Combat Evolution in Xenoblade

this page is meant as a essay/critical analysis of the combat in the xenoblade games (note, we haven't played future redeemed, and may or may not add that if it makes sense.)

the combat in the xenoblade series is in some ways, what gives it its identity.

at the time of xenoblade 1's release, traditional jrpgs had, at least to english speakers, really really stale combat systems. mostly turn based. we weren't there, so we can't contribute our own perspective, that's just the impression we've gotten from reading reception around the time of the game's release. that reception usually praising or appreciating the combat.

we think xenoblade 1's combat works really well for what it is. it's probably the most accessible to understand completely of all the games, and it explores what a real time class based combat system could be like in a single player jrpg. it also emphasizes heavily positional aspects of combat.

being real time, it balances moves with things like frame data, how long it takes for the move to recharge after using. the game punishes players for bad positioning by not letting them use certain moves, or not letting their moves access their special properties, among other things. many moves also have hitboxes, meaning that they need to be lined up correctly to actually land! we think these aspects of the combat make it feel much more grounded than a lot of similar games, even though it is still fundamentally stat and strategy based like most jrpgs.

to us, these two aspects of xenoblade's combat, being real time and emphasis on position, are the core of its identity. we also think that its attempt to bridge the gap between the abstracted stat-based combat of most rpgs, and the grounded technique-based combat of action games, is a secondary element of its design. through these lenses is how we usually judge the game's combat, partially because it is something we enjoy and appreciate, and partially because we want to try and look at the game from what we think it was trying to be.

we think this game mostly succeeds at these things, and every time we've played it, including the first time we played it, we've always been amazed by how much they built on top of those three fundamental pillars, despite being something completely new. the combat feels complete and multifaceted, and the combat encounters are surprisingly diverse and have a lot of secondary mechanics to accentuate the game's core ideas.

probably the most notable of these is the game's break topple and daze system. topple stops the character inflicted from moving and gives them 0% chance to evade anything. it essentially temporarily incapacitates someone. in order to inflict topple, break usually needs to be inflicted first, and, similarly, daze usually requires topple to be inflicted. moves that inflict these debuffs are pretty limited, or require special usage! this is partially because the moves have finely tuned debuff timers and cooldowns, and distribution and conditions, making it so they have to be timed and planned. i think this encourages a awareness of the combat that makes it really cool.

of the player controlled attacks that can inflict topple, only two of them have no special condition attached, wild down and steel strike, although these are exclusive to characters with no easy way to inflict topple first, and for most of the game they have really long cooldowns. monado cyclone is probably the best topple art, since it is available on shulk, who can also break and daze, but it also requires a full talent art gauge, and it also consumes the entire guage, limiting shulk's access to other monado arts, while also taking 3 seconds for the attack to startup, and 2 more seconds for shulk to go through endlag. for context, shulk's air slash can only break an enemy for 5 seconds, and stream edge can only break for three seconds, making it difficult or impossible to line up a topple with shulk solo.

party builds are in xenoblade 1 are incredibly fascinating and fun to explore because of this. every character has their own playstyle, and the distribution of powerful arts is balanced, and feels as if every character has the ability to perform well.

the party members generally follow a class structure, with healers, tanks, and attackers, and in some ways support, but none of these are enforced heavily, and so every character has diverse abilities. in addition, every every character has passive skills that can be transferred to other characters, although with some limitations and fine tuning. this means that each character can fulfil a number of different roles in a team loadout, and generally experimentation is rewarded.

seven and riki are probably the least fitting for this. seven has a lot of different abilities but none of them really synergise together all that well, and they also have the most limited skill sharing with the other characters, and riki is hard focused into a support character. although even riki does have diversity and is often a really good filler character on any team to round it out, and we're not sure how much seven's lack of good synergy should be counted for this.

of the other characters, shulk generally fills the role of a attacker with some support capability, dunban is a dodge tank and attacker, reyn is a face tank, sharla is a healer, and melia is a ether attacker. although, defining the characters by their class roles i think does overlook the differences between them. shulk's support abilities are basically unique to him, with access to monado arts, dunban has a lot of specialist moves for filling different niches in a team, melia needs to do set up in order to use their arts and during that set up period she can act as a support character, and she also is important for having guranteed hit rates and long range attacks. reyn is probably the only truly straightforward character in the game; he focuses on basic damage output and basic aggro control, and there isn't many conditions on his moves and abilities. this also makes reyn very good.

when we played xenoblade definitive edition, we decided to try and play the game by exploring all of the depth in the mechanics and the world, since we had originally played the wii version by only focusing on the main story, and we had learned the xenoblade games generally want the player to actually focus on the side stuff as well, and that doing that can make it more fun!

in xenoblade, there is a concept called affinity, and in xenoblade 1, party affinity is the strength of the relationship between two party members. affinity typically builds very slowly, and so requires a lot of time for the party members to be together, especially for combat. party affinity is important for various side activities like heart to hearts and i think other stuff as well, and so we wanted to play the game in a way where we built affinity between party members equally, which meant constantly switching out party members and organising new team comps.

we also tried to optimise builds at every point, since we fully understood the game's mechhanics during this playthrough, and because we wanted to see what was possible and what it was like, and also because of the definitive edition's new manual levelling system, which lets you lower your character's level to something you've already been to, and so we could reasonably do everything in the game without becoming over levelled and losing the game's challenge, which was apparently a big issue in the wii version, which we've heard about from people who have tried to do everything in it.

in some ways, you could say we were trying to break the combat system, by exploring every option made available to us as soon as possible, and constantly experimenting with new team comps. this playthrough gave us a massive appreciation for the diversity of playstyles and options each party member has, while also making apparent where the game is limited and perhaps gives us a better idea of what benefits and harms the combat system.

at some point into the game, toppling and chain attacks become very overcentralising, and turn the game into more of a set up menu based game rather than a real time one. this point doesn't come until very late, though, and you need to understand the game's mechanics and know a lot about it to understand how to execute those, and those things arent made explicit to the player. we view them as exploits, and tried to avoid doing them when we played once they became too strong, or, in other cases, intentionally avoided creating a environment which would make them strong, like fully upgrading topple arts to have the shortest cooldowns. chain attakcs i think upset the game balance to a lesser extent, since they are still random and difficult to time, and so they are never a truly guranteed win button and will usually still require the player to work around other mechanics.

we also think that, when fully understood and explored, the game can feel kinda limited. there are very clearly certain characters that are better and more essential to a team than others, irrespective of combat scenario, and there really isn't as much build customisation as we'd hope. it's kinda streamlined in that sense, which is cool, although it does lose some of the silly fun that certain rpgs get by giving you a incredible diversity of options and builds.

whenever we play the game now, we can't help but feel the combat is just a little limited and straightforward. there just aren't enough options and diversity for the game to continue being fun long term.

the definitive edition introduced a time attack mode to the game, and we were hoping it was going to be similar to xenoblade 2's very well done challenge mode, and would've vastly expanded on the combat and challenge and specifically addressed certain exploits to make them less effective like 2's, but it didn't.

it is kinda weird saying that the game feels limited and small, since i thinnk to some extent that also makes it much more accessible and streamlined than the later games. although, the xenoblade series does also heavily encourage experimentation and fully exploring the game's mechanics, 1 included, and so it feels justified in saying that when fully explored, it can feel pretty limitng and inflexible. especially in the post game.

x

x and 2's combat is almost entirely the reason we want to write this in the first place.

x as a game is a natural and direct expansion and iteration on 1's combat.

it expands on the build diversity and customisation, real time and positional elements, and technique inspired combat, in addition to introducing a lot more kinds of combat scenarioes. it iterates by addressing some of 1's weaknesses, and attempting to further refine what 1 was already doing. this isn't to say 1's combat is weak or undevelopped in isolation, it just appears that way when compared to X.

one of our friends was really surprised and kinda comforted by the similarity between 1 and X's combat. community consensus is often that X is completely unlike all the other games, and since it also is the least played of all of them, that gets spread without much challenge. i think this idea originates from the intial backlash at X's release, where the differences between 1 and X were accentuated, since a lot of people wanted and expected a direct sequel to 1, but X ended up being aesthetically quite different, and thematically much more similar to the Xeno series in general than it was to 1 specifcally. mechanically, though, X is actually a evolution of what 1 already did.

the games after X would maintain the same core principles of the 1st games combat, but X specifically actually also retains the core structure and style of combat of 1 had. with the art palette and everything. Which is kinda weird in all honesty, cuz its seems 1's combat was designed with the wii remote and nunchuk in mind which lets the player navigate the menu and move around simultaneously. this would also be true for X but it just doesn't support the wii remote in any capacity, meaning it can be pretty painful to play for extended periods!

anyways, X has more party members, more arts, more skills, and more kinds of status effects. it also adds sprint option that doesn't let you act until you're done sprinting, and lets you jump in combat. since sprinting stops you from taking other combat actions other than just, it helps us feel more grounded in the world, reminding ourselves that our character is physically there, and not just in a menu,

i think because xenoblade x has more characters, the characters are more streamlined in how they function in combat. they still get unique skills and arts but their basic function is the same.

in xenoblade 1, every party member has a fundamentally different mechanical structure, based around their talent art. well, a good amount of them. dunban and reyn have probably the least interesting ones. but shulk and sharla and seven and especially melia at least have really different play structures because of how their talent arts.

shulk's opens up the ability to use monado arts, and each monado art drains the talent gauge a different amount. sharla's make her less viable. melia's is cool. xenoblade x doesn't really have anything like this, in fact it doesn't have talent arts at all.

in its style, xenoblade x focuses a lot more on player freedom than xenoblade 1 as well, and the flexibility with builds is greatly expanded. anyone can wear any armour, use any weapon, any art, any skill (kinda not really for the last two; at least Cross can use any). we think that to some extent this streamlining makes the game less Autism stimulating and less diverse. however, for the most part, the added flexibility is mostly a benefit to the game.

xenoblade x does hard limit builds, though, with weapons. every character can hold two weapons at a time, and, for most of the main game, those two weapons must be from the same class (the ability to use weapons in different classes is unlocked when mastering the class, like in 3). in addition, you need to have one melee weapon, and one ranged weapon. this hard limits you into not being able to use two melee or two ranged weapons.

weapons control what auto attacks you use, and what arts you can equip. arts are tied to weapons. what is in our eyes one of the most broken arts in the entire series is a topple art called Assault Hammer. It is one the two starting arts, and is attached to the Assault Rifle ranged weapon. this is interesting, cuz that means that equipping it, necessarily means giving up any other ranged arts from other weapons, like Ghostwalker on Dual Guns.

and so that creates decisions about how to structure a build. it gives enough flexibility where you can have all kinds of awesome builds, while also limiting it in an important way to make creating builds more interesting. there are a load of times where we've wanted to use arts from two different ranged weapons at the same time, cuz they would be really good together, but we can't! and so that forces us to try and make the build in a different way. it's a like puzzle game. it is incredibly stimulating cuz you need to find things that work well together!

um, the game itself makes this really fucking difficult, though, cuz you can't see everything at once and navigating the information in game is kinda bad. part of the goal of our x guide is to make engaging with the build system and combat more accessible.

in addition to that one hard limit, there are several soft limits that are removed by certain progression. we've already mentioned the class restriction for weapons, but it also goes for class skills, too. equipment optimisation is a pretty signficant soft limit, and the barriers the game places to getting optimal equipment is pretty intense. we've played the game for idk between 500-700 hours and and we still have only a few level 20 augments and weapons with max slots (augments are the name for this game's gems)

we think this is kinda cool. cuz it makes it so certain things in the game are totally possible, like one hit killing high level enemies, but the barrier to entry is so high and intimidating that extremely few players actually go that way. it's also an effective way to stop people like elysia from ruining the combat system for theirselves by having over powered equipment. like, it's cool that some of this shit is possible, we like that, but we also like that it is mostly theoretically possible.

we do think the game could've made more augments cooler, though, or bring more attention to their effects and importance. we kinda just picked armour based on explicit stats.

anyways. uwu~!

something we think that xenoblade x and 1 do really well is art variety. every art has it's own purpose and oftentimes those purposes are incredibly interesting. Fuck it. Art that turns dunban 180°. why not!!!! and the way they are designed usually makes executing them feel incredible.

we feel that x did a really incredible job of expanding on this. there are more basic arts, since there is more build customisation and you can never gurantee everyone has access to the same art pool, but that works surprsingly well. we also think the increased number of arts is very healthy and fun, or maybe its not actually more but just feels more cuz every art can be used in so many more situations and contexts due to build variety.

each class, and, especially each weapon, have their own style and theming.

the full metal jaguar class line theme is based around health mismanagement and assassination. one of its strongest arts halves your current HP, and another just fucking Disables Enemy Aggro, including outside of combat, when used from behind. and the theming extends into the animations and namings, and we love it. those two arts are called Blood Sacrifice and Shadowrunner. really awesome and we love the aesthetic theming going on.

actually, a load of arts are positional. on full metal jaguar line there is an art called Sliding Slinger which increases tension (essentially the game's mana meter; we'll get to it) when used from the side. it also slides the character forward, which is important, because it means that using the art requires more positional awareness so you don't, i dont know, sliding slinger into lava. we think this is very cool and works with the sprint button really well. the game also feels like it plays a lot more with proper physical hitboxes than the 1st game, and things like the ability to change weapons with a buttoon, the importance of team commands, and everything else the game adds, contributes a lot to the sense of place and groundedness that the series is attempting to be.

at the same time, though, the game is styled much more like an open world mmorpg, at least it gives off that vibe subconsiously. enemies don't have collision, the camera is generally far further back, and by design the game's larger scale makes it harder to feel intimate and a part of the world, the streamlining of the mechanics compared to xc1, the samller and more computer interface like font, the way information is displayed, just a whole bunch of things, feel far less grounded than we would've liked them to be.

we try to play this game in a phyiscal minded sense, and a lot of arts, like Power Dive and Sidewinder do support this (sidewinder has more range than most things), but so much of the game's whole structure is far more disassocative and abstract, and makes it difficult to play with this mindset. like, the game has a bunch of phyiscal lock on points on an enemy, on appendages, and you can break the appendage with enough damage, and the characters even angle their weapons to actually hit what they are locked on to, but still, it often feels like, the game is working against itself in this regard. the game even has physical grab enemy commands in the game's Dolls, that lets you bind the enemy (OMG doll binding!!!), it really feels like it wanted to expand on 1's groundedness and physical aspects more, and focus less hard on abstraction, but the game still feels incredibly disassocative in some ways.

i think, we're thinking about overdrive. it's a great example of the the conflicting relationship here.

let's talk about it

so, first of all, we want to praise Overdrive as a mechanic, and explain why. it's fucking sick as an idea, and addresses some of 1's core combat failures while also naturally expanding on how the series' combat works.

overdrive is basically a powered up state where your character goes into overdrive. it has a almost psychedlic motion blur effect when used, it has different music in a completely different style from the rest of the game to fit the new vibe, and it massively powers up damage and reduces cooldown timers and resisitance.

the speed up in cooldowns is huge and changes how the game is played. in addition, overdrive introduces art comboes, with colour comboes and weapon comboes, with a bunch of different effects. an issue for a lot of people with xenoblade 1 is that the combat can be a lot of waiting for shit to happen, and that game's powered up mode, the chain attack, can eliminate a signifcant amount of the combat's identity. and so, chain attacks in X were replaced with Overdrive, and we think that that addresses so much.

overdrive is accentuating the existing combat systems, and and working on top of them, and also add in an element of player rhythmn and pacing, and also manage to give a JRPG a serious execution challenge (not necessarily good, or bad!). it makes everything move so much faster and forces strategy and plans to be made and executed at a much much faster rate than normal. it puts stresses on builds and gives another thing for builds to think about. what works well with overdrive? what helps maintain overdrive?

maintaining overdrive is a matter of getting tension. tension, or TP, is one of the game's resources. TP arts cost 1000 tension, and overdrive costs 3000. 3000 is the amount you can hold without any expansion. there are a bunch of ways of gaining TP. part of the fun of overdrive comes from micromanaging your TP in order to keep it going. normally, overdrive has a ten second time limit, but it can be indefinitely refreshed if you get another 3000 TP before it runs out.

the way this plays out in fights is incredibly interesting! and you still need to react to what the enemy is doing and plan around it and strategise on the fly! it makes it so that optimal build loadouts aren't set in stone, and engage with some of the more fundamental aspects of the game!

since overdrive doesn't make you immune to enemy attacks like chain attacks do in xenoblade 1, you also need to micromanage your health, and your healing cooldowns and resources. let's talk about health and defense in x.

in xenoblade 1, sharla was a dedicated healer, riki had one okay but slow healing art, and other characters only had tokens for healing that weren't really meaningfully signficant. if you wanted a healer, you put sharla or riki on to your team, unless you were doing something really fancy or managed health in a different way.

xenoblade x doesn't really have healers. the game does have some pretty strong healing arts, although not very many, and they only become strong with the right builds and sufficient upgrades. and the weapon system does also limit the potential for healing focused builds, probably.

the game's primary form of healing for most of it is soul voices and quick time events. soul voices are when you combo an art based on what a party member calls out. the quick time events are cool, they are somewhat random and force you to be more engaged in the situation and i like how they force fast reactions and situational awareness and intentionally put more on to your mental stack, which makes the vibe of gameplay feel better for us. you don't lose anything for failing them in most circumstances, but you do gain things for doing them successfully.

we think this is a really cool idea, and it does work to address one of the traditionally less interesting and diverse class types in the series. and in regular gameplay i think its really cool

in some of the game's more intense fights and challenges, though, soul voices and quick time events are too inconsistent and unreliable for survivial most of the time. some of the more difficult fights in the game can sometimes feel like your only options are to not get or take any damage in the first place, any less and you get one hit killed.

this is something that does exist in all other games in the series, but X and especially the games after it do it a lot to balance things.

in x, the way you usually deal with inadequete healing is by stacking as maybe resistances as possible, or trying to negate damage as much as possible, but there are also a bunch of other options and the ways you can go about each of these is pretty interesting from a build perspective. but even if the build process is still fun and diverse, the end result is kinda boring. once you get the build working the amount of situational awareness required and on the fly strategy required goes way down.

this game has elemental resistances, and the way they work is by percentage. if you can raise them to 100%, you no longer take damage of attacks with those elements. it's stuff like that. and, for certain elements, getting max resistance equipment isn't that difficult.

one of the most prominent builds in the community is longsword + dual guns, because long sword has in many ways the strongest offensive art in the game, and dual guns has incredible support arts in addition to one of the strongest defensive arts in the game, ghostwalker. this build fundamentally works by using the support arts to maintain tension, and using ghostwalker to make the character invincible for a certain number of hits. really, the only kind of adaption this build forces mid fight is when enemies have large multi hit attacks, that eat through ghostwalker, but because cooldowns charge up so fast in overdrive after a certain point, the risk this poses can often be mitigated if its planned around.

beyond that, all the strategy of this comes from the build's set up phase. and the actual battle is mostly just a memory and execution test, like a combo trial in a fighting game, and an endurance trial.

overdrive as a mechanic is also designed around this. the main game screen has intense motion blur effects, making regular gameplay far less readable. this makes focusing on the in game information and menus much easier, since your eyes automatically focus to those areas during overdrive so you can get as much information as possible. it is meant to make the game less distracting, so you can focus on executing in overdrive, but it does also work to support the idea that at high stages, overdrive is often more a purely execution challenge of a certain build, and does end up ultimately defeating the core gameplay loop in the same way that chain attacks can in the first game. both of them are only like this when optimised, although it feels a little too easy to optimise them.

i think for the main game, overdrive is a really fun mechanic, although sometimes it can feel over powered when you get the hang of it, and can completely invalidate the idea of levels in the game. this video [youtube, 3 minutes] beats a level 92 superboss while being at level twenty, using only basic equipment that is super readily available.

it feels like it invalidates some of the combat!

oh also we've only talked about like half of the combat in the game

the game has two similar combat systems, the one we've been talking about is ground combat. the other one is skell, also called doll, combat, and those are mechs the player can use.

we havent brought them up outside of when we mentioned binding, because, well, they are in many ways a signficantly less interesting system. skell combat has long animations, long cooldowns, boring build system, and have relatively little potential. ground gear can be pushed very far depending on how a build is made, and making and executing that build is incredibly fucking fun, and that is likely the biggest strength of the game. skells just don't get that in the same way. we have actually found optimising skell combat fun, but in more of a gamey number go up kinda way. it's like cookie clicker in the mmrorpg style. doing the same thing over and over while number goes up slowly until you finally get the major upgrade you were working towards.

we do really like how certain skell things work. ammo expansions and positional stuff and movement is in some ways a lot more signficant! at least it feels that way, since there is more feedback to the player for many things. skells just in general interact with the world in more physically grounded ways, which is weird, because they can fly. i like how we're just saying this without expanding on what we're talking about and inevitably people who haven't played X or know much about it will be like what the fuck wait what are you talking about

we like how there are bunch of different overdrives depending on the skell type, we like how the skell faces what it is hitting and a lot of their projectiles actively home in on to what they are targetting, and how you can go into a first person mode that shows the cockpit, and some of the animations are really good.

fundamentally we think it is just kinda clunky and underwhelming. skell also doesn't really have a natural upgrade system, too, like ground combat, and most skell upgrades are made by buying or crafting equipment, which i think is oftentimes less fun. it is very cool when you find a brand new crafting recipe for something you've never seen in the middle of nowhere though, that is one of the coolest collectible rewards the game has.

fantasy of controlling an anime mech is incredibly cool and there really aren't that many mecha games out there, especially not good mecha games, and i think if skells were less slow and clunky, and had more fluid movement and attacks, that would've been very cool just as video game mech combat in general. although, at that point i thinnk that would essentially be moving skells into an entirely action game combat oriented pathway, although, maybe that's okay, cuz ground combat still retains the more jrpg esque combat system.

also it would be VERY funny for one of the best modern mecha action games to also be a open world jrpg about mental health and philosophy on the nintendo fucking wii u

a lot of the way dolls already function in X feels like they were designed with a more action game mindset to them. animations generally flow much better between each other, you can even move during certain arts, there is a signficant element on positioning and physical status effects like bind, you can switch modes to go fast, the cockpit view, how the skells collision acts with the other entities in the game, and arts have less special effects for strategy, but do also look very cool. at the same time, the arts are also extremely slow, for both animation and cooldown time, and they are fundamentally limited by the rpg systems they inhabit,.

on the inverse, ground combat overdrive DOES make the game operate signifcantly more like a action game, with comboes and everything and an emphasis on rhythmn. this is the despite the fact that ground combat feels more abstracted than doll combat, and has the ability to totally invalidate the just in time strategy and physical awareness that we think is one of the series' greatest strengths. the art and build system for the ground gear is also fucking incredible, we love it.

like something we need to emphasize is that the way X is structured makes it so there really aren't any bad builds. and the amount of build diversity is massive, and experimenting is extremely funny. the weapons and arts have really solid theming and aesthetic styling, which gives them a lot of life and character too! and all the arts and skills do unique things and create so many possible scenarioes.

the enemies in X also have quite a lot of diversity that feels absent from the other games in the series, but we're not sure if that's actually true or if we've just noticed it more in X. it feels like every different superboss for example has its own gimmick or combat style or theme, which challenge different aspects of the combat system. there aren't really many scenarioes that are just you hit them and they hit you back and you see which one of you runs out of life first, or at least it doesn't feel like that.

in addition, since mastering and getting accustomed to overdrive can be pretty hard, it is difficult to ever really exploit it to the maximum extent, especially if you are making your own builds and trying to find what is most fun or cool to you, and constantly experimenting. there does come a point in the game though, before beating it, where we started intentionally fighting enemies 20+ levels over us to give us a challenge, and were disapointed by most main story fights, although this was only in our second playthrough.

it is incredibly difficult to judge X's combat in the main story, because depending on how well you understand overdrive and how much time in the build system you spend, the game's combat can play out completely differently. i think our basically no overdrive playthrough, and our second overdrive playthrough, were really fun, but we can't be certain that the same circumstances that made it fun for us would exist for others! and the gap in accessibility and difficulty between the two is huge, as well as the gap between their power levels.

we'd probably recommend people who play this game to take it slow and try to engage what everything the game has, and learn its systems as you go, instead of doing one things over and over again. in general we recommend this for rpgs or at least xenoblade specifically, but X in particular also expects the player to experience most of it in this way; a signficant amount of the best things in the game are technically entirely optional, and a lot of people rush the main story and are really disapointed by it, and frustrated by the game trying to get them to play the side stuff.

so, all in all, X massively expands on the combat of the original game. and for the most part, is a very natural and thoughtful progression. people like elysia still continue to play and explore the combat system to this day, even though the game is getting closer and closer to being a decade old. there is signifcantly more staying power and depth in the systems that exist than 1, although we'd argue that they are paced less well and less consistently across all players, which can make it difficult to enjoy equally. we find xenoblade 1 very easy to recommend to people as their first xenoblade, because of how comparably accessible it is compared to the other games.

even the combat's faults feel a lot less obvious and important compared to 1's, because of how much there is

2

xenoblade's 2 combat feels more like it is inspired by the first game's combat system, rather than being a iterative step with the same system.

fundamentally the game shares a lot of surface level stuff, like arts, how the field works, chain attacks. but the theory behind the combat feels entirely different.

i think first we want to talk about some of the changes made to the core xenoblade mechanics.

you can no longer attack while walking, and auto attacks have tiers and you need to sit still for them to get to the max tier. we think this is incredible and makes auto attacks way more interesting an relevant, and makes the game feel signficantly more grounded and more action game like than rpg like than 1 and X.

the game also forgoes the traditional menu combat system inspired by mmorpgs used in 1 and X, and replaces it with mapping everything to the face buttons individually. the game still allows you to normally have 9 arts on the same time, though, with input comboes (although, in practice, this isn't how they are used; we'll get to it). this also heavily contributes to a action game feel over a jrpg feel. like, 1 and X still definitely had menu based combat, even if it was real time, and we think this change not only makes a ton of sense from a game design perspective (the nintendo switch also doesn't support wii remote and nunchuk! wahoo!!!), but it also signifcantly improves the game feel.

the game removes X's sprint, along with many other additions made to X, like the positional indicator and more complex battle command menu (and by extension removes X's conumsable items (i bet even for people who have played X for 200 hours don't even know the game has conumsables in combat, we didn't)), and X's more complex class and gameplay structure.

2 does however retain X's core emphasis on classes conceptually, and also build customisation. this is now done with a single weapon, but now also each weapon has an attached companion who has unique effects, as well as a suite of their own unique special moves, which are kinda equivalent to 1's talent arts, although more gamey and streamlined. each character can have three of these companions, called Blades, at one time, and since they can each have different weapons, each one can also have different arts equipped. this means that you can have up to 9 arts, plus the Blade's four special moves.

the game limits access to all of your arts and specials based on blade cooldowns. specials fill up in different ways from how arts recharge, and when switching your active blade, the one you were previously using gets put on a cooldown as well.

the game also introduces a art cancelling system, which feels perfectly at place and is implemented really really well. it feels really good in this game and perfectly at place and also pushes the game further towards action games. imagine if skells had this (... assuming they also had other changes to make them more fluid! and fun!)

one of 2's most important aspects is how it sorta tiers attacks. auto attacks charge up and can cancel into arts, arts charge up and can cancel into specials, and then there are also four different special tiers, and you use progressively higher special tiers to do blade combo routes, and then you have an epic finisher at the final stage of the combo, which adds a orb onto the enemy, which feeds into the very top of the hierarchy with chain attacks and overdrive. there are also other power up mechanics like pneuma call and eye of shining justice, but these dont replace chain attacks or overdrive, whereas chain attacks and overdrive are mutually exclusive to each other.

the game also has another physical debuff combo system, in break topple launch and smash. it is a really cool evolution of the existing break/stagger topple combo in the previous two games, and also was used to balance topple to make it no longer possible to use over and over again. it feels really awesome to use, and the game has intentional synergy with the driver combo and blade combo system. also, the game continues with an additon made in x: break/stagger now flinch the enemy and interrupts whatever action they are doing, which does a LOT to make the games feel more action oriented (after the flinch they resume as normal unless they get toppled)

(oh we forgot to mention X still has topple locking but like it's wayyy funnier in X for so many reasons but also feels more difficult to implement than 1 cuz of the build diversity and upgrade progression.)

you know, 2 sounds way cooler when we write it out like this. god, it honestly has such good bones now that we think about it. sigh

well, yknow, we did think it was really cool! when we played the game for the first time, we actually loved it! the combat system had such a good balance of rpg and action game mechanics and felt really really good to figure out and use and there was so much on the fly strategy that we talked about for X and that we really liked in that game. it also has the build depth that X has and a lot of diversity as a result kinda and also everything was SO MUCH EASIER TO READ THAN X (this actually has a huge effect on making the game feel. like, enemies now have a big prompt on the top of the screen that says the attack they are going to use, which makes attacks feel way more tangible and less abstract and random)

however, 2 plateaus hard, and much faster than the other games. the only reason we never plateaued in our first playthrough, was because the game has shit tutorials, and literally just hides important build information to the player, making finding the broken shit really really hard and criptic. like, special attacks don't have their damage or stats listed anywhere in game, and level 4 specials don't even have any in game information on what they do at all, and a lot of the numbers and language are misleading, and the arts just don't have very basic information like how many times they hit in their stat page, which was present in 1 and X.

the game kinda forces the player to do their own research, although, this isn't really possible through experimentation because of how rigorous testing and awareness has to be. so, research means going online, if you want to actually make use of the build system in a intentional way.

and, nowadays, there are loads of guides online that explain how to use the combat system , and, as there should be, the in game tutorials sometimes literally lie to you. but, they also (sensibly) inform players how to play the game, and, oh my god, this ruins the game, so hard.

like, we just want to point out that the knowledge gap is huge between playing the game normally and looking up guides online, and the way the game is designed definitely feels like you are supposed to have all the information the guides give you. but, having that information very quickly ruins the game's combat.

by about halfway through the game it is difficult for us to continue enjoying the combat system, everything we can do just feels way too powerful for everything else. it isn't like X where you can become really broken but there is still some element of fun in it because of the execution test and the diversity of enemy encounters, in 2, you just kinda, wipe the opponent off the face of the planet and never give them oppurtinity to fight back.

this is primarily because of chain attacks. the game's combat is fundamentally designed around the player doing ever increasing attack tiers and then finishing it with a chain attack, and the chain attacks, are very badly designed !! they are essentially an entirely different blade. you do a level 1 blade special on the first round with any of your three blades, and then a level 2 special on the second round, and then level three specials onwards, until reaching a fullburst, which does a level four special and ends the chain attack. it functions like xc1's chain attack in that it makes you entirely unkillable and also makes the game essentially just executing a pre defined set up. it is a very controlled scenario, and once the chain attack is all set up you really jsut need to hit the right buttons in the right order, since everything thereon is entirely guraunteed.

the game heavily encourages this. there is a lot of dopamine released from being a good puppygirl dolly and following what the game wants you to do. that is really cool how the game can do that, but it, wears off very quickly. it stops bieng fun to pull off because that becomes just the new normal of combat. especially, the game encourages overkill in chain attacks, as well, which is, after killing an enemy, instead of swtiching target like in xenoblade 1, 2's chain attacks keeps the chain attack going on the defeated enemy, to try and get a high score, and this high score multiplies the experience points you get for defeating it, and this is a really important part of the game's progression!

this absolutely ruins the game's pacing and makes it extremely easy to become too strong too fast. chain attacks are slow and methodical and don't have much interesting in them, and are extremely strong and important to combat. once again! chain attacks also entirely negate the game's core combat system. you can't even use arts in a chain attack, it's entirely specials!!

the whole over powered thing could in theory be handled by manual levelling and also using less powerful equipment, but, manual levelling is only unlocked for new game plus, and there is a massive disencentive to use weaker blades. the blades function on a gacha system, and you can't make a existing blade weaker. there are a good amount of "rare blades" in the game, with cool styling and theming and ideas. but, since you can't really make them less strong, you're forced to using randomly generated "common blades", which lose the theming and aesthetic coolness of the rare blades. also, while we're at it, arts just in general feel way more generic and less exciting than X, even for rare blades.

now, i feel some argument could be made not to use chain attacks, and in some ways the game plays a lot better without using them, but it definitely doesn't feel intended, in the main story at least.

2 has like, three kinds of arts, with very little variation between them, and very little exceptions. really, the only thing that separate arts from each other is their frame data and number of hits and damage ratio. on rare occasion they'll have driver combo stuff attached, but that is kinda it. weapons having mostly just the same 3 arts with different names across all the classes in the game means really the only important part about choosing a blade is in what their specials and passive abilities do, which, usually ends up making the game something you win in the menu, like the chain attack.

arts are mostly just a way to feed into specials. and specials have pretty bad gamefeel; they take most control away from the player so that they can watch a long animation, and like, that's actually fine, but most specials still don't do much, and are mostly just there to do blade arts. and you know, specials work really well for the comboes, they have a really good flow when they are used like that

but since they are the most unique attacks you have most of the time, there is a good amount of desire to use them as basic attacks, similar to arts, and this just, feels horrible.

in fact, the unique specials that are core to certain builds' strategies are actually pretty unfun to use because of their long animations where you cant play the game, and because you can't use them whenever you want. they take time to charge up, but also once they are charged up, you need to make sure not to charge them up anymore by using arts, so that you don't accidentally charge it up to the next special level, which is an entirely different special (oftentimes worse!). this means you can't just, i dont know, have monado cyclone, which is a level 2 special, on hand whenever you wanna pop to ruin a enemy group's day. and in that specific example shulk also has a really useful level 1 that is in some fights basically essential, and so using level 2 means not having access to level 1, and shulk also has a pretty bad level 3 that you don't wanna have to use really ever, which encourages you to just spam cyclone whenever you get the charge, or to just, stop using arts entirely, which like, means not playing most of the game again.

in some ways, chain attacks feel like they were meant to be more balanced, but, eeeehhhhh.

now, we did also say this game has overdrive. Yeah. it's more fun than chain attacks, kinda.

overdrive in 2 was added in the dlc, and the core game isn't designed around it like X. infact, basically no mechanic has any special relationship with overdrive, whereas X has all kind of things that directly interact with overdrive in unique ways.

a major reason why X's overdrive is so fun is because the arts in the game fundamentally have really really cool design concepts!! and have cool comboes you can do and the overdrive micro management is cool and fun to try and work out and pull off in the heat of battle while trying to keep an eye on everything. overdrive accentuates the game's existing design philosophy and mechanics really really well. in 2, it doesn't really do that the same, or like, it does in some ways, but not in a meaningfully signficant way.

overdrive also requires using Elma as a blade, which, uh, limits the kind of options you can go into the game with. you could put elma on a computer controlled character, but you need elma in the field to use overdrive, and there is no way of directly controlling the other character to switch their blades.

overdrive is also sloww and just kinda is something you do and is very very like, it's gooood in a tier list sense, right, but it isn't a very fun or interesting mechanic. every time we remember 2 has overdrive we get excited until we try using it and realise that it has none of what makes X's version special. and that kinda sucks, cuz there are so many interesting ideas. (in general, we'd argue the series overcorrected heavily by returning to chain attacks, mostly uncritically, and that the form they currently exist in cannot be balanced. huge shame, and a huge reason why we're writing this)

oh, uh, 2 also reintroduces healers, although now they are formalised and explicit, along with attackers and tanks. honestly, this streamling doesn't feel great. it didn't feel like 1 suffered from a lack of explicitness in its classes. anyways. healers are boring and suck. the game is almost entirely about pure damage output, and there are much better healing options available that don't sacrifice so much potential damage output. how good a weapon class is is based entirely around how much damage potential it has, and healers almost universally have terrible damage, although, it is very funny how huge some of the outliers are in this. probably one of if not the highest DPS blade is technically a healer. although, they are a DLC blade, and the dlc characters are given more freedom to be overpowered, and dont accurately represent the rest of the game.

in addition, even when you try to use them in a lot of situations, healers just stop working at some point, because of how much damage things do to you. which, has the same problem that X's system has, where a lot of potential strategy and tense climatic moments in battle just cannot exist. Combat in 2, at some point, feels like binaries. you either win and follow your flow chart successfully, or you just lose and have to retry. there isn't much in between those two extremes, and so a lot of the potential for interesting strategy and tense exciting moments isn't able to exist. at least, again, at some point in the game. either you do your big damage and win or the enemy one hit kills you.

it's just, like, the game feels extremely overcentralising, and actively discourages the player from engaging with the most fun mechanics. arts are boring, auto attacks are just, auto attacks, all of the unique and interesting stuff encourages you to either play a bad build or to entirely ruin the game's balance and pacing. it has such solid bones, we are so happy we got to have fun with it. but, it relies so heavily on that 1 or 2 time dopamine hit when you finally cash out on your first menu set up based build and get it all working together. that hit feels really cool and its awesome the game can do that, but it, cannot rely on it for the rest of the combat encounters after it stops feeling that way. it just becomes repetitive.

huh, we just thought about something. what if the reason why the game is so poorly balanced is because of how bad the tutorials and in game build information are. that would likely mean playtesters never uncovered how horrifically busted certain options are. it's hard to say, we dont know how good or bad the tutorials are in any other language since we've only played the game in english and frankly do not want to spend another 10-30 hours+ of our lives playing a game that we do not enjoy playing. wait actually can you even play the game in different languages? i think xenoblade 2 is one of the few switch games that only comes with the local copy of it, and doesn't include the other copies released in other locations.

the game's dlc introduced a challenge mode, it's really good.

challenge mode came out a signficant time after the game's release, and seems to have changes within it's trials intentionally designed to make chain attacks less reliable and less powerful. that's actually incredibly cool, and is one of the things that makes us believe that the developers who make the xeno games pay a lot of attention to how people receive their games, and are very very good at taking criticism.

we haven't played challenge mode very much, it's too hard. i think it does sorta highlight how weak and uninteresting the combat is without chain attacks, but there is still a lot going for it that challenge mode helps bring out. the game still does rely on a very binary combat system, though, at least a lot of the time (challenge mode does introduce new mechanics to make it more interesting but it largely remains binary of optimising for pure damage output and never getting hit/taking damage too quick). it absolutely makes the game's combat signficantly more interesting and it existing on its own gives us so much more to talk about since it accentuates things that just wouldn't be relevant or come up in the main game.

the build system sucks. it is clunky and slow like X's, while also now just hiding important information from the player. at least in X the information existed, it just annoying to get to.

probably the reason why we can't play much challenge mode is because we aren't able to figure out what builds it wants from us. we don't know what works well, and everything just feels like more of the same. X also does feel like this but the goals are more clear. what attributes does this enemy like or not like? do they have any status effects that you want to deal with? how does this build handle TP? in challenge mode, everything jusut feels simultaneously the same while also feeling weird, we dont know.

challenge mode also adds cool costumes and also a timer, and the timer at least gives a goal in combat. instead of optimal things just being the strongest, optimal things are now also things that are the fastest and strongest. sometimes this is more interesting, sometimes it's less interesting, but it does work pretty well in a game like xenoblade 2. time attack in an jrpg!!

in an update, or maybe it was in base game i cant remember, 2 also lets unique monsters have a timer appear when you fight them, which does the same thing outside of challenge mode. Would be really cool if they actually put the frame data and hit count on the art screen.

torna

oh by the way this is technically xenoblade 2 dlc except um also its an entire 20 hour game LMAO so we're treating it separately (and theres a lot to say!)

(xenoblade 2 has very very good dlc and waiting around of the updates and additions to roll out every couple months was so awesome. like bro they fucking just added a second game who could've expected that)

torna is basically if xenoblade 2 had combat, but good.

torna reintroduces arts that are actually interesting to use, and instantaneously the potential in 2's combat system comes out. everything just feels so much better to do than in xenoblade 2, almost entirely because arts have a point existing on their own.

there are some fundamental changes with 2's system as well, which feel more minor than making arts meaningful, but do polish it up a lot and make it feel a lot better.

instead of having companion blades that you can't control, you can now actually play as the blades in the exact same capacity as the main party members. in fact, the blades are main party members in torna! in addition, instead of switching blade, you change the character you are controlling.

this makes so much sense from an aesthetic perspective. getting to actually control the cool things the characters do feels good!! and blades are the coolest parts of 2's combat from an aesthetic and theming perspective by far!!

the non blade characters also get to use their own specials now and each party member has their own weapon that can't be switched, like in xenoblade 1. in addition, three party members are grouped together to be one team, and only 1 member of the team can be controlled at a time. the teams can't be rearranged; Jin is always paired with lora, and can't be moved to Hugo's team.

when you aren't controlling a character, the previous active team member does a support role, like blades in base xenoblade 2. this feels so much more organic and honestly fair than how blades work in 2. switching between team members in combat does a switch art, and switch arts have a long cooldown and are unique to each character and have special effects that regular arts rarely have access to.

the way the team composition system works and how rigid it is heavily limits build customisation, but because there are still 9 party members and only three can be actively fighting at a time, there is some cool stuff you can do.

everyone also has a talent art!! these work work pretty differently than talent arts in 1. in torna, talent arts have special effects that can act like a mode switch for a character. minoth's talent art increases damage, but also increases aggro by a larger amount, adam's extends the duration of driver combo effects in exchange for hp (VERY FUNNY (nicovideo, 3 minutes, final boss) )

torna's combat is just so much more exciting!@!

2's combat system feels incredibly setup based and torna resolves this heavily by granting characters far more options and fluidity in combat.

and by far our biggest criticism of torna is that there aren't many unique combat scenarioes and build options are limited.

3

note: we've played 3 and explored its combat system the least by far of any of the games, and we'd like to reaquiant ourselves at some point to finish this more nicely. also, we only got the dlc after we started writing this.

realy interesting that 3 introduces something very X-vibey in the colony strength thing and then just imediateley scraps it after like 2 hours.

in general, 3 moves back closer to X and 1, and is less similar to 2. there are more options in combat, there is a re-re introduction of talent arts, reintroduction of classes like in X, a real time power up in interlinking, reintroduction of sprint that prevents you from attacking while moving. in all honesty, the most exciting parts about watching the xenoblade 3 pre release trailers was finding all the connections with X and gears (we haven't talked about gears on this page cuz its combat is structurally very different, although it does share some themes)

this kinda makes 2 feel like a outlier in the games due to its dramatically different combat system from all the other games. it kinda feels weird how much effort they put into 2's combat system just to throw it away in the next game for something more traditional. Although we think that was probably the right decision.

like in X, mastering classes in 3 lets you use that class's skills and arts even when you are in another class. although, in 3, classes are tied to weapons, and when using these mastered arts, you just momentarily switch weapons for the art and then return to your main class. this means you can mix and match arts from any class without worrying what weapon they use.

3 instead restricts mastered arts and skills by only letting a few predetermined arts and skills being allowed to be used in other classes. to us, this feels like this helps maintain class identities in 3, like, if you want to do the thing a certaiin class is known for, you have to pick that class. the mastered arts and skills are generally a lot more general purpose and less specific.

3 also restricts arts by only letting you use mastered arts from classes that are from the opposing nation of the main class. the swordfighter class is Kevesi, which means you can't set any mastered arts from other kevesi classes while using swordfighter.

this is kinda cool but mainly just makes it kinda annoying cuz you can't actually see your entire art pool very easily. like X, you have to switch your build just to see the rest of your arts. 3 does however auto save your builds of a class even when switching to a different class, and 3 also gives you the ability to save a ton of full party loadouts and quickly switch between them. the full party build save feature should've been in the base game at launch, imo.

anyways. the arts that belong to your current class on your right arts palette, which gives you three out of 5 of your available arts. the left arts palette gives you another 3 slots for all of your mastered arts. also, agnus and keves arts recharge differently. keves use time based cooldowns like 1 and X, and agnus uses auto attack based cooldowns like 2. we think this is cool, we think both cooldown systems have cool aspects to them and we like how they kept both. although, in practice this just means agnus arts recharge faster, and the game isn't balanced around this, so agnus arts are just simply better.

your talent art can be switched to anything you want im pretty sure there are no restrictions once you've mastered a class. which is cool, although talent arts are generally too niche and specific and bad anyways.

in combat, you can do fusion arts, which combines the effects of adjacent left and right palette arts into one animation, and there are some bonuses to doing this. we don't really like this, it kinda just makes it so optimally you basically only have 3 arts at once that just are better than regular arts. actually, since the master arts and skills are mostly just general purpose, the build system in general is kinda limited, and mostly just feels like it puts some busy work in between making an optimal build. also, even though you get to keep all your equipped class's cool arts, since you only have 3 slots in the palette, you can't really do anything cool with your main class.

and, back on talent arts, most of them suck. they have very slow uninterruptible animations, and the attacking ones have very low damage output. multi hitting ones especially have very low dps due to their low damage and long animations. and you can't cancel out of them, unlike regular arts. it kinda feels like they just ported over 2's specials, called them talent arts, and then made no adjustments to fit them into the new combat

the game does have good and exciting builds, but, there are just very few of them. it isn't like X where you get some really cool arts that you can mix and match and are guranteed to be able to find something cool. you first need to find something that probably works well, and then you might be able to find synergy

also, the way we played 3, we constantly switched classes across every character during the story to try and max out classes organically, which 1 and X taught us was a good thing to do! classes in