Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is an action role-playing game released in 2017 for the Nintendo Switch. It was developed by Monolith Soft and published by Nintendo. This game is the third in the Xenoblade Chronicles series and the sixth main game in the Xeno series. It was released on December 1, 2017. Development began shortly after the release of Xenoblade Chronicles X in 2014. Key developers from earlier games, including franchise creator Tetsuya Takahashi and directors Koh Kojima and Genki Yokota, returned for this project. The team aimed to create a story-focused game similar to the original Xenoblade Chronicles. The game was announced in 2017 and released worldwide that same year. Nintendo of Europe handled the localization for the game.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 shares similarities with earlier games but introduces a new summoning mechanic. It has a different setting and characters compared to the first Xenoblade Chronicles and returns to a story-driven approach, unlike Xenoblade Chronicles X, which focused more on gameplay and open-world exploration. The game takes place in Alrest, a world covered by a sea of clouds. Humans live on and inside giant living creatures called Titans. Some people, known as Drivers, can summon powerful beings called Blades from crystals. After being hired for a salvaging mission, a young salvager named Rex meets a legendary Blade named Pyra. Rex becomes her Driver and promises to take her to a fabled paradise called Elysium. Throughout their journey, Rex and his group are chased by Torna, an organization that seeks Pyra’s power for its own purposes.
The game received mostly positive reviews for its story, characters, themes, combat, music, environments, and scale. However, it was criticized for its gacha system, maps, tutorials, and technical issues. By December 2020, the game had sold over two million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling title in the Xeno series and Monolith Soft’s most successful game. Downloadable content was released throughout 2018, including a story-focused expansion called Torna – The Golden Country, which was released in September 2018. This expansion is set 500 years before the main game and introduces new gameplay features. A sequel, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, was released in July 2022.
Gameplay
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is an action role-playing game. Like earlier games, the player controls one of three characters in a party. The game has an open world and includes a day-and-night cycle that influences events, such as quests, enemy strength, and item availability. Unlike the first two games, which took place in one connected world, this game is set on multiple large creatures called Titans. Players can move between Titans using fast travel.
Characters in the party can control other beings called Blades. Up to three Blades can be active at once, and this determines the character's class. The game’s Blades and skills are based on eight elements: Fire, Water, Wind, Ice, Electric, Earth, Light, and Dark. There are 40 unique Rare Blades in the base game, with 11 available through downloadable content and New Game Plus. Most Blades are not required to complete the main story. Some examples include KOS-MOS and T-ELOS from the Xenosaga series. A special mode called Challenge Mode, added through downloadable content, includes Blades from other Xenoblade games, such as Shulk and Fiora from Xenoblade Chronicles and Elma from Xenoblade Chronicles X.
The game’s battle system is action-based. The player controls the main character in real time, while other party members automatically attack when enemies are nearby. Each character has skills called "Arts" that can attack or cause effects like slowing enemies. Both players and enemies have limited health points, which decrease when attacked. A battle is won when all enemies lose their health, but is lost if the player’s health runs out and cannot be revived. Health can be restored using healing Arts during battles or regenerates automatically outside of battles. Winning battles gives experience points, which improve characters as they level up. Players also earn Skill Points to upgrade abilities and Weapon Points to strengthen their Arts. If a battle is lost, the party is revived at the last visited Landmark. Repeated use of Arts allows special moves called Blade Specials. Using Blade Specials in a specific order creates a Blade Combo that deals heavy damage and disables an enemy’s ability. A Driver Combo requires the party to apply four status effects in order: Break, Topple, Launch, and Smash. Completing a Driver Combo causes massive damage and makes enemies drop items. Combining a Driver Combo and Blade Combo at the same time creates a Fusion Combo, which increases damage and enhances the Blade Combo’s effects.
A "Party Gauge" fills as party members attack. When full, the player can perform a Chain Attack, where characters take turns attacking. Chain Attacks can be made stronger by destroying elemental Orbs left by Blade Specials, which adds more damage and gives an extra attack round. The gauge slowly decreases outside of battles, and one level is used to revive fallen characters. An "aggro ring" around a character shows that enemies are focusing on them due to attacks, adding a strategic element to directing enemy attention.
The player controls one of the Drivers in the party, who uses a Blade’s weapon to automatically attack and perform Arts. Pressing an Art button during an auto-attack allows the player to cancel the auto-attack’s animation and use the Art immediately. After a short wait, the Driver can switch Blades. Each Blade gives the Driver different Arts, based on the Blade’s weapon type and the Driver’s abilities.
Plot
The game takes place in a fictional world called Alrest, where a sea covered by clouds, known as the Cloud Sea, is home to giant creatures called Titans. Humans live on these Titans. According to legends, humans once lived on top of the World Tree, a huge tree at the center of Alrest, in a paradise called Elysium with their creator, the Architect. However, they were banished for unknown reasons and given the Titans to live on. Blades are powerful beings summoned from Core Crystals. They use a force called Ether to power their weapons. The people who control Blades are called Drivers. If a Driver dies, their Blade returns to a Core Crystal and forgets its memories. Over time, another Driver can awaken the Blade if the Core Crystal is still intact. Because of the strong spiritual connection between a Driver and their Blade, the Blade’s personality is shaped by the Driver’s personality. Two nations, Mor Ardain and Uraya, are on the edge of war throughout the story.
The main character is Rex (Japanese: Hiro Shimono; English: Al Weaver), who is the Driver of the Aegis, a powerful and legendary Blade. The Aegis has two personalities, Pyra and Mythra (Japanese: Shino Shimoji; English: Skye Bennett). These two personalities share the same thoughts but have different abilities. Rex, an orphan, grew up in Fonsett Village on the Leftherian Archipelago, a place with many Titans that are close together and connected by bridges and other structures. Rex became very familiar with the Cloud Sea and worked as a salvager, collecting parts found beneath it. He has a close relationship with Azurda, a Titan he calls "Gramps," on whom he lived for part of his life. A group of Drivers called Torna seeks to destroy the Aegis, forcing Rex and his group to escape and search for a way to reach the World Tree. Other important characters include Malos, another Aegis and the main antagonist; Jin, a Blade from Torna who helps Malos; Nia, a rebel from Torna and her Blade Dromarch; Tora, a Nopon who creates artificial Blades and his Blade Poppi; Mòrag, a feared Driver from Mor Ardain and her Blade Brighid; and Zeke, the prince of the hermit country of Tantal and his Blade Pandoria.
The downloadable content "Torna – The Golden Country" adds a new story set 500 years before the game’s events. It follows Lora and her Blade Jin, as well as their allies, in their battle against Malos in Torna, a country not accessible in the main game.
Rex, an orphaned salvager who collects treasure from beneath the Cloud Sea for money, is hired by Argentum Trade Guild Chairman Bana to help Drivers Jin, Malos, and Nia, who are part of a group called Torna, salvage an ancient ship. Inside the ship, they find Pyra, a legendary Blade known as the Aegis. When Rex tries to touch Pyra’s sword, Jin fatally stabs him. Rex awakens in a field with Pyra, who tells him they are in a memory of Elysium, the paradise where Pyra once lived. She asks Rex to take her to Elysium and gives him half of her Core Crystal to revive him. With help from his Titan companion Azurda and Nia, who has left Torna, Rex escapes to the Titan Gormott. However, Azurda is injured and reverts to his larval stage. Soon after, they arrive in Gormott’s capital, Torigoth, and are joined by the Nopon Driver Tora and his artificial Blade Poppi. The group tries to reach Elysium but is stopped by the artifice Ophion and swallowed by the Titan Uraya.
After escaping Uraya’s stomach by defeating the mercenary Driver Vandham, Rex begins to see Vandham as a mentor. The group later learns that Jin and Malos are the leaders of Torna, a terrorist group named after a Titan destroyed during the Aegis War 494 years ago. Jin is a bitter veteran Blade from the Aegis War, and Malos is later revealed to be the other Aegis. Together, they aim to destroy humanity by unleashing the artifice Aion on Elysium. During a battle with Malos and another Torna member, Akhos, Vandham is killed, and Pyra reveals her true form, Mythra. Pyra and Mythra share the same memories and consider themselves sisters, switching between forms as needed.
The group’s search for a way past Ophion leads them to join forces with Mòrag, a special inquisitor of Mor Ardain and the elder sister of the Ardainian Emperor, Niall, and Zeke, the prince of Tantal. In Tantal, the group battles Jin, who forces Pyra to surrender. While Azurda leads the group to find the third Aegis sword to save Pyra, Malos steals Pyra’s power to regain his strength. After the group finds the third sword, phantoms of Pyra’s former Driver nearly kill Rex, but he is judged worthy of the sword. The group confronts Jin and Malos at the Cliffs of Morytha, where Rex unlocks Pyra and Mythra’s true form, Pneuma. Rex, now able to match Jin’s power, forces Malos to summon Ophion, who knocks the group into Morytha, the ruined land beneath the Cloud Sea.
In Morytha, the group must work with a weakened Jin. Malos’ Driver, Amalthus, attacks by controlling Titans. The group cuts Amalthus’ connection to the Titans, but he kills all Torna members except Malos and Jin, with Jin defeating Amalthus before he dies. The group arrives in Elysium, which is revealed to be a long-dead wasteland, and meets the Architect, a scientist named Klaus. Klaus explains that he discovered a device called the Conduit, which sends objects to different dimensions. The use of the Conduit split his body in two and destroyed the old world.
When Klaus senses his other half is about to die, which will kill him, he sends the group to stop Malos, who was corrupted by Amalthus’s malice and has obtained Aion. After Malos is defeated and dies, Klaus dies but gives Rex and the group a "final gift." Klaus’s death causes Elysium to collapse. Pneuma helps the group escape but sacrifices herself to destroy the World Tree, stopping its debris from harming Alrest. The group survives when Azurda, helped by Pneuma, returns to his adult form and flies everyone back to Alrest. When they return, the Cloud Sea fades, revealing a renewed world where the Titans merge to form a new landmass. Pyra and Mythra are revived in separate bodies and reunite with Rex.
Development
The game was created for the Nintendo Switch by Monolith Soft and is the third game in the Xenoblade Chronicles series. It follows the original Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles X. Development started in July 2014, while Xenoblade Chronicles X was still being made. The first Xenoblade Chronicles had a story-driven structure typical of JRPGs, but Xenoblade Chronicles X focused more on missions and exploring a large open world with less emphasis on story. The development team was not happy when fans criticized these changes and decided to make a new story-driven game. Because the gameplay was similar to the first game, they named it Xenoblade Chronicles 2. This game took less time to develop than earlier games, but the beginning was difficult because the technical details of the Nintendo Switch were not yet finalized. The structure of Xenoblade Chronicles X was reused to help speed up development. Another reason for making the game early was an agreement with Nintendo to release it during the early stages of the Nintendo Switch's release.
One of Monolith Soft’s goals was to give characters more facial expressions than in past Xenoblade games. Masatsugu Saito, the lead character designer, was chosen for this task because he had not designed characters for a video game before. The developers wanted the main characters to look more expressive, like in anime, instead of the more realistic style used in earlier games. Square Enix artist Tetsuya Nomura designed characters for the Torna organization. Takahashi, the game’s director, wanted to work with Nomura but was unsure if he could because Nomura was busy with other projects. To his surprise, Square Enix agreed to let Nomura work as a guest artist. Other guest artists, such as Kunihiko Tanaka and Soraya Saga, helped design Blades, which are weapon-like creatures. Tanaka created a Blade version of KOS-MOS, a character from the Xenosaga trilogy. The story was written by Takahashi with help from screenwriters Yuichiro Takeda and Kazuho Hyodo. Takeda, who also worked on the previous Xenoblade games, said the writing process for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was similar to making a movie. Although it is a sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles, the game has a new world and new characters.
The game’s music was composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, Kenji Hiramatsu, Manami Kiyota, and the group ACE (Tomori Kudo and Hiroyo Yamanaka). Mitsuda, who managed the audio budget and music production, was invited to the project in December 2014 by Takahashi. Over the next year, Mitsuda and Takahashi met many times to plan the music, eventually inviting ACE and Hiramatsu, who had worked on the first Xenoblade Chronicles. During these meetings, each composer’s role was decided: ACE handled music for open-world exploration, and Hiramatsu handled battle music. Mitsuda said the team wanted to honor the style of the first Xenoblade Chronicles and avoid disappointing fans. The music involved over 300 musicians and 20,000 sheets of music. Mitsuda called it his largest project, with music files reaching over one terabyte in size. The game has about 120 music tracks, with 25 of them composed by Mitsuda.
The soundtrack includes performances by the Bratislava Symphony Choir from Slovakia and the Irish choir Anúna. Mitsuda, who had wanted to work with Anúna since the 1990s, said their performances made him emotional. Two tracks, including the ending theme written by Mitsuda, were sung by Jennifer Bird of the English duo Tomorrow Bird. Before recording, Mitsuda and Bird communicated to ensure she could express the characters’ emotions through her singing. During recording, Bird added improvised musical elements, which was unusual for Mitsuda’s compositions.
Release
The game was announced in January 2017 as part of Nintendo's detailed introduction of the Nintendo Switch, with a gameplay trailer released on the same day. Similar to the original Xenoblade, the title was called Xenoblade 2 in Japan but had "Chronicles" added to its name in English-speaking areas. The game was also shown during Nintendo's E3 2017 presentation, where it was confirmed for release by the end of 2017.
Like the original Xenoblade Chronicles, Nintendo's European team handled the English translation of the game. This team worked closely with Nintendo's Japanese and American teams to make decisions that might be controversial, a problem that occurred with Xenoblade Chronicles X. Unlike the first two games, the translation process happened during development instead of after, allowing the game to launch worldwide on December 1, 2017, at the same time. A few days before the game's release, Nintendo posted a promotional music video featuring a song from the game, "Shadow of the Lowlands," by Mitsuda. The video includes a performance by Anúna and was filmed and directed by Michael McGlynn, the group's leader. An official soundtrack with over 100 tracks was released in both physical and digital formats on May 23, 2018. Additional content, such as new items, quests, recruitable Blades, and a challenge battle mode, was added through an expansion pass released throughout 2018. New story-based content, Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country, was released digitally as part of the expansion pass on September 14, 2018, and as a separate retail version the following week.
A costume based on Rex was added to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild a few weeks before the game's launch. Characters from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 were considered for inclusion as playable fighters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s initial lineup but were not chosen due to timing issues, as director Masahiro Sakurai said the game was announced too late in the development of Ultimate. Pyra and Mythra were later added as a 2-in-1 fighter through downloadable content in March 2021, along with a new stage and music tracks. Although Rex was considered, Sakurai said it was not possible to control both Rex and the other characters at the same time, similar to the Ice Climbers. Rex was instead used in supporting roles in Pyra and Mythra’s moveset.
Reception
Some critics described the initial reveal of the game as "unexpected," with Jeremy Parish of USGamer comparing it positively to Chrono Cross. At the Gamescom event in August 2017, the game received early praise from gaming sites, which highlighted its simplified combat system and environments.
Upon release, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 received "generally favorable reviews" according to Metacritic, which gave it an overall score of 83% based on 93 reviews. The game's story, characters, combat system, soundtrack, amount of content, and the beauty and size of the environments were widely praised. John Rairdin of Nintendo World Report called the game "one of the finest JRPGs of the generation and perhaps of all time" and praised the music, the variety of the world, the engaging combat, and the compelling storyline. He also believed it might be the best JRPG for the Switch. Game Revolution's Jason Faulkner called the game "a joy to review," noting its sense of wonder, exploration, and character development. Hiroshi Noguchi of IGN Japan gave a positive review, stating it "offers a timeless tale of adventure and an incredibly deep battle system." Alex Fuller of RPGamer supported the game enthusiastically, saying it "capped off 2017 as one of the greatest years in RPG history."
Nadia Oxford of USgamer stated that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 "captures nearly everything that made the first game great, borrows the best elements from Chronicles X, and improves on many aspects." She praised the game's story, which explores themes such as patriotism, war, environmental decline, and the challenges faced by ordinary people. She also noted the game's exploration and the richness of its world. GamesTM called the game "the apex of open-world design," with exploration compensating for minor issues.
Leif Johnson of IGN praised the game as a "standout RPG" with a compelling story, combat, and exploration over at least 70 hours of gameplay in a varied and rich world. However, he mentioned some frustrations, such as a confusing minimap. Shubhankar Parijat of GamingBolt called it "a must-play for all Nintendo Switch owners" and praised its vast world, complex story, and intricate combat, though he noted some design flaws and lack of polish.
However, the game also faced criticism. Jason Schreier of Kotaku gave a negative review, calling it "dull, dreary, overly complicated, and unconcerned with wasting the player's time." He criticized the writing, technical issues, pacing, and gameplay, which he found overly complex. He also criticized the story but praised the music and environments. Noguchi of IGN Japan noted issues with unclear mechanics and bugs at launch but expected improvements from early patches. Jed Pressgrove of Slant Magazine criticized the game's many tutorials, which he felt distracted from the experience. He did praise the soundtrack. Harold Goldberg of The Washington Post found the gameplay "intricate and unfriendly," calling it difficult to access the game's potential.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 won awards for excellence at the 2019 Japan Game Awards and the 2018 Famitsu Awards. It was also nominated for "Best RPG" at IGN's Best of 2017 Awards and for game engineering at the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewer Awards in 2018.
The game sold nearly 98,000 copies in its first week in Japan and 168,000 after a month. In the United Kingdom, it debuted at number 19 overall, which was 9 places higher than Xenoblade Chronicles X. In the United States, it charted at number 16 for December. Within a month, the game sold over a million copies worldwide.
By April 2018, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 became the best-selling game in the Xeno franchise and the best-selling game of Monolith Soft. In September 2018, Takahashi stated the game "exceeded my expectations" and noted strong sales in North America and Europe. An interview with 4Gamer revealed the game sold 1.73 million units worldwide by March 2019. The 2023 CESA Games White Papers reported that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 sold 2.70 million units worldwide as of December 31, 2022.