Probably the single biggest factor that keeps me coming back to the Xeno series is how ambitious the games are. Xenogears and Xenosaga never got to finish their stories, but the sheer scale of what they were trying to convey left a huge impression on me.

Then there's Xenoblade Chronicles, a game which was incredibly ambitious in the scale of the world it let you explore, as well as the degree to which the battle mechanics interweaved with the narrative. The scale of the story itself was smaller, but in exchange felt more complete

Xenoblade Chronicles X continued the trend that XBC1 set and tipped the scale even further in the direction of depth of open world and battle mechanics, creating a beautiful, immersive world you can easily drop hundreds of hours into.

However, that world and the insane number of sidequests and things to level up may have come at the cost of the main narrative throughline, which was sparse compared to other Xeno entries.

When I think about Xenoblade Chronicles 2, though, nothing particularly stands out to me as being ambitious — except maybe the graphics, which are hands-down the best the Xeno series has ever seen.

The story/world balance returned to something more similar to XBC1, and it felt "safe". While it was fun and did have some narrative tricks up its sleeve that left me reeling, it didn't really feel like it did much to try and tread new ground.

I don't really know where this thread is going, lol. I guess I just wanted to try to work through some thoughts I was having about the Xeno series, and why I have some mixed feelings about XBC2. I definitely don't want to just shit on it, even though that's how it might sound.