Completed this Thursday night. 150 hours play on the clock. Anyone know if the new game+ is worth my while?

WOW! Achamoth has got to be one of the most incredible surroundings ever conceived. This game doesn't seem to stop amazing me.

Here's it's day-time soundtrack :

playing time about 10 hours now, party lvl 20, Heading for colony six,

The story is picking up momentum at great speed. I've had the 'playing mario galaxy the first time' feeling now a few times playing Xenoblade = rare and awesome

playing time about 10 hours now, party lvl 20, Heading for colony six,

The story is picking up momentum at great speed. I've had the 'playing mario galaxy the first time' feeling now a few times playing Xenoblade = rare and awesome

It gets better. Just wait until you see the spoiler removed and spoiler removed levels.

ca'nt wait, this weekend i want to gain al lot of hours.

The red controller is also sold separately :

UK Amazon

so apparently Gamespot gave Xenoblade GOTY for Wii instead of Zelda. At first I was impressed at them not being predictable or pandering to fanboys (similar to when World of Goo beat Brawl for IGN) but then I remember they thought Skyward Sword was a huge dissappointment in a laughably bad review and realize that's the only reason it won.

And King of Fighters XIII won their Fighting game of the year award. They keep this up and I might actually start respecting that site.

there were other fighting games this year? I mean there was Marvel vs. Capcom 3 but I think the Ultimate version has been (thankfully) ignored so much that it actually took away the relevence of the original release.

It went up against Street Fighter 4, Dead or Alive: Dimension, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom, and Mortal Kombat and still came out on top. I'd say that's progress.

oh yeah, I forgot about Mortal Kombat. That was dumb of me.

The quests get a lot better as your affinity with the area gets higher. It was a real drag getting to about a three star affinity with frontier village, but after that quests got a lot more enjoyable.
MASSIVE SPOILER WARNING
I'm up to one of the Egil battles (The one where he is controlling the mechonis,yaldabaoth, i think), and i'm having a lot of trouble. I'm currently using Riki-Sharla-Dunban, but what would be the best team for the battle? Please help.

In the past few days (contrary to my signature - I haven't actually been playing Xenoblade up until recently) I've been without a computer, and have been playing this again.

I've been anticipating the end for at least 20 hours (I thought the game was wrapping up at around the eryth sea originally, then the mechon forward base), but I'm definitely nearing the end now.

In answer to your question, @Jamouse, I've been playing through the game as Shulk with Reyn and Sharla, and the battle you speak of was pretty easy for me. I found it easy, because the boss wasn't constantly spamming ether attacks that my monado block skills can't defend from.

I usually rely on tactical use of arts (like backslash or side slash - I don't know their actual names) to raise the combo meter. Sharla helps keep the team's health up (either through her AI or throuh the team combo), while Reyn helps divert attention away from me, as I get in a few more back slashes.

When it comes to combos, Shulk and Reyn are perfectly suited to each other, as they share many like-coloured moves - suitable for damaging the enemy (red, mainly) while bringing the combo meter up. Sharla isn't completely useless in this team up - on my game, she's just learnt a high powered red move of her own, but the three of my main characters have a series of moves that break, then topple and then stun the opponent. Sharla's red move has a chance of one-shotting any enemy that is stunned, but this is useless in boss and unique battles.

It may be a case of changing your characters around, but if you've been playing through a large part of the game as those three, I understand if it might be hard to adapt to new characters
In summary (if you haven't already), look at your characters' arts, and see if there are any that work together. Re-arrange your characters in the party list if neccesary (for example, Riki may be occupying your second slot, when he may be better in third during a combo). And definitely mop up any goons the boss may summon.

oh yeah I pre-ordered the game a little while ago. April can't come soon enough (...well actually it can, I haven't finished any of my Christmas games and I got 2 more games, plus there's a 3DS game or two and Rhythm Heaven Fever...)

Beaten!!

I had so much trouble with a particular boss near the end (one who summons loads of elemental enemies, has a spinning attack that topples you and everyone else in the team - no matter how far away you are and likes to knock or push your teammates into a pool of acid where they slowly die) which required me to switch up my team a bit, but I was largely able to complete the rest of the game solely with Shulk, Reyn and Sharla.

As for sidequests and diversions, I didn't really get many of them done. I look forward to doing that on my next playthrough. I just wanted to get the game finished so I can play it again properly (albeit with a different primary character.

I've started again (with a new game, mind you) and will be playing through as Reyn. It's quite easy to adapt to him as a playstyle, because I can really focus on tanking.

I had trouble with Lorithia too. She is one of the most frustrating bosses I've ever faced! It took hours of level grinding and attemts at beating her until I finally did it with Shulk, Rikki and Sharla at level 77. It was especially annoying with the way it takes longer to level up in XBC than in other rpgs I've played.

Getting nostalgic by reading the american posts of anticipation, it truly is an amazing game. I would try the +game or even start a completely new one, but it ate so much time the first round through, it wouldn´t be done to the end. Hope the US´ll enjoy it as much as the europeans and the aussies have. Oh well...

I can't wait for US release of Xenoblade, then cheer for the other two games. The last story and Pandora's tower to be released hopefully. How come Xenoblade is not listed for pre-order on Amazon yet?

Because it's not being sold through Amazon. Only Gamestop and Nintendo's own online store.