Topic: Xenoblade Series chat

@StarPoint Oh, you haven't seen anything yet when it comes to cutscenes. At least the amount of them (I'm not sure any that I've seen can match the hot spring one for cringeworthiness). Starting in chapter 6 or 7 there are points where you are just walking for a minute in between multiple cutscenes. As for leveling, it has been awhile since I played the original (haven't played the DE), but I do remember often being the same or usually even a few levels worse than the bosses, but in this game I am usually at a higher level. So yeah, I guess you do level up faster in this game, which is nice. Much less grinding required. And I don't remember ever being blocked off from advancing the main quests due to field skills, but they are definitely annoying the rest of the time. I am really enjoying it, too (I'm in chapter 8).

@StarPoint It's so funny. Xenoblade 2 introduced one of my favorite mechanics in the whole series (overkill bonuses) and yet it also has the worst mechanics in the series 😂

@Xyphon22 I don’t mind so much the frequency of the cutscenes, more so just the content in some of them. It’s good that you haven’t been blocked off from field skills, I’ve had it happen to me a couple of times now, mostly regarding Poppi. Which is strange because I feel like I’ve done a lot to raise her affinity level, but it still leads me to getting stuck on a couple of occasions.

@Vortexeo It’s the really good mechanics that are driving me forward, and I do think they outweigh the bad ones for the most part. Right when I’m ever like “Man, I wish I could get past these field skill checks” or “It takes forever to raise trust with a Blade,” then the game gives me an amazing boss fight that ends with me doing an overkill and getting 300% bonus rewards. It’s such a rollercoaster sometimes but there are definitely more highs than lows.

Woohoo! I finally beat Xenoblade Chronicles 2! It's been a long time since I played the original Xenoblade (I've only played the original version on Wii), but I've got to be honest, I think I may have liked this one more. I'm not sure I understand everything that happened, but I got the main points and it didn't drag on like the original did which I thought was ending about 20 times before it finally did. I also really liked all the characters and found the side quests better and more intriguing, especially around the rare Blades. In fact, I think my favorite character in this game was probably Wulfric. His heart-to-hearts and main quest were great and really brought out a funny and caring character.

What's most crazy is that I was still learning things up to and even in the final battle, which probably isn't a good thing because it means the game did a lousy job explaining it (or I just forgot, which is also possible). I was fighting Amalthus at the end of chapter 9 when the realization finally dawned on me that you can only have one orb of each element at a time. I kept wondering why I would do many blade combos but then there would only be one orb when I did a chain attack. Then I was fighting Morag in chapter 10 when a blade I had never used was forced into my party and I discovered he had a skill where it would block and I would just recover life while he was blocking, which was awesome! Finally, I found the final boss to be actually fairly easy but when I almost had him he did some weird attack where the screen just went white and suddenly I was back on the title screen. So I looked up if that was supposed to happen and what it was which is how I finally learned about Full Burst. I wondered why you would ever use Pneuma, Pyra's final form in a chain attack because it would require you to destroy two orbs in your second round so you couldn't get the max number of rounds out of your attack. Now I know, and it just completely destroyed the final boss before he could even get that big attack off. Good times.

So now I have a couple of questions about the DLC, which I clearly want to get because everyone says it's the best DLC of all time. Is it something I should try to play right away to have everything fresh, or can I wait a bit? Because I kind of tried to blast through the last 3 or so chapters and would prefer to take a little Xenoblade break. Second, is there any reason (apart from the normal debate on the subject) to get this either digitally or physically? It's just odd that a DLC would get its own separate physical release, so I'm wondering if one is better in this particular instance (I have the main game physically, if that makes a difference). Finally, I saw if I go the digital route that Torna is $39.99 but the season pass which seems to include it is only $29.99. Does the season pass really include it and that is really stupid pricing, or am I missing something? Thanks.

@Xyphon22 Given how long it's been since you played the first one did you recognize any of the XC1 connections in XC2?

As far as the digital versions of Torna go they both provide the same things. However, the $39.99 one is meant for people that want to play Torna before the main game (it gives download codes for the rest of the XC2 DLC). The $29.99 is meant for the players who played the main game first. I think the lower price was just an incentive to play the main game first 😅

@Xyphon22 Congratulations. Glad you enjoyed it so much.

I haven't played it yet but they are the same DLC. The reason Torna alone is more expensive is it a standalone game, you don't need to own the base game.

But the Season pass contains other bonuses for XC2 so it's definitely the one to go for unless you specifically want physical.

I need to get to Torna. Maybe this will be my kick!

@Vortexeo I honestly don't remember that much about the story in the first Xenoblade, but I also don't think I really understood all that they threw at you at the end even when I played it. I thought it was funny when the opening cutscene of chapter 10 played, I thought that Klaus looked a lot like Shulk and Galea looked a lot like Fiora (although I even had to look up Fiora's name because I couldn't remember it) so I looked it up to see if that was true. I also wanted to look up a story synopsis anyway just to confirm some things I wasn't 100% sure about. I guess it's not true, but I read that at least Galea is one of the goddesses in the original but by a different name, although I don't remember her. And is Klaus supposed to be the main god you fight at the end of the original? I honestly don't know I think I may just have to Google connections between the games and see what comes up.

As for the DLC, thanks for the info @themightyant. I usually prefer physical, but I don't know if I'm willing to pop for almost $60 for it. Although I mostly like physical because I can resell it when I'm done, so maybe I could get most of that money back. But I already have a big pile of old games I haven't gotten around to reselling yet because Amazon has made the process so much more difficult, so that's probably a bad idea. So I thought I could wait for the once or twice a year Nintendo puts their games and DLC and stuff on sale on the eShop, but according to Deku Deals it hasn't been on sale since 2019 and that was on Target, it has never been on sale on the eShop. So that stinks. Decisions, decisions.

Just got to chapter 8 of XC2, and yeah, I’m really feeling it now. Getting through those boss fights without Pyra, who I heavily relied on throughout the game, was super rewarding. And the story itself is definitely pretty interesting. I do think it’s pretty messy and kinda hard to follow, but as a whole it’s definitely intrigued me more then XC1’s story. Plus, I am actually starting to form a theory on who the Architect is. If I’m right, it would be a REALLY cool link to XC1.

I still have lots of issues with the game, such as the field skills and traversing through some areas. And I swear the English VA is just getting worse as it goes along. Some of it is just remarkably grating. But like I said before, the good is absolutely outweighing the bad here. I really look forward to finishing this one up, and I actually just ordered a physical copy of Torna. Looking forward to starting that up once I get through the main story.

Just got my copy! Super excited to play this after the main game as I've heard it's a huge improvement over the base game in many aspects.

@StarPoint Where and for how much did you get it? I'm still trying to decide how I want to get it. I usually prefer physical, but it is so much more expensive in this instance.

@Xyphon22 Got it on Amazon for $50. I know that 2 years ago copies sold for like $200, but thankfully they have gone down significantly in price. Other websites like eBay also have them for around $50 to $60.

So! I finally beat Xenoblade Chronicles 2. My feelings about this game are all over the place, but as a whole, I really enjoyed it. It has some very low points, but also some incredible moments that balance out the experience very well for me.

For starters, I really enjoyed the combat system. It is definitely a bit of a handful to begin with, but 45 hours later, I genuinely felt like I had mastered it. Techniques like art canceling, blade combos, and overkills were super satisfying and never got old. And I also really enjoy the open-ended nature of the combat, being able to mix and match members of your party and their blades so you can craft the specific team you want. I didn't mess too much with customizing my party - for the most part, I stuck to the story blades - but I still appreciated the option.

One aspect that I'm not quite as keen on is exploration/traversal. I will say that it is a big improvement over XC:DE's traversal for sure. It's a lot quicker overall, with worlds feeling much tighter and more compact to move around. There's definitely a lot less running in straight lines in this game than there was in DE, and that's a huge deal for me. I also thought the enemy placements were well-balanced. It never felt like there were too many enemies at a time, and I think they were spread out appropriately. However, the one thing that really weighs down the exploration is the field skills. Throughout my playthrough, I think I got significantly held up 3 or 4 times from field skills gating my progress. This led to me having to do a ton of grinding with specific blades to raise their trust and gain these skills, which really hurt the pacing for me. And I didn't even bother with any side quests that required them, as I really didn't feel like grinding further to either get blades in the gacha machine or grinding trust. As a whole, it's not a game-breaking issue for me, and thankfully it only happened a handful of times, but it was still not very fun to get through.

One area that I can't decide which is better between XC1 and XC2 is the story. I think XC1 did a better job with its story pacing and character interactions, and the lore behind what is going on in the world. The setup of Bionis and Mechonis is genius and I don't really know if it could be topped to begin with. On the other hand, I think XC2 had much more interesting characters overall, and several of them going through arcs (even though some are rather small) is a big step up over XC1's arguably flatter characters. If I had to pick one, I think I would choose XC1's story, but I could probably go back and forth.

I'll end this by talking about the soundtrack. I cannot believe how amazing it is. It's easily one of the best video game soundtracks I have ever heard, through and through. Everything from the battle themes, to cutscene music, to character themes is just top-notch. Kenji Hiramatsu and ACE absolutely killed it and really enhanced the emotion and/or excitement in several scenes. I loved XC:DE's soundtrack as well, so I'm really excited to see how Torna and XC3's OSTs hold up.

So for now, I think I'm gonna take a small break from the series and play a couple of lighter games. But I have my physical copy of Torna ready to go, and I'll definitely be getting to that soon. As a whole, XC2 has some stuff that I have a lot of problems with, but I still really enjoyed my time with it. I can't wait to see how Torna and XC3 improve on the gameplay from here.

8/10 Great

@StarPoint Woooooo! Congrats on beating the game! I swear I've seen Xenoblade 2 get hate in almost every aspect but it really is enjoyable. It's in such a weird spot where I understand all the criticisms but I still loved the game. So now that you beat the game did you catch any of the XC1 references? Was the theory you had earlier correct?

@StarPoint Congratulations. I'd love to hear your thoughts on any connection with XC1. I'll be honest I played XC2 about 6 years after XC so missed a lot and had to google it

@Vortexeo @themightyant My theory was indeed correct! Mega spoilers ahead: The first couple of times the Architect was mentioned, I didn't think much of it, but the more times they were mentioned, I started to think "What if this is supposed to be Zanza/Klaus?" Then the more stuff that got revealed about them, the more it started to make sense. Then, that opening chapter 10 cutscene that's almost a 1 to 1 recreation of the universe creation cutscene from XC1 played, and I was like "Oh yeah, this is awesome." The revelation that Alrest is basically a post-apocalyptic world left behind by Klaus was really cool and added a lot to the world for me. Honestly, if I ever play through this game again, I think I would probably enjoy the story more to see all the foreshadowing and world-building making more sense.

I still even after looking up the story about the original didn't remember any of that stuff, so I went to try to watch the videos thinking that might jog my memory more. Apparently the "movie" of all the cutscenes is over 10 hours long! Which, amazingly enough, is three hours SHORTER than the same thing for Xenoblade 2! I did not notice there being that much in 2, it seemed to me there was a lot more in 1, but I guess that shows I enjoyed 2 more that it seemed more entertaining to me and didn't bog down the experience like it did in 1.

@StarPoint The land of Morytha seriously became one of my favorite places in the game after that revelation! If you do replay the game at some point it is worth noting that XC2 has the best ng+ mode in the whole series. I really want to replay the whole series myself but I just need to find a good time to do it 😂

@StarPoint @Xyphon22 Idk if you noticed but what's really cool is that you can actually hear shulks voice in XC2, it's the line he says right before he kills Zanza. I thought it was so cool that the architect actually knew shulk was about to kill him. When you see it side by side it's even cooler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Prmwk1rHl_k&ab_channel=ja...

There are also some smaller references like in Chapter 7 when you fight malos, he actually uses the same monado arts that shulk does.

@Vortexeo Yeah, I saw that when I was going through a recap of the story and I was like, "What? I don't remember that." So I rewatched that cutscene and when that part came I remember that I originally thought it was just Rex still talking, I didn't realize it was someone else. So that was pretty neat.

@Xyphon22 Oh yeah, I played Xenoblade 2 before the original so initially it went way over my head 😂. It blew my mind when I found out though!

@Vortexeo Oh wow! That is really cool! Yet another tie in that makes everything feel more connected