Key developers from previous games returned, including franchise creator Tetsuya Takahashi and directors Koh Kojima and Genki Yokota.

The game received generally positive reviews, being praised for its story, characters, themes, combat, music, environments, and scale but criticized for its gacha system, maps, tutorials, and technical issues.

As of December 2020, it had sold over two million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling title in the Xeno series and Monolith Soft's most commercially successful game.

[2][3][4] The game is open world and has a day-and-night time cycle that affects in-game events, including quests, enemy strength, and item availability.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has an action-based battle system, where the player controls the current lead character in real-time and party members will "auto-attack" when enemies enter their attack radius.

[11] A Driver Combo requires the party to inflict four status conditions on an enemy in a specific order: Break, Topple, Launch, and Smash.

The main character is Rex (Japanese: Hiro Shimono; English: Al Weaver), who is the Driver of the Aegis, a powerful and legendary Blade.

The Aegis has two personalities, Pyra and Mythra (Japanese: Shino Shimoji; English: Skye Bennett), who share the same conscience but have different abilities.

As an orphan, Rex grew up in Fonsett Village on the Leftherian Archipelago, a place with several Titans that are close together and connected by bridges and other structures.

A group of Drivers called Torna set out to destroy the Aegis, leading Rex and the party to flee and find a way to the World Tree.

The group's search for a way past Ophion leads them to join forces with Mòrag, special inquisitor of Mor Ardain and elder sister of the Ardainian Emperor, Niall, and Zeke, prince of Tantal.

The group confronts Jin and Malos at the Cliffs of Morytha, during which Rex unlocks Pyra and Mythra's true form, Pneuma.

Rex, now matched with Jin's power, forces Malos to summon Ophion, who knocks the group into Morytha, the devastated land beneath Cloud Sea.

The group arrives in Elysium, which is revealed to be a long-dead wasteland, and meet the Architect, a scientist named Klaus who explains that he had discovered a device called the Conduit that sends objects into different dimensions, the use of which split his body in two and destroyed the old world.

[c] Sensing that his other half is about to die,[d] which will result in his own death, Klaus sends the group to stop Malos, who was corrupted by Amalthus's malice and has obtained Aion.

[21] One of Monolith Soft's objectives for the game was to give the characters a wider range of facial expressions compared to past Xenoblade titles.

[22] The developers chose him to give the protagonists a more expressive anime-like art style than prior Xenoblade entries, which featured a more realistic type of modeling that they found a bit too stiff.

Other guest artists also contributed, such as Xeno series veterans Kunihiko Tanaka and Soraya Saga, who designed some of the game's Blades, weapon-like life forms.

[30] The game's original score was written by Yasunori Mitsuda, Kenji Hiramatsu, and Manami Kiyota and the duo of ACE (Tomori Kudo and Hiroyo Yamanaka).

[31] Mitsuda, who was also in charge of the audio budget, musician booking, schedule management, and sheet music proofreading, was first invited to the project by Takahashi in December 2014.

[51] Pyra and Mythra were eventually added to the roster as a 2-in-1 fighter via downloadable content in March 2021, along with a new stage and several music tracks.

[52] While Rex was considered, Sakurai deemed it unfeasible to control both of them at the same time, likening the situation to that of the Ice Climbers, so he was reduced to supportive roles in Pyra and Mythra's moveset.

[53] Some critics called the initial reveal of the game "unexpected",[23][39] with Jeremy Parish of USGamer favorably comparing it to Chrono Cross.

[57] The game's story, characters, complex combat system, soundtrack, amount of content, and the beauty and size of the environments were largely praised.

[65] Hiroshi Noguchi writing for IGN Japan gave a very positive review, stating that it "offers a timeless tale of adventure and an incredibly deep battle system.

"[68] She highly praised the game's story, stating "The narrative explores patriotism, war, environmental decline, refugees, and examines the little people who get caught in the crush when big powers scrap with one another.

Jason Schreier of Kotaku, who had also disliked the original Xenoblade Chronicles, gave a largely negative review, calling the game "dull, dreary, overly complicated, and unconcerned with wasting the player's time".

[73] Jed Pressgrove, however, writing for Slant Magazine was highly critical of the large amount of tutorials found in the game, stating "It's very difficult, if not impossible, to feel like you’re in a different world, much less experiencing a story, when such elements call attention to the contrived nature of the whole shebang.

[84][85] In the United Kingdom, the game positioned itself at number 19 overall in its first week, which made it debut 9 places higher over Xenoblade Chronicles X.

We really saw more people pick the game up and experience it in the North American and European territories than we thought would do so... the sales of the Torna DLC are exceeding our expectations as well.