19/04/2018

Xenoblade Chronicles 2: 50 hours


My Switch's battery is currently charging, after yet another long XC2 session that nearly totally depleted it; and as I just passed the 50-hour mark in the game, now's the perfect time to take a break and write a progress report.


I'm currently exploring the snowy depths of Tantal, with my crew boasting levels in the mid-50s. I was already kinda overleveled at the 30-hour mark, and I got even more severely overleveled after I spent a couple of hours killing everything that moved in Leftheria. Then I spent another couple of hours unwinding in Temperentia, which made me even more ridiculously overleveled. As a result, I'm now towering a good 20 levels over tantalian foes and fighting for peanuts, with battles yielding little more than 50-70 XP. If I'm lucky enough and take down a huge beast, I might get 120-150 XP; not really worth the hassle, methinks. On top of that, none of the regular foes attack me anymore because of my high levels; as a result, I cannot help but feel like a nasty bully when I let my crew gang up on some poor unsuspecting beast that was not minding me in the slightest. I think I'm going to blitz through the game until I encounter juicier enemies that deliver more XP and have a bit more bite.


As much as it pains me to admit it, I've virtually given up on side quests during the last 20 hours. I've reached a point where I can barely clear one side quest out of five, just because I lack the Blade abilities that would allow me to progress in most quests. I still accept them and fulfill them when I can, which does happen sometimes: while in Temperentia, I got a nicely relaxing fetch quest that allowed me to put to good use all the items I had foraged during my exhausive exploration of the place. But unfortunately, simple and straightforward quests like that are the exception rather than the rule. I won't criticize XC2's side quests for being long, complex and demanding, because that's very much a design choice that's just as valid as simple and short side quests; I'll just say that since I usually tackle side quests in RPGs to unwind and get a break from the main story, XC2's convoluted side quests are not exactly my cup of tea.


I've dabbled a bit in Salvaging, mostly to unlock one of Poppi's abilities; and now that I'm done with that, I won't touch Salvaging again unless it's absolutely necessary. I've realized that I can perfectly live without the items that come from Salvaging, and even more without the QTE that come with it. As a matter of fact, I've realized that I can perfectly live without 95% of the items offered by that game; and as a result, I've decluttered my inventory and gotten rid of massive amounts of stuff that I'm pretty sure I would never have used anyway. That gave me plenty o' money to invest in Pouch items, which are a neat way to get passive buffs without having to lift a finger in battle. All in all, the only items I keep track of are Pouch Items, Core Chips and Accessories; the rest, I ignore or check once in a blue moon. Hey, maybe it's time to pore over my selection of Aux Cores again, just in case I got something juicy in the last 15 hours.


It's smooth sailing on the story front. (SPOILERS!) The decaying state of humanity and the sheer desperation of the last remaining countries are becoming more blatant by the chapter. Alrest looked like a peaceful world at first, but the cracks are now plainly showing: some villages and towns are on the brink of starvation, whole Titans are becoming uninhabitable, and wars are about to be waged for tiny expanses of land. It's a dire reality, and one that the game presents with a lot of tact and restraint while still not occulting any of the issues at hand. But no matter how grim things are in Alrest, we still get privy to juicy romantic development between Rex and his two well-endowed Blades. There is definitely a love triangle at work there, as well as a funny dichotomy between the exposure of Pyra's and Mythra's assets, shall we say: while Pyra's outfit and the way the camera films her are all about exposing her bosom, Mythra's outfit and associated camera shots focus much more distinctly on her bottom and thigh gap. Will Rex be forced to choose between Team Butt and Team Tits, or can he get the best of two worlds? Only time will tell! Hopefully time will also tell if Nia is indeed a Blade as the game seems to imply, and what are Blades exactly. (End of SPOILERS)


One development that took me by surprise are the technical issues. Ever since I set foot in Mor Ardain a couple of hours ago, things have gotten pretty hairy on that front, and a lot of hitches that were totally absent prior to that point started to appear and are now rampant. Clipping reigns supreme, graphics are getting fuzzier and grainier, textures pop in and out of existence and often take a couple of seconds to load after Instant Travel; and to my utter chagrin, the game's initially bright colours are becoming increasingly dull and washed-out, as though someone applied a crappy Instagram filter on my XC2. Gameplay is also affected to some extent, with hardcore slowdowns in hectic battles, the targeting feature routinely locking on some enemy roaming in the background instead of targeting the one that's right under my crew's noses, or foes slipping through the floor after a hit and delivering blows from there while I cannot retaliate. I don't know if these technical hiccups are to blame on Monolith Soft running out of budget or on my Switch being overwhelmed by my battery-draining gaming sessions, but I have to admit that these issues bother me ever-so-slightly. I'm not a graphical whore by any means, but seeing a game kind of unravel in front of my very eyes as I'm playing it is a rather unpleasant experience. I just hope things won't get significantly worse before the grand finale.

That's it for that 50-hours progress report, dear fellow gamers! See you soon for the next chapter of my XC2 epic; and as usual, thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!

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