The Best Endgame - Path of Exile: War for the Atlas

When developer Grinding Gear Games introduced the ascendancy classes to Path of Exile, a friend and colleague of mine, who reviewed the game at the time, was sure that this is it. "It's a great new expansion, but I think we've seen it all now and they've run out of stuff to add. It's probably time for them to look into creating something new."
That was a bit of a bold claim and you have to be careful with those when you review stuff. So he asked me how I felt about it and I agreed with him. The game now had a story stretching across four acts, you killed what we then presumed was the main villain, then did it all over again on the higher difficulty settings and you had the endgame maps and Izaro's labyrinth, which let you specialize your class and build some more to make it perfect. What could you possibly add on top? In terms of features and content, at that point Path of Exile was already going above and beyond its main inspiration - Diablo 2.

The first big surprise came with The Fall of Oriath, which more than doubled the game's available story content, bringing it to a massive ten chapters full of insane boss battles, even more monster variation than before, new abilities and spells, new gear and easily one of the best Free2Play experiences any fan of ARPGs could possibly wish for. There's an insane amount of content and it doesn't cost anything at all. Heck, even if you decide to throw some money at the game, all it'll get you is extra storage space for more loot and some cosmetic armors and effects. All of this is nice to have, but it's by no means mandatory.

In one big update, Path of Exile's story portion got bigger and better than anyone thought possible. You can now easily fight your way up all the way to level 70 and higher just by following the story and using one of the countless possible builds using the game's huge (and admittedly mildly stupid) skill tree as you go. Fight as a slayer, who storms across the battlefield with whirlwind attacks. Be a clever and nimble shadow, who zips and teleports around, taking out enemies before they ever see you. Blow them to bits with fire, ice and lightning. Or get a little more creative and summon an army of ballistae to destroy the bad guys for you. Become a pathfinder, who draws her power from the game's many powerful and unique potions. Or be a necromancer, who potentially controls not three or four, but literally hundreds of minions by raising their corpses, manipulating baddies to fight for you or animating weapons and armor dropped by fallen enemies to rise against your foes. If there's any other game in the genre, which grants players so much freedom and so many possibilites in how they get to play their characters, then I haven't heard of it.

But while the story got a major overhaul, the endgame was still severely lacking. Only a small handful of builds was really viable for the super hard content, which came after the story's final boss. Many challenges were so over the top, that only a tiny fraction of the player base could ever see, let alone hope to overcome them. To many players, Path of Exile simply stopped after the story, which is still fair in a free game, but the endgame was far too exclusive. It also had severe balancing issues. Some endgame maps suffered from labyrinthian level design and low monster density, making them absolutely no fun to play, while others had bosses, which were massively overpowered for their tier of difficulty, while other, higher level bosses, were a pushover by comparison.

I'm using past tense here, because the most recent content update to Path of Exile, War for the Atlas, basically does to its endgame, what The Fall of Oriath did for the story part of the game. All of the maps have been re-balanced, many of them had their layouts changed for better pacing, there are now decent amounts of enemies to fight, kill and loot on every map and the bosses are an absolute blast! Rather than simply throwing an extra tough damage sponge at you, who hits a little bit harder than regular trash, many of the new boss baddies require you to use a bit of strategy. They have some deadly but well-telegraphed attacks you need to avoid, some of them come with several phases and there are no more "WTF just happened" insta-deaths like with certain map bosses before the update. Granted, many of these fights are harder versions of boss fights you see in the story chapters, but they're simply a lot more fun to play than just another extra juicy, slightly larger skeleton with an oversized life bar.

Powerful new loot is always welcome, too!

On top of that, you now actually get to see some endgamey content, even if you're on the more casual end of the player spectrum. In the past, you had to work your way through 16 tiers of maps, fight four insanely strong guardians and then face the Shaper, the final boss in the Atlas of Worlds. But chances were, if you weren't dual-wielding credit cards to get the world's most powerful gear off some shady 3rd party website (or devote your life to farming for that stuff) in an attempt to copy some famous streamer's flavour of the month build, you'd probably never get to see the Shaper, let alone defeat him.

The Shaper is still here in the new update, his four guardians are still massively powerful and you're still gonna have to show some serious dedication if you want to beat this guy. But things are no longer as restrictive as they used to be. First of all, the shaper now battles some new entity, 'The Elder' for control of the atlas. You will constantly run into both of these guys as you play endgame maps. They will do nasty shit such as strengthen the map boss or spawn portals and nasty, otherworldly monsters to hinder your progress. This can happen on just about any map, so it's new content you'll get to experience just by playing these endgame maps. On top of that, there's a whole bunch of super powerful new gear dropping in areas affected by the Shaper or the Elder, potentially helping you to become stronger a bit faster and without trading and grinding for new gear all night and day.

The new story bosses completely change the way you tackle PoE's boss fights.

Endgame build diversity has received a bit of a boost, as well. Sure, some of the most popular builds were utterly destroyed by nerfs. It's no longer possible to simply die to a boss, then remain dead and watch as your minions kill the boss for you. Yes, people actually did this. You could make certain minions more or less invincible, so this trick worked pretty much everywhere. It's no longer possible to get so much life-leech on hit that you'll basically become immortal for as long as you keep on punching. And for a while now, the possibility to build up enough energy shield to make yourself practically unkillable, has been removed, as well. So there's a certain amount of moaning going on about the brutal nerfs and some say that damage spikes are still too punishing for melee builds, which may still get eradicated by surprise oneshot-attacks.

It's tempting to join sides with the folks raging against nerfs. But I don't think I've been killed by any surprise onehit wonders ever since the new content update and I strictly play melee now. It's true, there are some bosses and mechanics, which can wipe you out in the blink of an eye, but they're all fairly predictable. Volatile monsters no longer explode on death to immediately take you out. Instead, they make a distinct noise and then spawn an exploding orb, which will follow you before it blows up, giving you ample time to react. Bosses with powerful attacks usually have a long, clearly visible windup phases, making everything avoidable if you know what to look out for. It's true that many ARPGs let you stand right in front of any boss, clicking it to death whilst popping a ton of potions, so if you're not into active dodging and figuring out some boss patterns, then PoE will cause you some frustration.

Particle spam can also be a problem when trying to avoid attacks.

With that in mind, the skill tree has undergone some tweaks and it's now easier to gain life, armor, resistances and gain some all-around toughness without having to spend every last point on survivability, whilst completely ignoring your offense. You still need to find a good balance in order to achieve both enough defenses as well as decent kill speeds, but the game no longer feels like 'Path of Life Nodes'. Claire and I are more or less playing the same builds we had before the update and they feel significantly tougher than before. For the first time it feels like I can actually play exactly the build I want in PoE's endgame without getting punished for it. We're tackling Uber Izaro next and judging by our map progress, we're starting to circle in on the Shaper, himself.

I'm not entirely sure what to do once we'll be done with that or whether PoE really needs any more endgame after that. There's such a mind-boggling amount of content in here, which feels so complete and polished, I'd be happy to simply do it all over again with a bunch of different characters. But knowing Grinding Gear Games, they're already working on the next big content expansion, which will completely destroy my expectations. How fucking cool is that?

The Nintendo Switch is my favourite new toy

When I bought our first Nintendo Switch, it was really meant to be a gift to Claire. Because she's our resident Zelda nut. Heh. Deku nut. Ahem. She played and finished most of the Zelda games, Breath of the Wild looked incredible, I had a new job and a bit of money, blah, order, boom, there ya go.

She had a bit of a play with it, I watched for a while, all was well. Then she went to work the next day and I was sitting there with the new Zelda. By the time she got back from work I had progressed twice as far into the game on my new save file as she had the first night she gave the game a try. 'Her' Switch was now a shared custody case. And when that didn't work out, we ended up ordering a second Switch with its own copy of Breath of the Wild.

It's Skyrim, but less broken and with a terrible durability system.

I love Breath of the Wild. So much in fact, I had completed the entire story, uncovered the map and obtained all the horse armor, gear, hearts and all the other cool shit I wanted whilst Claire was still derping around in the starting area. Then came the first DLC. Boom! Master Sword got! And then - nothing. Boredom. I had seen and done everything I wanted to see and do on Zelda and there was nothing else in the Nintendo shop that appealed to me.

The lack of obvious killer titles had a funny side effect: many of my friends (and Switch owners in general) decided to try stuff like Splatoon 2 and Arms, both of which turned out to be absolutely incredible games. But they're just not for me. I don't find these games aesthetically pleasing at all, I dislike the art style and I'm just not rich or bored enough to throw 50 Quid at something that looks weird to me, just because I've got nothing else to play.

I'm happy for you if you enjoy it, but... meh.

My Switch went into hibernation, which was okay, because I was enjoying the GPD Win by then. That was then. A lot of cool new stuff has appeared in Nintendo's virtual store since then and I've already drooled all over the fantastic Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in an earlier post. There has been an update, which largely eliminated the gyro drift issues with the right joy con, so shooting zombies in the face on Resident Evil Revelations (2) has never felt more immersive and satisfying.

Most fun I had since House of the Dead multiplayer

I'm now buying games on the Switch, which look and/or run better on other platforms (as the aforementioned Resident Evil) or, in case of Fifa 18, I already own on PC. And that's not because I've completely lost my shit or because I'm suddenly a billionaire. They're just more fun on Nintendo's hybrid console!

Sure, Resident Evil may not have the same draw distance or dynamic shadows as it does on Steam, but I get to aim my shotgun with the joy con and get that satisfying rumble when I pull the trigger. Call me insane, but I enjoy that even more than clicking a mouse button. And I've made more than one new friend by putting the console on its little kickstand and playing Resident Evil on the go. It's an eye-catcher for sure. Visually, the Switch version of Fifa 18 is a pretty big downgrade from the PC version, but when I go and visit the family for Christmas this year, it's not my computer I'll be hooking to their TV with a bunch of extra controllers.

I will have to be more careful with the team selection or Christmas might end early for me.

Oh, speaking of extra controllers...

I'm so happy right now.

The 8bitdo SF30 Pro is the closest thing to an SNES controller you'll get, which has all the buttons and functionality of a standard Xbox 360 pad. It's borderline useless until you update the firmware, so that step is mandatory. Once that's done, the SF30 Pro works with the Switch, a PC (via USB or Bluetooth) and Android devices. I'm playing all my Switch games with it, as well as more and more PC games. It's great for stuff like Street Fighter or Night in the Woods. I've also played some GTA with it, which feels a bit weird and takes some getting used to. There's a reason why they no longer shape controllers like this. Still, it's a lot lighter and smaller than a 360 controller, which is great when you have small hands like I do. This may well become my new default controller, not just because it's a solid lump of plastic and feels just like the real thing, but also because the cats ate the cable on my 360 controller, rendering it completely useless.
With the Switch being portable and so easy to hook up to any tv or monitor in seconds, we're now buying more and more stuff on there, including games we wouldn't necessarily consider trying on other platforms.

Heroes of the Monkey Tavern is a fun dungeon crawler for under 5 Quid.

Take the really amazing Shantae, for instance. Her first adventure was a bit of a hidden gem on the Game Boy Color. You can grab the Shantae games on Steam and on just about any console nowadays, but it's just not the kind of game I'd play much on a PC. Not that there's anything wrong with it. But when I'm at home and using my computer, I'll usually play some deep, lengthy RPG or a multiplayer title. Something to keep me busy for many hours at a time. But when I'm on the go and just killing some time, I absolutely don't mind playing a quick level or two on the Switch. It's easily one of the best 2D platformers around and I grabbed it for about 10 Quid because it's currently on sale.

It reminds me of the 16bit Aladdin games.

I'm also having way more fun than I expected with Heroes of the Monkey Tavern, which cost me £4,49. Sure, it's a very basic dungeon crawler and compared to old games like Eye of the Beholder it's almost laughably easy, with most puzzles posing no challenge and most of the difficulty in combat coming only from the awkward controls. But it's fun clearing the 8 big dungeon levels, whacking monsters and watching your party of adventurers grow stronger in the process. I didn't consider trying the Steam version for even a second, but I'm having a lot of fun with it in my pocket. Speaking of which...

I know, but hear me out.

There's no denying that Yooka Laylee was met with, shall we say, lukewarm reception. It may be a little too close to Banjo-Kazooie for its own good (as in, outdated mechanics minus the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia), the later levels don't quite maintain the awesomeness of the game's first world and the camera enjoys full-on colonoscopy mode a little too much. And of course it doesn't hold a candle to everyone's favourite ex-plumber's new adventure.

And yet, Claire is playing the absolute shit out of it on her Switch right now. The automatic camera is less awful and, more importantly, you get manual camera controls, should you want them. The game looks absolutely stunning on the Switch and performs as well as the versions on PS4 and Xbox One. Yes, there are some minor graphical downgrades, most of which are so subtle, you'd only notice them if you directly ran each version side by side. Playtonic went and created some brand new assets for the Switch version and moved to a different version of the Unity Engine for the sake of performance and it shows. Yooka Laylee performs great on the Switch and while it may not be the instant classic many Rareware fans had hoped for, it's definitely enjoyable on the go.

And there's a bunch of other great, affordable games on sale right now.

I'm staying away from Skyrim, simply because I really don't feel like shelling out 60 Pounds on what's a six year old game with six year old bugs. The Switch version has the same game-breaking glitches and issues, which have been in the 2011 version, many of which have been addressed and fixed by fans, but Bethesda couldn't even be fucked to fix them for Switch users more than a half decade later, when the community has already done all the work for them. Besides, I've already got a portable, fully-modded Skyrim on the GPD Win, so... yeah, hard pass on that one. On the plus side, 60 Quid will buy you a TON of fun indie games such as Yono and the Celestial Elephants, Kingdom New Lands or the Nintendo exclusive Golf Story. Turns out the Nintendo Shop is pretty well-kept and not a huge clusterfuck like Steam these days.

You can't really go wrong with Kingdom New Lands when all it costs is 10 Pounds.

The Nintendo Switch has already sold 10 million units and Nintendo's fiscal year won't end for another three months. This console is absolutely killing it, despite the competition offering HDR, 4K and your annual Asscreed: Star Wars BattleCod. And why wouldn't it? With Skyrim, LA Noire and Doom, the Switch is already getting a handful of mainstream titles and so far, people don't seem to care about lower resolution and FPS when compared to other platforms. And is that really so surprising? I've seen people hook up their HD games consoles and digiboxes to giant OLED panels using a fucking Scart cable. There's a bunch of people, who could theoretically run 4K versions of games on their Xbox One X, but choose not to, because limited disk space and North American 3rd world internet. As a selling point, 4K is simply not as big as the competition must have hoped.

And you absolutely cannot underestimate the power of portability. Right now, the Switch simply offers a portable gameplay experience unlike any other device. Now, I'm not knocking Nintendo's other handheld, the 2/3DS, but the majority of games on there is a little more shallow and light-hearted. Sure, you get your Monster Hunter, but there's also casual stuff like Miitopia or Tomodachi Life. Great games for sure, but they're no Skyrim or Breath of the Wild. You won't be playing Skyrim on a smartphone anytime soon, either. Yes, there's the GPD Win, which is basically a pocket gaming PC, but that's really only appealing to a niche market right now. Not everybody wants to dick around with Windows upadtes and resolution, cfg and ini tweaks before playing a game.

And good luck running LA Noire on your smartphone!

And let's not forget Nintendo's insanely strong exclusives. With Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey, they haven't released one, but two 10/10 games within the same year! The aforementioned Arms, Splatoon 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles are all pretty great exclusives, as well. Meanwhile, Xbox fans get their Halo games and... hmm... didn't Forza and Gears of War all make it to the Windows store by now? I guess PS4 looks a bit better with Horizon: Zero Dawn, Bloodborne and Uncharted. They're all damn fine games, but by the looks of it, Nintendo can hold its own with some great Switch exclusives. And damn, if they ever patch in motion controls for Doom, I'll be doing this for the rest of my life.

I'm having a blast just following the news about sales right now. While the whole industry went and pushed for HDR and 4K and ever more powerful hardware, Nintendo comes up with what's basically a tablet, which is hilariously underpowered when compared to the other current-gen consoles. And let's be honest - the friend code system is horrible, forcing people to use a smartphone app for voice chat is stupid and wanting to charge money for online multiplayer in 2018 is a dick move by Nintendo, which goes perfectly with their day 1 DLC packages, season passes and Amiibo bullshit. And they get a free pass for all that nonsense, because everyone loves Nintendo.

Wolf Link tripled in price and is now 'limited edition' because he provides a powerful battle pet in Breath of the Wild.

These guys aren't saints, the Switch is overpriced given its relatively weak hardware - and you'll be paying SO MUCH MORE for pro controllers, coloured joy cons, a power bank, SD cards and AAA-money for really old games, should you want LA Noire or Skyrim. There's some obvious room for improvement here.

But that only makes their success funnier in my book. Fuck, I'm shelling out obscene amounts of money on PC hardware so I can play stuff on maximum details in 1440p or even 4k, where frame rates allow it. I spend countless hours modding stuff to make it look awesome. Then I go and buy 720p30FPS games on the Switch, because I enjoy the motion controls, splitscreen co-op, portability or any combination thereof. By now I've probably dumped two monthly salaries on these guys, so technically, I should probably propose to them at this point.

4K is overrated. HDR is overrated. Don't get me wrong, I actually like that shit. But if Nintendo can keep it up with their killer exclusives, impressive mainstream ports and a well-regulated online shop, which features select quality indies as opposed to Steam's endless stream of digital diarrhoea, then Nintendo might just end up stomping the competition. I'll laugh so hard. And be broke for the rest of my life.

Something's coming...

The guys at Figureprints have sent me a teaser picture...

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is my favourite game of 2017 (minor spoilers)

From a gamer's perspective, 2017 has been a bit crazy. Mass Effect: Andromeda was so hilariously bad, my lengthy rant about it actually lead to my first real job in the gaming industry. Let's not even get into lootboxes or Visceral Games being shut down. The PC version of this year's Call of Duty was surprisingly good for about a week and is now so utterly infested with cheaters, there's a fair chance you'll end up in a hacked lobby, which will mess with your stats and unlocks much like back in Modern Warfare 2. What fun!

But there has also been some good stuff with all the crap! The good folks at Larian have created an instant classic and one of the best RPGs ever made with Divinity: Original Sin 2. The new Assassin's Creed turned out to be decent, despite fucking loot boxes. Fans of Resident Evil got an incredible new game, Cuphead is a ridiculously impressive indie gem and for a brief moment, Sonic was awesome again, thanks to Sonic Mania. Night in the Woods quickly became one of my favourite games of all time - and it's getting a director's cut this month! There are the tweaked and upgraded new Pokémon games on the 3DS and there's even a portable version of RPG maker on there now!

I'm making a game about my cat.

Then there's Nintendo's Switch and the sudden shift from 'but there are only two games' to 'when am I supposed to fucking play all this'. With Mario and Zelda they've already got two very strong game of the year contenders, but the one title I'm ejoying even more than any other game this year is Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Now, I'm not saying it's 'better' than Breath of the Wild or whatever game you feel is the best one you've played all year. But it's the one I've been enjoying more than everything else I've played in 2017.

I never played any other title in the Xeno series. I'm also not massively keen on anime, apart from stuff everyone should be required to watch by law. You know, Ghost in the Shell, most of the stuff by Studio Ghibli, that sort of thing. But there's something about Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which immediately sucked me right in. You see this guy in a diving suit jumping into a sea of clouds to harvest some sunken goods. There are some onscreen credits, the presentation is quite impressive and Claire thought I was watching a movie. The guy comes back up with his loot on a crane and walks around on what seems to be a small boat or a tiny island or some sort of platform. A voice starts speaking to the treasure hunter, which is instantly recognizable as the voice of Andre the blacksmith from Dark Souls, so that's always a plus. You don't actually know where that voice is coming from, until...

Whoa!

Turns out the little "island" is alive. It's a so-called titan, a living, breathing being. Turns out the world was destroyed, everything is covered by this ocean of clouds and what's left of the people happens to live atop these giant titans. But the titans are dying, people are running out of space to live and war seems inevitable. So yeah, once again the world is fucked, folks scavenge in order to get by and there's this one optimistic guy, who wants to find a better place so everyone can live in peace. And since we're already ticking anime and JRPG checkboxes, the following clichés are also present:

- The main character is a young male
- He wields a sword
- He's got no parents
- He makes questionable fashion choices
- Bunch of powerful badass characters show you the ropes as you fight alongside them
- Badass characters turn out to be simply ass characters
- Female protagonist has disproportionally large tits
- Somebody creates a powerful artificial life form to help the heroes in battle
- The artificial life form looks like a very young lady about to buy hygiene products for girls for the first time in her life
- Female protagonist to male protagonist: "Put your hand on my chest!" She is clearly referring to a cameo she's wearing.
- "What do you mean we make a nice couple? W-we're just friends!"
- "It's beautiful because you made it. Uh... n-no, I didn't mean it like that!"
- Main character to female character: "You're heavy!" Entire world: "GASP!"
- "Run! Save yourselves, while I end my life as a heroic and slightly pointless sacrifice!"
- "We will defeat our enemies with the power of friendship!"
- Character, who switches between two personas, which are polar opposites in personality and appearance
- The obligatory unwinnable boss fight
- "I could tell you everything about who I am, who the bad guys are and why they want us all dead, but I'm not ready to open up right now." - "Oh, that's okay, no worries."
- "You should be obedient and dress in a maid outfit if you want to win a guy over."
- Annoying unskippable midboss nobody takes seriously
- Annoying unskippable midboss is actually kind of a good guy
- Cat people
- Talking tiger
- Super annoying species of furry sidekick guys with what's supposed to be an endearing speech impediment
- Sudden death by comically oversized sword stabbed right through the heart. From behind. By a traitor.

The game takes some 80 hours to complete and I'm not quite there yet, so I haven't seen all the clichés yet. I'm still expecting somebody to call a female character flat-chested and I'm still waiting to find out which character is always hungry and eats like a pig. At some point it'll probably turn out that the main character's father, grandfather or some ancestor was that legendary hero who did the thing. This is pure speculation and not a spoiler at this point, but so far, they've been knocking out the obvious ones fairly consistently.

It's anime, alright.

Thing is, these clichés don't really bother me all that much. If they did, then I'd also have to start hating on all the orcs and elves and 'it's basically the middle ages, but with fireballs' stuff in every western RPG and fantasy tale. I'm okay with it and I'm aware that being able to at least tolerate all these overused bits is a requirement if you want to enjoy Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

One of the reasons why it all works so well, even though I've seen much of it a million times before in so many other games and movies is the voice acting. Some of the voices sound so hilariously off and really, seriously surprising, because most of the English voice actors are Brits. And they don't speak proper Oxford English - they have some of the thickest accents I've ever heard in a JRPG! That cat lady in the yellow suit you can see in the screenshot up there? She's fucking Scottish! Rex, the game's main protagonist, looks like (and is constantly referred to as) a little kid, yet he sounds like a grown man with a thick regional accent, which I cannot quite place, because I'm from Germany.

I've never seen such a visually stunning game on a handheld device.

The English voices are a bit Marmite, of course. I absolutely love them, because the vast majority of actors do a fantastic job, the occasional terrible, cringey character aside. These voices are full of personality, they give all the heroes and villains character and I find them pleasantly refreshing. There's a fair share of people who absolutely hate them and then there are the usual pretentious cunts, who watch and play absolutely everything in Japanese and spend most of their time reading subtitles, because they don't understand anything beyond 'arigatou'. I find most characters really likable, while the villains are fun to hate. And that helps with the immersion.

There's also the stunningly beautiful game world, which is brimming with life and detail. The first large titan you get to explore has this vast, seemingly endless ocean of grass swaying in the wind. There are absolutely gigantic trees, tall mountains, countless hidden passages, caves and monster lairs for you to uncover. They contain valuable treasure, tough unique monsters and all the shit you want to be rewarded with for exploration. Perhaps even more importantly, though - the world is alive! Strange alien creatures, which vaguely resemble giraffes are eating the leaves off the trees. A bunch of critters which look like zebras, hippos, even the odd triceratops, lead their young to a watering hole, where they all gather to drink. A pack of scary maned lions have caught one of the 'hippos' and they're now enjoying a massive dinner. It's crazy to see so much going on all at once, given the somewhat limited hardware.

And did I mention you get to ride the goddamn tiger?

The whole experience is supported by this grandiose orchestral soundtrack, which flat-out refuses to be 'background music'. It's loud, it's omnipresent and it's absolutely in your face - and I'm okay with it, because the soundtrack is consistently fantastic. I find it hard to pick out a favourite tune, because there are so many great tracks here. Add to that an insane amount of fully voice-acted cutscenes full of 'I can't believe this just fucking happened' moments and you get a massively enjoyable JRPG experience, clichés or not.

Of course it isn't all just roaming animals and cutscenes. You'll actually have to play the game, which can feel a lot like an offline MMORPG. For instance, there's your fair share of side missions, which are usually boring fetch quests. Some guy was supposed to gather some resources but never came back, so now you have to find the guy, rescue him from some monsters, then harvest the resources in his stead, because he got injured or some shit. That sort of thing isn't particularly thrilling, but helping out raises your reputation with the locals, which in turn grants you better prices with merchants. Shops may offer you cool new stuff you couldn't buy before. That sort of thing. So while a fetch quest is still a fetch quest, at least there's usually some good reward waiting for you at the end.

Combat has a certain MMO feel to it, as well.

Then there's combat, which starts off deceptively slow and simple. You have an auto attack and a bunch of 'weapon arts', which deal a bit of extra damage or even do cool stuff like cause the enemy to drop a potion. Over time you'll be charging an extra meaty special attack you can fire off for a bit of extra damage. So far, so easy.
But as you progress through the game you eventually get to chain up your weapon arts to do all sort of crazy shit like stagger an opponent, then trip them, fling them into the air and smash them back to the ground. Special attacks can be chained together as well, resulting in devastating combos, which can take down the meatiest monsters in no time.

Each character gets their weapon arts and special attacks from so-called blades, which serve as the weapons they wield (swords, axes, spears, you name it), but also manifest themselves as battle pets of sorts. So your sword isn't just an inanimate object, but it also manifests itself as some sexy anime chick or a bear or some scary-looking alien thing and what have you. To make matters more complex, each of these blades come in different elemental flavours (fire, ice, you get the idea) and they're divided into attack, tank and healer blades.

Most bosses get blades, too!

You can put three of the playable characters in your active party at any time. These characters each get to wield three different blades at a time. It's possible to switch between these three blades in a fight, should you want to sacrifice some damage and use an extra tank blade or maybe retire your healer blade for an extra attacker to dish out some more pain. Combining special attacks of blades with different elements results in different combos. Follow your earth blade's special attack with a fire attack and you'll create a volcano. Perform a fire combo with a water blade to create a steam bomb.

You can only control one character at a time, while the other two are handled by the AI, but they're usually a lot more competent than the random cunts you get to play with in an MMO. Your team will constantly set up starters for chain attacks and they'll finish them if you follow up with the right weapon art. Characters with tanky blades will keep the aggro from the squishy healers, who will run around the battlefield reviving fallen comrades and collecting healing potions if the group is hurt. It's less WoW and more Final Fantasy XI/XIV, so it takes a while to master all the details and strategies, but it feels incredibly rewarding when you do.

Not gonna fight this guy, though. What is it with Nintendo and T-Rexes these days?

Still, I love to bitch about stuff and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 offers some opportunity on that front, as well. First of all, fucking awful directions. Some sidequests require you to go to the most awfully hidden, difficult to reach places right in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. If you didn't memorize the directions when the quest NPC gave them to you, good luck trying to find the place using only a little navigational compass and a vague, crappy description in your quest log. Sure, the game absolutely wants you to explore the absolute fuck out of it, but for god's sake! Running around in circles like a complete idiot whilst getting skullfucked by a bunch of stupidly powerful boss monsters, who can and will repeatedly onehit you isn't fun!

And the game is just a little too complicated for its own good. Found a new blade? Well, let's release it and see if you've got a cool rare one or just another one of the boring generic standard ones. Oh, you're out of space? Better get rid of some of your blades, who will make you feel like shit when you do. "Aww... sniff... that's a real shame." "I guess I wasn't strong enough, huh..." "I will miss you!" Gee, thanks! Force me to get rid of these guys in order to hatch new ones, then make me feel terrible about it, why don't you! Blades all want to be geared up and upgraded, some of their special abilities can only be unlocked and enhanced via strangely convoluted methods (drink four cups of coffee, play the harmonica twice, buy three steaks - I wish I was making this up, but I'm not). And then there's this one special blade, who can only be upgraded via some weird 8bit minigame, which is fun, but you'd better kiss all your free time goodbye if you plan on going down that route. It's all a bit overwhelming.

Sigh.

You can also send inactive blades on mercenary missions, cook a bunch of food, because of course you can and then there are certain areas with hidden treasure or quest rewards, which can only be reached during certain times of day or when the cloud tide is particularly high or low. It's an RPG and these dozens upon dozens of hours you'll be spending to complete it all have to be filled with something.

I'm not saying it's all tedious busywork (apart from the boring fetch-quests with shitty directions), but if you're expecting to just hop in for 20 minutes at a time, turn off your brain and enjoy a bite-sized chunk of videogame entertainment, then this isn't the game you're looking for. However, if you're looking for a moving, exciting story full of lovable characters with goofy accents, as well as a surprisingly deep and rewarding combat system, and gorgeous giant open world for you to explore, then Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is well worth your time. And the soundtrack is so insanely good, I've been playing it up and down all day when I didn't have the time to actually play the game. This year's Mario and Zelda may be enjoyable for everyone, including your little sister, your grandmother and your dog, but if you're willing to get into its mechanics, then Xenoblade Chronicles 2 might feel even more rewarding. It sure does to me.

Nintendo won't let me jerk it

We were doing a bit of cleaning around the house a few weeks ago and as I was going through our mountains of trash and old, unwanted crap, I tripped over this black slab of plastic, which was covered in a thick layer of dust. Turns out it was a Nintendo Switch. I couldn't believe we were dumb enough to buy two of the damn things!

Look, Breath of the Wild is probably my personal game of the year. Yes, breaking weapons are stupid and Link looks so weird, I still remember when early pre-release footage caused lots of people to assume there'd be a playable female protagonist this time around. The game was still so fun, I played the absolute shit out of it. And then - nothing. Okay, and then Splatoon, Arms and Mario, none of which I particularly care about. The new Mario still feels like a loose collection of jump puzzles and minigames to me and Claire, the resident 3d platformer fanatic, has put about 2-3 hours into it and never touched the damn thing again. Great! Another purchase to feel completely stupid about!

I had more fun with Sonic Forces than I did with Mario Odyssey. It's a good thing I quit my job as a games critic.

You can only play so much Mario Kart. Disgaea 5 is so full of fluff, filler and annoying bullshit, you can play for days without actually ever reaching the goddamn game underneath all the extra garbage. The rest of Nintendo's online store looked a bit like Steam did half a decade ago and at twice the cost. That's not a terrible thing if you want to play some Steam classics on the go, but I have my GPD Win for that, which also doesn't force me to buy all of these old titles again, just so I can play them on the go.

Our Switch(es) saw so little use, I genuinely considered giving one away to Claire's mother or something, because we sure as fuck weren't using them at all. My appreciation came back in one of those 'more money than sense' moments, where I decided that caring about neither Pokémon nor Tekken was the perfect reason to buy Pokkén Tournament DX months after release in a sale. I've completed every last tournament, optional boss battle and hidden bonus content over the course of a day and I'm still causing little kids to ragequit in the online mode. I love a game, which is a combination of stuff I absolutely do not care about!

Though I feel a bit girly for playing this.

I had another look at the online store the other day and suddenly - Resident Evil Revelations 1+2! For peanuts! I have never played a Resident Evil game before. I watched my brother when he played the first one on his PlayStation and it looked absolutely awful. 1st gen 3d graphics weren't much to look at even back in the day, camera and controls were shit, the voice acting was notoriously terrible. Hey, I can totally understand there's a certain B-movie appeal to it, but it just wasn't for me. Some of the later games in the series look pretty great, but I've got a genuine case of zombie phobia, which may or may not be related to my dad showing me hardcore horror films when I was five years old. I still don't fully close the shower curtain. So... Resident Evil on the Switch? PERFECT!

I've been playing the campaign in coop mode with Claire and it's some of the most intense shit I've ever experienced. The way cooperative gameplay is handled on there is really cool. Claire points out hidden treasure and blinds zombies with a flashlight while I'm panic-spraying bullets in their general direction. The game switches characters halfway through an episode, which is where she gets to spot zombies through doors and walls, warning me before I blindly run into them. I'm still shitting myself. If you're constipated, why not solve it the natural way with Resident Evil Revelations 2?

*poop noises*

I'm having even more fun with the Raid Mode, which combines some of my favourite stuff from Mass Effect multiplayer, Warframe and amazingly awful games like House of the Dead. You level up characters and unlock new skills much like in ME3 multiplayer, you get to mod weapons with elemental ammo, reduced recoil, faster rate of fire etc. like in Warframe and there's this insane cheesiness to it with god-awful techno music and poorly-animated zombies flopping through windows like in those old arcade style coop zombie shooters. I fucking love this shit!

My only problem lies with the game's motion controls. One the one hand, they're super immersive and I might actually like them even better than mouse + keyboard. There's just something about aiming a joy con and pulling the trigger to shoot. And with a bit of practice you'll be lining up headshots like crazy. Problem is, I tend to spaz out a lot and jerk the joy con around like an idiot, causing the gyroscope to lose its center, resulting in an annoying drift effect. Claire is perfectly still, because she hates wasting calories, so she is stupidly deadly with motion controls, but I'm just too twitchy to really make them work. I wish there was a sensor bar to help me aim when I panic. I still can't force myself to get that proper trigger discipline, but it's an insanely fun gameplay experience in the moments where I can force myself to stay still enough. And then...

I didn't play the first Xenoblade Chronicles. Apparently it was the greatest JRPG of its time and everyone loved it, but it just didn't appeal to me all that much. The 3DS version looked tempting, but eeeeh... I'm good, thank you. Then I saw the trailer to this one when browsing the shop and... whoa! o_O

The visuals! The landscapes! The battles! The music! A guy with an eyepatch! The download finished a few moments ago and I can't wait to give this a go. While I was at it, I've also gone and grabbed Gear Club Unlimited. Yeeeees, it's a glorified mobile game, it's no Gran Tourismo or Forza, but I just want to race some real cars on the go. Mario Karts are great and all, but you can't eat spaghetti every day.

It looks okay. I'll give it a chance and not expect too much.

I haven't been much of a console gamer since the death of the Dreamcast. And I was so bored with the Switch, I was already starting to wrap it for somebody else for Christmas. Now I can't put it down. Weirdly enough, I'm spending most of my time playing games full of Pokémon and zombies and other shit I never liked and I'm having stupid amounts of fun. And now that I no longer have to spend my weekends reviewing shit, I get to play as much as I want. Whee!