59 - Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Switch 2017) - BEAT - Well this was a doozy. Over 90 hours put in with more likely to come and I gotta say that this game is a wonderful time. I wasn't someone that liked the previous two games, I thought they had a lot of issues that couldn't keep me playing, but this streamlined the entire experience, making it more engaging, the progression being far better handled, and it never felt like I was being overburdened by the systems and questing. Fantastic music, some fun characters, a great world, I haven't enjoyed a JRPG this much in awhile, the last one being Final Fantasy XV, but that had so many problems, it was a tough enjoyment.
This game does have a few issues, like the performance in battles isn't great, where it does this thing to salvage the framerate by I think either dropping the games quality, or anti-aliasing, or something, but it really shows they were stretching what the Switch could handle, but that's par for the course with the Xenoblade games. They've never ran super well lol Also the UI isn't really great, they did a tiny patch to tweak the map, but it's still a bad map, and the minimap is supposed to be improved later, but yeah, that's down the road. Also I'd say there's pretty bad writing going on. It's not constant, but like you'll get these moments that make you groan or clearly state something they knew before, and it's all very tropey, which sometimes is endearing, but also Japanese writers have been doing this shit for years and they really need to try and improve. Also the Gachapon-esque crystals are frustrating. At least they aren't lootboxes with microtransactions, but I spent 90 hours in this game and still have like 10 of them to unlock. Lucky to get one Blade in at least 20 to 30 crystals, rare and common. I've used 3 or 4 Legendary ones and didn't get a single unique Blade. Just did my 5th one, got a unique blade, but these legendary ones are hard to come by. Not great odds.
That's all really nitpicky though. It's honestly in my Top 3 this year with Breath of the Wild, and Super Mario Odyssey. I mean, wow. Three games from one system, a new one, on top of a good year for gaming in general (That is if we don't include the great lows in gaming this year lol)? I still have more to do in this game as I actually want to try and get all the blades and complete as much as I can as there are still some quests leftover, at least a dozen blades to get, I'm nearly done with the Merc Missions, so I'll probably spend at least another 5 to 10 hours trying to finish up anything.
*EDIT*
And this is likely the last game of the year for me unless I'm surprised with something for Christmas. My total for games is...48 games beat or were endless/multiplayer games that I put a minimum of 10 hours into. I abandoned 11 games. Overall my best year so far. Next year I won't be buying as many games, so unlikely to get back to this number, though I already have a few ports I bought cheap that I'll be playing next year. Maybe I'll try and do more smaller titles, dig through some of these random games I've collected over the years through freebies and humble bundles.
