Well, this certainly whelmed me.
Xenoblade Chronicles: Future Connected is an expansion that tells the story of events that happen a year after the events of the main game. I won't be spoiling specific story events here, but I can definitely say that the story they present here is sadly not too terribly interesting. They try to answer some questions around Melia and the state of the High Entia after the events of the main game, but it really doesn't carry enough weight to make you truly invested in the plot. It also doesn't help that the main antagonist of this story doesn't evoke any real emotion from the player. They're meant to be this intimidating unrelenting force, but after coming off the main game and its strong cast of antagonists, the one they present here just feels so uninteresting and boring that at no point throughout my playthrough did I feel any personal desire to see it eradicated outside of wanting to see the credits roll.
Since this story expansion released a good number of years after the initial Wii release of Xenoblade Chronicles, the voice acting sounds noticeably different. It's very jarring in the beginning, and it doesn't help that they didn't rerecord the mid-battle call outs from the main game, but after a while you get used to it.
Outside of Shulk and Melia, two new nopon characters join your party. Character-wise, they're fine. They're mostly meant to be comic relief, but have their more interesting moments here and there. Gameplay wise, well, one of them is Reyn and the other is Sharla. They have no unique arts to use in combat at all. It's a shame, too, because I feel that an expansion like this would be an excellent opportunity to try to make characters that allow you to employ new strategies not possible in the original, giving it truly its own unique feel. For whatever reason, they played it safe, and I feel like we lost something there as a result.
With this story expansion, they made a ton of changes to the gameplay. I won't be listing them all, of course, but I'll mention the ones that stand out the most to me.
Firstly, gone are the affinity chart and equippable skills. I understand why this was done, as this is a smaller story expansion and the player may not have time to fill out affinities with the party members during the short runtime, but at the same time I feel that a ton of incentive to mix and match party members was lost as a result. I wound up using a party that was Shulk, Melia, and the Reyn nopon for the entire campaign because I had no real reason to try any other combination, and that really upsets me. Of course, I could've switched things up, but without the incentives in place from the main game, or any new ones, I didn't feel any real need or desire to.
With affinity gone, so are Heart-to-Hearts. Thankfully, though, they were replaced with an alternative in the form of Quiet Moments. These take a different form from Heart-to-Hearts, with these being fully voiced cutscenes that display a scene between two party members bonding rather than it being a text-based interaction with dialogue options to choose from. They're cute and do a good job fleshing out the personalities of your party members. As you progress the plot, more become available to you, and I feel that they're always worth hunting down to take a break from the action and enjoy a fun back-and-forth between characters.
The last major change I'll discuss here is the removal of chain attacks. This devastating move was replaced by a new system, entirely based around specific nopon you find and help in the open world. As you assist these nopon, they join your party. They aren't full party members, but they'll join you in battles to occasionally do things like attack, heal, or dish out debuffs. Once you find enough of them, you unlock the ability to use the chain attack replacement, which lets you choose between three special moves: one deals extra damage to an enemy, one heals and buffs the party, and the other dazes and debuffs the enemy. While I prefer the utility of chain attacks, I do think it's neat that they attempted something new here and it did help out during tense battles, so I won't say I hated it.
Also, when I say that these nopon join your party, I don't mean that it's the kind of party-joining where they're invisible when you're running around the area and then a few of them appear during battle occasionally to do things randomly. Oh, no, they went the extra mile here. The nopon that join your party are always visible, following you around the world Map and joining in every battle. You get over 10 of these guys, too, and let me tell you the Switch does not like that at all! With your three party members, all these nopon, and however many enemies decided to try to take you down in one fight, you're gonna see the framerate dip below 20 almost immediately. It also doesn't help that with so many nopon on screen it gets really hard to make out where smaller enemies are, making it awkward to try to get into position for position-based arts. It was a brave move to have that many characters in battle, but I do not think it was worth the hit to performance.
Overall, I don't hate this expansion, but I don't think it's something where I'll say to fans of Xenoblade Chronicles that they need to play it. You can skip this and lose absolutely nothing, story-wise. I feel that there are too many sacrifices made in regards to changes to the mechanics without enough additions to make it truly stand out gameplay wise, as well. At the very least, this is a mercifully short expansion, being around 8-10 hours long depending on how much time you devote to side content. If you're debating on picking up Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition solely for the extra story campaign, I am sad to say that you won't find much here. My personal recommendation is to just stick with the base game and pretend this isn't a part of the edition, unless you care about some small unlocks for the base game that become available when you beat this.
Also at some point my brain called Melia Smellia and I can't stop calling her that now I don't even hate her I like her a lot but it's like an intrusive thought at this point and it won't turn off please help me please help me please hel
Xenoblade Chronicles: Future Connected is an expansion that tells the story of events that happen a year after the events of the main game. I won't be spoiling specific story events here, but I can definitely say that the story they present here is sadly not too terribly interesting. They try to answer some questions around Melia and the state of the High Entia after the events of the main game, but it really doesn't carry enough weight to make you truly invested in the plot. It also doesn't help that the main antagonist of this story doesn't evoke any real emotion from the player. They're meant to be this intimidating unrelenting force, but after coming off the main game and its strong cast of antagonists, the one they present here just feels so uninteresting and boring that at no point throughout my playthrough did I feel any personal desire to see it eradicated outside of wanting to see the credits roll.
Since this story expansion released a good number of years after the initial Wii release of Xenoblade Chronicles, the voice acting sounds noticeably different. It's very jarring in the beginning, and it doesn't help that they didn't rerecord the mid-battle call outs from the main game, but after a while you get used to it.
Outside of Shulk and Melia, two new nopon characters join your party. Character-wise, they're fine. They're mostly meant to be comic relief, but have their more interesting moments here and there. Gameplay wise, well, one of them is Reyn and the other is Sharla. They have no unique arts to use in combat at all. It's a shame, too, because I feel that an expansion like this would be an excellent opportunity to try to make characters that allow you to employ new strategies not possible in the original, giving it truly its own unique feel. For whatever reason, they played it safe, and I feel like we lost something there as a result.
With this story expansion, they made a ton of changes to the gameplay. I won't be listing them all, of course, but I'll mention the ones that stand out the most to me.
Firstly, gone are the affinity chart and equippable skills. I understand why this was done, as this is a smaller story expansion and the player may not have time to fill out affinities with the party members during the short runtime, but at the same time I feel that a ton of incentive to mix and match party members was lost as a result. I wound up using a party that was Shulk, Melia, and the Reyn nopon for the entire campaign because I had no real reason to try any other combination, and that really upsets me. Of course, I could've switched things up, but without the incentives in place from the main game, or any new ones, I didn't feel any real need or desire to.
With affinity gone, so are Heart-to-Hearts. Thankfully, though, they were replaced with an alternative in the form of Quiet Moments. These take a different form from Heart-to-Hearts, with these being fully voiced cutscenes that display a scene between two party members bonding rather than it being a text-based interaction with dialogue options to choose from. They're cute and do a good job fleshing out the personalities of your party members. As you progress the plot, more become available to you, and I feel that they're always worth hunting down to take a break from the action and enjoy a fun back-and-forth between characters.
The last major change I'll discuss here is the removal of chain attacks. This devastating move was replaced by a new system, entirely based around specific nopon you find and help in the open world. As you assist these nopon, they join your party. They aren't full party members, but they'll join you in battles to occasionally do things like attack, heal, or dish out debuffs. Once you find enough of them, you unlock the ability to use the chain attack replacement, which lets you choose between three special moves: one deals extra damage to an enemy, one heals and buffs the party, and the other dazes and debuffs the enemy. While I prefer the utility of chain attacks, I do think it's neat that they attempted something new here and it did help out during tense battles, so I won't say I hated it.
Also, when I say that these nopon join your party, I don't mean that it's the kind of party-joining where they're invisible when you're running around the area and then a few of them appear during battle occasionally to do things randomly. Oh, no, they went the extra mile here. The nopon that join your party are always visible, following you around the world Map and joining in every battle. You get over 10 of these guys, too, and let me tell you the Switch does not like that at all! With your three party members, all these nopon, and however many enemies decided to try to take you down in one fight, you're gonna see the framerate dip below 20 almost immediately. It also doesn't help that with so many nopon on screen it gets really hard to make out where smaller enemies are, making it awkward to try to get into position for position-based arts. It was a brave move to have that many characters in battle, but I do not think it was worth the hit to performance.
Overall, I don't hate this expansion, but I don't think it's something where I'll say to fans of Xenoblade Chronicles that they need to play it. You can skip this and lose absolutely nothing, story-wise. I feel that there are too many sacrifices made in regards to changes to the mechanics without enough additions to make it truly stand out gameplay wise, as well. At the very least, this is a mercifully short expansion, being around 8-10 hours long depending on how much time you devote to side content. If you're debating on picking up Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition solely for the extra story campaign, I am sad to say that you won't find much here. My personal recommendation is to just stick with the base game and pretend this isn't a part of the edition, unless you care about some small unlocks for the base game that become available when you beat this.