Post Script

Why the Blades are at the heart of everything Xenoblade Chronicles 2 gets right – and wrong.

There’s an uncomfortable moment when you realise something so fundamental to a game may also be what’s holding it back. Blades, the weaponised life forms of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, are undoubtedly one of the game’s greatest assets, yet it soon becomes clear that their presence is at least partly responsible for its most glaring faults.

One of the biggest problems manifests in the early stages, particularly if your Switch is undocked. The resolution hit in handheld mode is acceptable for the most part, but in some areas the environments devolve into a soupy mess, and the situation is exacerbated by combat. Monolith’s game communicates plenty via its UI, which remains crisp throughout, but with positioning so crucial to the damage you inflict with certain Arts, the fact that you can’t always properly gauge an enemy’s orientation becomes an irritant, particularly when things are getting hairy.