Last Game You Finished And Your Four-ghts

That "special power" she has too, didn't really add anything to the story or the game overall. It felt shoehorned in.

It's still a great game. I still own the original on Wii, and got pretty far into it (to the Hidden Village, I think). I decided I'd get it again because on a purely surface level it looked a lot better (see the screenshots above) and I knew there had been some quality of life improvements, so I thought maybe, just maybe, I'd actually finish it this time. And I did!

The main thing that sticks out about XC1 is how successfully it delivers its story and how well-done its dialogue and exposition are. Tonally it is quite different from most JRPGs I've played. For example, while there are typical tropes (the protagonist is in love with the pretty lady and needs to rescue her slash get revenge; the mysterious magic man who advises the party is possibly untrustworthy; everyone has a comically big weapon) the focus is more on spinning a good yarn rather than hamming things up too much. Something that, from the few hours I've played of it, XC2 does not achieve (anime ladies with their baps out almost immediately).

I like the main characters. Shulk isn't as obnoxious as your typical protagonist, I don't think - they saved that for his best friend Reyn, but he is also a lovable meathead who shouts 'allez oop' every time he jumps and who I made run around in tiny pants for the whole game because I could. Sharla is a bit of a non-character for a while but the stand-off against Face Mechon Gadolt (and the sort-of developing romance between her and Reyn conflicting with it) made her a bit more interesting. Melia saved everyone else multiple times by blasting fuck out of enemies with ether when things got nasty and had a truly terrible time of things (I mean, almost all of her loved ones die), so was arguably the most interesting character - but they still decided to force in a weird and dull implied attraction to Shulk when we knew he only had eyes for Fiora. Riki was comic relief who was relied on probably just enough to stop him from being a colossal pain in the arse. Dunban was bland but with motive and morals, so who was ultimately pretty solid. And finally, Fiora was a pretty good character - turning her into a Mechon was a cool, kind of unforgiving twist - but she only came into her own pretty late into the game, and at the end just becomes a Homs again anyway! Boring.

My only proper gripe with the game is that the pacing goes a bit to shit in the later parts. I think that's why I didn't persist with it first time around. Once you get through Galahad Fortress, face off against the Mechon and fall to the ground in Mechonis, when Fiora joins the team, everything just slows down a little bit too much. Meeting the Machina is a cool twist that I didn't see coming, and then travelling up the Mechonis itself is quite cool in theory (the sense of setting and scale is brilliant)... but it drags. And by the time I got to Agniratha, I was bored of battles, so I turned it onto Casual Mode so I could just keep on going to the end. (Casual Mode just makes everything easier to beat. You still fight the same and get all the same rewards - it just speeds things up, and is ideal if you want to focus more on the story.)

That said, the story was good enough that I wanted to persist. And it all kind of made sense - it's really common in RPGs, particularly JRPGs, to have to put a lot of stuff down to suspension of disbelief and just accepting what's been spoon fed to you, but I feel like everything kind of made sense right up until the end and all the questions that had come to mind about 'who was that guy? why did they do that? what was the point?' were mostly answered. There were a couple of points that weren't that satisfying (not totally sold on Alvis and his roles, full stop; and why did everyone just immediately forgive Egil for everything he did?) but all in all, I was impressed. The philosophies it pondered and the way it attempted to answer them (or just muse on them) didn't come across totally wanky - it just made sense of the game you'd played up to that point.

It's held up well for a 10-year-old game and despite its flaws - pacing, as I mentioned, as well as a few too many tedious fetch quests - I think it's still brilliant.

P.S. I will forever be baffled and delighted at the names of the 'unique monsters'. My personal favourite is Flabbergasted Jerome, who turns out to be a cloud of ether floating over a lake that you just have to shoot to fuck. Why is it flabbergasted? Who named it Jerome?