Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Had to buy a North American copy in order to be able to access the DLC. But I'll finally be able to play it now, at least, so hopefully it'll turn out just as good as the base game.

@Vortexeo I think I'll probably be going for 100% completion as well. The story isn't particularly gripping so far, but the gameplay/system improvements are making exploration even more of a joy than in the base game. No longer concerned about wrapping this up before TotK. I'll just be pushing forward at my leisure.

The only thing that really kept me from 100%ing Torna were those accursed barrels it wanted you to track down. This game does a much better job of making it easy to locate and mop up these collectibles.

Just finished the story, and damn, this feels like a perfect send-off to the series, in a way the base game just completely failed to live up to. Still groan at the concept of Moebius and knowing how it all ends with how they play a role here, but the antagonist and the meaning behind it all felt much more well realised… and that’s kind of crazy when this DLC takes a lot less time to finish yet feels more like a satisfying package story-wise. The characters are… nothing to write home about besides gigachad Rex and my nostalgia-boi Shulk, but at least they weren’t Noah and Mio tiers of wasted potential. Really thoroughly enjoyed this and it has essentially let me end this trilogy off feeling happy and content, when the base game would have left me pretty bitter and confused. I think like this, the base game can kind of exist as its own thing with an actual purpose instead of just leaving me with more questions… and well, the ending ties it all up nicely.

I forgot how to spoiler things in here which is why I’m being vague, haha, but yeah, if somebody can remind me of that I’d love to go into more detail. I think it was something with /…?

On the gameplay side of things, wow, they fixed a lot of the things I had issues with. Ether cylinders actually have a use now! I maxed out on those in the base game and ran out of stuff to truly use them for quick. Exploration actually feels nice and rewarding with the affinity system, whereas it honestly felt like it wasn’t really that terribly impactful in the base game. I think it only became an issue when they made the maps way larger but the way you traverse it is just… walking everywhere, which made it feel more like a chore sometimes to traverse, and with not really that many stand-out areas either. Here it feels much more concentrated but with lots more stuff to find (though it does feel pretty lineair as a result, which the base game did have going for it that it has more ‘optional’ feeling areas I suppose). I just wish I could have gotten all these cool additions in the base game instead of a separate DLC because they’d add so much enjoyment to it in places where I feel it was sorely lacking before. I’ll probably go for 100%, doesn’t seem too hard, and I’m actually enjoying my time here.

That’s a lot of shade thrown at the base game but ey, this DLC has made me more interested in going back to it and trying more of the sidequests to see what I can get out of it that I couldn’t before.

I wondered if anyone could tell me when is the best time to buy the expansion pass? I haven't played the game yet, but the glowing reviews of the DLC have really bumped it up my backlog. Is there any benefit to buying the pass straight away, do any of the waves affect the main game? Or am I better off beating the game before grabbing it?

Thanks in advance!

@Takoda [spoiler] [/ spoiler] (remove the space between the "/" and "s")

@Nanami_Ataraxia 3 of the 4 DLC waves added content to the base game, including new side characters, new game modes, new outfits, etc. If you're planning on buying the expansion pass anyway, there's literally no reason not to get it with the game so you can experience it fully.

@Ralizah Ok that's great and all I needed to know, Thankyou so much! Will pick it up as soon as I'm ready to play it

Lol, dude I completely forgot about those barrels you had to find for Torna lol. I remember getting that quest pretty early in the game but you couldn't actually complete it until towards the end. So what chapter are you on in Future Redeemed?

Also, come to think of it the side content in Future Redeemed really reminds me of rebuilding Colony 6!

@Vortexeo I spent the first two days getting to early chapter four, and have been distracted with rl stuff since then. Now I'm mainly popping back in to clean up monster entries I missed and complete the occasional side-quest.

Every time I've played XC1, I've largely ignored the Colony 6 rebuilding sidequest. Same was largely true with XCDE as well, although I did get it about half-way rebuilt this time before getting bored.

@Grumblevolcano Thank you! Might type up a storm here at some point with spoiler tags then, now that I know how to.

Christ, if you've invested a lot of time building up Shulk and Rex and have mostly ignored Nikol and Glimmer, that one story fight in Ch. 4 just feels impossible. Bad game design, IMO.

@Ralizah Had this exact issue and I just switched the difficulty to normal and beat it first try, if only barely. I just wasn’t going to deal with levelling them up and getting their skills in order, felt like too much of a hassle for such a sudden hurdle. It’s definitely an odd choice.

@Takoda So, I completed the other plot quest, which gave me access to an item that allows you to reset affinity chart growth. Did that on Shulk and Rex, and that seemed to give me the edge to take them out.

@Ralizah those versions of Shulk and Rex are actually fully set up regardless of what you did to them yourself.
I'll agree that the quest is a kind of weird difficulty spike tho. I did pretty much everything I could at the time and was lv35 or so, only to be greeted by the two at 38. I also did that half of that story section first and I was a little bit annoyed (or rather p***ed AF) that I unlocked the ability to respec affinity stuff right after because I could've used it for Nikol. Glimmer was fully kitted first because she's RIDICULOUSLY good. I'd argue she's the best healer we've ever gotten on top of her having a bunch of buffs that pretty much guarantee to go to the entire party with their huge areas of effect. She's probably my favorite character to play as because you just constantly heal and the buffs are up 99% of the time.

Glimmer also made me realize that you get pretty significant changes to fusion arts depending on how you pair them up and I'm not even sure if base 3 does that as well but it's a great feature. I think you get three buffs and debuffs she wouldn't have access to otherwise with the correct setup and it seems almost all of the party members get access to party buffs like that (Rex might be the only exception but I barely look at Nikol tbh...not super fun to play imo and I also don't think he's super great as a character on his own. Which may be the point, him being kind of awkward around most characters and all)

@Dom_31 Weird. I'd thrown myself at the fight multiple times before without success, but got it on the first try after making that change. Literally changed nothing else about my set-up or playstyle.

After that fight, Glimmer is at the top of my list with regard to character building. Unfortunately, I've already used all of my unlock items on other party members and maxed out her default affinity tier, so I'll have to wait until I find more of those items.

Is Xenoblade 3 already complete? No more DLC's announced for the foreseeable future?

@Jhena Yes, Future Redeemed was the last part of the Expansion Pass. The same situation happened with XC2 (game launched December 2017 and final DLC released 9 months later with Torna in September 2018).

There will however be some kind of patch in the future to make the amiibo content available to those who don't have the amiibo.

@Grumblevolcano
Thanks. Nice, now I can get to enjoy this awesome journey. I think I will play it in the next months. The part about making the amiibo content available sounds great too. Did the amiibos unlock meaningful content? Do you know anything about it?