(no subject)

There's this thing that happens to me a lot with JRPGs. The villain comes up with a lecture about how much the hero sucks, and the hero has no response, and I DO have a response. I keep waiting for the hero to say any of the things that are going through my head about how the villain is an overgrown infant throwing a tantrum, and he never comes up with anything as the villain keeps ranting and ranting, and I just keep getting angrier as I wait for anyone to shut this tool up. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has a terrible case of this even by JRPG standards.

(Actually, you know what's weirdly good at shutting up villains? Kingdom Hearts. "Darkness is the heart's true essence." "I don't know what you're talking about, and I don't care.")

I’m losing my damn mind

I'm going to go ahead and spoil Xenoblade Chronicles 2 here, because this is bananas.

Like I said earlier, there are three characters in XC2 who each seem like they might be the love interest until the next one is introduced. First there's the tsundere catgirl, then the subby girl who's basically a sexy Pokemon, then the even more tsundere girl who's an even sexier Pokemon. Literally 80 hours into the game, the MC finally got through to the catgirl enough for her to spill a bit of her backstory, and he told her she didn't need to be ashamed of whatever she was keeping secret. Then he got himself into mortal peril, and she saved him by revealing that she was a sexy Pokemon all along and using her magic sexy Pokemon powers to protect him. Also, she told him she loved him, to which he responded by saying he loved "all you guys," because this game is too mainstream and high-budget to ever actually follow through on the harem fantasy it keeps hinting at. Now there's a weird new gameplay mechanic where whenever you want, you can have the catgirl swap out of being a sexy Pokemon tamer and swap in as the MC's sexy Pokemon instead. (But only the MC, because she's nobody else's sexy Pokemon.) Couple this with the occasional implication that the inquisitor is in love with the MC, and the only female allies of the MC who don't want to jump his bones are the ones who're already acting as someone else's dedicated sexy Pokemon.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think Sekirei handles the whole "sexy Pokemon" thing better than this game does.