Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 3

@Vortexeo A lot of people thought that it was just a strange hand shape or something, but then I noticed the hair and it clicked. I really hope this dude ends up as a good villain, given he seems to be in the same sort of space as Metal Face was in the original, as a villain who's apparent in the first part of the game and acts as the main antagonist for the most part.

@VoidofLight Yeah, I was definitely one of those people who thought it was a weirdly shaped hand 😂

The whole "passage of fate" line has me wondering if he's somehow related to Alvis, but I have no clue how they would link the two.

@Vortexeo I could see it turning out that Alvis got corrupted or something, given he still technically exists, but just left due to the conduit leaving in 2. If he's not the Ouroboros we see in the trailer, then we know that the conduit or Alvis has to be involved in some way, given the merging of two entirely different worlds.

Looking at other Xenoblade communities, it's so weird how both 1 and 2 are extremely polarizing. So many people get mad at you for the smallest things, and tell you that you're wrong if you prefer one over the other. In the community I was in, I just did a comparison of the Giant holding the dead guy to how open 1 was about it's character deaths, and showing those on screen, and I had a ton of people who loved 2 that crawled out of the woodwork, acting like I was insulting 1, when I did no such thing. I never said "3 is going to be as dark as 1, and not as light-hearted as 2!", given that I don't think 2 is that light-hearted to begin with, but also because I just wanted to make a comparison on how open the deaths were.

Also, I had a guy accuse me of lying about a person I met who only wanted to play 2 for the sexualized characters, and said that he didn't believe me, and that I was just a Xenoblade 2 hater.. despite the fact that I don't really hate 2, and I never implied I did.

I do strongly agree that I'm far more attached to the more connected environment of Xenoblade 1. At the end of the day, outside of some late game stuff, the world is only connected via story and cutscenes, whereas the world always feels connected while playing it. But it makes it easier to buy into the world being actually connected instead of being a series of video game maps that exist as data to be loaded in when you fast travel or reach the correct cutscenes/s. Also I feel like its much cooler to see a Wii game push itself with such large environments, whereas putting it on a popular HD console that is a sequel to said game makes it feel like "oh well duh, of course it does". Though to be fair, none of that really matters the moment you see how Xenoblade 2's environments actually look.

It's not a major deal either way, but it is one of those things that makes Xenoblade 1 even cooler to me.

I do feel like 1 vs. 2 is a fascinating look at what people are into. Because my sheer hatred of time wasting (combined with being too invested in the series to not try out a large chunk of its side content) and finding the lighter story tropes it used to be utterly tired did not help (which is a shame because I actually really love using comedic and lighter moments to get you attached to characters), so elements of this I was always gonna be biased against. But I would also maintain if you enjoyed the comedy of this game, you could basically pick an anime with comedy aimed at teenagers at random and in all likelihood have at least as good a time.

@VoidofLight In fairness, you are the person who started a recent post with the line: "The latest article on Xenoblade 3 is why I dislike the fans of Xenoblade 2 for the most part." I wouldn't be shocked if people thought you were taking shots at them.

@kkslider5552000 Perhaps aside from Torna, I can't think of a single Xenoblade game that wasn't bad about wasting my time in certain respects. Whether it be through countless meaningless MMO-tier side-quests, needlessly huge environments, needlessly complex battle systems and character building mechanics, or a poorly-paced story that requires tens of hours to get going. These games are defined by their sense of excess in almost every respect.

@Ralizah Eh, fair.. but in the other community, I never really made statements like that.

The only thing I could say wastes time in 2 is like... core crystal gacha, given how horrible the rates are.

@VoidofLight The single change that'd make the biggest improvement to XC2, IMO, is if they made it where you could unlock all of the rare blades through exploration, side-quests, and story progression. Granted, that's true of several of them, but grinding for the last few you're missing really sucks. I never unlocked KOS-MOS, for example, despite playing 120+ hours.

@Ralizah My friend always got common blades in Legendary Core Crystals... even though the rates should've been higher with Legendary crystals.

@VoidofLight They are higher, but... RNG is still a merciless mistress, you know. It was always funny to me when I'd crack open a few legendaries in a row and get common trash, and then use a low-tier crystal and, BOOM, rare blade.

I'm just thankful this game was published by Nintendo. Imagining how Tencent would have monetized this system is legitimately terrifying to think about.

Oh, yeah, I know I didn't get all the blades.... I think I did get KOS-MOS though

@Ralizah I shudder to think of the world where Monolith and Nintendo decided to make it paid gacha instead of free gacha. Thankfully it's not in 3.

The Gatcha system is the definitely one reason why I didn't want to go for 100% completion in XC2.

@Ralizah 120 hours, lol. I got 280 and no KOS-MOS. Still missing that and probably 3 others.

@VoidofLight What the heck is art cancelling? EDIT: I looked it up myself, nothing I didn't know about, just didn't know it had a name. Though, didn't know about it changing damage based on attack phases.

@Vortexeo Yeah, Pyra also had that issue, as did others, but I was trying to avoid going into a full out rant. As someone who adores Bayonetta, I have no problem with fanservice. But it has to feel natural to the character to work.

I got 180 hours in XC2 myself, and still no KOS-MOS. It's pretty clear they didn't want everyone to be able to get her with how rare she is.

I think the Gacha system did its job, in that we each got a different set of rare blades on the first run to give a bit of an individual flavour to the story. The likes of KOS-MOS (yes, I was one of the lucky ones), Boreas, Nim, Adenine, and even Godfrey (who ran an inordinate number of merc missions) feel a bit special to me as a result.

If you just want to grind it afterwards to get all the rare blades there are ways to speed it up to the point where it should only take you a couple of hours. Gold chips, driver combos and high level enemies that you can easily farm are your friends.

That said, if XC3 doesn't have anything equivalent to rare blades, I won't miss it.

I can see it being a bit neat to have different playthroughs, but it's just really irritating to deal with. I honestly won't miss it. That, and field skills were painful.

I just find the whole thing awkward. Not as awkward as those games that literally have lootboxes but not actual monetization for them (where its just something terrible but done in a not terrible way but you still reminded me of something terrible so...thanks?), but closer than it should be. You don't have to remind me of f2p mobile games to make me enjoy this 60 dollar RPG.

I kind of hope they bring back gems in Xenoblade 3, since Pouch items were extremely confusing and only served to over-complicate things compared to the gems in 1.

Agreed on the general consensus I'm seeing so far on pouch items vs. gems. I didn't even really use the former until I learned it was needed to build Blade affinity in some cases. Which brings me to my other point: field skills. I wasn't necessarily bothered by these as long as they were optional, but to use them to actually gate progress in the main story took it a bit far IMO. Anyone reading this probably knows where I got stuck for a bit before working on field skill/affinity investment.

The gacha system....I wasn't really a fan. If I'd been trying to 100% the game, it would've driven me nuts. To the game's credit, it does throw some freebies the player's way. My personal favorite non-story Blades in my playthrough were Adenine, Perun, Dagas, Electra, and Zenobia.