Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@BrainOfGrimlock Well 400 hours across two full playthroughs, one NG+ playthrough, and a lot of Challenge Mode which ate up a lot of my time. So I'm an anomaly in that regard.

Xenoblade in general consumed my life though. I have 500 hours in Xenoblade X and 250 hours in Xenoblade 1, and even Torna as an expansion took 40 hours of my life that I'll never get back. All of them with at least two playthroughs.

@EvilLucario It obviously depends on the type of game, but in RPG's like this I am generally a fan of NG+ so i'll certainly bear that in mind - thank you!

@roadrunner343 Well, if you really did, I've got nothing. You should be able to blaze through the first four or so chapters pretty quickly, after which most if not all battle systems should be unlocked (was quite some time since I played it for the first time, so my memory might be a little fuzzy on the details.)

Are you cancelling your attacks? Are you building your team with Blades that synergise well together so you can build elemental orbs and then use chain attacks? I second NEStalgia's advice to ignore Tora for now. He is not a damage dealer until you get QTpi (chapter eight, I think) and he's not unkillable until you get a Dilaton chip for alpha (post-game, IIRC). So basically, anyone else is better for damage, and Mórag is superior for tanking. Also, Tiger! Tiger! is the worst thing that ever graced Alrest with its presence.

I honestly don't know what to tell you, since I'm not sure what you already are doing, and what you're not. If you feel up for it, I do encourage you to give it another try. I genuinely feel that while it is very flawed, it is still an amazing game. I've thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think I have some 400+ hours in it by now. Only BotW has more on my Switch, but that is only because I recently started a brand new Master Mode run. Plateau Lynel didn't go as well this time, I think I left it for too long and managed to forget how to play the game. 8D

@Grumblevolcano You should be able to buy more from that bard, but I think you can only buy one with each character? Or something like that? Put Vandham as the player controlled character and try to buy from him - it should work. (I hope I'm not lying.)

@EvilLucario it took me 80 hours to 100% Torna in NG+. I too took 40 hours in Ys 8. Didn't 100% it, not even get the good ending. Need to get back and finish it. Octopath came out. Didnt even beat the final boss in Octopath because Torna came out and I was tired of grinding...

@NEStalgia You could definitely say I haven't felt it yet, at least As for combat being turn based, I know that it essentially is, but it also feels that way. I've played plenty of old (and some recent) cRPGs that were built on turn base systems, such as NeverWinter Nights 1/2, Dragon Age Origins, and even some MMOs like Guild Wars/Guild Wars 2 that felt like they had a more active and engaging combat system to me.

Also, from the sounds of it, I would have to agree I probably am not leveraging the systems well. I pretty much stuck with whatever characters/blades I got as part of the main story, thus far. I think I have 2 others for Rex, but I pretty much used Pyra the whole time. I was also using Tora, so maybe that's part of it too. I don't know exactly where I was at in the game, but I made it to at least the Mercenary Camp and I know what Tiger! Tiger! is.

@Hallonblad Yeah, I don't know. I just need to give it another shot. I was definitely canceling attacks, and I was beginning to chain, though I also recall being confused a bit by how the mechanics worked and had to google a bit (I'm new to the franchise) so I'm sure I was doing so inefficiently.

As for BotW, I did the exact same thing a few months ago, brand new master run. Never came close to finishing it, but that was my solution for attempting to get into XC2 and failing again. I'll definitely give it another shot, but it will sadly probably have to wait for a while now. It's a bit frustrating to me knowing that I already own a game that could possibly be one of my favorite games on the system if I could just crack into it. Unfortunately, due to time constraints (And a wife and kids) my attention space is much shorter than it used to be. Someday.

@Hallonblad Didn't work but I think your logic is along the right lines. I'm thinking I was able to buy 4 in Chapter 1 because you had a party of 4 but those 4 accessory kits end up for Rex, Nia, Tora and Vandham so you can't buy more until the other drivers arrive. I'll find out soon enough whether this is the case.

@roadrunner343 NWN was based on the D&D rules like Baldur's Gate, and DA:O was a loose clone of that without using the D&D rules and license. So they were actually based on pen and paper rule-sets....veeery turn based. With actual pauses and waits unlike XC2. I'd say those were much more turn based. XC2 is more like FF12, Child of Light, WoFF where character speed affects your actions.

Yeah the game does not explain anything well at all. I played over half the game not understanding blade bonding, chain attacks, or field skills/affinity charts at all and only using story blades. The folks in this thread were the only way I figured out how you're supposed to be playing. (mostly thanks to a boss later that gates your progress until you understand what you're doing. Easy to cheese on easy mode, not fun on normal.) Plus field skill check gates that force you to finally learn the affinities, blade bonding, and merc missions....which I also didn't get until the folks here explained it Yeah, I used Pyra mostly as my "primary" on Rex, but once you get into chaining, you'll need to switch up your blades to get the elemental combos you need onto the enemy (orbs. If you do lv3 combos you attach an orb of that element to the enemy. That becomes critical in unleashing a chain, and possibly getting enough orbs to do a full burst combo.) If you made it to the merc camp, you already got the tutorial on full bursts and chains, and the game did the tutorial so badly that you had no idea what's going on and ignored the system, just like I did

You can get through until you get to Temperantia without understanding chains. The boss there will force you to understand though. I.E. enemies at 50% health go into rage. They do more damage. Bosses can do obscene damage in rage mode and wipe you. The only way to deal with that is by properly chaining/bursting where, if you set things up right in the first half of the battle, you can ohko them for the last half (or close to it.) That means using your combos (A/ZL/ZR moves with everyone's blades) to Lv3, and if the last one is say, fire, you attach a fire orb to the enemy. Attach say, fire, water, earth, then when your party gauge is full hit + to enter chain combo. You attack the orbs in rotation in that mode. Each orb has 3HP. Attacks will attack their opposite element orb (a.k.a. Pyra attacks water orbs.) If no opposite exists, attacks attack a random orb. Opposite attacks do 2HP damage. Random attacks do 1HP. Shatter an orb and you keep going into round 2. Break all the orbs and attack with multiplier damage for the last round. Break enough orbs and you do a full burst (a special QTE attack that does insane damage.)

That's confusing to say. More confusing to read. But once you try it a few times and understand what that all means it's easy And requires some strategy.

Tora and Poppi can be devastating, but I don't have the Tiger! Tiger! dedication to make Poppi that useful And Tora can't take 3 blades for most of the game so that limits your combos with him. (Of course, people doing Tiger Tiger and New Game + can use him devastatingly...)

XC2 works entirely differently than XC1 and X so this battle system is all new. Only break/topple/launch/smash remain staples. Torna changes it up again (easier, maybe too easy in some ways.)

@NEStalgia To be clear, I wasn't suggesting XC2 should or should not be turn-based - simply that for whatever reason, I have played games that were more blatantly turn based, such as D&D based RPGs, that still felt like they had a more active battle system. Perhaps that reason is just my own ignorance to the games combat systems.

As for the game explaining things poorly, I'll agree. I never felt completely lost with any one system as the introduced it, but I know for sure I wasn't using them effectively, and the game doesn't really force you to understand a concept before moving on to the next. This may be the bigger problem, because I without this discussion, I'm not sure I would have ever realized I was doing something so wrong, because I did watch a couple videos and try to pay attention to the game's tutorials back when I first played it. Especially after reading some of the comments here, I know I'm not doing things correctly. Definitely not doing burst moves either. I guess I do have about a month of downtime until Smash, so maybe I will try to give this another shot.

@roadrunner343 I think that impression is created partly by the game A) Not explaining anything, insufficiently explaining what it does explain, and trying to throw the kitchen sink into having so many convoluted systems, many of which seem irrelevant, and in some ways are, or should be. B) The game is pretty forgiving (at least for a while) in letting you progress without testing your knowledge of the systems. By the time it does test you, it's a hard wall and you're hours behind in figuring out you don't know what you're doing. Dark Souls may be obnoxious, punishing and hard, but what it does do is make sure you more more less know what you're doing to even leave the tutorial area, or at least you figure out you're never going to be able to figure it out before you leave the tutorial area. XC2 kind of lets you plod along at an ok pace while clueless. Then you get about half-way through and that's when they decide to tell you you have no idea what you're doing, go home. Japanese in general are usually amazing at teaching at just the right pace, but apparently Monolith's producers are the exception to the rule. I had the same kind of experience you did, with a lot of the same problems, however, I was faring a little better with keeping the pace up coming from XC1 and X so I had more "concept" familiarity of how a Xeno game works. Even though the actual systems in this one are entirely new. (And seriously, the affinity charts are obnoxious. Torna did it so much better.)

...And then I read the second paragraph and saw you mostly said the same thing Yes, you're exactly right, the game doesn't force you to understand things where it should, and that's the core problem. Heck, the affinity field skills you can mostly cheese until the last 1/3 of the game where suddenly you start needing like Lv7 lightening and you have 1..... And that takes a lot of after-the-fact grinding and RNG blade generation.

I'd definitely advise if you overall like the game but don't have a handle on the systems, give it a try and stick with this thread for help. Everyone here gave me more information in 5 minutes than the whole game's tutorials did, in clearer text, too (Except, ignore Evil too much, he sets up everything for playing as hard as possible...he's set for PvP builds in a game without PvP )

I don't think merc missions are unlocked for you yet, that opens up at the camp after the Uraya chapter, so you're probably at a good spot in the game to learn the things you're missing still. That's when the grinding of RNG blades really begins (It's just a menu-driven metagame thing to send blades out on "missions" and they can upgrade that way on a timer.) Unlike me, I was like 4-5 chapters ahead of that before I learned I had no idea how to play.

@roadrunner343 Yeah, the game isn't the best at explaining the different battle systems to the player, and it doesn't help that there is no way to re-read the tutorials. I figured everything out on my own by trial and error, which made me understand them very well once I got the hang of it, but before that... it was often quite frustrating.

Pyra is a monster and should be able to carry you through the entire story (and into postgame if you so choose.) If you have Dagas, put him on another driver so you get the extra damage. Pyra's level 3 special deals a fair amount of damage, you can use Mythra to "charge" her and then switch back to Pyra for the actual attack. Since Dagas is fire elemental he can step in with a special to keep the combo going if you should mess up with Pyra for whatever reason.
I really like Pyra. She's fun to use, much more so than Mythra. :3 So maybe I'm biased. But I'm not wrong in saying she's very good at what she does.

Chain attacks are not as complicated as they seem at first, and they will undoubtedly make the battles go faster. Just press + when your special meter thingy in the top left corner is full, and then wreak havoc on your enemies. Mythra's level 2 (second round in a chain attack) has a really big reach and is AOE, so if you're fighting several enemies that is a good one to use so kill them off , or at least hurt all of them simultaneously. You'll need elemental orbs on the enemy in order to prolong the chain attack though, so make sure to do a lot of Blade combos (which will also fill up your chain attack meter, so good things all around.)
Later in the game you won't want to put orbs on the enemies, since it gives them resistance against the element/s that orb is, but you don't need to worry about that until muuuch later.

As for using Tora, there is nothing wrong with doing so, but. You don't get QTpi (best attacker in the game with the right build (and a lot of Tiger! Tiger!)) until chapter 8, and you don't get any Dilaton core chips until postgame. Those chips will make alpha borderline unkillable, making Tora well worth a spot on your team. Until then, there just isn't any justification to have him on there when the other drivers can do everything better. Of course, if you just love Poppi to bits and don't care about efficiency, then that is the only reason that really matters.

@Grumblevolcano Oooh. Yeah, there you go. ^-^ All I know is you can get kits for everyone. Now all you have to do is fill out the second of Vandham's affinity charts and solo Relentless Arduran with him and Roc.

I finally finished the main quest of the game after nearly 100 hours and playing since Christmas of last year. There were times where the game would frustrate me enough to where I went 2-3 weeks without even playing at all.
I agree that the game could explain things a lot better. But that seemed like a problem with the first Xenoblade Chronicles as well. That game took me about 10 months or so too (and about 200 hours!).
I think I like the story and gameplay better in the second. And it's an added bonus that it has an expansion pass (going to start Torna soon).
The game could use a decent amount of improvements, but it's still great. It just requires a lot of patience.

@LuigiTheGreenFire I think you'll be pleased with a lot of the questing/systems/explanation improvements in Torna. They oversimplified some things, and it's a smaller scope game. But they did great with it!

@subpopz That's interesting you'd compare it to Nier as a contrast. In a lot of ways I find Nier reminds me of XC2 (particular sections, of course). And Torna, since both have such bleak backdrops.

@subpopz Oh, certainly, the color palette in XC universe is much brighter than...well...any Taro game. Purely visually that's true. Torna is a very somber world, barely less so than Nier. Not dystopian and designed to make you feel uneasy, but just....sad. It's very autumnal in tone for obvious reasons.

But the actual world of Nier and some sections of XC2 are thematically very similar. Visually, too.

This game along with others like Tropical Freeze and Star Allies is gonna be on sale for $35 at Walmart during Black Friday. Get it if you haven't, spread the word.

@NEStalgia The main Torna music gives me an uneasy feeling. Definitely adds to the atmosphere.

Question for you guys if you know:
why does Minoth have gun daggers, but Cole gives Rex a regular dagger as his weapon to give to Amalthus?

@Trajan interesting question. I'm not sure there's a story reason for that. I wouldn't be surprised if that cut scene was already done and late in torna dev the designers decided gun blades were cool for him.

@NEStalgia Yeah that's what I figured man. Was curious if there was a story aspect.

I'll tell you, if you have the time, replay the game after Torna. Super interesting.

@Trajan I can imagine....it really changes your thinking on so many characters and your perception of events. I still think Malos has one of the most interesting and subtle character developments in the game. He went from pure destructive indifference to actually questioning everything despite continuing, and his reasoning changed somewhat. On paper he's "the villain" throughout. But the character changes to him are exceedingly subtle but significant from where we see him in Torna to where we see him at the end of XC2 at the tree. Very subtle but very well done.

Hey all! So literally just started this and found a lot of stuff/gifts/items in my menu under ‘expansion pass’ - examples include;

• war chest contribution from Bana
• gift from Mr Rurui
• newbie drivers core crystal set
• final item distribution list
• dlc blade list; distribution 3
• driver essentials
• upgrade parts for poppi

Naturally all that makes little to no sense to me (and that’s a good thing!), just curious if anyone has experience with them/knows if they’re game breaking in any way? I hate pre-order/expansion stuff that gives you a headstart/unfair jump, not sure if this stuff is that or generally/legitimately helpful stuff i’ll use more as the game goes on? Any non-spoiler-y help gratefully received, even one liners!