LogFAQs > #966976299

shipwreckers posted...

The western censorship didn't help XCX either.

I don't think too many people actually based their purchasing decision off of what percentage of a 12-year-old girl's buttcheeks you could see in half a dozen optional costumes. As much as a handful of people got really upset over the censorship for the principle of the matter, I'd be very, very surprised if it had a measurable impact on the game's sales. The WiiU's low install base was pretty much entirely responsible for limiting the game's sales.

Though, that said, X sold almost as many copies as XC1 did on Wii (840k vs 913k). 1 has since eclipsed that (560k on 3DS, 1.52 million on Switch), but as far as the initial releases went, they saw similar sales. Now, that's despite NoA doing everything they could to pretend 1 didn't exist (DE really was the first release where they actually made an effort to sell it to people), while X was actually promoted, but again, the WiiU's install base held it back. Quite a few people wanted to buy it, but didn't want to buy a WiiU just for it.

shipwreckers posted...

Somehow that "filler" was bearable to me

It really only bothered me leading into the chapter where Skells were unlocked and the chapter where the flight module became available. X really wasn't story-driven so much as the game was about exploring and building up the world of Mira, so most of the time I was pretty happy to just explore and do side quests and fit the story missions into that as felt natural. The affinity missions were a bit more of an issue because grinding affinity sucked (especially where swapping party members to do so was such a pain, so cycling through everyone regularly wasn't overly attractive), but overall, it wasn't too bad.

With Torna, though, I wanted to do all the sidequests and stuff (and eventually did), but when I wanted to get the story first out of the way in case I ran out of time, that got really annoying. I liked the sidequesting well enough, and I understand the push for "Look at all the friends you made and then murdered!" to help flesh out the world and drive home just how tragic the whole situation was, but the community level requirements were just a bit too high to flow naturally with my approach to sidequesting. At the same time, though, they didn't take that long, so the padding wasn't a huge problem even with my desire to rush through the story.

shipwreckers posted...

The story hit hard indeed. IMO, it gave some much needed context as to why Mythra was the way she was (as opposed to her simply being another distant / emo JRPG trope girl).

I'd say that context was already there, since it was pretty well explained what happened in the Aegis War and they were pretty clear about why Pyra existed (namely, as Mythra's dissociative trauma response), but it was cool to see it happen, build attachments to all of the characters that were affected, and watch them and the world develop into their future selves. Most of XC2's story progression (once it finally starts progressing for real) consists of building up the world to explain the motivations of the characters involved, and that world/character-building gets really quite interesting once it gets rolling, so more of that was great. Hugo's death hit me particularly hard. Despite only seeing the character for a short time, they did a really good job of communicating just how important a person he was in everyone's life. Between Addam sobbing as he held his body and the Special Inquisitor trembling silently as he accepted the core crystals, it was made heart-breakingly clear how much of a loss his death was for the people around him, and that's just good world-building.

streamofthesky posted...

It has the gameplay that XC2 main game should've had.

Eh, I don't think I'd say that. Stacking up orbs for a big chain attack was much, much smoother than in the base game (although Orb Master is a thing if that's the route you want to take), but in turn, that meant things revolved a little too much around doing that, unlike the much larger array of options the base game gives. Driver combos were kind of awkward, especially with such high Break resist on most of the enemies you'd actually want a Fusion bonus on, so relatively few Art Recharge pouch items (and the ones that are available are very lategame, unlike being able to buy Narcipear Jelly 20 seconds after taking control of Rex), and the combos being tied to Switch Arts for so many. It was still a great time, but I wouldn't say it was unilaterally better than the base game (though I say this not having done a particularly deep dive into endgame combat like I did with the base game, so my experience may be lacking).