BCC 25-48: Hi-Res (Patreon)

I've been playing Xenoblade Chronicles 2... it's nice to play a fairly traditional JRPG on a home console, since those are getting to be less common these days. Still, I almost gave up on it... the game has a ton of systems and different types of equipment to keep track of, which to me is a turnoff. Luckily I'm playing with lowered difficulty, so although all those systems are there, I can kind of ignore them and just focus on the story and such. Still, it's pretty overwhelming when each character has their individual skill tree, a second set of skills specific to each weapon type, each weapon is technically its own character that requires its own equipment and has their own skill tree to boot. Not to mention that there's a unique weapon-character that is powered up seemingly exclusively by playing a specific minigame that, so far, I've only found one location to play it (and it's not particularly fun).

I feel like paring down and simplifying things like this is probably one of the hardest things to do as a programmer. I know that, just as a writer, I hate when I come up with a cool idea but, for one reason or another, it just wouldn't work for the story so I end up scrapping it. I can't imagine how it would feel to design and program an entire skill system and then reach a point where I have to decide whether or not it makes the game deeper or if it just clutters the UI.

Either way, I'm still not very far into the game. I'm liking it, though, and it's interesting to look at the game design, since it honestly feels a lot like an MMORPG, just without the other players.