There's a lot of neat changes to the gameplay in Torna that make me think it'll be hard to back to XC2 if, for whatever reason, I felt the desire to replay it.

I like the Kingdom of Torna, I like the gameplay tweaks, I like basically all the side content and the NPCs. If there's one thing I can say about this game, it's that it made me invested in the plights of the Tornan people. The tangible changes you make to their community feel rewarding, and the way it all comes together in the penultimate sidequest feels like a great period to the whole thing.

I like just enough of this DLC that I don't feel cheated by playing it. The main story is a story that never needed telling because it's not as though Jin's motivations weren't already explicitly clear in XC2 proper. It didn't need anymore fleshing out, although I guess it's nice to see what he was like before. I don't mind giving Addam a proper design, but making him a prince takes away from the idea that Mythra's original Driver was just A Guy by making him someone special.

I'd honestly even go so far as to say that the main story in this is worthless. The two antagonists who absolutely needed more fleshing out, Amalthus and Malos, get nothing in their favour here. They're uncomplicated, uncompelling villains much like they were in the main game. Every time a main story beat was happening, I was zoning out and just waiting until I could get back to helping out the people of Torna.

Even though I had fun with this, it's hard to recommend it if you were expecting something worthwhile out of it.

Reviewed on Jan 03, 2023


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