The sequel... that is the third game in the series?
144 hours. It took me 144 to finish the main story. I could have done it some 10 hours earlier, but the game threw me for a loop when I was at level 77 and the last boss at 70. So since he killed me at full health with one attack I grinded to level 86... and got my ass handed to me again. So I looked it up and it is of course a puzzle boss where you have to use the special chain attack. Which I got the hang of around hour 100, thank god for that, otherwise this fight would have been horrible. But other than that, it was good.
So story is that you play as Rex, a kid salvager that gets hired by this group of drivers to get a ship in the cloud sea. A driver is someone controlling a blade which enhances attacks and is personified weapon pretty much. While on the ship you find a sealed blade which turns out to be the aegis, a legendary blade that came from the top of the world tree that the great hero Addam used 500 years ago to defeat Malos the evil blade bent on world destruction. The battle destroyed two of the great titans which is what the people of the worlds live on. Rex opens the seal and is killed by Jin, one of his employers and apparently they are Torna, a terrorist organisation that hunts for blades, named after one of the fallen titans. As he died Rex appears at a place called Elysium together with a red-haired girl named Pyra, the same girl that was the aegis. She will bring him back to life if he promises to take her to Elysium in the real world, since this seems to be a dream state from her memories. He comes to life, save Pyra from Torna and escapes on his "grandfather" titan together with the gormotti girl Nia and her blade Dromarch who couldn't stand Tornas bloodshed and defected. They end up on Gormott which is occupied by the Mor Ardainian empire that looks for land due to their titan slowly dying, which causes frictions with the kingdom of Uraya. Meanwhile Indol, a Vatican like organisation, tries to balance them. In Gormott they are hunted by the imperial soldiers and the Grand Inquisitor Morag, older sister to the boy emperor, who later joins them together with the nopon inventor Tora that created the artificial blade Poppi. The last member is Zeke, prince of Tantal, an isoloationist nation. Their goal is to reach Elysium through the World Tree.
Now, the gameplay is pretty much the same as the other Xenoblades, but with the blades system. Blades have different weapons that you can switch around mostly like you want. Most blades are the same different rotaation of character models, but there are unique once you can get, either by random chance or through story/side-quest. Good and bad, I like when it happens and in theory can make every playthrough uniqe depending on which blades you get since you mostly will use the special once if you can since it's more important to level them up. And that's the problem since certain quest you need the right amount of skills that only the special blades have, and it gets annoying when you need to grind for them to get them. Especially when the bonding scene takes forever (until they apparently patch it away in a week, which is to late for me). Good music when you get them as well. Most music is rather good, and I got the soundtrack with the special edition.
Now, the story is basically get to the finish line. At a point near the end I actually didn't know who the bad guy was. Not that there were candidates, but I understood all their decisions. Torna is led by Jin and Malos, Jin being a flesh eater (cannibal blade) who ate his driver as the last act as she was dying to not be returned to the core crystal and loose the memory of her as Torna was being destroyed by Indol led by Amalthus. Malos is the aegis Amalthus stole from the architect that is the god of this universe and share Amalthus lust to destroy the world, but the reason Amalthus believes that is because his mother was killed as she protected him from slavers (?). So Malos isn't really responsible for his actions since he is influenced by Amalthus. I feel sorry for them. You get to see the other Torna members as outcast since they are flesh eaters and shuned by society and even though they instigate conflicts and destruction, I can't fault them. The world is shitty. And don't get me started on the political subtext. Indol houses a refugee camp from the conflicts around Alrest (mostly between Mor Ardain and Uraya that is getting closer to war), but at the same time Indol is the ones supplying core crystals to the nations and registers every owner perpetuating the cycle of conflict. And therefore easies their conscious with providing the camp, but complaining that it defiles the square they set up. Was someone saying the refugee crisis of 2015 and onward? It's f***ing brilliant! It's clearly the western world taking in the refugees and still selling weapons to the waring nations of the world and it furthers conflict between those living near the refugees camp in the western world. Now, it's a bit more complicated in the real world, but a short summery it works brilliantly.
In the end you fall below the cloud sea and sees the destroyed landscape of a modern city and climbs the world tree which is really a space elevator to a satellite in space which explains the aegis ability to conjure laser blast from up high. And here was probably the most interesting twist I ever encountered. And it's because it's the same twist as from the first game. Not the kind, but the same exact twist. We get a flashback to the war that destroyed the world below the cloud sea up in the satellite that tries to be the last line of defence, but two scientist argues over some artefact. It's Klaus and Galeia, the people that became the two titans in the first game. The twist is that this is a post-apocalyptic earth, but Xenoblade 1 took place in a splintered timeline which is connected through a black hole that eats half of the Architects body, the architect being Klaus, the bad guy from the first game that feels the end of his evil side as Shulk and the others at this very moment have arrived to kill him, killing both, and he accept this due to the remorse of causing all this. My mind is blown. It doesn't make a lick of sense for someone that haven't played the first game, but for me and other that played it's huge. And he isn't even a boss, the final boss is Malos in a giant mech that is about to destroy all of Alrest. You blew him up and then of course the satellite is falling apart. Rex and the others escape with an escape pod, but Pyra tricked them to it since she had to stay behind to destroy the world tree so it doesn't crush all of Alrest. But of course she returns at the end like some magical Disney movie. And I'm alright with that.
I don't know why, but I actually prefer X over this. And I felt more invested in the story for a longer time in the original. Don't get me wrong, it's a good game and when the shit hits the fan at the end it's really good, but it felt like it took to long to turn from a run of the mill good vs evil story. The Torna bits should have come long before I feel. Well, better wait for the DLC story content.
Look at the view!
Now, the gameplay is pretty much the same as the other Xenoblades, but with the blades system. Blades have different weapons that you can switch around mostly like you want. Most blades are the same different rotaation of character models, but there are unique once you can get, either by random chance or through story/side-quest. Good and bad, I like when it happens and in theory can make every playthrough uniqe depending on which blades you get since you mostly will use the special once if you can since it's more important to level them up. And that's the problem since certain quest you need the right amount of skills that only the special blades have, and it gets annoying when you need to grind for them to get them. Especially when the bonding scene takes forever (until they apparently patch it away in a week, which is to late for me). Good music when you get them as well. Most music is rather good, and I got the soundtrack with the special edition.
Love the package, but it's huge!
Now, the story is basically get to the finish line. At a point near the end I actually didn't know who the bad guy was. Not that there were candidates, but I understood all their decisions. Torna is led by Jin and Malos, Jin being a flesh eater (cannibal blade) who ate his driver as the last act as she was dying to not be returned to the core crystal and loose the memory of her as Torna was being destroyed by Indol led by Amalthus. Malos is the aegis Amalthus stole from the architect that is the god of this universe and share Amalthus lust to destroy the world, but the reason Amalthus believes that is because his mother was killed as she protected him from slavers (?). So Malos isn't really responsible for his actions since he is influenced by Amalthus. I feel sorry for them. You get to see the other Torna members as outcast since they are flesh eaters and shuned by society and even though they instigate conflicts and destruction, I can't fault them. The world is shitty. And don't get me started on the political subtext. Indol houses a refugee camp from the conflicts around Alrest (mostly between Mor Ardain and Uraya that is getting closer to war), but at the same time Indol is the ones supplying core crystals to the nations and registers every owner perpetuating the cycle of conflict. And therefore easies their conscious with providing the camp, but complaining that it defiles the square they set up. Was someone saying the refugee crisis of 2015 and onward? It's f***ing brilliant! It's clearly the western world taking in the refugees and still selling weapons to the waring nations of the world and it furthers conflict between those living near the refugees camp in the western world. Now, it's a bit more complicated in the real world, but a short summery it works brilliantly.
This tipped me of he wasn't the nicest pope
In the end you fall below the cloud sea and sees the destroyed landscape of a modern city and climbs the world tree which is really a space elevator to a satellite in space which explains the aegis ability to conjure laser blast from up high. And here was probably the most interesting twist I ever encountered. And it's because it's the same twist as from the first game. Not the kind, but the same exact twist. We get a flashback to the war that destroyed the world below the cloud sea up in the satellite that tries to be the last line of defence, but two scientist argues over some artefact. It's Klaus and Galeia, the people that became the two titans in the first game. The twist is that this is a post-apocalyptic earth, but Xenoblade 1 took place in a splintered timeline which is connected through a black hole that eats half of the Architects body, the architect being Klaus, the bad guy from the first game that feels the end of his evil side as Shulk and the others at this very moment have arrived to kill him, killing both, and he accept this due to the remorse of causing all this. My mind is blown. It doesn't make a lick of sense for someone that haven't played the first game, but for me and other that played it's huge. And he isn't even a boss, the final boss is Malos in a giant mech that is about to destroy all of Alrest. You blew him up and then of course the satellite is falling apart. Rex and the others escape with an escape pod, but Pyra tricked them to it since she had to stay behind to destroy the world tree so it doesn't crush all of Alrest. But of course she returns at the end like some magical Disney movie. And I'm alright with that.
I don't know why, but I actually prefer X over this. And I felt more invested in the story for a longer time in the original. Don't get me wrong, it's a good game and when the shit hits the fan at the end it's really good, but it felt like it took to long to turn from a run of the mill good vs evil story. The Torna bits should have come long before I feel. Well, better wait for the DLC story content.
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