Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Damn, I managed to beat all the unique monsters up until this point (excluding challenge mode) but Nameless Sentinel is ridiculous. Its Enchant Sword attack pretty much kills everyone in one hit.

EDIT: I decided just to briefly go to easy difficulty and that was a fairer fight.

@Tsurii lol yeah that area in xc1 was horrendous. Let's take I've of the most important areas if the entire game and just fill it with level 100 monsters in the middle of the game! Not a shining moment in game design.

Meanwhile in tantal my first time though, it had lv90 monsters including massive squid things on the rocks on the lower level. I just went back and none of that is there and levels are all in the 40s... Huh?

Also xc2 has its worst nightmare quests though. A quest with a chest to open that requires lv4 nopon wisdom. Poppi only gets to 3. I have to look online to see who else does. Only 2 rares. Only one that's not random. To get that one you need another rare that has lv4 affinity and have to go to a particular town. To get the requisite rare you need to complete another quest. To get that quest you need to walk in a certain spot in a certain town while holding at least 10 crystals and an item bought from a specific informant in another specific turn. How would ANYONE figure that out without the internet?

@NEStalgia If Tantal is having ice storm or something like that, the monsters there become lv90 and such. Only that weather though.

@Tsurii is it not Theory you need? Whuch you need praxis with lv4 affinity to get? What i described is how you get prax and theory

@NEStalgia Theory has Nopon Wisdom, but there's another no-RNG Blade with Kasandra, which you can get in Chapter 4. The informants sell info that a famed Driver was eaten near Chansagh Wastes, and you can spawn the enemy by salvaging at that place. Then you get Kasandra, who has Nopon Wisdom.

@Tsurii Theory does have Nopon Wisdom. Don't ask me why, she just does.

@NEStalgia There's more, the Blades with Nopon Wisdom are:

• Poppi [the first Poppi]
• Boreas (RNG crystals)
• Kasandra (buy informant item and salvage in a specific point in Mor Ardain)
• Theory (buy informant item, complete quest, reach level 4 affinity with Praxis, complete a 2nd quest)
• Dagas (RNG crystals and complete Blade quest)
• Fiora (buy the expansion pass and complete a certain challenge battle)

@Tsurii @EvilLucario ugh, it figures, the list i found did not list nopon wisdom in Kassandra, just Earth and one lucky gal, only listed dagas and theory as the only two.

Of course now i might as well keep spamming praxis Merc missions and get theory anyway....

@Grumblevolcano fiora sure gets some longevity from a character that died in the first hour of the series.... she's got to be a level 200 litch queen by now

Going physical on the torna plus dlc though, so i don't have it until I'm probably done the game in a month

I still find the Pokemon collection that's never explained well (i had no knowledge of these special blades nor the quasi mandatory nature of them) and the hm system is deplorable. Things like "the weather affects lv90 monsters spawning in chapter 5".... How do you even figure that out without the internet? And how did internet people figure it out? It kind of broke the whole chapter since instead of exploring i spent it hiding and running. I'm really hoping the torna expansion features mind of fix some of the extremely stupid decision making this game features now that blades will be playable characters.

@NEStalgia Luck is a factor, when I first went through Tantal it was just normal snow so the high level monsters didn't appear. The first time I noticed it was returning back during Chapter 9 when I found out that buying stuff from shops in large quantities increases the dev level of titans faster (could've done with knowing that before the end of Chapter 8 ).

@Grumblevolcano sigh such idiotic systems at times... The dev levels, weather, hms. It feels like they had so many ideas for interesting systems, didn't have time to flesh then all out or fully integrate then, but didn't want to remove any so they just threw in everything, fully realized and explained or not, so your end up with random unknown stuff you find out by accident or Reddit....

@NEStalgia I mean... The game does tell you about it. It tells you that buying and selling stuff will increase the dev levels in towns, and it tells you that some monsters only appear during certain weather conditions... I didn't find it particularly confusing during my first play through since I actually did explore the game and talked to NPCs and bought info from the informants etc. After that it was just a question of observation.
My first time in Tantal was during foggy weather and I had to deal with lvl 80+ enemies crawling all over the place, but since I'm a masochist I guess I found that fun. :3 Also, it was possible to take them down as long as I didn't attract multiple enemies at once.

I'm not saying it is perfect, and I don't really understand why the tutorials only are shown the one time and then never again (like seriously, just save them somewhere for the player to return to whenever.) But it isn't keeping information from you. You just have to get in there and find it.

Love Crossette, she's adorable. She's kind of like the long lost twin of Kasandra. XD Love the mirroring between them, one kind of based on jinxes and curses and the other on festivities and lanterns.
Also super hype for The Golden Country in September.

The only thing left to wish for is playable Malos. <3 Best Blade. Or well, second best because Poppi is best everything.

"some monsters only appear in certain weather" sounds nothing like "the entire region will be flooded with level 90 monsters while you are level 39...." And when it's that way your first time though you tend to assume that's how it always is and you shouldn't be there at all until ng+. I just ran and never returned, assuming i wasnt supposed to.

Then there's the annoyances with quests. Standing in front to the roof door in argentum that's locked. It's for an argentum quest. Found out online you need a key from another quest in another place. You'd know this how? Then praxis aside i got Kassandra, it was easy but without you guys telling me she could be used, and then a walkthrough telling me that the quest (which i already had) involved running past all the level 80s, in the wrong direction, in mor ardain to salvage at a specific spot, and nothing about the qyest suggested salvaging. I just don't get the 1988 design decisions in this game at times, but more importantly i don't get how you guys seem to intuitively not have a problem with it. Maybe just way more obscure jrpgs than me.....i avoided the psp fodder types

They explained dev levels and environmental changes in Gormott.

@subpopz I love the series for the amazing worlds they build and the fantastic characters and stories. The gameplay isn't terrible, it hints at greatness, but it's mired under a chaotic tangle of Ill conceived and barely integrated systems with an outdated design. It's not that it's not at all enjoyable, but it's ever frustration inducing from problems no game of Nintendo published caliber should suffer. Xeno as a whole feels like a series of AAA world building, AA production value, and polish and concept testing worthy of a budget indie publisher. To be fair though, that's probably why monolith had such trouble finding publishers that would stick with them until Nintendo bought them. They reminds me of early Blizzard. A company run by artists, not designers, and it shows . The world and journeys make it a top experience despite the flaws. If it weren't for the amazing words, visual design, etc. We'd be left work something that feels like a budget indie... Overambitious but inexplicably compartmentalized gameplay systems.

But what frustrates the most is there's no need for that. Coming up with special worlds and characters is the hard part of rpg design. The rest should fall in place of they weren't reaching to make the game into different things for different people. Both monolith and square are gaming into that same trap too often. Except monolith still had world building, an art square mostly forgot.

But no, i do like it, I'm not pushing through it despite not liking it. I just keep ramming head long into idiotic designs that keep finding enjoyment to a halt. Why should a locked door in argentum for a quest in argentum require a key from a quest in uraya... And if it does why does the game but tell you you need a key and how you might get that key? How does that count as design?

The monsters in other weather, i just don't see how anyone could conclude that while running through a snow field filled with lv90 everything that that isn't normally what's there and that under other weather all those things are gone. Especially in a game series that does fill areas with monsters to have to run past. The level 80s in mor ardain near the factory don't go away. No reason to expect the 90s in tantal do either. Of course if your first time through they weren't there maybe you see it differently... But if you only know the green beam emitter is surrounded by huge lv90 squid, it makes sense you're being enemy gated and not meant to be there.... It fits the environment.

There's a reason Xenoblade is generally kind of polarizing within the rpg fan base. It really is kind of sideways. I both love it and am confounded by it all at once.

I dunno, I feel the gameplay was pretty high quality for the most part for the original. Like it had its quirks and its underdeveloped parts, but most of the stuff that mattered was really, really good. Like borderline all of the main game and most of the side stuff was handled fairly well. It's just like the...10 or so % of side content where it starts to go off the rails. (which let's be honest, is the norm for open world games, at best)

X was much more inconsistent though. Like it tried so hard to go against JRPG convention that it sometimes forgot why certain things exist in the first place.

@Trajan i think the tutorials lacked example. They briefly started a concept like it was a design doc but offered little to no practical example, so with weather it sounded like a specific enemy or type may only show up at certain times, kind of like x1 npcs only show up at certain times. Instead it meant entire sections become inexplorable due to post end game monsters inhabiting areas instead if the normal monsters. But it never said that. And the statement was in girmitt before you even really understand anything about the systems.

I think specifically with Xenoblade the issue is it can't decide if it's an open world mmo or a linear jrpg. I play it linearly because the story implies it expects linearly. When it keeps expecting your to jump around it acts like an. Mmo sandbox in defiance of the feel of the story. I think x felt better as a game because the narrative matched the gameplay rather than running parallel. Yet i like the stories they tell.

The big things that really cause grief though, more than the weather which was partly bad luck if bad weather that modified the area first time through in a story believable way that led me to not question it (i thought at most it was a bug) is that they never presented blades as pokemon (nor do i think that was a great idea for the series) so i didn't understand how I'm supposed to use them until chapter 7 or so. And the side quests, while more interesting than the mmo fetch quests of 1 by far, are badly thought out in the ways you acquire and start them, it there ways they link with each other.

Mostly it's the fact that the game design features many moments where there is literally no way to know what to do without asking the internet. The nopon chest. Needing theory or Cassandra in your party.... There's no in game way to know Cassandra it Theory exist at all, let alone that you need one of them to do a quest in the very first world if the game, nor how to get about getting them. Pyra doesn't have a sufficient level of "Internet Wisdom" yet.

@subpopz lol, yeah that's my take away too . I think SMT is straight forward and xeno is obtuse..... Then again xeno really is divisive. Something about the design really didn't click with a lot of otherwise jrpg fans. I thought maybe it's better for people that play a lot of obscure Sony jrpgs but maybe it's the opposite.... Experienced jrpg players look for certain player hints in the design and xeno goes out if it's way too cross all those wires.

Well i used blades. I made sure all main characters had a few available types to swap. And i was waiting for more main cast members to need others.... Or some obvious reason to use more crystals. I had no idea about grinding rng, rares, and finding specific skills.... i saw them merely as elementals for combat numbers.

@NEStalgia Well, I guess it's just a case of how you process what you are told. "Certain monsters in certain weather conditions." All right, so I think like this; "Currently the weather is foggy so these are the enemies that will be in this area during this particular weather. If I return when it's snowing, I might run into the same ones, or I might encounter some entirely different ones - not only different species, but levels as well. Anything goes." I guess your way of processing that very same information is different. There is nothing wrong with that, but it unfortunately seems it did set you up for a nasty surprise while I got a fun and exciting experience.

As for the high level enemies found in Tantal during fog, that was what happened to me during my first play through as well. At no point did I feel it was impossible to get through or that I had to run for my life. Those squids aren't UMs, just normal enemies if high levelled ones. At that point in the game it is very much possible for you to take them down as you should have gained a fair understanding of the battle system by then, know how to wisely use your invincibility frames, as well as having filled out quite a bit of the affinity charts of your Blades and given them core chips and aux cores of decent caliber. I took down several of those monsters the first time and levelled up quite a lot as a result. I didn't really struggle with anything again until Jin "Empty Moment"ed me in the World Tree. And even then I didn't die, just was surprised at how much tougher he was than I had expected.

Field skills are explained in the beginning of chapter 2. After that was explained to me, I checked out the affinity chart every time I received a new Blade and looked at the specials, passives and field skills that Blade would grant me. And also, I bought any information from the informants I could get my hands on, so Kasandra, Praxis and Theory were among the first rare Blades I got my grubby hands on. Which is pretty awesome because both Kasandra and Theory are pretty good (love Kasandra.) Praxis is pretty standard but nothing to scoff at either, especially not early in your first play through.

As for the key to the Nopon Shrine, it wasn't exactly clearly explained and I can't remember exactly how it went since it's been literally months since I did it, but if I remember correctly it tells you to find the key somewhere in Alrest, right? When a quest tells me stuff like that, I just leave it for the time being. Usually I run into the solution further down the line and I don't need to deal with the frustration by obsessing over it.

I'm not telling you how to play your games, but I personally find it more enjoyable when I don't worry too much about stuff. I just do what seems fun and leave anything else until later. I agree that the tutorials should be saved somewhere so the player can read through them again at a later point, but much of the information found in the tutorials can be found in-game I think? The informants sell information regarding combat, and many NPCs will also talk to you about it if you speak with them. It's really not impossible to figure much of the stuff out, though I guess some of it might be mindset and how used you are to convoluted JRPG logic etc.

I'm glad you're mostly enjoying it though. That is, after all, kind of the point of playing a game. ;D

@Hallonblad Yeah, a lot of it seems to be based on how one processes information. You read the weather thing the way you did and the squids seemed normal. For me I read it as "Derrik the Soul Eater" may only appear at night in the rain, or "Hool Arachnos" may only appear when it's cloudy, but I presumed the enemies would remain level appropriate regardless. Much of it is based on filtering the information through a lens of "what hundreds of other games have taught me" based on cues to the player in game (Xeno defies those cues.) And part is what the game itself teaches me (I can't dislodge the lv80's in Mor Ardain even though I must run through there, and I can't dislodge the level 60's in Elpys even though I had to run through there. Thus, clearly these massive overpowered squids wrapped around giant rocks that look like a piece of level design meant for them around a huge energy stream feeding a city must be purposely there, gathering around the heat, thus I'm meant to run through this area and avoid them, too". In that regard the game was inconsistent, and the game's own cues told me that like previous areas, that's just how it was supposed to be (and visually it fit the theme of the harsh survivable terrain far below the floating city, no wonder the city is way up there!) To me there was nothing to suggest it was merely weather related and lots to suggest that was just the area as designed. I was SHOCKED yesterday going back and finding a bunch of level 40's. Even the freaking bunnets were level 80 the first time! Weather shouldn't be doing that....

OTOH, wow, you're like a super-player. How on earth did you take down the squids at level 40 or so the first time through?! I mean it's clear you're not really meant to be able to. I'm level 64 now and tried yesterday. Still can't do it. I threw it in "easy mode" to see.....still can't do it there either. Lv90 is just too powerful still. They pretty much wipe my team in seconds. One character goes down after 2-3 hits from them. No party gauge buildup yet, so I can't revive. Then we all go down. "knowing the battle system" doesn't help, we're all dead before any arts even charge up. Maybe by end-game if I have all the "use art tied to button x" upgrades, but right now I don't....been spending points on chain and healing upgrades. How on earth did you kill something more than twice your level without dying before you even fire off one art, let alone slapping 5 orbs and building the party gauge without reviving at all?!

Also "invincibility frames"....this sounds like Street Fighter. That's definitely not normal RPG play All that said at that point I had almost nothing on the affinity charts because I didn't even know how they worked until Elpys and folks on this thread explaining it. now they're filled out well-ish with 3-4 levels...but that's lv62 or 64 in chapter 9 as I go back and do some quests I had to skip....a long way from arriving in Tantal. Though somewhat irrelevant as those squids still 4-shot me even with loaded affinities and being 22 levels higher than the first time.

Now I check the affinity chart etc. up until chpater 6 or 7 or so I had maybe 15 blades total, did nothing manually on the affinity charts (didn't understand how they worked really, it seemd like one of those "I guess this will fill out on it's own as I play then?" kind of things, "kill x at y", "talk to x of y", seemed like, kind of how you say you play, you just play and gather stuff (admittedly that's partly being trained by the fetch quests in XC1.)

The informants....never bought a thing. They didn't seem to have a clearly identified purpose, so I was waiting for some apparent need. In hindsight the game still never really makes clear what those documents are (or how to use them.) Even now I really don't know. I just buy the ones some walkthrough tells me I need to do the thing that should have been more obvious "Buy out everything in the stores".....I'm cheap. I hoard the cash in the game until I know I need it I don't buy gear until a boss stonewalls me either....because games offer so many things to buy that may or may not be what you need when you need it, so I err on the side of buying nothing until I need it Problem is I almost never see a need to buy anything in most RPGs, as loot you find is almost always better anyway. So a guy in an alley selling docs that no immediately identifiable purpose gets a miss That ties in to the "feed x's favorite pouch item!" Nothing in the game tells you that, and buying every item in the game, one each for every blade just to experiment and find out isn't going to happen. IF the game needs me to know it, it will tell me. And...it doesn't

I guess some people are into that design but to me it's kind of oddly retro. I love retro stuff but some design ideas really have been improved since they days they were broken because they had to be.

The door says "maybe there's a key in Alrest" (i.e. "somewhere in the game").....the quest kind of dies right there. Even when you get the key you're just told it's some key, maybe it opens something. If you're not thinking of that obscure door you'd still never know what it's for. Too much relies on chance encounters like NES games where "nobody will ever see all of it!"

I might be too used to convoluted JRPG logic for my own good. This series defies the conventions that are ingrained

But yeah, despite the complaining in this thread, I also recommend it in other threads I do love the series, and the game overall....but it has so much frustration that keeps it from being a perfect experience when it's I love it....buutt.........x, y, and z.

I'm still counting on the Torna expansion to fix some of the crazy errors in design here. The blades system caused some issues, and playable blades might resolve some of that.

@Tsurii Lol I'm stuck at Serious Showdown on BoC currently. The most I've gotten was either Malos or Jin at half-health, then they just drain my Party Gauge and OHKO me... while I'm playing as Tora.

New trailer which sums up the expansion pass: