Xenoblade Chronicles

Honestly, Sheba's quest isn't really even that anime-esque. There are a few elements, but in general her personality is just more of a general Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense kind of thing, though it does have some pretty heavy shades of The Ojou.

Sheba's quest isn't really particularly anime. At least not more than anything else in the game.

Mythra's probably the most "anime" character in the game, being a generic lump of Tsundere tropes played straight.

edited 12th May '18 5:43:45 PM by Anomalocaris20

Well, I did hear that her lesbian harem thing was an anime thing. At least, that's how it was in the non-translated version.

edited 12th May '18 5:43:26 PM by RainingMetal

lesbian harem doesn't sound much more anime than about anything else in this game to me. I'd have mentionned Poppi qt pi or just poppi in general for the game going anime, personally. If that doesn't count as anime, nothing in the game does.

As someone who had the exact same concerns than you at first, still bought the game, finished it : Think twice before buying it.

I too was bothered by the aesthetic since the very first trailer of the game was shown, but I wanted to give the game the benefit of the doubt since I loved both 1 and X so much, and after finishing the game I can say I just shouldn't have bothered.

I cant say, don't buy it, period, cause who knows, maybe it's really just the aesthetic and you might get over it. It's only the tip of the iceberg of why I didn't liked the game, although it certainly didn't helped . The game isn't in "cliche anime scenes" mode all the time (the scenes you've seen are most likely the points it really goes too far), although it feels bland or annoying really often.

If you do buy it, however, and if you don't like the 4-6 first hours, if you feel the game just isn't clicking with you, sell the game back. It's not getting better after. I have a bunch of friends who felt the same way toward the game and they all sold the game back around that point with no regrets and I honestly believe I'd have been better off doing just that.

the gameplay does stand up to its predecessors, but I clearly can't say as much for the world. It felt unengaging, not alive, and never encouraged me to invest myself in it. Also the plot and the sidequests have gameplay and story segregation literally everywhere so you're in there for a rough time if you're trying to immerse yourself in the world.

edited 12th May '18 6:20:32 PM by Yumil

I don't think the aesthetic is the problem so much as the character designs. And not even most of them really. It's just a few skeevy blades, Rex, and Pyra that drag the whole thing down, and Rex/Pyra being bad is a big problem for obvious reasons.

Yeah character design is a much better term cause there's not much to say about environments, areas or enemy design. it's just like in the the first game in that area.

On the character design, I'd be less indulgent than that though. I have a hard time picturing blades I had no problem with. About a good 2/3 of the blades had at least a moment in their introduction or their quests made me go " ugh, seriously ?".

From the top of my head, I can say I had no problem with herald, vale (and I'm kinda afraid to be proven wrong by her quest honestly), godfrey, Agaeon, Percival, ursula, Kos Mos, Dromarch, Roc, Finch, gorg, boreas, Wulfric... Maybe Dagas ? And I'm running out of names at that point.

For context, that's about two times less than the amount of blades I have gripes with.

edited 12th May '18 6:31:45 PM by Yumil

If it makes you feel better, Vale's quest isn't too cringe-worthy. At least for me.

Then again, this is coming from the guy who facepalms every time he's reminded that Godfrey exists, and that his quest was basically a whole Idiot Plot.

edited 12th May '18 6:31:52 PM by RainingMetal

I'll remember that when december and the last dlc hits. Although I haven't touched the game since finishing it and I feel I'm never going to 100% it. Especially when I get my ps4 and persona 5 back in three days.

edited 12th May '18 6:33:05 PM by Yumil

Glad to hear the opinion of a person who was in a similar position.

I've heard some people say some positive things about the game, but every time I've seen those scenes of generic anime cringe... ugh... I don't see myself soildering through that even if the entire rest of the game was absolutely fantastic, which doesn't seem to be the case.

A real shame. I really wanted a proper sequel to the original, but these character designs, story decisions and cringy anime tropes... I'm not gambling 60 bucks on it.

I don't really pay those anime cliches any attention. Though I do agree that Rex can be painfully naive and optimistic at times. It's kind of a recurring problem in the Xenoblade stories in general.

If I may ask, what exactly have you seen that constitutes "generic anime cringe" because there are maybe three small scenes that I would qualify as that.

Are the three you're talking about Mythra "sleepwalking", the hot springs, and Poppi vs. Rosa?

Yes to Mythra sleepwalking, but also Mythra Tsunslapping Rex into the camera (though I thought that was freaking hilarious myself), and "I love you and everybody". I thought that the hot springs scene was fine and more of a way to foreshadow Nia's thing than for fanservice and Poppi vs. Rosa was so ridiculous that it looped around to being awesome.

edited 12th May '18 7:08:32 PM by LordVatek

Is Poppi vs Rosa third really cliche anime thing?

Edit: Rex being slapped into the camera was legitimately funny (since boss battles start with the screen cracking, so it's a great Breaking the Fourth Wall gag).

edited 12th May '18 7:08:38 PM by HandsomeRob

Mythra sleepwalking is the only one that really made me cringe at how "harem anime" it was. The hot springs scene turned out better than the shallow fanservice I expected it to be, at least.

"I love you and all you guys" is the best thing, though.

edited 12th May '18 7:16:10 PM by Anomalocaris20

rex being too optimistic is honestly the least of my concerns with him. There's a few times in the story, especially towards the end, where I kinda appreciated him and thought "THERE, now we agree on something" and it was when he was pushing the idealism to the maximum. To me the problem is more than those scenes doesn't really rely on him as a character to work, they rely on him as a mouthpiece of the general aesop. And like sure I agree with the overall aesop and there's certainly room for something fantastical to build around it (Persona 3 I'm looking at you) but it does nothing for rex as a character, nor did they actually put much work into developing that aspect of him. It was just kinda there, because they needed it, but I didn't really felt it was a lesson learned from the journey we went through. It worked for me, but mostly because I'm a sucker for anti nihilism.

As for the very very very cringy scenes, I agree with the others : there's only a handful of those. the "sleepwalking" scene is really the lowest point.

But just because there's a few times where it really goes too far doesn't mean the rest of the game is exempt of it. It's much more low key and secondary, most of the time, But I felt like the game was perpetually two feets away from going back to the cringe and was constantly skirting with the limits.

Theory and praxis are a good illustration of that, to me. Never in the game did they did anything remotely fanservicey, but the fact their artwork's goddamn faces makes them look like a pair of lolis with abundant fanservice each, and that for fuck sake theory cover your damn ass (and praxis isn't better in that regard), they'll never be more than tolerable to me.

That's the kind of thing that got the game the nickname "pedoblade" among my friends and it honestly bothers me so much more in the end than the sleepwalking scene. At least that scene I see it once and never has to see it again. Every single time I try to check my rare blades, and boy do we often do, however...

edited 12th May '18 7:54:20 PM by Yumil

I will say I hope MS lean more into sci-fi than fantasy for the future games. The fantasy stuff is mostly just serviceable, with sci-fi and mechs getting the actual interesting and meaty themes.

I dunno, X was wholly sci-fi and it... lacked any of the synergetic charm that Xenoblades 1 and 2 have.

The chances are fairly good that the next game is going to be X2. The XCX series is their Science Fantasy stuff while the Xenoblade series is their Fantasy stuff with Sci-Fi sprinkles.

I honestly think the dichotomy of the Xenoblade line and the Cross line to be an interesting idea. They're vastly different from each other but share a number of similarities at their core. This allows people to still have that core that they love so much while also getting to choose their preferred flavor. I just wish the Sci-Fa line had a more distinctive name to make talking about it a tad easier.

I just wish they let us use mechs in both.

I love mechs. I want to pilot them all day. They were the best part of X.

edited 12th May '18 8:13:07 PM by HandsomeRob

Yeah, the main "anime cliche" things that came to mind for me were the sleepwalking bit, the hot springs, and the slapping. Though the hot springs bit is honestly really tame and the slap is really just the capper on a scene that's otherwise really not very anime-inspired. Although I guess you could take Zeke's Chuuni tendencies as it. I guess the Rosa fight also counts, but honestly that's more of a spoof of Humongous Mecha than a straight usage.

As far as X goes, I was really torn. The worldbuilding, world design, sidequests... all that stuff was amazing. Exploring the world and helping the various races acclimate to coexisting was a really entertaining and fun experience. The problem is that the main plot almost felt like an afterthought and didn't really have a satisfying resolution at all. If they had just removed the actual main plot and just focused on the process of humanity trying to rebuild itself on Mira it would've probably been in my top 5 games of all time.

I'm... Kinda sorry to admit that I liked Mira better than Alrest. It was more eldritch than living, sentient continents, yet also more alive than LIVING, SENTIENT CONTINENTS. And, while the main plot wasn't the strongest, it still did what it needed to do, and gave us some pretty great scenes anyway. The sidequests, meanwhile, could vary in quality, yes, but when it got good it got GREAT.

Though maybe everything about 2 is tainted by the Gacha still not giving me FUCKING VALE OR FLOREN OR AGATE HOW HARD IS THIS I GAVE YOU NEARLY 200 HOURS FFS

The sleepwalking scene wasn't helped by the fact that apparently everyone sleeps fully clothed, on top of the covers. I know there are design considerations that make realistic sheets and designing pajamas for every character just for one scene to be a waste of time and effort, but that's just another sign they shouldn't have bothered with that scene at all.

As for X, while I did love it, they need to be much better about those slow opening chapters and Expo Dumps. They spent half an hour slowly explaining things that the opening narration covered in thirty seconds, the only reason it was needed at all was because of the Amnesiac Hero, and that had absolutely nothing to do with the plot. Cut out Rook and the first couple chapters of X, and basically nothing is lost.

Ignoring those major flaws, I think I prefer the story of 2 over X. X relied too much on mysteries that might never get answered, and had a bit too much Japanese culturalism that didn't translate well (specifically, the whole thing with Lao being a traitor; Japanese custom is to pretty much ignore anything outside of work as long as it doesn't impact job performance, but to Westerners it looked weird that everyone was ignoring his suspicious behavior).

One thing I learned recently was that the decision to have Cross be a mute was actually a last-minute thing. Tatsu, and I think all of the Nopon, was also a last-minute addition which is why Tatsu feels more than a little tacked on.

X needs a sequel to polish its systems and plot but it has the potential to be really good. As it stands I definitely think 2 is better than X but I also think that 2 does a few things better than the first game (like character balance) so that's not really saying much.

edited 12th May '18 9:18:39 PM by LordVatek