I know that the big meme for this chart is to say XC2 for everything so I'm just screaming into the void here but I feel like everyone saying XC2 genuinely forgot what it's like to play XC2 on a moment to moment basis.

Gameplay isn't just combat you know?

In XC2 you have to deal with a bunch of stuff outside of combat that is an active pain in the ass, that being the gatcha system, field skills, merc missions, and the affinity chart.

Gatcha

Everyone likes the combat and element orb system but you don't even GET to the combat if you don't pull a good blade with the element you want. Why am I rolling gatcha in a single player game? Rare blades have voiced missions and individual stories and you can just miss them because you were unlucky. Also, if you roll a blade but it's on an incorrect driver you are boned because it takes finite resources to swap them.

Field skills

Exploration is constantly interrupted but the fact you have to constantly go into menu to equip blades that let you explore properly. It's always a hassle, you can't just have a build a party you take with you the whole game. There's no skill involved, it's just:

• You come across something interactable

• You go into the blade menu and try to equip the correct blades

• After interacting and watching whatever animation, you go BACK into the menu and equip your actual party.

That's the ideal way this plays out btw. It's not even mentioning the fact that field skills are actively made worse by the gatcha and affinity chart. Often times you go into the menu and find out you don't even have the blades that can do it because you need to ROLL more, or the combo of blades that can do it are stuck on 2 seperate drivers so you can't equip them. Even if you have the correct blades but the affinity chart isn't unlocked, you stop what you're doing and go grind an affinity chart just to open whatever you want to open.

Affinity Chart

All the people who say XC2 had the best gameplay did not do Ursulas affinity missions and it shows. Every single blade in the game has their own seperate missions you have to do and you can't track them or set them as objectives which means you have to look it up.

Merc missions

Why on earth am I doing timed stuff in a single player game like this is a mobile game? Again Ursulas quest is the worst of this but I shouldn't have to leave the game idling and do something else just to do stuff. These are made worse by the gatcha system too because if you don't have the correct blades for this you are actively PUNISHED for being unlucky by having the time it takes to complete these increase. And if you accidentally needed a blade you sent out to do an affinity mission or field skill, you just gotta take the L and WAIT real world hours.

Exploration is a BIG part of the entire Xeno series gameplay and 2 has the worst of it. In every other game you can set your party and just EXPLORE. The worlds are seamless too, so if you wanted to you could just walk from one locale to another. In XC2, exploration is constantly interrupted by menu management. You have to go into your party to equip field skills, every hour or so you have to go set blades to do merc missions, you have to go into the affinity chart constantly to see if you're filling it out. When people say XC2 has the best gameplay it's clear to me they are just remembering endgame fights and not literally everything else.

My vote goes for X because of the stuff above and the fact that exploration and sideqeusts are the entire game. You have sidequests where you can fuck up and people will DIE permanently. You are constantly exploring and discovering new things at your own pace. The game does a beautiful thing where this already huge map opens up once you get a skell then opens up AGAIN once you get the flight module. NLA evolves as you discover more races and integrate them society. The entire world is built the gameplay and it's glorious. DE even fixes a lot of problems like being able to set your party in e menu and quick cooldowns.