Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@Cynas yea, i mean i agree with you... the whole concept was a bit silly from the get go.. but I didn't care because i love Takahashi and it just seemed like a whole lot of fun..

but there are definitely a lot of grey areas.. blade and driver are linked. if the driver dies the blade goes back to core crystal.. a blade cant fight at full capacity without their driver.. but then like you mentioned Brighid.. I always felt there is more to her than is revealed in the game... then we play Torna and all the rules are different.

@misanthrope Might want to put that bit in spoiler tags for those that haven't played XC2 yet!

But I don't buy that he changed specifically because of that. He's the same Jin. His methods and intentions changed, but that's less because of what he is and more because of what has happened to him. This is, as the interview with the devs said, the idea that 500 years ago the synergy between blades and drivers wasn't as developed as it eventually became (story-wise.) Obviously later he's a lone wolf, which makes even more sense that he was already used to the front lines. He didn't get that good with a sword standing behind Lora for a while 500 years ago projecting energy beams at her

@Cynas Technically the base game combat is more complex and interesting where you have to arrange who you use when to get the orbs lined up to build a chain. It's a bit more frantic. But it's also kind of obtuse, and without a really DEEP tutorial on the order of having a whole series of missions to teach you how it works, the coolness of it really vanishes. This system on the other hand is simpler to understand. I think where it becomes "easy" though is you no longer have to worry about your elemental combos....the orbs/combos are kind of automatic like you're using Pneuma/Green haired Pyra all the time. But the health bar "tag battle" switch is really cool for the format. I want a full game with that fully utilized.

As always with Monolith it's feast or famine. XC1 had simplistic boring combat. break->topple over and over. Monado Buster! Again and again. XCX went the other way with such an overly complex cryptic battle system few could even understand it. XC2 dialed it back but not enough, it's a great battle system, and not overly complicated once you learn it. But the game never properly teaches it to you. Then Torna decides to just simplify it rather than better present it? But it's a cool system this time. Maybe under-utilizied if it's not pushing difficulty.

@Cynas @misanthrope Indeed there's a few examples of blades fighting alone in the base game. Brigid's introduction, Morag was still en-route to Gormott, Brigid was the advance party. It was also implied a few places Aegeon often left Nial to operate as an advance scout/operative. Neither were "eaters". Also Fan LaNorne was operating far away from her Indoline driver when she retrieved the party, and then there's Malos himself who's never actually seen together with his driver in the base game at all. Plus side quests, specifically Praxis and Theory where they are separated greatly from their respective drivers. So that part isn't strange at all. Putting the meatbags in front of the blades in the base game is the weird part

@misanthrope I think with Brigid a lot of her "differentness" is that she kept that diary so unlike most blades that had to relearn themselves from scratch, she has a direct written account of who she is, what she knows, and what she's done, preserved by the Imperial court, and likely retrains her to be up to snuff with it each new bond with an emperor, after all, she's a royal protector of the sitting emperor and always has been (as far as we know.) And of course Jin, Mythra, Malos, etc have been "awake" all 500 years. That alone makes a huge difference for them.

Boy, I come back from class to this. Let's get crackin'.

@misanthrope I don't buy that the combat is convoluted at all. Drivers and Blades are just equal in Torna, only they have different items to use compared to each other. And your reasons are VERY different from my reasons, which is literally the opposite of what I'm saying.

And yes, Blades can fight on their own. They just suck compared to having their Driver with them.

@Trajan So to answer your question about Nuncle Azurda and Jin, as other people said they didn't really end in good terms. Plus, during Chapter 1, he was more surprised at Malos being there than Jin.

As for the other questions:

1) Lora and Jin were in Spessia, the third Titan that sunk. Tornan refugees fled there, and Amalthus attacked and wiped them all out in fear of Addam and Mythra, though by that point Addam and Mythra already disappeared.
2) He just did, and I guess Torna didn't completely sink during that time? Idk. Game never says.
3) Judicium and Temperantia was sunk by Torna's Titan during the prologue. That was the time when Torna's Titan was crazy and asserting its dominance everywhere. Temperantia is irrelevant to the Aegis War.

@NEStalgia Mostly since Blades and Drivers work better in unison instead of one just taking the full burnt. Hiding behind Blades like Dughall does isn't really good for combat.

Fighting styles also evolved since 500 years. Remember, the concept of passing Blade weapons back-and-forth was because one girl was too poor to get another weapon. But it later fleshed out to be stronger, hence why in XC2 base game you hit way harder than in Torna.

Grinding XP is a lot more annoying in Torna, currently my team is at 94 and I've been using the same 3 golden bosses for the last 20 or so levels as nothing else gets much XP. Not sure if the developers' intention is for you to only get a full community on a NG+ run but getting a high enough level to face some of the golden bosses without NG+ is tedious.

EDIT: Finally 100% completion for Torna.

@EvilLucario Watching the chapter 8 scenes again, Jin tells Mythra that it wasnt her who sunk Torna, but Almalthus. What are your thoughts?

So is there an expliantion for this? Or is it just plot inconsistencies? I know MONOLITH knew what they were doing so I'm probably just misinterpreting something.

@AlternateButtons it's an RPG. You're supposed to do quests.

@AlternateButtons People are generally in the ports, which you can fast travel to. Quests appear both on the map and above people's heads in the overworld. By the way, you're confusing completing quests with increasing community (people). Many quests yield more than one person. Additionally, some people will join just on talking to them. They have a yellow marker above them.

@Trajan

1) I took it as Amalthus destroying the remains of Torna.
2) I rewatched the second cutscene in Chapter 5 and yeah, Malos says it's an Aegis War casualty. However, I also rewatched the cutscene that showed Torna dominating for over a thousand years and while the Titans looked like Temperantia, it's up in the air if it was Temperantia. I didn't have time to find the cutscene where Amalthus and the other Indol guys were talking about it (if it existed) though, and I can't remember when they mentioned Judicium in Torna. So I kinda misremembered for Torna's Titan going ape in the prologue, oops.
3) Things like Siren were hot enough to leave behind glass. While using "warhead" as a term may seem weird, I think similar things exist in the world.

@AlternativeButtons Some quests give no community. Some quests give 2 or more. Most quests give 1. Even more community can be gained by simply talking to people. In the community tab, you can track them down by highlighting over them and pressing Y.

Uhm.... So torna just went intoa first person camera set about waist high and I'm aware of no way to get it out. Am i going to have to delete all my progress and start again?!

Edit
Nevermind. Who knew there was a zoom function of you holdl and use the right stick that even goes to first person mode!

@NEStalgia Try holding the L button and push the right analog stick down.

@Cynas thanks! I discovered that just as you replied! Weird mistake

@AlternateButtons In the desert area, there's a forest at the lower left portion of the map. It's a fairly decent size and hard to miss.

I'm convinced you must have quest markers turned off or something... the blue quest markers should show up clearly on the area map. Take a look at the beginning of this video.

I've heard other people complain about this as well. I didn't even know you needed a specific community level my first play-through since I did all side quests as soon as I found them and spent more time hunting them down rather than doing the main quest. But when I did NG+ and just wanted to run through the main quest I also hit a wall... twice. A one point you need to reach CL 2, and then later on CL 4 before you can continue the main quest. That did indeed put something of a damper on my enthusiasm. Torna is certainly not made for speed running. XD

@Hallonblad @Hallonblad TBH I'd almost rather an RPG force sidequests than have them be kind of pointless to the point of being ancillary as most of the Xenoblade series has done. It's a little more like the X philosophy where the side quests were the main game and the main story strung it together.

In other RPGs, Elder Scrolls games don't force the side quests, but most of the game is side quests, and if you race the main story through you're missing 75+% of the actual content. And one of the strongest chapters of any RPG I can remember was Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn where you arrived in town and you needed to raise a certain amount of money to continue. They recommended you take jobs at the tavern to get the money. All the sidequests at the tavern became the main quest to do, and while out on those quests you were bound to find other quests. By the time you do all these amazing quests and get back to main game progress you realize that those quests were most of the game.....the main quest didn't have a whole lot after it. You experienced the game through living in that world doing other tasks.

I'm guessing it's similar here. Though I just hope the quests here aren't bad or don't tell you what to do, as XC quests usually are. So far they've been way better than XC1/XC2 fare, but I'm just arriving at the first big area of Torna after Gormott, and XC2 (main game) quests were nothing short of infuriating depending on RNG wins and random chance of being in the right place and right time with the right person, and many needing rewards from other quests (that needed rewards from other quests) to complete.

I tend to enjoy side quests, so that is not necessarily a problem (for me.) Like I said, I didn't even notice that I needed a specific community level on my first play-through since I reached the necessary levels automatically by doing everything I could find immediately. I do find it strange that in NG+ I am still forced to reach those community levels to progress. Clearly I have already done it before, so allowing me to speed through the main story at whatever pace I want shouldn't really be that big of a deal. I personally don't hate it - or even mind too much - I just found it strange and I understand why some might find it annoying. My first play-through of the core game I focused mostly on the main quest and went back to do the side quests afterwards, so I do sympathise with the people who wanted to go for that strategy in Torna as well.

I had no problem with the side quests themselves, neither in Torna nor the core game. I didn't find them cryptic or infuriating. Just follow the quest markers and you'll be fine. I can think of only one tiny hiccup I had during my side questing in Torna. The green barrel quest, after having opened 70 barrels you apparently need to reach community level 5. The game doesn't tell you this though (at least to my knowledge,) so I was confused about this for a while and left it alone for some time before I figured it out.

@Hallonblad Haha yeah in XC2 I also saved most of the side quests until chapter 9 or so. World tree area. Then again, I think a lot of that was because a bulk of quests actually needed access to late game areas to actually complete, and/or needed field skills in quantities I didn't have until late game (thus the RNG issues.) I've heard having the expansion pack made some of that easier (pay to win?) but having had TGC on physical preorder forever, that wasn't an option. So far TGC side quests are the most "normal" quests in all of XC universe, without bizarre unexplained requirements.

In Torna I've done all avaliable side quests I could before progressing. I love it. This game is to the bse game similar to how Majora was to Ocerina.

Also, full burst on Minoth is beast. That is all.

Would I understand enough by playing through Torna if I never played the base game? I'd like to play it, but I simply don't have the time available to put into the base game as well.

@Introspect From what I've heard, it's appreciable as an independent experience, although it will spoil some stuff about the backstories of certain characters in the full game.