That’s not to say there isn’t personal drama, though. There’s a lot of moving from location to location, listening to characters discuss the strategies and decisions on what to do next, agreeing, and then rinsing and repeating the process. While XC2 put character interaction and personal stakes at its forefront, Torna does the opposite and for far too long, those elements feel like they take a backseat. The writing feels painfully sluggish and uninspired compared to what preceded it, in no small part thanks to those war politics I mentioned earlier. It’s inaccessible.Īs someone who finished the original XC2 and really loved it, unfortunately, I couldn’t really get into the flow of the story of Torna. It expects you to already know who Addam and Mythra are, and all the intricacies of the war politics that the world of Alrest is embroiled in. Torna expects you to already care about Lora and Jin. It fully expects and welcomes new players with open arms, telling them “It’s ok to not know anything! We’ll teach you!” but then turns its back moments later with the introduction of the plot. In fact, they’re more in depth and easy to understand that the tutorials that Xenoblade 2 ever had. The tutorials that Torna ~ The Golden Country introduces to the player are in depth. The game prides itself on being a standalone release that people can pick up off the shelves and play without owning XC2, but during the time I spent with the game, the same thought kept crossing my mind. I found myself struggling to understand who it was for, exactly. The Torna DLC is at odds with itself in so many ways. Torna ~ The Golden Country uses its setting to primarily explore the backstory of Lora and Jin, two of some of the most important characters in the base story… and because of that, it’s really hard to write about the events that occur in Torna for any readers who might be interested in trying out this game without playing the original.
However, that doesn’t mean the DLC is void of spoilers of the game its based on, but much rather the opposite. Torna takes place 500 years prior to the events of Xenoblade 2 (which I will refer to as XC2 from now on). This whole setup proves to be both a blessing and a curse, making Xenoblade 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country (one big mouthful) an extremely interesting experience to talk about. If Nintendo had come out of the gate announcing Torna to be a Xenoblade 2 spinoff rather than what it turned out to be, not a single person would’ve batted an eyelid. This DLC is essentially its own unique game – not even requiring the original released to be played, if so desired. In an extremely uncharacteristic move from Nintendo, Monolith Soft have come out with the Xenoblade franchise’s biggest piece of DLC ever – Torna ~ The Golden Country, a standalone expansion.
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