Free content is doesn’t matter. Xenoblade 2 in fact one of the best games in terms of story/gameplay and ost 

wow...at least Live A Live had a final chapter were everyone fought the big bad.  It’s like they looked at it and the SAGA games and went “Yeah...we can do worse.”

I’d say this sums it up: I guess we are just different.

Good advice - checked out the Disgaea V demo and I liked it, but I wasn’t quite prepared to put 200-300 hours into a tactical RPG. Still on my list for when it’s on deep discount.

They’re trying to thread the needle between JRPG and open-world, and I get where you’re coming from. I’m the kind of person that will try to take a game on its own terms rather than be upset over what it isn’t. I’ve read a few reviews, and they echo some of these sentiments but mostly liked the game.

But I’m torn. If…

You are right. I did enable the Japanese voices eventually. And I truly do appreciate the work they put in as they could have just left it as is.

You say ‘story’ but ought to break that down into: ‘characters are flat,’ ‘plot is not engaging,’ ‘relationships don’t build and grow between party members’, etc., etc. If you play RPGs for story and character, you play RPGs for story and character. 

Hah, I should have scrolled down before commenting; I just wrote the same thing you did. Can’t believe how much the game improved when I switched over to Japanese voices. Everything seemed to fit so much better after that.

I played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in English for about 45 seconds before switching to Japanese and never looking back. Not sure if that’ll do it for you, but it made a world of difference for me. I instantly found the characters more engaging and charming, and everything just seemed to gel much better. There are no…

I’ve got like 200+ hrs on Xenoblade Chronicles 2...

It’s not quite the same, but maybe give Disgaea V a look? That game is bonkers JRPG silliness in the best way, because it embraces being campy. The levels of strategy are also quite deep.

Even if there is a hidden second half of the game where the story gets good, uh...it strikes me as really poor design to, y’know, hide it.

thanks for the review! It also makes me very concerned, but the concern isn’t new as it’s been building over the last couple weeks as outlets began letting out impressions etc.

And even if it were true... an entire second half of a game that’s “easy to miss” is atrocious game design.

I really liked Xenoblade 2, (not as much as the first, by a long shot), but this... I couldn’t even make it through the demo. The battle system was pretty good, and the graphics and music were nice, but the rest of the trappings were just sooo dull.

Actually, most other reviews are more or less the same. The gameplay is great, but the lack of party interactivity hampers the story a lot.

Did you miss the context on purpose?

Jason’s point was that the grinding *felt* like grinding because the game’s narrative wasn’t picking up the slack and making him want to do it.

In his defense, his priority on narrative quality aligns with mine, and his negative points on the Xenoblade games line up with my experience - their stories are boring cliches, their characters are flat, and they have a complete disrespect for the player’s time. From what I’ve read / heard so far, the complaints…

They didn’t say the game was terrible. They said that it was awful that that the other characters you bring along don’t interact with the actual story in any way, and I agree with that sentiment. One my favorite aspects of RPGs is seeing how the characters interact with each other. It never had to be novels or…

so...you complete each of the 8 individual stories and then the game just ends? there’s nothing after that? that does sound incredibly bizarre. I pre-ordered the game, and i’m gonna play it cuz i loved the demo, but these articles do make me concerned that they messed up any sense of an actual primary plot.