This article has major spoilers for Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
Xenoblade is a game series I hold near and dear to my heart. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 is one of my favorite games of all time and I wouldn’t give up my love of the series for anything.
That being said, Xenoblade is not without it’s flaws, and as a lover of dungeons in RPGs, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has a lot of low points in it’s various dungeon crawls throughout the game. In this article, I will be discussing the Old Factory and Spirit Crucible Elpys dungeons from chapters 4 and 7 respectively.
The Old Factory
The Old Factory is a dungeon that actually was jarring enough to halt my first attempted playthrough of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in it’s tracks. Between confusing layouts and various lock and key style puzzles that boiled down to finding the exact right room in the factory, this dungeon is a pain to get through the first time. Additionally, this dungeon marks the first big difficulty spike in the game shortly after meeting Mythra for the first time. What could have been a simple factory layout turns into a confusing maze of similar looking control towers that I found myself going around in circles to navigate.
Spirit Crucible Elpys
Ah yes, Spirit Crucible Elpys, likely the most hated dungeon in the Xenoblade series. What more can I say about this dungeon that hasn’t been said already. This dungeon was what actually had me swap from playing as Rex to playing as Morag for the rest of the game. Simply put, Morag had the hit points as the dedicated tank character to be able to jump off of the tangled ledges of this dungeon without dying. It became less of a dungeon to navigate and more of one of those old minecraft dropper maps. Additionally, there were several points in the dungeon where I just had to run past tough enemies due to a lack of resources to be able to effectively fight them in the dungeon due to restricted blade abilities and the lack of the aegis.
As stated before, the dungeon is a maze of ledges you have to drop down, however the enemies in this dungeon have a status effect they can inflict called blowdown. Blowdown is a status that acts as a sort of knockback and stun effect that launches your character backwards. Where I am going with this is that most enemies in the spirit crucible elpys dungeon can easily knock you off of those ledges with blowdown, causing a full party wipe from fall damage.
One last thing I would like to discuss about the dungeon is the several points where you have to have certain traversal skills on blades to progress. This makes progression of the main story of the game locked behind either luck or grinding.
All in all, Spirit Crucible Elpys is an annoying dungeon in an otherwise amazing series of games.
Thanks for letting me rant a bit, this is The Dandy Dullahan, signing off with love. Stay creepy.
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