One thing I hated in XC was the timed quests. I really hope they never come back in XC2. But if there's story in XC2, like how the refugee camp moved ot the bigger city in XC, timed quests might come back. I just hope the story of XC2 is done in such a way that timed quests are not there at all.
I never really minded the timed quests. I guess it's because I tend to try to do all of the side quests anyways, so I always ended up doing them. I do know I missed some simply from lack of exploration, but as far as "not having enough time" that was never an issue, because technically they're not really timed. They're just based on where you are in the plot. I get that some people don't want to do side quests, and just want to play the main story, so I totally agree that side quests shouldn't be based on the main story's progression. Similarly, progression in the main quest shouldn't be based on side quests, like they are in X.
About the combat issue you mentioned. That's because you don't hit the enemy to damage them. You attack within melee range to attack them. Sure I do agree things like charge and back attacks ened to be fixed up.
Yeah, I don't like that you're in "melee range" even though you aren't in melee range at all. But I get that from a gameplay perspective; it's hard to animate that, and it would be really frustrating to have to get literally within touching distance to enemies to hit them. But in the end, it makes melee v. range irrelevant because enemies can hit you with melee attacks even if you're in ranged attack distance. There's literally no point in switching between melee and ranged attacks except if you're doing an Art.
The same goes for Xenoblade. Both games had this issue.
I think it would be better to make it so you
have to get close to enemies. That way they could do some sort of balancing act: melee attacks do a lot more damage, but you're opening yourself to be melee attacked by the enemy, which also does more damage. Ranged attacks are weaker, but you're safe. Something like that would add a lot more strategy to the combat.
I am fine with auto attacks but there needs to be a big attack you can use. Before you get the Monado in XC the main character has that attack he can use. It gets replaced with the swap to monado abilities later on. An attack like that really needs to be in the game for the whole game.
One of the Monado Arts is a huge attack, so it essentially replaces the pre-Monado one and adds a bunch of other really useful Arts.
XC2 needs to be way more open than XC was. XC was disgustingly linear.
The reason the game never really felt linear to me was that I always do side quests. Kind of like I talked about above, I tend to try to complete all side quests before I move on with the main quest. Thus, for me, the game never really felt linear. I always felt like I was traveling back and forth, and it felt good to see my side quests actually change how the game looked. I liked that side quests opened up possibilities with different NPCs depending on how I completed them (which options I took). I would usually finish a main quest mission and then just go everywhere to see what had opened up to me.
Again, I get that not everyone plays that way, so I totally understand that if people only wanted to do the main quest, the game definitely was linear. I would definitely like a more open-ended questline, but only insofar as they don't
force side quests on us. I still hate that you
have to do Affinity Missions in X, yet the characters that you do Affinity Missions with are literally superfluous and useless. Don't force me to play with a character to progress the main story and then not let me use that character for the main story.
