Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles X - OT

It is very easy to sink hundreds of hours into this.

It took me about 140 hours to complete mains story. I did some of the side-quest but not even nearly all of them. This game is a time-sinker, surely.

@Indy83, @Andyliini, @Tsurii: Thanks for the responses. I knew this would be a time sinker, and it looks like even more so than what I was thinking. XD Other than the major time sink (which means I'll be on this game for months lol) most of the other mentioned elements so far look appealing to me.

I just can't get into this game. I Loved Chronicles but this game isn't story driven enough, I want the exploration of the world to be my choice outside of the story, not the main point of the gameplay. Also the character models look like dolls, it reminds me of Star Ocean 4 :/

Once I get my eyeglasses I'll try to 100% the game! Right now I'm not even at 50%, but I did beat the main story quite a longtime ago.

I've completed a couple of post-game missions. Usually, I'll love to 100% a game, but since I've put so many hours into this and I fancy playing other games, I'm going to stop playing this now.

Unfortunately, I never did reach the mission where Lin eats Tatsu (Someone told me that once, and I hope they weren't joking)

Yeah, XbX is a different beast than XB.

Its wierd, I prefer XB vastly... but the traversal mechanics in XbX makes it so hard to go back.

But hey, don't be shy, you know, one of Takahashis biggest complaints about XB was that he didnt get enough criticism of the game from players so he kinda had a hard time figuring out a direction for XbX. You're helping!

Heres some of the things where I feel XbX really fails in comparison to XB.

XbX is an RPG. Its not just an rpg, its an rpg arse rpg. That sounds really redundent, but its kind of not. Most games marketed as RPG's arent really RPG's today, they are more adventure games. Not that thats a bad thing (The frothing demand that everything be called an rpg, and if the peg isnt forced into the rpg peg hole then its some kind of an insult is manufactured by marketing.)

Anyways, XbX is way more on the rpg side than XB... and Thats actually detrimental to the experience. One of the aspects of RPG's,, is that its not about the player skill and agency, but the characters skill and agency. People think that rpg is just a literal take on role playing. Oh, Im gary of buttselvania, Im a wizard vampire this is an rpg im playing a role!!!

Well, no, thats an adventure game. If it was an rpg, you would be gary of buttselvania, your strength would be 4, which is strong enough to wear chain mail armor, and wield a long sword but not enough to wear plate armor, and wield a bastard sword, and your constitution is 2, blah blah blah. You cant do anything that your stats don't allow. In an adventure game you just think it and use the rules of the game to do it.

How this applies to X is the level locking. Its not full blown rpg, but its a lot closer than most games dare get today. (Not that thats particularly a bad thing, those mechanics only existed to simulate aspects that developers could not actually realize at the time) So X level locks just about everything, if you ain't got the levels, you cant do or use the thing. Now I am going to talk about what I really like about the original Xenoblade, and how this pretty much got ruined in XcX.

The original Xenoblade had absolutely wonderful progression design. For a lot of people, that just meant a great path from colony 9 to the end of the game, with great cutscenes and fights and scenery along the way, and maybe some side quests. Or a lot of sidequests. bury you in sidequests!!!! (For people who really get burned out on sidequests, the vast majority of sidequests only existed to keep players from getting progression blocked from a lack of area affinity. Basically, if the quest giver doesn't have a name, and your affinity is good, ignore no names. The quality of sidequests you do will sky rocket.

But there was more to it than that, there was more 'side content' in Xenoblade than sidequests from NPC's. Actually exploring the areas revealed a lot of content.. I mean a ton of content, with tons of stuff to do, and plentiful and worthwhile rewards for doing it. Each and every area, has places to go to, things to find, and enemies to fight, that can keep the player coming back multiple times as they increase in level throughout the game. OR to clever and skilled players, they can raid those areas early, and defeat enemies high above their level (Yes its possible folks, there is a way around the accuracy apocolypse) and find secret areas and chests (Not the ones enemies drop, there are actually overworld chests in Xenoblade) that give powerful armor weapons or moves to reward the ambitious player earlier in the game than the levels of the surrounding enemies would suggest. And it was further layered, with more areas inside the older areas you already re-explored, that get unlocked by a sidequest that grants a key to secret door areas.... Its great, its multilayered and very rewarding.

XbX has none of this. THe world is great, merely traversing it feels great, on foot it feels great, in skell it feels great, flying feels great... but their is never really much reward for utilizing those tools.... In fact, really, your enjoyment seems to diminish when you do. Like you, I discovered muc of the game on foot. I got to crazy places on foot, and then again with the skells, but never once did I ever feel rewarded. Anything I did find turned out to be a prop for a sidequest that remained inactive until the sidequest is taken, and any weapons or armor I got from defeating enemies over my level in secret areas was worthess. It was level locked, so It would be dozens of hours before I could equip the weapon I won by exploring advanced areas long before. Then the game pretends I never saw these areas in story quests, finding peices of the life unit and not being able to do anything with them until I reach a certain point in the story missions... The way the games progression structure is designed completely disrespects player agency... Yet the mechanics of the traversal system have your soul screaming to blaze your own path....

Its the classic problem with having a level 5-6 sand box open world design. Its so decentralized that the story and the progression are all loose and don't line up.... Or at the worst end of the spectrum all the 'variety' of the infinite quests of the sand box world are all completely interchangable which basically turns the game into ultimately repetively doing the same thing over and over again.

Xenoblade on the other hand, was a classic level 4, open world. Not a sandbox, but not linear, the perfect combination of the two, with all the strengths, and none of the weaknesses. Xenoblade had massive areas full of wonder, but the single entrance and exit to each area really helped that feeling of progression and accomplishment, and really helped organize the progression design of the game, as well as aid in in layering the areas for return visits.

Thats not to say that this can only be accomplished by directly mimicking xenoblades progression layout, it can absolutely be done in a seamless world, like how a sanfbox open world is seamless, however the progression design would have to be focused enough to keep it from actually being a sandbox until the endgame. But it would be really really tough...

Yep, feel exactly the same way. Finished 30 minutes ago with 107 hours on the clock, not including a handful of restarts. Certainly felt satisfied having finished it, money well spent. I think they can hold off releasing a sequel until I cleared a few dozen games from my backlog.

@CrimsonTadpoles @Shaneoh. Yeah. I finished with something like 35 hours on the clock months ago, and then I took a looooooooooong break. XD and I've recently gotten back into this to get Mia, and to try and 100% it.

Getting Mia was a very hard slog... I think I was pretty underlevelled, as I was the same level as the Boss' second form at the time. (I'm at level 57 now.) I now have every character unlocked. Now for the joyous task of doing all these missions, and grinding affinity to complete every square. Cauldros is now at 70%, and is ironically my most complete, due to having to go around getting all those Squares filled in for Mia... Once I've finished the Off the Record missions, I'll go around and clear every Treasure Square.

...Whilst writing this, I've finally worked out why the Xenoblade Wiki didn't have a page on Go Shiro. It's because people spell the name wrong, and it's actually Go Sirho... Well, I may finally be able to boost my cap from 95,000 Miranium up to what I need for the Ares 90.

I know it probably can't be helped, but it is a bit awkward when the characters imply they're just seeing a place for the first time in a story mission when the previous Affinity Mission I did had them go to that area.

It absolutely can be helped.

Its even really easy, particularly when you consider things waaaaaaaaay harder to keep track of in both games happened a lot.... For example, one person dying in X leads to an exponential number of splits that are accounted for throughout the game... A lot of people can optionally die in X....

here its just a matter of two states. The deal breaker was likely the insistence on fully voiced cutscenes for the parts. Didnt have the budget for more states, and didnt want to have text only alt states.

It was absolutely a judgement call.... They thought people by and large wouldnt notice. They underappreciated the capacity for people to naturally explore on their own initiative from just having the tools, and simple freedom to do so.

I greatly hope they recognize this and keep it in consderation.

@Tsurii It was somewhere in between 35 and 40, I think. I just went flat out on it, and did virtually no side missions. It helped that I kinda cheated a bit on the grind between level 30 and 45, as there's a oneshottable Zig midgame, so that only took about an hour. I think the largest gap was around chapter 7 or 8, as the pace slows to allow for lots of sidequests to be done, but before and after that, it's mainly just consecutive story missions.

It's taken me an extra 35 hours to get up to the point where most people who've finished are with Sidequests though. I've finally managed to get all the probes I need for 100k storage. I reckon it'll take me a good 50 extra hours to 100% it, at least. My mission log is filled up, and I haven't really started on Affinity. The meat really is in the Sidequests, not the main quest.

Thinking about it, I've just looked up what the fastest time I could find was. 5 hours, 39 minutes... I thought I did things pretty quickly, but that's insane. It's by a guy called Nepumuk, and he's published some of his old speedruns on youtube, at the least. I sat and skipped through one, and he's very efficient. XD

EDIT: I could be misremembering, but I know for a fact it was definitely shorter than 50, as that's when I started making my Backup, so that I wouldn't lose masses of data.

Yeah 35 hours sounds nearly impossible for this game. I needed to grind before some of the main bosses for quite a while, and my total playtime is currently at 80 hours, and I still haven't finished. Based on what I have left, I think my total will be about 100 hours.

@Dezzy I thought somewhere just under 40 was pretty good. (I don't generally do sidequests first play, but here, it's where the real meat is, so I did most things postgame...), and then that Nepumuk beats it in under 7...

I've even watched some of it, and I still don't believe they did it that fast. XD

But there's ways and means for skipping out on grinding for Bosses. Like I say, there's a Zig in Sylvalum that's quite easy to beat, and gave me a level boost roughly each time I beat it in a skell from level 30ish, to 45ish, if i remember correctly.

@Tsurii The main slowdown was actually the Gwin affinity missions you have to do to unlock Chapter 11. I hadn't used Gwin much, I'd mainly used XReturns/Lao/Elma/Lin, later swapping Lao out for Irina, as the main four story members, as such.

I'm really dreading Affinity grinding...

Most other story missions just require one or two affinity missions (like Spy games), and certain survey percentages, which you can get easily by just putting some probes in.

Now most of my survey percentages are hovering about the 60% mark, as I still need the last blade level, and to get some decent Skell and Overdrive gear. This is where I really think I'm gonna have to put the hours in. XD

At a 100% Completion though, I don't think anyone could do it in under 80 hours minimum, and even then, they'd have to be pretty efficient about it... There's still so much to do. XD

EDIT: Now I'm really thinking about it, the story was... Really short. Like, in terms of how long I was on the actual Story Missions, as opposed to how long I was prepping for em. Chapter 10 is essentially ONE Boss Fight spanned out into a chapter... (And it's not even a hard fight, once you figure out what you're doing.)

...I'd love more story missions at the expense of some normal missions. I'd be happy to sacrifice what are often glorified fetch quests for some stylish glorified fetch quests. XD

For your affinity grinding, go to the blade barracks and do support missions. IIRC the last group of missions is for affinity grinding, and gives huge affinity boosts as a mission complete reward. Literally save you dozens of hours compared to any other method.

@Tsurii Some are great, like the Bianho Water Plant line, and the Alex vs Xenos line, but it's so frustrating when you get a mission that needs some really rare collectables, for no other reason than needing rare collectables...

I'm mainly thinking about Professor B's return here, which frustrated me to no end (Why do you need a Spirit wand, Professor?), and also the Kirsty mission line, which literally ends up being 'give Miranium/Money to this person, move on'. Perhaps I'm just being cynical, but on the whole, I'd have preferred a longer story, even if it came at the expense of removing some quest lines. A few, at least, nowhere near all of them. Perhaps beef up the existing chapters, or change them so there's more of an even gap between them.

@Indy83 Yeah, but I'm just not looking forward to the monotony of it. The online and reward missions could probably have been a bit better had they not mostly been: "Beat up three waves of enemies, some of whom may have no relation to the vague plot of the mission..."

Some are a bit more unique, but my experience has been mostly that...

@TheXReturns I can not think of any way to help make you enjoy the monotony. All I can offer is a way to expidite the monotony... Provided you can stomache it for even that long.

Oh, have you considered roofies?

Just do the horrible soul sucking grinding, and then pop a forget me now! You will have the affinity,and you won't remember a thing!

(Don't do drugs kids)

@Indy83 I may moan about it sometimes, but I love this game really. I wouldn't have put in nearly 80 hours now, trying to 100% it if I didn't.

My only problem is Boze. Others may have their different 'quirks' (with my favourite additional characters being Alexa and Yelv. Those two are great.), and HB may be really stuck up, but at least he's a decent scrapper to make up for it. Boze just annoys me.

He's a 'DLC' Character, so thankfully I won't have to bother with his Affinity missions. I prolly will anyway though...

Got the game yesterday, started it up today.
It downloaded some update before I was able to start, not sure whatit fixed but...
-At first there was no sound from the TV, only from the gamepad. I had to save and exit back to the start menu before the sound came.
-And the text in this game is awfull, I can barely read it! It could be in a language I can't read, and it would only be slightly harder for me -_-

Soo, my first fifteen minutes with the game was not too promising. I don't know how many times I will try again if the sound becomes a prominent issue.

The text is definitely way too small. I have to sit closer to the TV to make it out, and also wear my reading glasses!