Tales of Xillia 2 is a direct sequel to Tales of Xillia, released one year after and the story also taking place one year later. This is the fourteenth flagship title of the Tales series, released exclusively for the PS3. With the short timeframe of one year to develop and produce the sequel, you can expect reuse of assets from the first game. Unfortunately... Xillia 2 reuses all assets from the first game, which involves the environments, maps, characters, enemies, battle systems, music etc, literally everything. This means that there are no improvements to the graphics, which were severely dated even when it was launched in Japan in 2012, let alone worldwide in 2014.
That said, Xillia 2 inherits the snappy load times even when fast travelling, most areas load within two seconds, but this comes at the expense of a lot of pop-in. This sequel takes the core of Xillia, and adds a few minor enhancements, enough such that the game feels sufficiently different. First of all, they have ditched the dual perspective story mode. To replace it, the player is frequently given dialogue choices, you pick one of the two responses and what you pick will directly influence the next scene. It does not have any effect to the story overall and even if you pick all the "bad" choices, there are no penalties and other characters still trust you like normal.
Therefore, the dialogue choices mechanic of the game is arbitrary at best. The negative is that this means that the main character you control, Ludger, is a silent protagonist. Until you get to your second playthrough, he does not speak the dialogue choices you picked for him. The only times you'll hear his voice is when he grunts, yells out "Elle" or during battles where he shouts out the name of the artes he's using. The other new major game mechanic is that Ludger is landed with a huge debt of 20 million gald that he has to repay over the course of the game.
In all honesty, the developer doesn't expect the player to repay even a fifth of the the debt during the normal course of the game. It's really for those people who either grind too much or have a second playthrough. The primary reason for the debt is to block your progress during the story and prevent you from deviating from the expected path the developer wants you to take. This debt is annoying in the beginning of the game as it is harder to earn gald but ends up giving you more freedom later on. The story follows the new protagonist, Ludger Kresnik, who lives in the hi-tech Elympios, as opposed to Rieze Maxia where most of the previous game occurred.
While going to work, Ludger meets up with an 8 year old kid named Elle, and Jude (from the first game). Through a series of events, they find out that there are alternate "fractured" dimensions that must be destroyed. Wrapped into that is the fact that Elle needs to go to the Land of Canaan in order to meet up with her father again, as this was the last instruction provided to her as he protected her from various armed guards shooting at them. Naturally, Ludger and gang help Elle. Ludger quickly meets up with the original protagonists from the first game, but this feels too coincidental and contrived.
Xillia 2 forces nearly all the characters from the previous game to reappear in this sequel, even finding ways for the ones who had already died to make an appearance. A lot of things happen on their journey, including various terrorist attacks, finding out the truth of the clan of Kresnik, and their powers. The characters are less annoying this time around and the story is much more streamlined, although it can get repetitive until later on in the story. It is comprised of 16 chapters and as the main story is much shorter than Xillia, there is less filler and padding involved. You're given the choice of diverging and exploring the surrounding areas, or just smash out the story straight away.
Despite its flaws, the story is more engaging than Xillia, and there was an excellent plot twist towards the end of the game. The story is darker compared to previous Tales games, with frequent killing, destroying of worlds and blood. Still, it retains some of the lightheartedness of other Tales games and provokes some thoughts, keeping you thinking about the possibilities and implications of the story even after you turn off the game. Pretty much all of the endings were sad though. Yes, Xillia 2 has multiple endings.
Thankfully, you don't need to keep playing the same battles and events over and over again to get all the endings, they're all relatively painless and boils down to several points in the story where what you pick for the dialogue choices, will dictate which ending you'll get. While there is the main story to get through, for each of the playable characters, there are optional side stories which provide bigger insight to what they're doing now, and their natures. You can trigger them after every main story chapter or do it all in one go after you beat the game, or ignore them entirely, the choice is up to you.
Completing the side stories will activate bonus scenes in the main story chapters, so it is in your interest to complete them as soon as possible in order to get the most out of the game. Playing through the main story, plus all side character stories, including exploring all areas, will take roughly 30-40 hours. Then there's the post-game content which involves a difficult bonus dungeon, and Trophies. The Trophies of Xillia 2 are annoyingly grindy, it has a similar list to Xillia, except for example, instead of using a character's ability 150 times (which is bearable), you now need to use it 450 times, and instead of using linked artes 1350 times, you need to use it 4050 times.
Considering that by the end of the end, you would have used roughly 1350 linked artes, it is a joke at how much grinding the developer expects you to do in order to earn the Trophies. Xillia 2 has a relatively easy Platinum Trophy, it's just very time consuming and boring. The battle system for Xillia 2 is the Cross Dual Raid Linear Motion Battle System. Basically, it's the same battle system from Xillia but with a lot of additions. Your controlled character (the other three in your party are controlled by AI but you can set strategies) can use physical attacks and something called, artes, which are basically magic. Artes are mapped to a combination of the left stick and circle button, while the physical attack is mapped to the X button.
You can also block, jump, quick-step (i.e. dodge) and use items during battle. The unique feature here is that you can link with other characters in order to use special abilities and special linked artes, including the all-powerful mystic artes. There is a gauge at the left of the screen which can trigger Overlimit, where you get limited time to rapidly chain together linked artes which makes for really cool visual spectacles. The other new addition to the battle system is weapon swapping for Ludger between his dual blades, guns and hammer. You can swap weapons on the fly, which also change his attack type, attack speed, range and his artes.
While weapon swapping sounds good, until you unlock an ability later on in the story, swapping weapons is clunky and the game is easy enough that you can just stick to one weapon and still get by with no issues. Ludger has access to the Chromatus transformation which is basically a powered up version of him in armor. During the phase, he doesn't take damage but instead have at time gauge and he can execute really powerful attacks. It's effective to get yourself out of a tight spot. These new additions to the battle system add enough to be interesting while remaining familiar and accessible.
There are a total of nine playable characters, each with their own unique artes, skills and weapons. This can feel overwhelming since there are just so many characters, especially since the game adds in an affinity system. It's basically a friendship system which you can max out the gauge in order to unlock some items, including wearable costumes. The levelling up system is now the Allium Orb, where you equip items to each character, and they learn new skills based on which item you equip them with. It's not as cool as Xillia's Lillium Orb but works well enough.
Xillia 2's biggest advantage is the fact that it gives you a lot of freedom to explore, to the point where at certain points, you are not too sure where to go next. You have the whole of Elympios and Rieze Maxia to explore. Even if you have played through Xillia, it is still fun to go through all the areas, although nothing has changed. The story doesn't even go through most of the areas. You can easily spend hours exploring the connected maps without diving back into the story chapters. Unfortunately though, this is also Xillia's biggest downside. The reused assets, while great to explore just once more, is not as great when the game forces you to repeat these dungeons and environments not once, but multiple times.
Forcing you to repeat environments makes certain sections of the game very repetitive and you end up just rushing past all enemies since over the course of the story, Ludger will enter Fractured Dimensions which are basically alternate versions. It's very tedious and the washed out colors of these fractured dimensions make it seem lacking in detail and texture. There are a few new dungeons but don't expect much from them. Xillia 2 has a horribly designed final dungeon map with randomized paths. The annoying part is that it is packed full of enemies on narrow walkways, with the in-game map not showing the "illusion paths". This means that these paths will disappear only when you get near them.
The final dungeon is frustrating and a huge time-waster, which ends up being unnecessary padding at the end of the day. It's disappointing and lazy in an already lazy game in terms of asset reuse. You can freely rotate the camera, which may not seem like a big deal but considering that it is only a feature introduced in recent Tales games, it's something worth mentioning. The enemies roam the environments so there are no random encounters, but there are a lot of enemies roaming around and they respawn somewhat quickly. They instantly respawn if you go to the next area and come back. The fast travel system unlocks relatively early on in the story which is a good thing as it was already starting to get tedious with the constant backtracking up until that point in the game.
Ludger can dash which provides a faster way of running at the expense of mobility. You have your standard side quests which are provided through a Quest Board. These lists out your standard fetch quests and monster hunting quests. There is a set of powerful monsters to defeat. Overall, Tales of Xillia 2 is actually a better game than you'd expect considering it literally copied and pasted Xillia's maps and enemies, then plonked a new story on top. The story is more engaging with less filler, and characters are much more likeable. While it is not recommended to play this straight after Xillia as you will definitely get burnt out, Tales of Xillia 2 is a fun game and a great JRPG.
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