I imagine I'm not the only person who wanted Haze (a.k.a. Fan La Norne) to be a recruitable Blade for New Game +. They could have even included a quest to reassemble her Core Crystal; Amalthus could leave behind his half when he's killed and the party could then search the ruins of Indol for Haze's half. I know she was killed off because her ability was too powerful, but the same argument could be used against making Obrona playable. The fact that Mikhail, who isn't even a Blade, is recruitable in New Game + further weakens any justification for excluding Haze.

After killing the other Seed family members, Joseph Seed (The main antagonist) drugs all of your newly acquired friends and drugs all of them except for your police friends. He gives you two options: Let Joseph go, or Resist.

1. Let him go: Joseph lets you and your police friends to walk free, but you leave him and the rest of your drugged friends behind. As you leave Montana in order to alert the National Guard, you become hypnotized. In earlier portions of the game, being hypnotized results in you turning into a killing machine. So, you essentially kill your friends and become hypnotized.

2. Resist: You get a cool boss fight, but then right as you're about to arrest him the cult drops a FUCKING NUKE. You're forced to retreat to a bunker with your police friends + a now arrested Joseph, and you have to leave your other friends behind to die as the entire county you just worked hard to free gets burnt to a crisp. However, on the drive to the bunker, everyone else dies except for you and Joseph. Joseph locks you up in the bunker, and you're stuck with only him.

Both endings result in your friends dying, Joseph not dying, and everything you worked so hard to achieve being completely wiped away. It eliminates all motivation to return to the game and finish any sidequests, and I doubt I'll ever want to replay the game with this garbage ending. I have no reason to keep it, so might as well sell it and get some value back.

Blah. I'm getting too old for Disney Deaths. You didn't fool me in Chapter 7, you're not fooling me here. Plus, it's kind of hard to buy the "a man has to know when to let go" bit when Pyra and Mythra come back--and as two separate people, to boot. Fanservice-y designs notwithstanding, I've no issues with Pyra, Mythra, or Pneuma, but I've begun toying with the idea of a "what if?" fan fiction in which they remain in their Chapter 7 vegetative state and the party is forced to either find a non-PoL way to revive them or save the world without them.

Oh, and Malos can go fluorine uranium carbon potassium himself. I think of myself as a pretty forgiving person, but this guy was unrepentant to the end. For me to give a damn about the guy who just tried to destroy the world, I need to see him actually show remorse and make a serious effort to make amends.

I did thoroughly like the tie-in to the original Xenoblade. It was nice to hear Shulk's voice again and the thought of both final battles taking place simultaneously was pretty cool.

I feel the ending of 2 with the return of Mythra and Pyra was eh as well and it makes even less sense to me. The Architect was dying so he said that Mythra and Pyra would fade as well. He used the last of his power to fix the planet. Like...I clocked "Yeah...blades regenerate from crystals, and so there's a clear opportunity for that here" once the crystal was tossed over. Yet without the architect I don't get how Mythra/Pyra could regenerate...less so why they'd have there memories other than "Cause Aegis, lol".

I found myself really wanting to know what the deal with Addam was. Constantly remains hooded, completely disappears into nowhere, felt really odd to leave his character unexplored like that. I kept expecting some big twist connecting Rex to Addam like the big twists surrounding Shulk's origins but it never came.

I originally thought Klaus's "final gift" was the return of Pyra/Mythra AND the world creation, but I dunno anymore. Apparently dataminers found that the inaudible line Pyra/Mythra says at the end is "Hello, I'm _____" which would mean that they lost their memory, which I guess is another way to look at it. It's a decent ending, but 1 has the better story overall. 2 is still my favorite of the series though.