Xenoblade Chronicles 2
/Why are battles so awful at the start of the game? I get that the battle system is complicated and we want to ease the player into it, but asking the player to essentially press ‘A’ and wait for the battle to end seems like a really good way to lose player interest. Hell, even starting with the knuckles weapon would be an improvement, they are at least much more active looking, and charge arts faster.
Why can I not auto-attack while moving? The battle system puts a lot of emphasis on movement, between attacks with positional requirements, and attacks that spew health potions you need to run and grab, and yet any movement at all results in you sacrificing a lot of auto attack damage- you may even be giving up more damage than you gain, especially at the beginning of the game when your abilities aren’t very strong yet.
Why do I move so slowly in battle? Combined with the previous point, it really exacerbates the movement the game encourages you to do. It’s not uncommon for a health potion to spawn so far away that you take more damage running to get it than it heals you for, and that’s if it doesn’t despawn before you get there.
Is there really no better option than holding R and pressing Y or A in order to change which enemy you’re targeting? Even just tapping L to cycle through enemies would be really nice. The button already does nothing, and it’s not like cycle left vs right is an important distinction- most people are just going to go 1 direction until they hit the target they want anyways.
The way drops pop out of enemies and chests and collection points is pretty neat, and evocative of the satisfaction a lot of mobile games have perfected. But then you have to run and pick them up, and the name displays in place, and chances are you have to rotate the camera back to see what you even got. Why can’t this just be displayed in a static place on screen, so you can actually read it?
Why are voice lines played so frequently in battle? Surely not all of these lines are actually important- would it be that hard to have some kind of filter in place that prevents low priority lines from playing so frequently, so that they don’t obscure actually important sounds, like ability shouts? I like the voice out of battle, I’d rather keep them on than have to silence all voices because battles are dumb.
Why is it that this game has this massively convoluted combo system, and yet, the amount of feedback it gives on any singular part of it is so awful. I feel like I can’t tell when I can perform a special combo, or when a special combo has succeeded, or just about anything, really.
Why is it that in battle, your 3 main arts have their name and a brief description displayed, but your current special does not? Am I just meant to memorize what all 4 levels of “fire” do? For every blade, for every character?
Why is the base inventory screen so barren? It’s just a line of buttons in the middle of the screen. Surely there is some amount of information, or even just a pretty picture you can put here. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of white space, but there’s a reason 99% of RPGs will show your party on this screen.
Why can I not take an item out of my pouch? You have this system where you put a consumable in your pouch to trigger a buff, and when the time expires, the pouch will automatically restock itself. So what if I don’t want it to? What if I don’t want to waste my +5% hp while I’m running around town? You don’t have much ability to micromanage here, this whole mechanic is just super clumsy if you aren’t willing to invest in tons of consumables. There isn’t even a convenient timer or bar to see when your buff will expire.
When swapping arts, why is it X to select an art, and then A to swap it? It seems pretty standard for the button used to initiate a swap action is typically the one to execute the actual swap, that is what my muscle memory naturally wants to do.
Why can I not see my bonus exp anywhere? It’s not on the character screen, where I see exp to next level- it looks a whole lot like you can’t tell how much you have to spend until you’ve already committed to staying at the inn.
Why is bonus exp even in the game? I could understand if it was a singular pool you use to apply to the characters you want to level up, but it seems like every character earns their own individual bonus exp. So why would you ever not spend it? It’s just exp you have to pay to use, as if the rewards from completing quests didn’t feel insignificant enough already.
When applying my bonus exp, why do I not get to manually apply the exp with some kind of slider? I can choose how many levels to grant, but not how much exp. Plus, there’s literally 0 “juice” to this process. Leveling up should have fanfare, this is just so clinical.
Why is it that if you press X to go to the skip travel menu, there’s no way to go to the inventory from there? It seems pretty likely that people would accidentally press X instead of +, or maybe they actually want to go directly to the inventory from there. Skip Travel is already INSIDE THE INVENTORY MENU, why do I have to go all the way out and then back in again?
On that note, why is the inventory button farther away than the skip travel button? Not only is it the menu you are likely to use more often, but it’s also the standard that the inventory is almost always accessed with the top face button (y/triangle/etc)
There should really be better communication to the player what each affinity skill does. It can be a bit hard to tell what abilities are passive, what each different colour icon means, when any of these things you are unlocking are even useful. I don’t think any of this is outlined anywhere, you just have to figure it out.
When equipping accessories, why does the description field display even when the player isn’t actively selecting an accessory? It makes no sense for this description to be there if the player can’t see what item the description actually belongs to.
If you have active objective markers, they are always displayed on the compass. This means that for most of the angles the player can actually look at, they will be clamped on the far left or far right. This can be pretty disorienting, since it makes it such that running towards the the icon isn’t effective unless it’s right in front of you. You’re better off just watching the distance to see when the numbers are going down.
Why is it that the “compass” doesn’t even have the cardinal directions on it? There’s literally no way to tell which direction you’re going unless you look at the minimap- which you can toggle off.
Why are there basically no icons displayed on the minimap? The amount of info it actually gives is pretty meagre, especially in the small view. It would be really nice if it displayed at least a clamped objective marker for your currently active quest. At least then you could tell what way you need to go, and then you wouldn’t need to look at the useless compass.
Why is the fastest way to see a “proper” map of the area pressing X → Selecting my area → Selecting my sub area? I suppose it’s because this is the “skip travel” menu and not the “map” menu, but they decided to combine the 2 for some reason, and it results in the map just being really shitty
As if that wasn’t bad enough, it doesn’t even show you what sub area you are currently in. Which, you wouldn’t think would be that big a problem, if the maps actually flowed together better.
When you are finally looking at the actual map, why is there no way to scroll it around. You just have a fixed screen. Everything is fit into the screen, but it’s awkward to not be able to readjust. If anything, maps usually work by the cursor being static in the middle and the map moving around it.
The icons and tabs displayed on the map screen are kind of useless. You can kind of tell what they are, but it would be nice if there was at least some kind of label when you highlight a new tab, even if it just popped up for a moment.
If you highlight something on the map screen, you get no feedback. Nothing pops up to tell you what it is, the cursor just kind of snaps to it. It’s just, a thing, that exists, in this place. Isn’t that interesting!
If you find something on the map screen that you want to move towards, you don’t have much ability to do so. You can’t place a waypoint on it or anything to help you track it in the game world, the best you can do is note what direction it is, and then try and walk in that direction (again, sure would be nice if the compass had cardinal directions on it)
Why is it that when you die in Tiger Tiger, it just automatically takes you out of the game? Surely the most common reaction to dying is to want to go again, can I not at least have a “try again?” prompt, instead of forcing me to wait for the world to load in again → re-activate Tiger Tiger → watch the opening animation every time.
Why don’t exchange stores have a money display? The whole point of these stores is to exchange collectibles for money, so does it not follow that you should be able to see where your money is actually at?
Just about every quest has more steps than seems right. It’s extremely common to do some busywork task, and return only to be told to go do something else. As a result you really end up feeling unrewarded, and you have to invest a lot more into quests that, very often don’t give you enough substance to make you want to be invested. Why not just make each leg an individual quest, so you’re at least rewarded for each step?
Everything in the game seems to have so much health- even random bugs or birds take slivers of damage from special attacks and combos. The result is battles take a very long time for a relatively very small reward. Why would I fight anything I don’t need to?
Was it really the best idea to put blades inside of loot boxes? I get the appeal of each run being different, and I get rare blades being legitimately rare and exciting, but it feels so contrived in a single player game. Good blades are rare enough that I honestly loathe opening cores, so they just sit there unopened.
Of course it doesn’t help that opening each one takes so damn long. Part of the animation is skippable, but the unskippable bit takes a good 20 seconds every core. People farming for rare blades can easily open 100+ cores in one go, and that alone is more than 30 minutes in just the unskippable animations.
There’s nowhere near enough feedback concerning high level enemies who patrol around. Even something 5 levels above you can spell your doom in the early game, and it seems like there’s high level birds and unique monsters of all descriptions roaming all over this game with no good way to know they are coming, especially considering how long battles against not-overlevelled-enemies can take.