, making a whole game per se finding such items, in contrast to XB2, where neither the drops neither the challenge incentivates beating the extra bosses.

The level system isnt well adjusted: up to lv60, it seemed like the mobs always have the edge, like a lv40 mobs being a huge pita for lv60 party, while after that it seems like the player has the lead: the lv130 megaboss cant even evade a lv99 party not even prepped to accuracy fights. If i wanted challenge, i would need to resort to adjusting the foe stats, but that is so artificial that i dont really care. In opposition, XB1 megaboss were quite a deal to fight against. I had to be close to my best gear to be even with them in a long fight.

Least but not the least, XB1 and XB2 share the same problem of resorting to stupid time sinks to artificially increase gameplay. While XB1 resorted to massive sized maps, XB2 resorts to annoying quest that kinda reminds me the worst of FFXI: quests with stupid plots, massive travelling, random stupid fights. It seems like no quest in game is reasonably long. XB1 quests, while smaller, it compensates with a huge damn amount of it. XB2 also brings one of the worst points of FFXI: stupid grinds: like performing 600 closing blade combo. Or making like 50 dumplings, with each requiring like 4 differents ingredients. Or 50 overkills. Or watching 70 extra cutscenes. If that can barely be reasonable to MMORPG, it makes little sense for an offline game.