Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@Trajan The hundreds of soldiers that were willing to kill innocent people rather than objecting to their orders.

@Trajan Damn, I checked and it was full.

@Cynas Ah ok. I'm going to watch the ending and chapter 8 cut scenes tonight. I was a few beers deep when I beat it last night so maybe I missed something. I love this game. Also, how do I do spoiler tags? I'm sure ill have more questions and a ending discussion would be neat. Or maybe I should start a new thread?

@Grumblevolcano Yeah I heard someone mention that bug so I went and checked for myself because I've had that happen in the base game. I had 490. So I went and sold some before going to the womb.

@Trajan put (spoiler) at the beginning of your text and (/spoiler) at the end. Except use square brackets instead of parentheses.

The way healing was almost entirely tied to soul voices ruined X's combat for me. Instead of executing a particular strategy, I have to keep using skills I don't even want to use because the game's healing system is defective. This was (mostly) alleviated in Xenoblade 2 by giving the player dedicated healing spells. I still find the complete lack of consumable items for health in a JRPG to be weird, but, on the flipside, it's nice not having to worry about maintaining my HP outside of battle.

Also, the fact that there doesn't seem to be a dedicated way to completely restore TP when necessary, leading to constant resource management issues with it. This was also an issue that didn't exist in XC2, or the original XC, for that matter.

And yeah, making the player take 40+ hours to be able to obtain the dolls, only to make them worry about stuff like fuel and not letting the things break kind of takes the fun away from having giant robots to play around with in the first place.

XCX has a great open world, but the combat, grindiness, and overly-complex nest of systems really took away from the game for me.

Torna's combat sounds incredibly fun.

@Cynas thanks. I didn't know if this site used html or not.

@Trajan Your spoiler tags aren't working.

@Grumblevolcano yeah they won't work for me for some reason.

@Trajan I don't have time to answer questions right now (class soon), but do it paragraph by paragraph. So like (spoiler)dhgjsjgjsjvbsja(/spoiler) instead of:

(spoiler)dhakfbsjjxebdj

Fhskdjjfbsjdj

Ghsjcj

(/spoiler)

If you get what I mean lmao.

@EvilLucario thanks man it worked. No worries dude. I'd really like your insight.

@Cynas basically the things @EvilLucario is saying.

it's basically stupid how the driver and blade roles are indistinguishable in combat.. and leveling up skills.. and it doesnt align with the narrative of the 100h+ base game.. and it simplifies it to the point of removing strategy from combat until it's just a button masher.

@misanthrope Your initial complaint was that the Torna DLC makes things convoluted yet now you say it simplified it. My argument to you was to point out that the combat is easier to understand, not harder than the base game. Also, I don't see what the problem is about being able to control both the driver and the blades. There are still only 3 weapons you can control, that portion is fundamentally the same as switching between the 3 blades in the base game.

@Cynas yea pretty much.. they complicated it by saying "alright now you can do this this and this" to the point of removing the strategy because just keep pressing buttons and youll do more and more and more.

and I dont think the combat is easier to understand... its so much going on its hard to tell whats happening anymore. the blades are drivers the drivers are blades. the blades doing the driver combo... remember when we were all trying to figure out the intricacies of combat in the base game? do you think new players starting with Torna really know whats going on or are they just tap tap a tappin?

I'm really really liking the gameplay changes in the Torna DLC. Yes some of the brokenness remains in terms of systems they can't change at this point, and it helps starting out knowing how the systems already work. But the affinity trees actually tell you what someone's favorite pouch item is rather than making you guess by buying every item in the game and feeding it to them. That alone is huge. The lack of RNG blades and a focused party helps a lot and hurts very little. The crafting system is fantastic! Way better than "refining aux cores at a store" etc. Finding specific ingredients still sucks and they really need to repair that system next game, but still almost everything has been refined.....I so wish I could play the main game with those systems in place. Also the combat system with blade changes is really cool!

@EvilLucario You may be right about it being too easy. I haven't found myself challenged so far (but no bosses yet either, I"m just wandering around Gormott which somehow seems fun now and didn't seem fun in the main game. I think they added some pathing and tweaks to make that maze navigable!!) But despite being easy, it's fun....and the idea of swaping out like a tag team battle fighter to recover health is a really really cool element. Maybe they end up under-using it but it's so cool otherwise. Plus it would be really weird for this cast to have "blade and driver". Imagine Jin just sitting back as a support. That's just not who Jin is. Melee Mythra feels a little weird but it makes me think for a minute, the beginning of XC2 made a lot of noise about a character hiding behind his immortal blade, but then the rest of the game puts humans on the front lines with blades far in the rear.....wouldn't the immortal blade make a lot more sense up front, story-wise?

Jin became a flesh eater.. that's why he is different 500 years from now ... and idk... I spent the whole game trying to swallow the lore that the driver does the fighting and it was absolutely stupid to write in KOS-MOS as a blade passively standing around in battles....... aaaand this is why i call this game a convoluted mess lol.

@misanthrope I don't think I'll ever be convinced that the Torna combat is more convoluted than the base game. When I first started the main game I was confused by Blade Combos, and honestly I think the way Torna does it makes it easier to understand. Being able to control the driver as well as the blades doesn't make things more complex, it's just different. You're still controlling 3 different weapons, swapping them out the same way as the base game. You just control a different character rather than a different weapon. Besides the Talent Art, which is really just an extra skill that can be ignored, what is more complicated to do in combat in Torna than it is in the base game?

@Cynas you could start with figuring out the most efficient skill to level up first?

There's no in game lore that says the Blade can't fight by themselves. Even in the main game when you first encounter Brighid, she fights by herself. In plenty of cutscenes and during special attacks the blades often attack themselves too. It was never a written rule that the blades can't fight. I honestly think it made more sense the way it worked in Torna. You could even say that Lora was the one that developed the concept of a Driver using the Blade's weapon and it evolved to what we see in the main game.

EDIT:

Choosing what skills to level up is related to character progression, not combat. But even then, it's easier to choose what to level up in the main game. Rex himself can have over 15 different types of weapons, each with 4 skills. From those 4 you have to choose to leave out 1 skill. In Torna, you can use all skills available to you, there's no deciding which ones to bring into combat. While there is now Support and Vangaurd skills or really doesn't matter which you choose to level first since all levels help. Unlike the main game, where if you choose to try a new weapon you have to start from scratch.

Either way, in the main game you could also have trouble what skills or what blades are most effective, so I don't see how it's more convoluted.