Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

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.

@NintendoByNature also have a look at the skill tree of your blades as each one levels up in different ways. The grind on many blades simply does not do much (apart from growing affinity with the driver)

I've been watching a friend of mine play through Xenoblade 2, and I realize how wrong I was about the cast and story. It's more enjoyable than I thought it was in those aspects. There are slight tonal shifts, but when those shifts are gone, the characters feel way more fitting for the game, and I can actually care about them more than when I first played the game for myself. The only character I can say I really dislike is Tora, and other than that the others are pretty good. Rex starts off annoying, but gets better as the game goes on, with his voice actor also getting better towards the later parts of the story itself.

The gameplay mechanics are much better than I initially thought, with my only gripes really being how slowly you move around during fights, and how the field skills are executed, with the blade gacha. If it weren't for the Gacha, the skills themselves would probably be better, since you wouldn't have so much in terms of road-blocking. The combo system, now that I understand it, is pretty great, and I love how they made chain attacks function in this as well. The GUI being based on buttons instead of scrolling mitigates the misinputs you'd have with the original as well.

@VoidofLight I indeed believe that most people that disliked the game never did really understood it either mechanicly (mainly because its tutoriais suck and cannot be watch after which is one of the more idiotic decisions in games ever...) or due to its artstyle (yes, it is very anime but the characters are genuinely interesting in well developed over the 80-100h story).
For me the gameplay is the best in the series (I feel torna washed it a bit too much) but I had to go on YouTube after some 40h as to understand what was I doing wrong (and to realize I never understood what "cancel arts" meant) and storywise and characters I like almost all above the first entry (for me Dunban is the only one i quite like)

P.s: I will also have to defend Tora as it is a Huge improvement from Ricky. Yes, it is a bit misogynist but that is a trope of anime...

I know this is off-topic, but is anyone else struggling to find a good physical copy?

@ElRoberico yeah it is common. They have not reprinted them since 2018 I believe. They can only be found on the used market for more than PvP...

@ElRoberico PNP Games has some new copies available at MSRP. It's a Canadian company though so I'm not sure about US shipping.

https://pnpgamesonline.com/product/xenoblade-chronicles-2-t/

I started doing my ng+ playthrough for Torna and I completely forgot how funny the post-battle quotes are in this game. Everyone is so mean to Mythra 🤣. I think Torna might have the best post-battle conversations. Either that or XCDE

@Cynas thank you so much! I'm remembering this if I get bid sniped on ebay tomorrow!

Got to the stele of judgement and had to stop since I didn't have the necessary skills 😒. Love the game but I've been noticing this alot more as of late to progress.

@NintendoByNature Brighid, Dromarch and Aegeon should have the skills you need and they're all guaranteed story blades by this point.

You may need to get a couple of them up to level 2. Brighid likes deserts and Dromarch mechanical collectibles, so that ought to be pretty easy. There are other rare blades with the right skills too, so have a look through the party to see if you've got any that just aren't equipped.

In general, there aren't any field skill checks that you can't pass just with the guaranteed story blades. You will need to get around to leveling them at some point though, so it's better to be proactive about it rather than wait until you bump into the next check.

@Matt_Barber ok thanks. Appreciate the help. It does kinda stink when you run into these. I did a little research and I'll try to level up my party in those areas.

@NintendoByNature Yeah, it's not the greatest of mechanics.

It's much more of a pain with side quests though, where you'll need to max out the skills of specific rare blades to finish some of them.

@Matt_Barber yep. I'll keep at it. I've gone this far.

Physical copies of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are currently very expensive in Europe, presumably due to scarcity. Do you guys think they'll be more widely available (and hence cheaper) after 3 launches?

@PrinsPaddestoel I doubt they will re-print Xenoblade 2, unfortunatly.