Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition

@Pizzamorg I've never really experienced that in these games until the final battles or area. Most has always been fair imo.

Every one of these I've played is exactly the same for me. Feel like I could copy and paste my final thoughts on each game and just change the name of the game 🤣

@Pizzamorg
Gormott in 2...
The way there...
Attacked by level one million simian/simius/rothbart thing!
Every time!

I have that problem with Xenoblade games as well, dealing with a mission with the recommended level being 15....and yet...it's making me go through areas littered with level 40+ enemies everywhere. lol

Oh man this might be my number one frustration of all and it's in every game for reason. What's the point of putting level 20 missions in a cave where every enemy on the way to the objective is 50 plus? Like you intentionally had to place it like this, why? They even do this on story missions and it's maddening.

@Pizzamorg I get it.
@Joeynator3000 that's definitely an issue for me too. I meant more not seeing story line difficulty spikes until the last area typically.

@Joeynator3000 There is a very handy art called Shadowrunner that makes you invisible to enemies for a short time. Cross can pick it up as part of the Commando class.

You need 1000 TP to use it, so you can't run it constantly until you've built your characters up a bit, but it should be good enough for you to sneak past one or two high level enemies. Once you've got the Blood Sacrifice art (Winged Viper class) you can regain TP on the fly and pick your way through groups of high level enemies with impunity.

So I’ve played this game for about 15 hours so far. For context, I’ve played every Xenoblade game expect for Torna and the original X.

All I can say is, WOW. This game has blown me away, and I’m enjoying it so much more than I thought I would.

The game feels impossible, especially on Switch. Everything is so much sharper than any other Xenoblade game, despite the larger scale. That scale, the density of the world, the gorgeous vistas… it just feels too good to be true. Exploration is so much more rewarding as well, especially with the addition of mining sites.

The combat is so fun as well. It might honestly be the most enjoyable combat in the series, at least so far.

Even if the story isn’t as good as the trilogy (which is hard to say this early on) this may very well end up being my new favourite Xenoblade game. And I haven’t even gotten a Skell yet!

@SplatRay001 Now imagine how it felt playing this in 2015 on Wii U.

@Joeynator3000 @NintendoByNature The game is meant to be harder than the others, given that they wanted to create a more hostile world effectively. I've had a few run-ins with high leveled monsters, but I've been getting better at dodging them in order to traverse the world itself. The quests help a lot with leveling- just like previous games, and the story hasn't gotten unfairly difficult either (but I've been taking my time and preparing before diving into the story missions).

I can see the game being pretty hard to play though if you're actually B-lining the story content. It isn't really what the developers intended for the players to do, given that this game isn't as story-focused as previous entries. It relies more on exploration (hence the barebones plot in the original release of the game). I heard that Chapter 13 adds heavier story content though.. but I've yet to get that far, as I'm still on Chapter 5.

@Ulysses The skells are definitely helpful in getting around, but I don't think they're worth B-lining for. Mainly because even after you meet the story requirements, there's still a grind that you'll have to do to get the basic one- let alone higher level Skells. You also don't get flying until chapters after you get the Skell as well.

@Ulysses
I think you read my comments out of context ...
I said Link speaks to everyone around him, we don't hear it, but all NPCs do.

You get Skells at Chapter 6, and their mobility is great but they're pretty weak in combat. You'll want to invest most of the next chapter or two into building them up while you still do most of the tricky fights on foot.

Writing one off is painful in terms of the money and materials; you get a few free uses with insurance and there's an eject challenge that'll save you even that, but you don't want to put them in harm's way too much, at least to begin with.

Flight Modules don't come until Chapter 9 but they fully open the map up and you ought to be adept at Skell combat too by that point. There are a few late game fights that you have to do on foot though, so don't neglect that entirely.

There's a ton of post-game content, and fully mapping Mira will send you on all the side quests, so don't worry that flying Skells come relatively late in the story. I'm not at that point yet, but I spent about three times longer with them than without in my previous playthroughs, for reference.

I'm around 40ish hours in and got my Skell. Not quite sure if this has made the game more fun or less 🤣 like giant robots are cool. Kitting it and customising it is fun. It's helped me clear some side content I was otherwise stuck on. But man it's stressful knowing you got only so many insurance tickets. Especially in this game where being randomly one shot by an enemy six times stronger than anything else just appearing out of nowhere is such a core part of the experience. Enemies being able to destroy your parts to disable your abilities is also super annoying too, even though I know it's what I've been doing to them for the last forty hours. I'm almost like too nervous to take this thing out and enjoy it.

So there is a companion who gets you a second Skell for free. The companion quest was level appropriate for where I was at in the game at the time (I find levelling in this game EXTREMELY slow, so I dunno how you would even get ahead of the level curve here in the first place to be honest), but it feels almost like cheating having this second Skell now. Like, I blew through the Chapter 7 boss in a matter of seconds, clearing that whole chapter in a matter of minutes. I wonder how much I would have struggled here without a second Skell just blitzkrieging the enemy.

@Pizzamorg
The leveling is okay, it's the class grinding that sucks.

The WiiU version had like a level 30 (I know it wasn't that low, but it was low) cap! I'm glad they increased it. I hit the level cap in the 4th chapter and that wasn't including grinding levels!

I'm level 30 at around hour 45, that feels really slow to me. Especially as like you say, class progression is also very slow. I enjoy the combat overall, but I am worried I'm going to burn out on this soon, as the slow pace of things makes thing feel quite static and repetitive.

Sure you can jump around and play as different companions or whatever, and the Skells are a nice shot in the arm, but I made the mistake of speccing into Partisan Eagle or whatever its called, and like my warning to everyone is don't do that. There is about half a dozen Partisan Eagle companions you unlock, feels like way more of them than any other class, if you want to experience that class just do it via the companions. You can obviously switch, but then begins the slow crawl through a different class tree instead.

I played for about 4hrs last night and actually started dozing off at one point lol. I've done a bunch of side quests and I finally had enough so I moved onto the main quest for chapter 4. Level 19-20 at the 15hr mark.

The level cap in the original game was 60. You can hit it very early with the aforementioned Brainjack/Servant Sacrifice build.

Leveling by itself doesn't do much though, as you don't get the bonuses that level mismatches give in the other Xenoblade games, to make very one-sided fights. Rather, it's more about unlocking gear and missions, so just do it when you need it for those.

Liesel, who comes with the second Skell, wasn't in the original game and I suspect that they added her to lessen the underwhelming feeling that the first one gives you.

By the time you hit level 30 you'll get access to much better Skells and gear, and get to equip your entire party with them. Hopefully, you'll have plenty of money set aside for this.

Gameplaywise X just feels like a dry run for 3 to me. X's parts all feel quite disparate, X's ground combat and it's Skell combat exist in complete isolation to one another, Overdrive's use case isn't ever properly defined by the game, you also have Skell overdrive and cockpit mode as well to further confuse and dilute everything. 3's combat could be really messy with so many people on the field at once and all the visual noise, but the clear flow and use case of ground combat, Oroboros forms and chain attacks was intuitive to me in a way X just isn't really. 3 felt like you were fleshing out one combat system, until you got it all fully online, and got to experience the full scope of it by the end, which I guess will happen when you get a second run at much of the same ideas.