It took me more than six months and 200 hours of playtime, but at long last I defeated Malus, reached Elysium, and saved the world of Alrest in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I loved many aspects of this RPG — exploring the vast, sprawling landscapes; watching the relationships between characters unfold; interacting with various Blades; unleashing powerful attacks against giant beasts; contemplating the complex story. But as much as I liked the game and feel like I got a worthwhile experience out of the time I spent with Rex, Pyra, and their companions, a truth solidified in my mind over the course of the adventure: for all its expanse and ambition, this is a game that in many ways lacks focus and is rough around the edges.

Most of my complaints stem from the game trying to do too much. Instead of focusing on a few key play elements and doing them very well, it seems like the developers at Monolith threw everything and anything they could think of into the game and kept all of it. There are at least half a dozen character growth systems to keep track of. This includes not only regular EXP for leveling up, but also WP for powering up each character’s various weapon types, SP for unlocking new character skills, innate abilities for each Blade that are unlocked in a wide variety of ways, powering up Blades with Aux Cores (which typically must be made usable by consuming other items), and a retro-arcade minigame you must play over and over again to augment one specific Blade. At best, having so many systems is a waste of time; at worst, it’s completely unmanageable for genre newcomers.

The game was desperately in need of an editor - someone to “upend the tea table” and convince the dev team to concentrate on the best parts and leave the unnecessary ones on the cutting-room floor. The weapon points are completely unneeded, for instance - your arts should get stronger and more useful as your character does - and the character abilities, considering how few there are, should have simply been acquired as the characters leveled up. Similarly, why are there four arts per weapon when you can only use three? It’s a fairly pointless choice to make; each weapon should have only had three (useful!) arts to begin with so players could focus on more important decisions. And who thought adding a new play mechanic in the game’s final chapter - which requires a rather specific party setup - was a good idea?

In addition, several aspects of the game are just clunky, and not at all the sort of thing one expects from a Japanese RPG. The in-game navigation often leaves a lot to be desired, for example, and when you try to access your map or open a menu, you sometimes get treated to a buzzing error noise instead. Likewise, attempting to interact with points of interest on the field often results in a dull click before the game decides to let you interface with the spot in question. And when a Blade earns a new ability, you have to go into the menu and watch the ability unlock with your own eyes before the ability becomes usable or the next ability in the skill tree can be unlocked.

Speaking of Blade abilities, their implementation as an exploration tool is also lacking. Since Blades and their abilities are acquired randomly, there are a few parts of the game where progress can grind to a total halt simply because you don’t have the right skills or haven’t leveled up your generic Blades enough. And even when you have Blades with the proper talents, it’s cumbersome to have to momentarily restructure your party for the special occasions those abilities are needed. If Blade field abilities accumulated and became part of their connected character’s skill set, I probably would have been saved hours of messing around in menus. On that same note, there are two characters who can change forms, but the way those separate forms are handled in the menu is nothing short of a total mess.

Last but not least, the game suffers from a few nasty difficulty spikes that seem to come out of nowhere and can really drag things down if you aren’t overprepared.

None of these issues mentioned here are especially significant on their own, but when you take them altogether, they do detract from the overall experience, and cumulatively they give the impression that the game could have used a steadier guiding hand or perhaps just a little more time in the polishing stages. With all that said, I never stopped having fun while playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but I also never stopped wishing it could be just a bit better. Despite the flaws, I am all too eager to return to Alrest when its standalone DLC - Torna: The Golden Country - arrives in the near future.

