Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Right? I'm picking it up soon, and I just expect everything to be perfect,

@RockingTheSwitch

Even with Xeno2 turning out to be great in the end, don't expect another Xenoblade X.

XenoX was 23GB, Xeno2 is only 13GB, and you 'll see the punch in the graphics department right away.
I guess they delibaretly reduced graphic extravaganza to make this game fit on a 16GB cart.
Kinda shameful for developers if the only options are to reduce graphics etc. to fit a 16GB cartridge or to make the rest of the game downloadable. Worse graphics are apparently the better choice though.

And the graphics aren't the only thing in Xeno2 that aren't perfect, so keep that in mind.

I had a huge list of flaws in the beginning, but now it's only 3 things that deserve minus points.
Granted, the game fixed a lot of its most glaring issues with updates the following months after release, while Xeno1 and XenoX were perfect from launch day on.

1) The Tutorials aren't re-readable. I thought an update must have fixed this by now but it seems they want people to go online for finding help.

2) RNG: If you want all blades, like me, (and I got em all by the way), be prepared for days of grinding blade crystals. I never want to replay the game from scratch because of this and it's great to have a NewGame+ option where I can start a new game with all the blades I already have.

3) Ursula! This blade takes very long to max out. And on NewGame+ you'll have to do it all again (if you're a completionist like me), and you can even miss a couple of Ursula's quests the second time around (like I did accidentally), so I have an incomplete quest list now in my second playthrough.

The rest is nitpicking. I'd love to have a monster encyclopedia like in XenoX, or a collectible screen for those insects, flowers, etc. just like in the other two Xeno games.

@hirokun Arts Plus boosts the power of your next Art, so you'd want to cancel after the third autoattack to maximize damage with that Blade Art. The timing of when you cancel your autoattack determines how much extra damage you'll do, so take advantage of it.

As for keeping track, you'll just have to watch the animations, but some can be tricky. Rex with a Megalance is hit -> hit hit -> hit. With Roc, it's hit hit -> hit hit -> hit. Morag with Brighid is hit hit -> hit hit -> hit hit. Admittedly it takes a bit of trial-and-error, but once you learn the patterns you can commit them to memory.

Re: common Blades. This is more late game, but common Blades have multiple perks over Rare Blades.

• They can be any combination of element or weapon type you want. If you want a Fire Bitball user, a common Blade can fill that role.
• The best Blades have better stat modifiers than the best Rare Blades. Blades like Brighid have a +15% Agility mod, for example, but you can potentially pull a Chrome Katana Blade that can give upwards to a 24% mod.
• They have exclusive skills no Rare Blades have. Ranging from Accelerated Growth boosting XP gain, Orb Master which is hilariously broken (adds an orb if you complete a Blade Combo step if the Blade is even active, so stacking orbs is hilariously easy and broken if you have a varied way of doing Blade Combos like Light -> Lightning -> Fire, which can allow you to put a Light, Lightning, and Fire orb in one go), Weaponmaster which boosts WP gain, they're really good.

You may start off with weak common Blades at the beginning, but starting at midgame you can pull some pretty sick Blades that devastate enemies.

As for the understanding of all the systems in place, (also pinging @NEStalgia here) I honestly, legit don't get the difficulty and convolutedness in understanding the terms and systems, at least for 1 and 2. I've played every game without much help and still managed to understand the overall systems and advanced strategies. That said, X was the worst about it since that game actually does throw you into the deep end with no help. It took a lot of experimentation and trial-and-error to figure out how Overdrive actually worked, and the manual and game does not tell you what certain stats like Potential (which increases the amount of healing you get from Soul Voices and boosts the damage of your TP Arts, which would have been REALLY nice to know). But 1 and 2 provide good tutorials that explain things well, so I genuinely don't understand this part from other people for both 1 and 2, but shrug. I did two full playthroughs of each game to nail down the gameplay criticisms of each game, but in terms of tutorial and teaching the player, I only blame X for dropping the ball hard. 2 isn't perfect though, a tutorial revisit like 1 or Ys VIII would have made it perfect though.

I can think of worse convoluted things on the level (or worse) as Xenoblade X, like Xenogears not telling you how Deathblows work or even how to obtain (which by the way was actually mandatory to know if you want to get through the game, good luck knowing without a guide), or Final Fantasy VI's Rage system with Gau, or Pokemon's EVs and IVs. Maybe I'm just used to JRPGs, but Xenoblade 1 and 2 were easy to jump into for me personally. A lot of the little details of Xenoblade combat I learned after the fact, and I wouldn't say that knowing one game's combat will help you for another. Even if you've played Xenoblade 1 before X, for example, you still need to learn how to properly manage your secondary cooldowns, Overdrive, and Soul Voices that make it play MUCH differently from Xenoblade 1. And Xenoblade 2 is just so different from both 1 and X that you have to relearn it all over again. They're all really different so it gets hard to really compare 1:1 with one another, and they only share superficial elements across each other.

Re: high-leveled enemies. I'd argue that all the high-leveled enemies are also sticking to one set place in Xenoblade 2 as well, just like Xenoblade 1. They can wander a bit more, but they don't wander as much as Xenoblade X, and the world isn't littered with aggressive high-leveled enemies like X.

Re: running away. Xenoblade 2 is already using every single button available. Left on the D-Pad is actually a command for your party to focus on the target while right, up, and down swap Blades. Clicking in the sticks also have actions too, and even if they could have moved the "hide pallet info" into the actual settings, I don't think clicking in the left stick to run away would be good either.

But yeah, you take more damage if you don't have your weapon drawn. I think they've said that in a tutorial, but I can't 100% remember that detail.

Re: character design. I get why people hate them, but sometimes it also comes off as hypocrisy on the other hand. I remember people getting so butthurt about the art change, but after I went back to play Xenogears after all three Xenoblade games, I see it as less of a "betrayal" and more of just a return to form since Xenogears is also as anime as you can get. People also mix up hating the design versus the art direction, which further drives me off the deep end whenever the actual ignorant idiots go off ranting. I don't know if I'm desensitized to stupid outfits (which started all the way back in the SNES era all the way to the present era - other games like Ys VIII also have some questionable designs too) or what, but I didn't blink an eye when seeing the designs.

Re: animation. Animation is pretty expensive, and spreading it across over 14 hours of cutscenes is very costly if you want to carefully animate everything. So you have to cut corners somewhere unfortunately. It sucks but it is what it is. If you want a worse offender, Ys VIII also reuses the same animations over and over with static and stiff animations as well. JRPG budgets generally don't burst the bank so that's one explaination. Granted you don't have to like it, I didn't like it all that much in X and Ys VIII (though what really hurts X and Ys VIII was that it was 95% ONLY static and stiff animations, 1 and 2 have the decency to mix it up with the actual nicely animated cutscenes).

Anyways, I apologize if I came across as dismissive and rude earlier in this thread. Probably wasn't the right tone for some points I made. As for Zeke though, you can actually have three party members in that fight. I assume you were using Morag who wasn't going to fight, so that changed up your party setup, so put Tora in your party and the fight should be winnable.

@SKTTR Thanks for the in-depth detailing. I actually have never played a Xeno and this would be my first time diving into one. I guess I won't really know what I'm getting until I'm playing. Depending on how much I like that game will determine if I will put up with the RNG you're talking about. I usually only do one playthrough no matter so I'm lucky I'm not a 100%er. Wish me luck as I am stepping in soon.

@EvilLucario no worries. You butt heads to figure things out, and we were both genuine and you really helped me.

Sounds like you are just geared for JRPGs though in general. Also I didn't know that there were games before xenoblade(probably since they weren't called xenoblade) so if its a return to form, good for fans of that. However I can't deny that I really liked the overall package for xenoblade 1. I can't make a full comment on 2 since well...I haven't finished yet.

Oh and yeah I forgot about left arrow being assigned. Maybe for the next installment they can manage to get it to work out!

Didn't think you could add tora back in, and yes I did have Morag in my party since I wanted to up her trust in battle. However on the character screen I couldn't seem to put Tora in so I just assumed it didn't actually want a 3 man fight. I trust too much sometimes.

Curious since you are super into the JRPG area more of your suggestions on other games if you have any in particular. I have played a few, but not a ton myself. I played FF8 and 10 way back when but as a kid I didn't even get close to finishing but I remember liking 8 a lot. I actually am pretty deep into pokemon, but to play the story isn't really anything hard of course. I really enjoyed Bravely Default and Second. Played Monster Hunter Stories. None of those is anything super crazy complicated, but I enjoyed them. Though I do like unique and deep skill trees to customize, so I like that in games. I get a kick out of upgrades for some reason.

Anyhow thanks again very much. I hope you don't mind me coming back to you in the future for more help if I should need it?

but still screw grinding tora tora!

@hirokun Hm, alright. I don't remember not having the option to put Tora inside the party for his fight, but I did see multiple complaints about it on the Xenoblade subreddit. If there was actually no option, then yeah that's a problem. But I'll be willing to pop in to give advice, I stalk this thread day in day out lmao.

Anyways, at the risk of derailing this thread... as for JRPGs, good ones that I think anyone can play fine are EarthBound and Chrono Trigger. EarthBound is simple turn-based combat with a twist on damage taken, in that your HP rolls down real-time so you can potentially save yourself from a lethal attack by healing yourself right then and there without falling unconscious. It's also a real charming and quirky game that puts a smile on my face every time I play it. Chrono Trigger is the classic SNES RPG too, if there's one RPG I want people to play it's that game. Not too challenging, very short for an RPG, the combat is slick and fun (though your options come nowhere near as varied as Final Fantasy V or VI), and it flows beautifully.

Moving on from that, the older Final Fantasy games on SNES/PS1 are good. IV has aged really badly and the story, looking at it from a critical analysis, has some holes and forced-feeling moments. But it's still very enjoyable all the same. Gameplay is also pretty easy, though the DS (and I think Steam) version is actually REALLY hard and improves the gameplay a ton because of that. Not for newcomers though, because IV on DS/Steam is unforgiving as hell. I recommend the PSP or SNES version instead, at least for a first playthrough.

Since you enjoyed Bravely Default, give FFV a shot. That game was the first game to really take advantage of the job system's fuller potential (after FFIII), though it's pretty hard at points. Jobs can potentially be overwhelming, but if you liked it in Bravely Default I don't see why you can't enjoy them in FFV. Story's good but nothing that noteworthy imo, but it's a great step-up from FFIV (though in all fairness, FFIV pretty much invented epic stories in games so I can cut that game some slack).

FFVI is the best of Final Fantasy overall (imo, there's back-and-forth between that, VII, and IX) with the best narrative/characters and best combat system (mix of FFIV and FFV with "Jobs" like FFV with a lot of customization, but all characters are set classes/Jobs like FFIV) of Final Fantasy. Something about it doesn't feel as fun as Chrono Trigger, but FFVI is a damn good game too.

PS1 RPGs have aged pretty badly (looking at you Xenogears), but I still think the PS1 Final Fantasy games have held up reasonably well and are worth a play. Xenogears though, oh boy that game is only good for its story/characters and nothing more, because that game's combat is... I have mixed feelings. I mentioned earlier that Deathblows (one of your primary ways of attacking) was convoluted to unlock and never explained how exactly you get them AND use them, but then there's stuff like Gears (basically Skells from Xenoblade X) and their combat does feel pretty cool, but some of the balance is way off with some blatant OP stuff or absolutely baffling decisions like not being able to heal Gears until like 10 hours into the game, and healing Gears is also extremely expensive mid-combat.

Oh, and platforming and navigation sucks.

Play it if you want to see where Xenoblade takes all of its ideas from. The story is really, really fantastic and on paper beats out Xenoblade 1's story by a landslide, but some sloppy storytelling (though not in the developer's hands due to strict deadlines) in the second half brings down some of the impact so I still prefer Xenoblade 1's story above all else. But as a game itself, it has aged pretty badly.

If you want more real-time action, from my limited experience Tales and Ys are both good choices. I have played Tales of the Abyss and really enjoyed it, though it's been years since I played that game so I don't remember completely about the story/gameplay, but I remember enjoying both. Ys VIII on Switch is also really fun, playing more a hack-and-slash like Bayonetta. The RPG elements aren't as important as raw skill in maneuvering terrain and reacting to enemy movements. Story's good too. Kingdom Hearts is also great, though imo only KH1, KH2, and Birth by Sleep are good gameplay-wise. Hating on Kingdom Hearts' story has become a meme at this point, but I can still enjoy it.

That's all that comes to mind for now.

@EvilLucario It sounds like you have a lot of familiarity with Xenogears/saga prior and are more in tune with retro RPGs (naming FF6) and as a result, like the devs themselves are kind of immune to seeing the bad design elements because you're just used to them. I'm an RPG junkie, mixed W & J RPG, but it's been ages since I've messed with the older stuff, and never touched the earlier Monolith stuff. I imagine Fallout 1 would confound me if I picked it up again today, even though it all made sense to me in the 90's Over time you get used to not having to worry about outdated design issues, and then a game comes along that reintroduces them and it throws you sideways.

If I really boil down the roots a lot of my problems stem from it mostly boils down to: Little to no explanation of affinity trees/field skills and no pacing that shows you how it all works, and the fact that the system itself and the UI for it sucks, right down to requiring them to be equipped, counter-intuitively. Plus very insufficient explanation of chain combos. I came away from the tutorial thinking of it as an optional bonus element in the game that I'd rather save my party gauge for revives than use as a matter of risk/reward (brave/default?) Finding that essentially "oh you need to use that and "oh you need to use it a specific time in battle against some gimmick bosses otherwise you get crushed". Combos and chains apparently are critical to play, but the game glosses over the first, which makes the glossed over tutorial on the second which depends on understanding the first twice as bad, and that causes a lot of problems later. I really had no idea they were even slightly important or paid attention to them until you guys mentioned them whenI was stuck at the core....I was like "you mean that thing is actually meaningful?" Some mucky systems, but worse, a lack of introduction/explanation/teething of them breaks things.

Those are the things I think are real, actual core problems in the game. The rest are pet peeves and design issues, the high level enemies that you have to run from make sense in theory but implementation isn't always the way I think they saw it in their heads. Everything about Poppi aside from the writing and design is a design flaw but not a game breaking one outside the caves. The glut of loot with huge scroll lists of materials and chips and pouch items while having to randomly throw parts from those huge lists at aux refinement without really knowing what you're doing, the very flawed navigation markers, etc, all of those are flaws, but only the above paragraph represents serious actual problems. The flaws can be grumbled through and looked past. The actual problems cause serious play issues and stop points.

@subpopz Interesting, so you were maxing out affinity trees while just kind of casually playing even without being a JRPG aficionado? I mean some of that is obtuse, collecting and certain points, or feeding specific foods to specific characters in the pouch...And having the correct bladed equipped to use the field skills. And if your'e not doing that, you're going to hit the walls (and the game never had a tutorial for the affinity trees and field skills.)

I have no problem with the characters, animation, art, etc. It's an RPG, it's expected. RPGs cost a lot to make, and graphics always get dialed back. Look at Bioware and Bethesda, even where lower graphics than other genres are standard. My problems are purely specific to gameplay systems and the instruction of.

@NEStalgia Even if I'm resistant to a lot of retro games' quirks, I'm not immune to bad decisions/design, even as a kid there were multiple points where I got angry at some of the RPGs having convoluted, annoying methods to get stuff with hidden passageways and crap. FFVI was very guilty of that, and only years later in my teenage years that I even learned about things like getting an early Genji Glove or whatever. Despite the games being pretty easy, some balancing and design was clearly extremely whack.

Xenoblade, though? Doesn't really have much of that, except in X. I would argue that you should pay attention to what the tutorials are saying, then put them to practice and give it a good whirl before moving on. Else you just put your fingers in your ears and turned away what's needed, which is ehh to me. Those tutorials are why you're going to be able to get into the game, which is why both Xenogears and Xenoblade X can be extremely annoying to play for newcomers.

And I would counter a lot of your points that the affinity trees are basically what you see is what you get with clear markers (and you can even just skip them with Merc Missions), they show you what Field Skills are in Chapter 2, they tell you about all the things you're going to need so if you're not putting them to use, I'm going to say that's the player's fault. The game should have given the option to revisit the tutorials, yes, but if you weren't going to pay attention then I'm going to have little sympathy, plain and simple.

@EvilLucario thanks for all that. Yeah I won't derail the thread. But I appreciate it. Maybe I'll find someone who wrote up or made a video on xenogear's story then. I do have to say I liked the narrative in xenoblade. I disagree with its message in part, but as it goes exploring ideas, I commend the writer and it was a wild ride. I do have chrono trigger on DS as I have a huge DS collection. I will eventually get to it and know its a classic. Everyone says the DS version is great. I'll get to it eventually. I also have Ys 8 coming, it looked like a good game. I played the first KH, never played 2, but I'll probably get 3, but I'm waiting to see what sony/MS do console wise as I don't want to get a XBone or PS4 and then have a new system show up and have those games ported or backward compatible. But I've waited longer for a game (looking at you starcraft 2). As I say never got big into FF as a kid, didn't have tons of money so I had really only big title games like pokemon mostly. I remember having FF9 but the disc two was messed up sadly. Garage sales are hit and miss...However I remember liking 9 for the first part heh. Earthbound is another classic I never played but knew as perhaps the most sought after SNES game for collectors. But I see its now on the N3DS eshop so hey I may pick it up and play it finally, yay for accesibility! I might print a custom 3DS case for it too for fun. Thanks for the tips. I'll try to add you on my consoles too. You've been awesome. Again don't worry you only ever came off as honest to me and your frustrations were understandable. You saved me from hating a game(xenoblade 2) that I looked forward to as much as BoTW and I'm a serious zelda freak.

Hmmm maybe I'm stuck with only 2 party members for zeke, yeesh, I don't mind grinding, but I'd hope to not need to. I'll have to research if there is something special you have to do. Time to snoop!

@EvilLucario I suppose it comes down to different people absorbing information in different ways. The way XC overall does it works for you, but it obviously donesn't work for everyone, hence why it's kind of polarizing in opinion of it more than many RPGs. For you, presenting text about something, somewhat out of context and without an immediate application is working I suppose. For me, most of the tutorials were detatched from a real world application to demonstrate the point from start to finish, and thus it easily gets compartmentalized as "I guess they're just giving me a heads up and I'll soon encounter something that will clarify the explanation." Chains they gave you a faux boss battle, and pre-charged your combos for you, and then you had no real application for it again for some time (until the battle at the ruins, but even there, it was a pseudo gimmick battle, and by then it was too far removed from the tutorial. Teach: Test, Teach: test. That loop is broken. Similarly with affinities, it's not self explanatory to most. The fact that it's a skills chart you can't directly upgrade, but each point has a different requirement ranging from food to rng collecting, to defeating uniques in set locations, and then even those are locked by affinity rings is not really intuitive. And even aside that, details like field skills were not explained, and not in a context that demonstrated the value.

It's one thing to know after the fact "oh, it's Pokemon HMs only even worse" but without entering it with that understanding, it doesn't present itself understandably. (Plus I've always despised HMs for many of the same reasons and nearly wept when they were removed )

Ultimately, the fact that the series renders some controversy tells us that the issues are real. Maybe some people handle the current setup more intuitively than others based on other experience, learning method, or what have you, but it's the task of the game planners to consider that, and their current method definitely doesn't fit everyone equally even among the dedicated RPG niche. I'm just trying to draw a point on where I think the roots of those issues lie. It's not the most offending JRPG series on the planet with these issues, but it's not also the most polished either. I disagree the tutorials are adequate, but even if I were to say they were, the problem is they were presented, frequently in contextually irrelevant circumstances that rendered the lesson blunt. TBH the tutorials feel to me (and Id put money on it that I'm right) an afterthought where gameplay testers told the team that it needed some kind of tutorial, so they found some spots it might fit and glued them in, but as an afterthought, where the scenario wasn't designed around teaching the lesson but they were instead bolted on top of completed gamelay in places the tutorial "might" work or come in handy. I suspect it was going to ship like X prior to that.

Still a great series, but it's great in spite of deep flaws and a lack of polish in a lot of areas, not because it's genuinely a masterpiece. I'm far from the Kotaku extreme that reviews every XC negatively insisting it's just boring and terrible. It's not, it's amazing, but it has some significant design flaws that hold it back from being utter greatness by making you kind of put blinders on to those problems.

I do wonder how big the Torna expansion is and if they'll be tuning any of those design problems better there.

@hirokun RE being stuck with 2 party members, that's another one of those design flaws that may be intuitive for some, but really isn't. Same happened to me at a later part of the game. you're not stuck with two. Go into the characters screen, press X to change characters, put cursor on one of the characters on the right (Morag isn't available, but Rex, Tora, Nia should be) and you should see a prompt on the bottom part to press "x" to include. It's not logical or intuative. But that ads the third slot back in.

Stupid design choices like that are what takes otherwise simple things and turns them into frustrating problems.

@subpopz It's weird how different minds pick up different things. To me the affinity charts were vague and nebulous, yes it tells you want, but I didn't know what I needed, why I needed it, or why I would do all these oddly-specific quest things for each point on each tree (ultimately I do think field skills should have been separate from the affinity upgrade tree if they were to be so prominent) And I've heavily used merc missions, but not for my story blades who were in my party while other blades were on missions (so of course they still need their specific upgrade paths.) It never even occurred to me there was a benefit to not doing it that way! And the game lets you go on that way none the wiser until you're presented a brick wall (immovable boss, or a literal door you can't pass.)

Sadly many checks I failed I probably had blades with the skills but didn't know I had to equip the blades (which makes for annoying continual shuffling of blades just to open crates.)

Yet the weird thing is I'm an RPG enthusiast that disproportionately plays more RPGs (and pseudo RPGs like Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect and Deus Ex) than any other genre! Meanwhile you don't and that all seemed intuitive

"that the version we got on SNES was actually the Japanese 'easy mode' "
LOL, so typical of that era to assume Westerners can't play hard games. Funny thing was often times the "too hard for non-Japanese" versions were too hard for Japan, too....go figure

Are you talking about the bridge near the Great Pillar Passage travel point? If so I found it when trying to find one of the Nopon for the Brothersisterpon quest but couldn't get to it until today.

THANK YOU!

So after all the struggles simply navigating the caves, I finished chapter 7 with almost no difficulties. Malos took a few tries....the first time I got SO close, should have had him in one go, but then Morag had to go and die JUST as I was hitting my chain attack. I didn't even see it, I take Rex's and Nia's turn and get the "combo finished" screen....took me 20 seconds to figure out what happened. Then I had 3 failures where he trashed me fast (including one where he inexplicably decided to run down the ramp at the other end of the room into that closed pit with 4 lv48-50 lizards in it for no possibly explicable reason....awesome AI.) Finally I got lucky and got 3 orbs on him and went right into chain as soon as he hit rage, and it managed to send him into overkill.

Second battle with Malos + Jin I got trashed bad first two times. I realized I was 4 levels under them. Just did a little grinding to finish the half a level I was working on, went to an inn to gain another 2 and went back to them still 1 level below and got them in one go. Nothing close to what the core was doing to me, even without Pyra on the team. Malos + Jin should never be easier than the freaking cave monsters.... "Hey everyone I'm one of the most powerful beings in the universe, but I'm nothing compared to a random flying eel in a cave!"

Onto chapter 8!

Minor rant on sidequests still sucking. For the 3rd time I decided to try to knock out some of the 3 (now onto 4) pages of sidequests. For the third time I went back to Pawley to get the ivy in Garmott. For the third time I harvest every collection point I find in the region and get not a single ivy. It will stay on 5/7 forever. I tried the one in the Cliffs, finding souveniers for the merchant(s). Find 100 honey. Find 100 other things. Even with grinding there a while and repeatedly hitting collection points I have like 18 honey and maybe 30-40 other things. No...no way I'm grinding all that out. Quests still suck in XC. Maybe there's less and there not as filler-y as 1, but quests still suck.

@hirokun NP! I was hung up on the same thing a few days before you, strangely, later in the game, meaning I lucked out where you were and had someone other than Morag in my party and wasn't subjected to figuring that out yet.

New update out tomorrow, has a new rare Blade and 5 quests for expansion pass owners.

EDIT: This is also the update with the Bringer of Chaos and Customize difficulty options.

Finally, we can upgrade Tora's Idea levels so we don't have to spend 30+ hours killing enemies just to raise his Idea level to do more damage.

And it seems like my backlog is going to be put on hold... again. Time for a third playthrough with Bringer of Chaos difficulty!

@EvilLucario It'll be nice to find out if NG+ is still broken with Bringer of Chaos difficulty. That will ultimately decide whether I do my 2nd playthrough before or after completing the Torna DLC.

Hey can anyone tell me, if I start a new game, will I get the DLC freebies again? I feel like we would but I'd like to know for sure.

Ok so I'm at the idiotic lightening mastery gate. Dead in the water. Pandy has lv2 but her rings still need two more unlock levels before lv3 is even possible. I have not a single other electric blade and after bonding dozens to everyone i still have not one..... Is there any hope?