Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@link3710 Sorry, I wasn’t clear, I did download rips of the soundtrack. Having listened to the music frequently it doesn’t sound compressed at all, so in that there’s little excuse for composers to laze!

@TheJGG It's just a driver combo (topple, launch, etc.) and a blade combo (the elemental specials activated by blades) being activated at the same time (before their respective timers run out, that is).

Christ @Ralizah I’m half glad I didn’t know. At least in Torna it was easier to initiate both Driver and Blade combos, due to the streamlined combat.

Torna’s battle mechanics were so simple compared to mainline Xenoblade systems that I actually really like it. I’d put it between 1 and 2’s combat, with X not far behind, and considering how good the gameplay and battle mechanics are in Xenoblade games, that’s really good. The simpler mechanics like streamlined Driver/Blade gameplay, easier elemental combos, and attacks like when Addam switches to Mythra and inflicts Smash. Those were useful. It also made the boss fights a hell of a lot harder because the simplicity allowed for less confusion. The final boss of Torna, or rather the penultimate final boss of Torna, was a really creative, difficult and epic boss fight. Everything was good whether it was the reworked Party Gauge, the two mechs in the background, or the boss’ insanely huge health bar, even on Easy, along with the reminiscent boss theme. It was awesome in every sense of the word.

I think Torna's battle system makes an amazing first impression (in part because it's actually explained decently!) and sustains itself well up to the end of the game but does get a little tiresome in the postgame. Although, to be fair, blade/driver switching honestly should have been in the base game! I think the main game's battle system sustains itself better and remains fun into the postgame and beyond.

For anyone frustrated with the battle system in the main game I would highly recommend giving Chuggaconroy's video a look on youtube it does a much better job of explaining everything you need to know. It definitely has a somewhat steep learning curve but once you get over that it's so engaging.

@mr_somewhere @TheJGG Torna's dynamic battle system is my favorite in the series to date. In general, Torna lacks most of the flaws plaguing other Xenoblade games. Even the side-quests are better!

Granted, if it was a 100+ hour experience like XC2, I'd want a little more complexity in the battle system, but for the 30 hours or so that it lasted, it worked out quite well.

@Ralizah Torna's battle system is a lot of fun for its run time but if you're going for 100% it kinda overstays its welcome. That's how I feel about it anyway. The sidequests are generally much better alright, the main game's sidequests are a real mixed bag but defo an improvement over the original. Playing through the original in DE I think the sidequests in that have (for the most part) aged the worst. I hear X has the best of the bunch in those terms but I never owned a Wii U so I'm still holding out for a port.

@Ralizah I sped through it in under ten hours, but I was really going for it, skipping cutscenes and all that. If it was a full game of course it would have to be a bit more complex but everything in it, side quests, character camaraderie and development, and NPC interactions, were great, yeah.

I don't think the limitation with Torna is the battle system, but that you've got a fixed set of blades and drivers, and far less in the way of customization options. Then again, the post game is far smaller than that of the main game and there's only really one of the Golden monsters that's up with the superbosses in terms of difficulty, so I'd think that it ends up easier to 100%.

It's fairly short for a Xenoblade game, but 10 hours for the campaign would be rather rushing through it by my reckoning. It's really more like 15-20, going up to 30 by the time you've done all the side quests. There are plenty of full price RPGs that are around that length but nowhere near as consistent in quality, so it's phenomenally good value.

I've made some slight progress in my new playthrough, I've reached Mor Ardain and am just about to fight Mòrag for the second time. Difficulty's been rather fair so far though I'm not particularly excited for the bosses in Chapter 9, it's gonna be a pain.

@CactusMan any strategy in particular you use to get the most rare blades? Or it was just to open enough Legend Core crystals until Lady luck shines?

I am still missing 4/5 blades with about 250h in (have not played in a while though)

Using boosters and ramping up your luck stat helps a bit, but mostly it's just a case of farming core crystals and skipping the animation.

I still refuse to say what I feel about this game as a whole until I get much later into it, but I can't ignore anymore that this is game is very obviously a mess. Enough of it is because it has cool ideas that it wants to do, even if it leads to weird issues. But some of it are just issues that the original Xenoblade didn't have, and fixing them would not lead to a worse game for anyone at all. Same with X, which is just baffling to me.

A lot of it is just user friendliness and presenting the various gameplay elements well. The tutorials in this game are kinda just garbage. I also didn't like when games thought you were too stupid to do anything it wanted you to do, but the opposite extreme is not any better. And parts of the combat are just so absurd, you have to present it in a way people can actually get. I've looked it up, and I still can't at all remember how those elemental orbs after a combo are supposed to be used in context of a driver combo or how to do good drive combos beyond doing them after an elemental combo. And I just don't like how they did the sidequest system in certain ways, and the map often takes too long to use in any way.

Now, if I finish the game and declare it a masterpiece by the end, I won't be shocked. I still think the game is great in a lot of ways thus far. But its also really messy, and is too inconvenient too often. Which is a real shame to me, because convenience is one of the reasons Xenoblade stood out at first.

I also like the story but at points its almost an ironic kind of enjoyment. Its such a specific type of anime style of storytelling, combined with a more uneven English dub, and some truly odd timing for lines and things that makes it...certainly interesting in ways that I'm pretty sure weren't intended.

@kkslider5552000 My opinion of this game changes quite dramatically. It's almost seasonal. One day I'll think this is a great game with good voice acting and combat and the next I'll hate the characters, combat and the atrocious dub. I think this game is the least good out of the three Xenoblade titles, but it doesn't make it a bad game. I'd rate them from best to least best as such; 1, X, 2.

I never really liked 2. Loads of people insist it's the better game, but the combat's waay more convoluted than the original's, and the story just has heavy tonal whiplash. There's some things 2 does get right though, like the side quests being a bit more interesting, and voiced heart to hearts. I absolutely adore the 10th chapter as well, and the voice acting, aside from Rex and probably Tora, is pretty alright.

The Torna expansion is probably my favorite aspect of 2, if not for the slightly better combat system and the gacha mechanics being stripped out entirely, in favor for a set amount of blades which feel like actual party members.

@VoidofLight Give Rasmus Hardiker some respect, he voiced the Luminary and Tricky Devil in Dragon Quest XI! ;p

I prefer Torna's combat to the main one, it's stripped down but is still wild fun. The random blades were quite boring, so they made grinding for Rare Blades a pain in the neck.

@TheJGG The gacha system was the bane of my existence when I got to a certain dungeon in one of the later chapters. It probably didn’t help that at the time I didn’t know the importance of side quests in xenoblade, and I only had the tutorials to go off of from 2. However, I remember finding loads of skips in the dungeon that aren’t really meant to be taken, until I reached a road block and had to grind to level up blade abilities.

@kkslider5552000 disclaimer: I am one of those that got in love with this game.
Completly agree with the tutorials as they suck and it is a crime that you cannot go back and check them again when on need. For instance I did not understand what "cancel arts" meant at first therefore I was not doing it correctly until I could not progress anymore tens of hours later and I had to check online what was I doing wrong.
Also the gatcha system was a mistake (at least they should added a rule that after 100 core crystals you would allways get a rare blade as after 250h I am still missing a few).

But now that I get the gameplay it is the best in a JRPG by a countrymile imo. The AI is not dumb as in the original and the battles become almost a dance. And I like the story and the characters altogether but another disclaimer although I do not watch many often I do like anime so some of the campy stuff does not bother me as much as others.

I feel like I'm one of the few people who actually enjoyed the gacha system. I'm also a collector, though, and like pulling "rare" things. Usually stuff like this is tied to microtransactions, so it was nice to be able to collect the cores through natural gameplay. I was always excited to use cores whenever I got them. I never felt restricted by the system either. I always had enough rare blades to go around, and by the time I finished New Game Plus I had collected every rare blade in the game.

I know I'm in the minority when it comes to this though, and I can understand the frustration from people who don't enjoy the gacha aspect.

I'm not a fan of gacha systems but most of the reasons I despise them don't really apply to XC2. You don't need real money to play, it doesn't gate off any of the main story behind a rare pull and - once the patch dropped that allows you to skip the animation - it doesn't suck up a huge amount of time either.

My advice for a first play through is just take the blades you're given and work with them. It'll make your run a bit different from everyone else's, and there are none so weak they can't be made to work with a good equipment setup.

Once you've done that, it shouldn't take long to pull the rest in an NG+. Just farm legendary crystals - repeatedly smashing the leveled up Relentless Arduran should do the trick - and repeat until done. It should take more like 3 hours than 250, although there's plenty else in the post-game to spend that amount of time on.

For me, I had parts of the main story locked behind not having specific blades with the abilities I needed, but that's probably because the way I was playing the game wasn't exactly the intended way, due to the tutorials being very poorly made.