Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

beaten this game a while back and its whats gotten me into the series and i love it quite a bit.

Alrighty, I FINALLY bit the bullet on a digital copy during the sale. I figured holding out for a decent priced physical copy was going to be a waste of time. I plan on finishing Pokémon shining pearl in the next couple of weeks, and then I'll start this.

Any tips, thoughts, or things to look out for would be greatly appreciated. I absolutely loved XC:DE so I'm hoping this is more of the same. Thank you in advance.

Do not think that the battle system is simple, @NintendoByNature .... Considering you & your party auto-attack, there's a surprising amount of things you'll want to keep an eye on since you control your arts & special moves, etc
I'm sure others will add more

@BruceCM seems like it'll be similar to XC? If so, i really enjoyed it alot.

Well, XC2 is a bit more complicated than the 1st game, @NintendoByNature .... I only got around a third of the available blades, for instance It'll be a lot easier going into that after the 1st than it was for me who'd never played them before, though

@BruceCM ok cool. I'm excited to dive in when I get the chance. It's next on my list.

The combat system in 2 is really slow. You can't move freely all the time during battles, unlike in the first game, since if you do the auto attacks don't work anymore, and you'll lose affinity with your blades. If you do move, all the characters are ridiculously slow in combat, so it takes ages to get to a specific position to do a specific art.

In my opinion, the combat is a bit too complex as well. Blade combos are poorly explained, and I was never able to actually pull any of them off successfully, since I didn't know how the system worked in the slightest.

The gacha system also didn't help, and it was pretty aggravating to deal with the entire game.

You can speed up combat a lot by using pouch items that recharge your arts and shuffling on the spot to reset the auto-attack sequence after the first goes off. Narcipear Jelly from the sweet shop in Argentum is one of the best power-ups in the game and lasts ages so load up on the stuff once you can afford it.

The tutorials in the game are really poor. They're constantly interrupting the story and you'll likely get information overload from them as well as some sub-optimal if not outright bad advice. Instead, there are some nice ten minute intros from Enel and ChuggaaConroy on YouTube that'll tell you all you need to know without spoiling the plot.

Don't get caught up in the Gacha too much on your first run. You can get through the entire story on the blades you're guaranteed to get, so any rare ones are just there to add a bit of extra flavour. I'd save attempting to pull the rest, or just anyone specific, until the post game where it's easy to grind core crystals.

@Matt_Barber great explanation thank you! I'll check them out on YT. One thing that quickly turns me off in a game is information overload. Stresses me out when I'm taught something I can't remember how to get back to lol.

@NintendoByNature
The tutorials in Xenoblade 2 are pretty bad as some people might have told you already. Admittedly I didn't know how to play the game properly for quite a while lmao. I would watch this video for some beginner tips! It really helped me!

@Vortexeo great! I'll give this a watch when I'm ready to jump in. The first game on switch was in my eyes, a perfect 10/10 game. So I'm hoping I enjoy this one as well.

@BruceCM made it to the Lilly section and to the Supply investigation( green barrel inspection). Not at the right level for nopon Wisdon so I need to figure it out how to level up 🙄

Have you gotthe Merc's Quest .... @NintendoByNature? That might be worth doing!

@BruceCM I have unlocked the ability to do them but I don't believe one to do one specific nopon level 3

@NintendoByNature, not sure if this has been mentioned or not, but you can stack Blades with lower levels of a skill to achieve the level needed for a higher level field skill.

For example, if an objective requires a level 3 Field Skill, you can equip one Blade that has level 2 mastery & one that has level 1 mastery to clear it. Or even equip 3 Blades that each have level 1 mastery.

The quest suggested should allow you to progress the story, @NintendoByNature .... Maybe others have other ideas

@RR529 hmm I'll have to take a look and see what to do here. Thank you for the input

Funnily enough, I'm at the exact same spot after my (admittedly short) session yesterday evening. I kickstarted the merc mission needed before signing off for the evening. I intended to read a little before nodding off, but sleep took over.

Do we need creepy/ sinister music for that ...?

Xenoblade 2 is my favorite game on the Switch, and possibly of all time.
It's tied with Tales of Vesperia and Wind Waker.

Really hope we will get a Xenoblade 3 in the near future.