Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@EvilLucario Any tips for the last 2 golden unique monsters? The Blant type enemy keeps using Life Force to heal itself and remove all orbs, the other one I don't have enough money to buy the info for it to appear.

I just picked up my Torna physical copy on midnight release last night and damn, im so excited to be playing more Xenoblade.

They said they made a new engine for the game and my initial impression is wow. Now, I played the base game docked and thought it was great, though that was last year.. Torna really does just seem to run absolutely flawlessly and the grass in Gormott does seem more impressive like the developers say.

Does anyone have more recent experience with the base game to give their comparisons? I would like to see a DF video on this.

This game is just amazing me all over again that a device so small as the Switch can produce a game like this.

I cant wait to see Monolith Softs new title... and now that Torna is out, I hope they announce XBCX for Switch in the coming months.

@Grumblevolcano Sorry, don't have anything since I started NG+ and I didn't have a lot of time to play Torna.

I don't have anything scientific to offer, but having spent 150 hours in Xenoblade 2, the first thing I thought after starting Torna was "wow, this looks noticeably more realistic".

It's not that big a difference, and still has dynamic res and all that, but it does seem a cut above the base game.

I wouldnt say more realistic.. but it just seems crisper and smoother... and the grass with the flowers looks awesome... I really can't be bothered to swap cartridges and do a comparison and I cant find any comparison videos online... But as soon as I finish Torna ima finally start my new game+ on the main game and see how it compares.

I am just so excited they are making advancements with their engine though because whatever that new RPG Monolith Soft is working on is, I know its going to blow our minds.

The grass is better because Torna is using a new rendering engine.

I think maybe the grass he was talking about comparing was between both titans in Torna. Even though Gormott in Torna looks more detailed I guess? The colors are different.

Looking at the grass, as in thr base game (and the first game) as you rotate your camera the grass follows your POV. Where as in Torna (the titan) it stays put and is fully 3d.

Anyone planning on playing again in the perfect order (Torna between chapter 7 and 8)? I still haven't beat Torna. I think I'm at the last stage. I'm level 64 lol.

I think I'll do NG+ then play in the perfect order.

Oh wow.. I thought the grass was just more complex- higher density, better animation, more colorful textures... but it is 100% rendered differently.

SPOILER question:

So Jin and Gramps end on a good note. So why in the beginning of the base game does Gramps say "Jin..still you persist"?

I don't know. Why would Jin be a nffjd to Azurda though? Azurda was their dude.

Bigger question is, why would Jin side with Malos, when his girl was with him to fight Malos? And then yeah the Prætor... Who influenced how Malos was. I assume Jin didn't know this, but still...

I guess I need to play through them in order now...

I loved the Torna DLC. I think the cast of characters was better than the base game, the combat was further improved, and the sidequests actually felt like they had meaning. I'm currently doing New Game Plus of the base game, but I already basically 100% the Torna DLC so I'm not sure if I'll do New Game Plus there. The only thing I didn't do was kill the 4 golden monsters.

@Trajan Jin and Azurda definitely did not leave on good terms. At the end of the Torna DLC Jin basically says to him "The next time we meet we'll be enemies." As for why he joined up with Malos, I'm pretty sure it's because he lost faith in humanity after seeing that they were the ones that really destroyed Torna, not Malos. Amalthus sent people to kill any survivors and destroy what was left of the titan, including Lorna, and people didn't object to do it. Although I think specifically it was humans killing Lorna that caused him to go over the edge.

@Cynas I love the Torna expansion too, but I think the combat is a total mess as well as the character progression tied to it.... it completely conflicts with the systems the base game spent 100 hours establishing... can't say I'm surprised though. despite being one of the best RPG's ever, the worst parts about the game have always been systems and ideas too convoluted for its own good.

Like the merc quests, constantly swapping blades out for field tests, vaguely defined upgrades.. man oh man, the game is SO good but so many annoyances... but the combat, really was quite great... then here they go again complicating things til they dont make sense anymore.

Just a warning, there's a bug with Torna where you sometimes don't get aux cores when fully completing Blade affinity charts. I just finished up Haze's affinity chart and didn't get Damage Heal VI.

@misanthrope What exactly did you think was a total mess about the combat? Of anything I think it made the existing combat system slightly easier.

• Blade combos don't require a specific element order. You can choose the named specials for increased damage but if the AI refused to switch to the proper character for the combo you can still do a special like "Ice III", for example.
• Elemental orbs now accumulate for each special and not just the final special of a blade combo. This makes chain attacks much easier to pull off.
• The option of changing the Driver's weapon to swap elements is a nice touch to add some variety.
• I think swapping out the driver/blade is a ton of fun. It's honestly not that different than changing blades in the base game but having a separate cooldown timer for switching Blades and the Driver makes for faster switching between characters. Also, having the extra attack when switching characters is a nice touch.
• This ones more of a personal taste, but I like the tag team system much more. It gives more characters a chance in the spotlight and you get to hear them support each other when they switch out. Makes them feel like a real team and not just a blade standing in the background doing nothing when you fight.
• The new Talent Arts were interesting, having a skill with a big benefit but also a consequence, but I honestly didn't use it much. The AI loved to use Addam's Talent Art though, which was nice because it extended the duration of a lot of my Driver Combos which made them easier to pull off.

Unless I'm forgetting something, everything else in combat was exactly the same.

As for character progression, how is it any different than before? More characters need to spend WP and there's support skills now but that's about it. The blade skill trees function the exact same way.

@Cynas I don't think it was a mess, but while I haven't tackled the superbosses yet due to other stuff in life, I personally think the simplification of Blade Combos and orbs compared to 2 make Torna my least favorite combat system out of the entire series, even below 1 which was my previous low.

In Torna, DPS is just far too easy and can be even more spammy and mindless than Xenoblade 1. No longer does party matchups matter for the right element, you just spam your Arts without consideration of which Blade to use or have. Full Bursts are far too easy to pull off compared to the main game since you'll gain like all the orbs within 5 minutes. There's no payoff nor momentum building to stronger attacks, you just spam attacks and that's it.

Talent Arts are also broken as hell like Addam's where Topple and Launch can be extended INDEFINITELY so you can always be able to fit in an entire Chain Attack into a Topple or Launch, trivializing a lot of bosses and Unique Monsters.

Torna's combat is still fun, but they removed a big element of what made 2 fun and made the game even easier than Xenoblade 1 and 2 which were both already easy games but still had satisfying combat when you mastered the intricacies. There's still intricacies with Torna, but it's not there compared to 1, 2, or X.

@EvilLucario I agree the combat was made much easier, but to counter that I just never used the bonus exp and kept my characters under levelled. It wasn't until the post game where I attempted the Golden bosses where I needed to use the bonus exp. The level 100 boss is especially difficult because it is completely resistant to driver combos and can get rid of the elemental orbs it has. Personally I think the game with the worst combat is X.

@Cynas As with any Xenoblade game the best combat lies in the superbosses so I'm still going to look forward to that, but when I finished the game I had more fun with every other game's combat. Perhaps it'll change once I finish the superbosses, we'll see.

X is actually my favorite combat system though. There are bad elements like appendages being an unnecessary thing, but Overdrive (while it is extremely OP, even more than anything else in Xeno) was very fun to use and mastering it allowed many different possibilities. One-shot builds were always there, but playing as a defensive wall or gimmicky setup like reflect builds can be fun. Skells had issues like also being pretty spammy, but it was still pretty cool to be able to bring out the Skells for more powerful enemies like millesaurs. Soul Voices and how it encouraged you building pressure on the enemy and reacting with powerful attacks as it kept you alive also really helped.

That said, X's combat can also feel extremely gated behind lots of grind and there is a certain threshold where once you pass it, you become way too powerful. The underlining systems of X is still my favorite out of them all though.

@EvilLucario I probably would have appreciated X's combat more if I spent more time with the game, but I haven't touched it since I beat the final boss. My characters were only around level 50-55 when I left it. If I spent the time to create a good build for all my characters I may have enjoyed it more.

My least favourite parts about the game were Soul Voices and Skells though. I found the game relied too heavily on completing those quick time events, which are always my least favourite part of Xenoblade games. If there was more skills available to heal it might have been fine, but the fact that one of the only ways to heal was to hit "B" at the right time was annoying. It was especially bad when I was trying to command teammates by going through that long command list, only to have a quick time event suddenly appear.

Skells were just a pain to use. The camera controlled horribly when inside one and having to go back to repair them or refuel them was annoying. I found it pretty strange how the game doesn't required you to repair the skell when it has 1 HP left, but if you let it hit 0 you have to spend 100k to repair it. It's not like it was hard to do, so it just added another annoyance of "Well, my skell is about to break so now I have to go down and exit it". There was yet another quick time event if the skell did die which helped with the repair fee, and I thought that made no sense at all.

@Cynas I must have missed that. Who didn't object to it?
@Grumblevolcano Make sure your cores aren't full.

I actually really liked the combat. So easy to do a driver combo and full burst.