Hey, I've got a question for uhhh most of you. As someone who bounced off XenoblaDE, is it worth trying Xenoblade 2? Would I be better waiting for Xenoblade 3? Should I stop trying to like this franchise that likely just isn't for me just because of FOMO what with so many here being so obsessed?
Got bored of the combat, mostly. It was around 30 hours in
This is perhaps the hardest thing to judge. All I can really do is give you a write-up you didn't really ask for lol.
The combat in 2 is pretty similar to DE when compared to, like, other genres - or even within the genre. You can see how 2 built off the original. Yet compared to each other alone, they play out very differently.
In 2, you need to stay still to actually auto attack (with each weapon/character combo having a unique auto attack combo). Instead of arts charging on a timer, they refill with a set amount of auto attacks. You only have three arts at a given moment instead of DE's 8; each is assigned to one of the four face buttons, with the remaining being mapped to a 'special'. The special is recharged by using arts. Using certain specials (based on the elemental system; each Blade has an assigned element) in sequence makes them stronger and feeds into the chain attack system, which is completely revamped from DE.
You can have three Blades equipped per character; these determine your available arts and specials. Your can switch between your equipped Blades on the fly in battle, effectively giving you access to nine arts - though doing so is on a cooldown timer.
Then there's the cancel system. 'Cancelling' lets you input an action the moment another one executes, cancelling the ending animation (not cancelling the actual action, which is a source of confusion early on). Doing this amplifies the power of the action and charges the special gauge. Pretty much everything can be cancelled or cancelled into; auto attacks (cancelling later moves in an auto attack has a greater effect), arts, specials, even Blade switches. This is why some people say it feels like a rhythm game at times; by the end you're constantly timing every press to feed into another one.
But unfortunately like DE, the combat is very, very slow at the start of the game, and I feel this one is even more egregious. At the beginning, you can only have one Blade, only auto attacks can be cancelled, your arts start fully uncharged each battle, and chain attacks are just straight up locked. These all open up very, very gradually. And like DE, leveling up arts means reducing the cooldowns - so you'll have to wait longer between actually getting to do something in the beginning.
When both are fully opened up, most prefer 2. I don't, however.
