What’s the feeling on the Xenoblade Chronicles games for Switch? Seeing everyone hyped for 3 has me curious about the first two.
Any comparison games that can give me an idea what to expect?
At the core, they're JRPGs with a greater focus on exploration. The world map is a little like in between your regular open-ish JRPG and an MMO. It is an open design on a large scale that funnels into smaller areas and is punctuated by towns or cities. Points of interest are often spaced far from each other, but it's also large, very pretty to look at (when the dynamic resolution doesn't fail you) and elaborate. XB1's world is all interconnected in some way, whereas XB2 is made up of distinct zones varying in complexity and scope.
When people talk these games being about exploration, I would not picture something like Breath of the Wild where the traversal is interesting in and of itself and there is a lot of unpredictability and dynamism in the player-world-enemy relationship. Your out of combat verb set is like any other JRPG, which is to say you can talk to a NPC, read a sign or walk (and awkwardly jump in these games). XB's world and enemy behavior is a lot more static. There is a large space to explore in which you will find either Loot or Hidden Bosses. You also get little bonuses finding new or secret areas. Its scope and size are the general appeal (sometimes in practice a problem I think), and there are lots of breathtaking views. Perhaps at odds with the level design, both games are structurally fairly linear affairs and your exploration will be bounded by higher level enemies that will obliterate you if you look at them too crossly. There are ways to get around them by the cheesing how they leash, but I never found this particularly satisfying or rewarding.
Both games have an active command-based battle system that's a little difficult to compare to other games. In XB1, the character you control does auto attacks and then you order special attacks based on internal timers. It's a little reminiscent of an MMO or like FF12 but more elaborate and all manual. Your other party members do their own thing and are sometimes competent, sometimes not. It's a system largely focused performing a set of chained status effects to disable enemies and prevent enemy party wiping attacks that you're told of beforehand. No single character can do the entire chain on their own, so you're reliant on other party members to trigger or continue parts of the chain, which can be frustrating. You can play whichever party member you prefer (but against optional bosses you'll often be a little hamstrung if you play the main character).
XB2 is built on a similar system but has a greater focus on timing based inputs, which makes battles altogether less passive and more interesting imo. The game also adds a mechanic of sequentially chaining your special attacks to build up to a super duper special attack on top of that. There are other additions that increase combat complexity, but in actuality it's pretty simple and over the course of the game's long runtime you will get very familiar with it all. Initially, it's a lot to take it but after playing the XB1 remaster I felt it was more engaging than XB1.
The side content in both games is not worth speaking of, really. The main stories and finding superbosses to take down with a kitted out party is mainly where it's at content-wise, and there's plenty of content there anyway.
If you're interested, the XB1 remake is a good place to start of course, but you can also begin with XB2 and you won't be lost. I think both games are decent albeit too long, the stop-and-start nature of the combat vs exploration dynamic is frequently tiring, and I was personally not as enamored by the large scale of their level design as others. But the variety of pretty environments was very captivating and kept me going through both games, so on the whole I would still give them a recommendation if you're okay with other JRPGs and all the associations with the genre because it's pretty stock standard beyond the level design and combat.
