Nintendo How well does Xenoblade 2 run in handheld mode?

[HardAct]

      I only play my Switch in handheld mode and have been eyeing Xenoblade 2 for some time. I never played the first one, but always wondered / and wanted to. This game would be a great time killer as it's a huge game from what I hear. Honestly though I have been a bit underwhelmed by a few titles that many ppl rave about on this little hand held gem of a system.

 

    SO! Just how well in the game in your opinions does it play this way, and hell why not. It it as good as it look and all. I loved Zelda, I'm really wanting some opinions here. The Switch has actually been getting some serious time lately, and for me that's a big thing. Still trucking through Dead Souls, Hollow Knight, and Bastion {yes, I know but I never beat it. I own it on everything and it's brother but never finished Bastion} So Xenoblade 2 worth the time to put on my Switch?

[stepee]

About 360p/15 fps. 

 

Edit: Only slightly exaggerating, and sometimes not even really. But yeah, it’s low res with a lot of sub 30.

[AndrewDean84]

It ran fine. Still one of the best jrpgs I’ve played in a long time. 

[Xbob42]

Like absolute fucking shit. It, no joke would go single digits relatively often, and looked worse than a badly compressed, 2009-era Youtube video about half the time.

 

In docked it was okay. Not amazing, but okay.

 

In handheld it was basically unplayable unless you have literally no standards and are maybe a little slow.

 

So by virtue of merely asking this question, I can already tell your standards will be too high to enjoy this game in handheld, because it is easily the worst game on the system for that mode.

[Brian]

Xenoblade? Runs like shit in handheld and is why stopped playing it. 

 

#Handheldonly

[Ghost_MH]

 

[Paperclyp]

Xenogears 2.

 

Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a looong time.

[crispy4000]

Xenoblade 2 is an amazing game.  Sits right up there with Zelda and Mario for me.  I put in a good 150 hours without buying the expansion pass, which I'm getting as soon as I finish with DQXI.  Don't skip it because of performance issues. 

 

I played the game 50/50 docked and portable.  Docked definitely is the way you'll want to play if you're at home.  Handheld does a better job maintaining framerate than resolution.  Some of the towns look gross with the resolution dips, as do some battles at their heaviest load.  Oddly enough, general exploration fares a bit better.

The game was just too good for me to cut playing it portable out of my life.  I put more time into Xenoblade 2 at a faster rate than any game I can think of.

My advice?  If you haven't played Xenoblade 1, start with that.  It's still a fantastic game, and you'll be a little more copacetic of the portable resolution issues (especially if you come from Xenoblade 1 on the New 3DS's display).

 

 

... One last thing.  Performance steadily improved with the patches they've been rolling out the past year.  Not to perfection, mind you.  But you should see heavy resolution/framerate drops a little less commonly today.

[ALIEN-gunner]

If only "Xenogears 2" was a real thing.

[chakoo]

How’s the new dlc standalone in handheld mode? I’m tempted to pick it up.

[HardAct]

22 hours ago, ALIEN-gunner said:

If only "Xenogears 2" was a real thing.

I fixed it, don't know what I was thinking, embarrassed but I admit my mistakes! 

[HardAct]

On 10/8/2018 at 12:27 AM, Xbob42 said:

Like absolute fucking shit. It, no joke would go single digits relatively often, and looked worse than a badly compressed, 2009-era Youtube video about half the time.

 

In docked it was okay. Not amazing, but okay.

 

In handheld it was basically unplayable unless you have literally no standards and are maybe a little slow.

 

So by virtue of merely asking this question, I can already tell your standards will be too high to enjoy this game in handheld, because it is easily the worst game on the system for that mode.

 

On 10/8/2018 at 5:36 AM, Ghost_MH said:

 

Thanks guys, this is what I needed to hear. I can't just ignore a game no matter how good it is if it runs like shit. This is what I needed to here, appreciated!

[crispy4000]

Honestly, you're missing out.

 

But hey, people missed out in Xenoblade 1 for similar reasons.

[Brian]

The only thing he is missing out is on nausea

[crispy4000]

6 hours ago, ManUtdRedDevils said:

The only thing he is missing out is on nausea

 

It'd have to be practically DS resolution for me to agree on that.

 

I played through Radiant Historia (original ver.) on a 3DS XL.  That was on the edge of my smear tolerance.

[Ghost_MH]

5 hours ago, ManUtdRedDevils said:

The only thing he is missing out is on nausea

 

Eh...I played the game like 90% handheld. It gets ugly at times, but it never stopped the game from being enjoyable. This is a turn based JRPG we're talking about here.

[Xbob42]

9 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Eh...I played the game like 90% handheld. It gets ugly at times, but it never stopped the game from being enjoyable. This is a turn based JRPG we're talking about here.

It gets ugly, it runs awful, and it's not a turn-based JRPG, it's pseudo-turn-based at best. There's way too much movement and timing for it to be considered turn-based.

[Keyser_Soze]

Some people like to torture themselves. As if playing a JRPG wasn't torture enough...

[Ghost_MH]

46 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

It gets ugly, it runs awful, and it's not a turn-based JRPG, it's pseudo-turn-based at best. There's way too much movement and timing for it to be considered turn-based.

 

The only actual timing based action in the games were for the special and elemental attacks and not once did frame rate limit my ability to hit those. Again, I played the game like 90% in handheld mode and sank well over 100 hours into it. This is not an action RPG. It's like Grandia, but you can manually control the character movement and your character just auto-spams the basic attack when its action meter reaches the end.

 

Going back and playing through Star Fox on the SNES is hard, even though I loved the game when it first came out. Xenoblade 2 is nothing like that. It gets ugly sometimes, but it's perfectly playable and never stops being fun.

[Xbob42]

3 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

The only actual timing based action in the games were for the special and elemental attacks and not once did frame rate limit my ability to hit those.

It did for me. Massive frame drops and completely inconsistent frame rate made me miss the timing on some of the QTEs far more often than was acceptable. (And the acceptable amount is 0.)

[crispy4000]

The only difficult QTEs to hit in that game are some of the salvaging ones, IMO.  Can't say I had the same problem.  They actually added an option to turn them off for specials in a later patch.

It's also not like Xenoblade X where hitting QTEs was needed just to heal.  Or if missed, could permanently destroy your mech in some situations.

[Brian]

This is the second game that made me feel sick while playing it. First game was Ryse: Son of Rome on the Xbone. 

[Ghost_MH]

3 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

It did for me. Massive frame drops and completely inconsistent frame rate made me miss the timing on some of the QTEs far more often than was acceptable. (And the acceptable amount is 0.)

 

Really? The salvaging QTEs were tricky in some areas. The QTEs during battles may as well have not existed because they were so easy to hit. I think the only times I ever missed a QTE in battle was when one of my kids pulled my attention away from the Switch. This isn't Mario and Luigi having you hit attacks in some sort of rhythm or based on some well timed cue. That sucks, but I have no idea if that's the norm.

[Xbob42]

I was specifically thinking about the salvaging ones. I don't recall having too much issue with the battle ones (I think I missed one once due to a massive frame drop) but the salvaging ones could be a NIGHTMARE. Because a fair amount of them are around towns, and I believe they also would change the timing based on the difficulty and maybe just for a randomness element (it's been a while since I played so forgive me if something's inaccurate) but I just remember if there were two salvaging spots on the opposite side of the town, the framerate differential alone from being on one side of town that might be less populated could change the timing even if the nodes were otherwise the same difficulty or whatever. (Was it difficulty? Or did you use different items to change the difficulty? Man I gotta play again sometime.)

 

I remember early on you could... waste stuff when failing salvaging? So mistiming it thanks to frame issues felt overly punishing and often unfair.

[crispy4000]

I can't remember a single salvage spot where there were framerate dips.  The camera is always oriented towards the cloud sea 'skybox,' meaning there shouldn't be.

 

Also, the town with the worst performance is on the first main Titan.  It's ironic that they didn't put there best foot forward there.  But even if you weren't imagining the dips while salvaging there, the button prompts in that town should be stupid easy.  It's early game.

[Xbob42]

I don't remember a single spot in the game with consistent framerate to begin with, so I dunno how to reply to that...

[crispy4000]

13 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

I don't remember a single spot in the game with consistent framerate to begin with, so I dunno how to reply to that...

 

It is when salvaging, for starters.

 

But yeah, the performance overall isn't so bad, especially post patches. 

 

I was coming off of playing BoTW on Wii U when playing Xenoblade 2.  Some of the towns in the former felt far worse in their framerate dips (like the oriental one, lost woods, etc).  

 

Granted, BoTW isn't as heavy handed with dynamic res as X2 in portable mode.  But that's only a major issue in Gormott's town IMO.

[Xbob42]

Well I can't speak to the current performance, only what I experienced back in... must've been January.