Abandon Shipping: Before release, Addam/Mythra was relatively popular due to Mythra's fondness of Addam in the main game and the parallels to Rex/Pyra. Post-release, however, shippers jumped when Addam and Mythra's relationship appeared more familial and when a sidequest revealed Addam already has a wife. Their interactions paint them as a sort of father/daughter duo rather than as lovers, and Mythra's attachment to Rex is such that her premonitions of him are what help calm her down during the climax, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 shows that she, Pyra and Nia all had fully consummated relationships with Rex.
Anti-Climax Boss: Superboss Hurricane Anise can be this depending on the player's strategy. Part of its difficulty comes from its ability to inflict Blowdown and send the player plummeting to their death, but by luring Anise inside the cave attached to its arena, the fight becomes much safer.
Best Level Ever: Auresco, the Royal Capital, is a large and dynamic city with multiple different structures and levels that can be explored, to the point that the rooftops are designed to be walked on and are required to be explored for a late-game sidequest. The mid-game climax of the game takes place here, with multiple Gargoyle and Malos fights, and crafty players can use the "zombie jump" exploit to climb Aureus Palace and get some stunning views of the whole Tornan kingdom.
Escapist Character: Lora is a 27-year-old who is one of the "commonfolk", being a mere mercenary and being the only one of the 9 protagonists who isn't a royal or a Blade. She lives with, and is in love with, a man who happens to be the most renowned Blade in all of Torna, and gets along perfectly with said royals and their Blades as she sets off on her quest to find her mother, getting swept into the larger conflict to defeat Malos and even getting knighted. While she is presented as the main character of the game, in-universe she wouldn't be seen as this due to Addam's greater fame and reputation and his being The Hero of the Aegis War itself, making her situation easy to relate to and look up to for many people.
Even Better Sequel: It's generally regarded as an Even Better Prequel to the base game. Given that it also builds on the strengths that XC2 had over the first game while addressing several of its flaws (such as by having a more streamlined battle system, better voice acting, and writing that eschews the cliches found early on in the original game), many players hold the opinion that Torna, if taken on its own, is not only a great expansion, but better than the base game, to the point some argue it rivals or exceeds the first Xenoblade in many areas, with the short length and mandated sidequesting (enjoyed by many, but also regarded as Fake Longevity) being two reasons it isn't often discussed as the top contender.
Evil Is Cool: Malos shines once again in this game. David Menkin is clearly having the time of his life as him in the English dub, and his presence and boss fights are absolutely spectacular — the latter are considered even better than in the base game. He even features on the alternate reversible cover art for the physical release, making him a Mascot Villain of sorts.
Game-Breaker: While all 9 party members are meant to be usable in their own right, some of them turn out to be especially potent when optimized.
Lora is a jack-of-all-trades Fragile Speedster meant to be a versatile character in any situation, but what sets her apart is her Talent Art, "Swallow's Flight". At the cost of half her HP, Lora can recharge all of her arts, which is invaluable during the early game when more sophisticated means of Arts recharge are unavailable, and puts her nearly on par with Poppi QTπ in terms of Break and Driver Combo potential, especially since she can follow up her monstrous Break capabilities by switching to Jin for his Topple. Not only that, but given that Jin is a Game-Breaker in his own right and Haze joins him on Bringer of Chaos, she also inherits many of their strengths. The only things holding Lora back is that when put on AI, she will spam Swallow's Flight even when not needed and that the hardest superboss in the game is immune to Driver Combos, nullifying one of her biggest strengths.
Jin is generally considered the best party member due having very high raw damage output and most of his Battle Skills synergizing to boost it even further. Transmigration increases damage dealt by 50% on every Vanguard Switch; because Lora is intended as the party's main Break inflicter and Jin's switch-in move causes Topple, you'll likely by using Vanguard Switch a lot and reaching the max cap of 250% in short time. Full Resonance boosts Jin's damage output by 100% while having him take 30% less damage at max Affinity, mitigating his Glass Cannon status. Lastly, Mind's Eye boosts his critical damage by a whopping 80%, making the broken Crit-Heal strategy just as viable on him as on Mythra. His Level 3 special Ice Revolution is considered the best Art in the entire game due to doing a whopping 100% extra damage against monsters with a higher level, which makes it extremely useful against Superbosses.
On Normal or Easy difficulty, Haze is a Low-Tier Letdown, very underwhelming and weak and not worth using over Jin's insane DPS. However, on Bringer of Chaos, Haze's three Battle Skills make her downright invaluable at maxed-out Affinity: Headwind reduces party damage taken by 20%, Tailwind increases damage dealt by 50%, and Summer Breeze gives all party members 40% resistance to all debuffs, which will do much to keep the party alive. What makes her become truly broken is her Talent Art, Winds of Time, which can stop enemies in their tracks for 5 seconds at the cost of consuming all of Haze's own Arts recharge. It's not unheard of for an AI-controlled Haze to stunlock monsters for up to half a minute at a time with Winds of Time, especially when Lora is equipped with Arts recharge pouch items. Overall, Haze falls onto both extremes of the spectrum depending on what difficulty level you're playing on, being a complete joke on lower difficulties but an invaluable Support Party Member on the highest difficulties.
Addam is made absolutely broken via his Talent Art. Transcendence lets him, for the price of some HP, extend Driver Combos for a very, very long time. Outside of the strongest superboss, who is immune to Driver Combos, this lets him stunlock enemies a la Xenoblade Chronicles 1, and similar to Lora, Addam has a Launch Art that can be followed up by switching to Mythra for a Smash to complete the Driver Combo.
While Hugo doesn't look like much on paper, what makes him shine is his Talent Art, Imperial Tether. At the cost of half his HP, Hugo can force all aggro onto himself for 15 seconds, nullifying the main weakness of Tanks (including Hugo himself) being poor at maintaining aggro due to their lower damage output. On top of that, Hugo's very high Agility as a dodge tank can be supplemented by Haze and Mythra and by using a crit-heal build to ensure he can both quickly recover enough of his lost HP to spam his Talent Art endlessly and also utterly No-Sell almost any enemy attack that does come his way.
Goddamned Boss: Hurricane Anise, the game's main superboss, especially on higher difficulties. This is largely because of how it screws with the battle system; it's immune to Driver Combos, making Lora and Addam (normally two of the best characters in the game) significantly less viable, and its "Warning Cry" Art lets it summon minions that lock up the Party Gauge, preventing the use of Chain Attacks. Even worse, it will undergo Elemental Awakening at random like most Unique Monsters if any special is used on it, and the only way to purge it is through a Chain Attack (which can't be used if its minions are active), effectively discouraging the use of specials. The safest way to deal with it ends up being via DPS Art spamming, making it a much more unfun boss than it was meant to be.
Good Bad Bugs: The "zombie hover" returns with a vengeance, and in fact can be exploited to fly to great heights and reach inaccessible areas, a technique known as "zombie jump". These areas include the Soaring Rostrum (without triggering the final boss fight), the balcony and conference room in Aureus Palace, and the Dummied Out area of Gormott corresponding to the "Upper Level - Left" area from the base game.
The tragic fates of Lora and Jin in the main game becomes even more tragic when it's shown that they likely only had a matter of days to recover from the fight with Malos when the Praetorium attacked the survivors of Torna.
Much of the dialogue in the main game referring to events in this game hits harder now that we fully witness what the characters are talking about. Standouts can include Mythra's anger at having to break her seal and return to the real world, and Jin's sheer disdain when addressing Mythra when they meet again.
Jin: It 'fell,' says the girl who sank it.
Minoth, a gunslinging ninja cowboy-like character who speaks Gratuitous Spanish and has various western influences, changed his name to "Cole" later in life. A few years later, another gunslinging cowboy character in Overwatch started going by the name "Cole Cassidy" (originally Jesse McCree), though the name change was for much darker real-world reasons than Minoth's.note Namely, sexual abuse allegations against multiple employees including one named "Jesse McCree" who was Overwatch Cole's original namesake.
Mythra's Lethal Chef tendencies get turned on their head by the end, where she's able to make a Miracle Parfait, her one good piece of food. Seems to imply that there's a spark inside her that's actually good at cooking. ...And then you realize, said spark is Pyra, who Mythra created as a defense mechanism for her PTSD, and sets free following the game's Downer Ending.
There's a line of dialogue from Milton who says Mythra's cooking can "do more damage to you than any Artifice ever could". Guess what happens in the game's ending.
Jin's monologue at the end about how he doesn't wish for "forever" with Lora and says that only one more moment with her would be enough for him is already depressing to hear, but come Xenoblade Chronicles 3it gets turned on its head completely, when Jin's Expy Consul N ends up preserving Aionios in an "endless now" just for the purpose of living forever with Consul M, against the latter's wishes, no less.
Heartwarming in Hindsight: Playing TTGC and getting acquainted with Minoth adds an extra layer of heartwarming to the "A Secret Cure" sidequest in the main game. Not only does the player have more meaning and context behind the Cool Old Guy playwright they're helping as they cure his terminal illness, but Mythra herselfnote as opposed to Pyra interacts with Minoth during the sidequest and plays a proactive role in it, which becomes even more meaningful after seeing them travel and fight together with Addam in the prequel. Even moreso considering that Cole is one of Mythra's few friends from that era to survive and retain his memories while remaining on the side of good.note Lora, Addam, Hugo and Milton are dead; Haze forcibly lost her memories and is Killed Off for Real during the main game; Jin and Mikhail underwent a Face–Heel Turn; and Brighid and Aegaeon are newer incarnations of themselves with new memories.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Brighid and Mythra's banter when they fight sounds a lot like a professional Super Smash Bros. player complaining that she's up against a rookie player with an overpowered character, especially when Mythra realizes Brighid has no counter to Sacred Arrow and prepares to spam it before Haze stops her. Sure enough, when Mythra actually joined the Smash roster, she met plenty of similar complaints about her moveset being straightforward-but-powerful, as well as the Newbie Boom she and Pyra brought with them. Thankfully, Sacred Arrow is only her Final Smash in that game, so it can't be spammed.
Ho Yay: Once again, Malos has a very charged relationship with Jin, albeit this time as his sworn enemy. He even comments to Jin flirtatiously that he has nice eyes.
Just Here for Godzilla: A major draw of the game is the opportunity to play as popular Blades from the main game, such as Mythra, Brighid and Jin. Jin in particular was a very well-liked and sympathetic villain in the main game but was only a Guest-Star Party Member twice briefly; here, he's not only the main Blade but the true main character of the story.
Aegaeon, once again, falls flat as the worst character in the game. Just like in the main game, he has no offensive presence, making it difficult for him to accumulate aggro and take advantage of his evasive and defensive skills. The consensus is that anything Aegaeon can do, Brighid can do much better, including Rear Guard support for Hugo.
While Haze is extremely useful on Bringer of Chaos difficulty, where the more drawn-out fights and stronger enemies make her support skills much more helpful, she is a very lackluster character on Easy and Normal, since she has almost no offensive presence. As a Support Party Member, any benefits that she brings to the party can be easily outperformed by Jin on his own, as most battles are over too fast for her skills and abilities to be of any benefit.
Memetic Badass: Ravine Bunnit, similar to the first game's Despotic Arsene, is an unusually high-leveled and very dangerous unique monster that happens to be a fluffy little Bunnit and can one-shot any party member on sight, drawing similar comparisons to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. While it isn't a superboss like Arsene, it's the second highest-leveled UM when not counting the Golden Monsters, and is the same level as the Final Boss. Unlike Arsene, it also happens to be brightly colored in pink and green, adding to the ridiculousness.
Aegaeon. Widely considered the worst playable character in the game and underutilized during the story for the second time in a row, he was already maligned for being a very weak Blade in the base game but got barely any improvements in the transition to Torna. It got to the point that Chuggaaconroy incessantly ribbed on Aegaeon during his Torna playthrough, treating him as the out-of-universe Butt-Monkey.
Moe: While Mythra had shades of this in the main game, her dynamic here with the rest of the traveling group makes her come across as very cute, like a bratty but well-meaning and caring child.
Assuming the entire titan and many towns he'd already destroyed didn't do this, Malos breaks this by attacking the Torna city with his Siren, which kills Milton and puts Mythra into an Unstoppable Rage.
Gort's attempts to kill Lora because of simple pettiness due to Jin cutting his arm off. This is 17 years after he tried to kill Lora for resonating with Jin's Core Crystal that he stole.
It's revealed that Amalthus didn't become Praetor through honorable means. Rather, he poisons his predecessor and murders his superiors who would challenge his rule. Then he wastes no time in attacking the Tornan survivors in his effort to find and kill Mythra.
More Popular Replacement: Many fans will claim that Lora is a better main protagonist than Rex, for being an adult instead of a childish Stock Shōnen Hero, and for being a person who's just been randomly swept into the Aegis War and doesn't end up hogging all the attention in- and out-of-universe like Rex does. Addam also gets this treatment if one considers him to be Rex's replacement instead (being Mythra's Driver and having some direct similarities), being around Lora's age and being an entertainingly gallant Large Ham and Reasonable Authority Figure with some insecurities and development of his own.
Most Wonderful Sound: "My friends, put your minds at ease!" Said by Hugo when he uses his Talent Art and gives your attackers/healers much-needed breathing room.
The enemy gauntlet activation stones are called "Barney Stones", which can bring Barney & Friends to mind for some players, resulting in them either cringing or giggling uncontrollably.
Mythra's screams of agony and tearful remarks to Malos in the ending, while incredibly heart-wrenching, are somewhat undermined by the fact that she constantly has Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes throughout the ordeal, making her look incredibly apathetic.
One-Scene Wonder: Pyra only appears at the end of the game and doesn't even speak, but the whole game contextualizes the reason for her creation (Mythra wanting to seal away her powers) and her appearance here sets up the entire story of the main game. It's also one of the very few times she, rather than Mythra, can be seen interacting with Addam. After beating the campaign, the title screen becomes a shot of Pyra sealed away in the Ancient Ship.
Padding: The most common criticism of Torna is the Community mechanic, in which plot progress is tied to the amount of sidequests completed. Critics view it as a way to artificially inflate the game's playtime, since while the DLC has around 30 hours of content if you complete all the sidequests, the main story is not especially long (around 10-15 hours) otherwise.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Or more accurately, the Base-Breaking Character. While Mythra was disliked for her Tsundere tendencies and occasional Jerkass moments in the main game, many players warmed to her due to the DLC fleshing out her character, giving her much needed character development, and showing just how much the War of Aegises traumatized her. This caused her to blossom from a typical polarizing anime tsundere who was arguably less well-liked than Pyra to one of the most beloved and praised characters in the series, even moreso after she and Pyra became playable in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
Sacred Cow: A refrain among some fans is that TTGC could be one of the best Xenoblade games, if not the best (aside from its relatively short length), due to its building on the strengths of its parent game while addressing its flaws. As such, major criticism of the game outside of its Fake Longevity is very rare in the series' fandom. While many Xenoblade Chronicles 2 fans acknowledge the base game's flaws when discussing or defending the game, they will often pivot to TTGC and/or lump it with the base game to explain why they favor the Alrest saga over the other Xenoblade games.
Salvaged Story: Some fans took issue with the fact that Mythra resembles and acts like a mature young woman who has Ship Tease with Rex, a confirmed 15-year-old. However, Torna made it clear that Mythra’s personality and possible physical appearance are supposed to be that of someone in their late teens, as Addam created her to represent his desire and fear of becoming a father. It helps that the majority of the party members treat Mythra like a rebellious teenager rather than someone around their age.
The Scrappy: Bry, the Royal Gardener of Torna. His stubborn and hotheaded nature are already red flags, but the fandom grew to loathe him due to him being an unapologetic abusive father to Kaym. What made him even more reviled is the fact that Kaym is presented as being in the wrong for having the nerve to go against his abusive father's wishes, and Bry never faces any repercussions for his physical violence and emotional manipulation towards his son.
While the community system itself isn't an issue, its integration into the game's progression is for many players. There are two gated parts of the main story which require the player reach community levels 2 and 4, forcing the game to a halt as the player must grind sidequests to progress. This is especially bad if the player's been ignoring sidequests up to this point, and comes across as a form of Fake Longevity.
Elemental Awakening returns with a vengeance. Unlike in the main game, there's no way to remove an awakening outside of simply defeating the enemy or breaking all its elemental orbs, making those tougher boss battles even more tough.
Unlike in the main game, pouch items can only be obtained by crafting and cannot be purchased. This often makes good pouch items Too Awesome to Use due to their rare ingredients, and means you'll be running out quickly while constantly replacing them.
Shocking Moments: Mythra going absolutely insane over Milton's death allowing her to move at the speed of light, and cause energy blasts so powerful they can destroy Malos' Gargoyles in a single hit. There's even a mecha battle where they're controlling their Sirens through sheer willpower and Mythra and Malos enter them by doing the pose of Jesus.
Malos' attack on Torna is one of the most discussed parts of the DLC due to the new remix of Amalthus - The Acting God and the tension along the battle.
The ending due to the amount of deaths. The fight scene between Bloodlusted Mythra and Malos is also insanely good, which helps too.
Signature Song: The battle theme of Torna is one of the most popular songs of all of Xenoblade, and the most popular Torna song. It ended up getting in Smash, similarly to the other popular songs of the base game, and got a Suspiciously Similar Song in the battle theme for the similar expansion for its predecessor's Definitive Edition, Future Connected.
To Revenge of the Sith, as both are prequels featuring the main character being a swordsmen that due to a certain tragedy with their loved ones dying turn evil as a result. In addition, both have one of the characters have a Big "NO!" near the end. It also helps that Stannif's explanation to Amalthus about the life cycle of Blades appears to directly mirror Revenge of the Sith's opera house scene.
An arguably closer connection would be to Crisis Core. Both Torna & Crisis Core serve as prequels to their respective JRPG's, and feature a lot of the games' casts dying at the end, coupled with a white-haired swordsman going through a Face–Heel Turn, the death of The Hero who looks up to said white-haired swordsman, and a blonde sword-wielding central character from the original game suffering an emotional breakdown and being forced to witness said betrayal and death and then using some bizarre mental lock to hide away their memories and cope with the anguish. This may even be the result of a deliberate Creator Thumbprint, as the idea for Cloud to develop a split personality in response to trauma is a holdover from Takahashi's initial proposal for FFVII, which very loosely manifested in the final game as him replacing his own memories and personality with Zack's.
Starboarding: Those who didn't fully jump off the Addam/Mythra ship still see Mythra as having had a crush on Addam.
Mythra becomes the Butt-Monkey of quite a few jokes from the other party members, which may end up being this trope for those who didn't care for her Tsundere moments in the main game.
Mythra's "Girl's Talk" field skill is mentioned to "not be very useful" (and is unlocked so late in the game there's nothing left to do), indicating how it's easily one of the most useless field skills in the main game.
That One Sidequest: Getting to 100 percent Community. You need to get both Monster Granny and The Nopon Halfsage. In order to get the former, you have to defeat 16 Unique Monsters. For the latter, you have to spend a total of 1,350,000(!) gold to buy the locations of four Golden Monsters and then defeat them. The highest-level monster is level 100, so you'll have to grind all the way up to the max level in order to do this. Clearing every single sidequest and the campaign will put you in the low 60's.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Lora herself. Despite being presented as the central protagonist of the story, she ultimately serves as a Decoy Protagonist not just to Jin but also to Mythra, with those two Blades taking up the bulk of the character development during the story. Some fans bemoan the fact that Lora's own character arc was resolved far too quickly (ending during the first visit to Torigoth), and that she remained a largely static Satellite Character for Jin and a Vanilla Protagonist during most of the narrative despite her top-billed placement and Character Shilling in-universe. While most fans agree that Lora helped make Jin a fantastic and sympathetic character, the problem is just that - Lora didn't have enough to stand on her own and make her feel like the central hero of the story.
Just like Territorial Rotbart and Immovable Gonzalez, Erratic Goliante is another Gogol Unique Monster "returning" from the first game and can easily be missed during a playthrough.
While Rex appearing in the game's epilogue isn't much of a surprise, the fact that Mythra's premonitions of him play a significant role in the game's climax caught a lot of people off guard.
The Woobie: Mythra suffers a lot through this Downer Ending. She loses Milton because she wasn't going all out to stop Malos entirely, which makes her use an attack that ends up destroying Torna and kills Hugo, leading to her wanting to be locked up entirely, until 500 years later, and at that point, all her old friends are dead, slowly dying, or joined up with the very beings who caused her suffering in the first place.
to fly to great heights and reach inaccessible areas, a technique known as "zombie jump". These areas include the Soaring Rostrum (without triggering the final boss fight), the balcony and conference room in Aureus Palace, and the Dummied Out area of Gormott corresponding to the "Upper Level - Left" area from the base game.