Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 2

@Knighty_IX I hear others say only more plot-heavy sidequests require returning to the giver... pretty much the same as the first. Even if that isn't true, they're marked and fast-travel is still a thing (very quick-loading too, apparently).

@Snaplocket You also have to consider that part of what contributes to the ''slow beginning'' here is actually the game trying to make it's combat more digestible in the long run by essentially drip-feeding mechanics.

I’m going into this as a noob, I’m liking what I’m hearing about it. I like that there are so many systems and things to learn, as far too often games are dumbed down for a casual gamer to understand.

@Knighty_IX It's worth noting that Jason Schreier didn't seem particularly thrilled by the original Xenoblade Chronicles, either. But then, neither was I, and almost everything I've seen seems like an improvement over the original.

Not allowing users to access past tutorials is a pretty big oversight, though. I'll be sure to screengrab them all if I end up getting the game.

You learn from playing the game, I don’t see the need for hand holding, if people can’t be bothered to learn for themselves then what is the point in playing games. Once upon a time there was no such thing as tutorials, or even the internet, people still loved playing and figuring out what to do. I’m yet to play a game that is so complicated I needed telling what to do, and I’m not even that intelligent. This game has them, so what’s the problem? Do you really need to play a tutorial hundreds of times before you understand what is going on.

@Snaplocket Gotta agree with you there. While I detest long and unnecessary tutorial sections in games--Skyward Sword, for instance--there are some games that absolutely need them, and XCX is a prime example of that. Over the course of my 90+ hours in the game I felt I only had a tenuous grasp on the game's many, many systems. It made some of the late-game stuff absolutely miserable.

I feel like at the very least there should've been like a training ground area where you can choose to do tutorial fights. Like, it is often bad to not do that tbh, because a lot of people will straight up miss out on what makes the game great (Wonderful 101 immediately comes to mind). Xenoblade X's best strength, outside of its world, is easily its combat. While the game is way too all over the place for it to happen as often as I'd like, the type of legit challenging enemy and boss encounters where you take full advantage of your TP and Soul Voices and other things are absolutely fantastic, but it took me forever, even after reading the manual, to understand any of it. I think I was 60+ hours in before I realized Soul Voice also helps with Affinity. And let's be honest, most people reading this post think the last couple of sentences I typed are just complete nonsense.

@kkslider5552000 Wait, Soul Voices help with Affinity?! Seriously? I completely forgot about soul voices for the majority of my playthrough, as I focused mainly on weapons, leveling up Arts, and augments. It would've been nice to know about that!
Ugh, affinity grinding was the worst. It just took so long to fill a single heart. At least the Affinity Missions themselves were mostly pretty awesome.

24 hour countdown!

Why doesn't this game have video capture though? Being a first party title I expect it. Heck I expect it for all major 3rd party games too. Shame RE Revelations 1/2 doesn't have it. Maybe it'll be patched in... one can hope.

Affinity Grinding is the worse. I so badly wanted to do all of the Affinity Missions but I realized I would be wasting my life to get everyone to 4 hearts. I HAVE HAD AN UNOPENED COPY OF BOTW FOR HALF A YEAR, AND THIS IS WHY. And yes, Soul Voices should always been done, purely on the basis of Affinity. That's apparent.

Like tbh, I hope it's ported to Switch so they can take out the unreasonable parts of it. The thing is, the reason I complain about it is that it's so great that I decided to dedicate over 100 hours into it. I so clearly see a game just as good as the original (and blatantly better in some regards) and it feels like it frequently goes out of its way to annoy people with things that are entirely solvable without compromising what other people like about it. This is the exact type of game that deserves a re-release to make some WInd Waker HD levels of "stop wasting my time" changes. I basically have no choice but to continually talk about it unfortunately, as it is indirectly relevant right now thanks to 2 coming out, and I've played almost nothing else this year (not even kidding, this, Happy Home Designer and Lost Odyssey combined probably make up at least 80% of my playtime for all games this year).

Also, I swear I've been having this conversation on like 4 different threads or something. This is getting weird.

@Knighty_IX 89.

I'm gonna assume that the next game in the critically acclaimed first party Nintendo series that's gotten good previews is gonna score well. Just a wild guess.

NLife is probably gonna score it like a 9/10. Hype‘s died down a bit on my part but that‘s simply because my photography course is going to visit the local Leica gallery tomorrow, meaning I‘ll be home even later. And it started to snow too! Gah, I hate snow! Can‘t wait to just disappear for the entire weekend and next week in my gaming room with Xenoblade, though.

Just saw that on Twitter. Cannot contain the hype. Foreshadowing of a Xenosaga HD Collection on the Switch? I can dream.

My guess is metacritic 88%.

So somewhere between the previous 2. I don't think it'll score as high as XC1. That was less anime tropey, more original a game, and also came at a time when almost no-one else could make good JRPGs.
But then I think it'll do higher than XCX because that lost a lot of points for being too hard to figure out its systems.

Not being able to review tutorials is ridiculous. The game throws so much @ the player. Expecting players to memorize everything is not good

@Knighty_IX There sure seem to be an inordinately large number of direct visual references to older Xeno games in this.

So...its 1pm on November 30th.

My order has been paid for from the Nintendo UK Store. Its not even awaiting dispatch. Its just "Processing".

So Sonic Forces was a day late from Amazon because they didnt tell me of payment issues or retry payment of their own will until launch day.

Pokemon Ultra Moon was 5 days late from Amazon because it got lost in the mail.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is gonna be late. I just know it.

Want to bet my backer code for Yooka-Laylee has issues?

@YummyHappyPills: You will survive it.

However, with XC2 we will see how Nintendo enforces the new street day policy in Europe. It seems that it works in some way.

My order from Amazon hasn’t even been paid for yet, so think yourself lucky lol.

@Hughesy I just wabt one thing to go right this year.

My Switch was late. Pokemon was late. Sonic was late. This will be late. Yooka Laylee will probably be late. Lets not even go into my personal life.

This was gonna be the highlight of my week. Guess its next week now