This week I played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 which I started a while ago. Compared to the first one which I did not like at all, both story and gameplay are a huge improvement. I actually am interested in the characters now and the combat is pretty fun, altho I still haven’t had a chance to experiment much with it.

I have however a few minor complaints: the blade gacha is a terrible concept and I can’t understand why it was put in the game; on handheld, performance is generally good but the graphics are ruined by a really strong sharpening filter; Pyra’s outfit is dumb and doesn’t fit the character.

I’m also playing Chants of Sennarr and it’s really good! I especially liked the design of the first three languages. The artstye is also really nice.

I’m back to Trails of Cold Steel 2. It is better than the first one. It still feels a bit like padding but it doesn’t feel as pointless. The game structure doesn’t feel as formulaic and repetitive, there’s less quests and it moves much quicker. The characters also finally look different from eachother, as they are no longer in uniform.

The issues tho are still mostly the same: the combat is a downgrade from the Crossbell game (the orbment system in Cold Steel is basically materia from FF7, instead of the much more interesting previous implementation) and I don’t care about any of these characters as they barely have a personality (I blame this on the social link-style mechanics and bloated cast).