Rumour: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Will Soon Allow Players To Fully Customise Difficulty Parameters

This really seems unneeded. I absolutely love XC2 but it's not a particularly hard game. Of course if you want to breeze through it and skip all the side quests you will be underlevelled and have a hard time, but that's the player's fault.

But then again, I don't mind quality of life updates, even if they aren't needed, just so long as they don't have unintended negative consequences.

About the only thing I don't like about the game are all the people whining about portable mode and people who think some girls with big boobs in the game completely ruins it somehow and have made it their life crusade to tell everyone how Xenoblade is an abomination of sexism and people only play it to fap.

This sounds like developer calibration to me. It's a strange thing to offer to players.

"Hey look, you can adjust parameters!" "This probably means that a new update allows manmade rockets to land on the moon!" "Yeah, that must be it!"

Talk about silly conclusions based off technical references.

I own Xenoblade 2 but haven't played it yet. Frankly, I'm glad I haven't - they keep adding things to the game, I'll check it out when they're finally done tinkering with it. All these updates are neat, but it means we aren't at the "definitive" experience yet.

Never played the game myself but I've heard people say the battles can be real slog to get through. Changing parameters like these could alleviate that problem for those that don't like the current mechanics and thus enjoy the game more.

I don't think the players need this TBH. Unless it's the usual difficulty parameter, we don't need this level of customization.

This is basically a shoehorned god mode.

Asking your friends for tips on how to beat a certain boss. They basically just tell you to flip a switch. Pretty fun.

I find the idea of difficulty customisation on such a minute scale a little bit strange. It seems like handing too many keys over to the player. I'm not against difficulty options outright, but generally they should preserve the idea of having a defined challenge which the player then has to overcome within defined parameters. Allowing the player to mess around with those parameters on the fly sort of removes that structure. "I beat the last boss" doesn't have the same ring to it when followed by the caveat "because I went into the menu and played with the settings until it was rendered impotent".

As other posters have noted, let's see if this will actually get into players hands.

@InnerClimb If the battle mechanics are the same then IMO it won't make any difference.

I have held off buying Xeno 2.
I'm glad I did as I can buy the rumoured gold edition complete with all the dlc when it gets released eventually.

I will not doubt waste another 300 hours like I did with the original.

@Zyph
Well, it could make them less tedious, couldn't they? Turning 5 minute battles into quick 1 minute ones, that sorta stuff. But like I said, I haven't played the game, so I'm just going on a whim here.

The difficulty balancing is already pretty good in the game. You can easily get wiped, especially early on, if you face a monster that's a few levels above you. It's also possible to become overlevelled if you disappear down a side quest rabbithole but, as with most modern JRPGs, the challenge is usually in the post-game and extraneous content - they're not trying to gate off the main storyline with difficulty.

Wasn't a fan of the game, but admittedly this is pretty cool.

@InnerClimb If their goal is to speed up the battle then yes you're right. Though giving this much power to the player, for me is a bit detrimental to the experience especially for a JRPG. You usually see this stuff on fighting games.

This could be a neat addition to have locked to new game plus, but definitely keep it out of the vanilla experience.

@Zebetite
It was already great when it was released and they polished the gameplay a lot since release.
I suggest you do the first playthrough then you can wait until you play the game again in new game +.
Most of the additions are only available in the new game+ anyway.

I'm looking forward to the new difficulty mode, Bringer of Chaos. I'm not interested in making my own custom difficulty, though.

I have held off picking up XC2 as I have seen a few people say it's a slog.
Obviously anything like that is subjective , but being a FF , Zelda and Star ocean fan, would I enjoy the mechanics and story of this game ?
Appreciate anyone's thoughts

I think people will use these new options to make the game more fun to them.

I personally played on the default (normal) mode for 360 hours, and got all 47 blades to S-Rank, and completed the game twice, before switching to easy to beat the last superbosses and to farm materials quicker.

Having the highest challenge at the beginning until completing everything possible, and then changing to easy mode so I don't have to grind for hours getting bonus stuff was for me the most enjoyable way to play Xeno2.

My guess is everyone will adjust the parameters to get the most fun and excitement out of the game and if you don't like it, you just stick to the original normal or easy mode.

It's a good thing for everyone, especially beginners and experts. And for me it's good enough to have another round at this game playing around with the new parameters.

More games should have something like this.

@Powerballad Yes, the game is worth it. Definately. It's huge though, so you need to spend a considerable amount of time to get into it. For me it was after 50 hours that my disappointment over how this is such a downgrade compared to Xenoblade Chronicles X faded away and I started to appreciate the game for its own merits. I'm glad I kept playing, otherwise I would have missed such an awesome world and story and battle system. It's one of those games where you slog on in the beginning because of your limited field and battle skills, but it feels so much better when you're getting stronger and more capable and have more and more cool things unlocked. It's kind of a struggle in the beginning, but as with every excellent RPG out there, you start out there feeling really weak and limited, but by keeping at it you'll be rewarded and you open up more and more capabilities until finally getting exceptionally strong, and fast, and have no barriers. If you have the slightest interest in an RPG you should definately check out everything that starts with "Xeno".

I know that I'm in the minority here, but as someone who likes everything about this game excluding the combat, this would be really nice to have. Being able to skip the combat so I can enjoy the story and characters more easily will be awesome.

Seriously, the combat is the soul reason why I stopped playing the game in the first place. I just found it incredibly boring because it tended to dissolve into the same process for almost, if not, every fight.

The way I read this, it's an improvement for post-endgame players who're able to beat the hardest bosses in the game in seconds.
By ramping up the difficulty, the game will still prove to provide some challenge to these players.
Giving these options to new players would destroy the gameplay, as they wouldn't have to master the combat mechanics anymore.

@Beedrill4Smash I hated the stupid button challenges for Ultimates, since due inconsistent performance (especially in handheld mode) the button presses not always immediately registered! This was sheer frustration, especially in the harder boss fights!

That has been fixed with the latest update, where you can set them to auto complete.

Since then I really enjoy the combat a lot more.

It' still a bit of a pain timing the Cancel attacks, but I can live with that.

@Jeronan Really? I never had this kind of problem and was wondering why they even patched in this function...
Are you sure it is not because of your tv settings that cause a delay or something?

@Kirgo No, when playing on TV it usually goes ok actually, but I play mostly in handheld mode and then in hectic fights where performance can get a bit spotty it's a total pain.

Controller input lag should be the same with docked and handheld, as they both go over Bluetooth. Unless you sit really far away from the TV and use the joy-cons instead of a Pro controller. I always use the X2 Pro Controller when docked. Love that thing!

@Jeronan I didn't play a lot in handheld mode, didn't think that in particular could be such a big problem.

It is a shame that the game has such a low quality in handheld mode

@Kirgo It's an absolutely fantastic game that is clearly pushing the Switch hardware to the limit and still looks and plays nice in handheld mode. It's just the button challenges that can be a pain sometimes.

Remember, Zelda Breath of the Wild is a first party Nintendo game and that one pushes the Switch to the limit too with regular and noticeable frame drops!

I really need to get back into this game. And I bought it day one. 😔

Sounds sensible. I ended up giving up on Xenoblade 2 as the combat was such a grind. It had very little depth and took far too long, and when I was attacked by a much higher level enemy my entire party would be wiped out in seconds. It's the worst battle system I've come across in an RPG, even worse than the brainless combat in FF15.

@Jeronan yes, absolutely.
Xenoblade 2 even is my game of the year 2017 and that is not an easily obtained title in a year like that.

@Jeronan Beyond the limit, especially in handheld mode. The low resolution and poor frame rate are barely acceptable in docked, but in handheld it's far below what is expected of a modern AA game.

@ramu-chan I don't see that much difference in handheld mode though other than if you fast travel or log into the game first time, that it can take up to 5 seconds or so before all textures and assets are loaded. After that it looks great in handheld too!

This game has so many problems, but I’m glad they’re working to improve it. I don’t think that small customization menu should wipe away my buyers remorse, but it might give me a better time with it if I ever decide to come back. Battles are absolutely annoying and a big step down from the first game.

People saying the battles take forever and combat is tedious don't even know how to play properly lol. 80% of complaints I see of the combat just revolve around people sucking. And I'm surprised so many people are wondering why this is a thing when more personalized difficulty options for those that want to make it as easy as possible or as hard as possible is always good. The default difficulty options already do a fine enough job anyway, so I'll be using this for a third playthrough on the hardest settings possible.

@Beedrill4Smash @ramu-chan @rushiosan

I am honestly a bit surprised about how negative the combat appears for some.
Personally, i absolutely love the combat.
There are so many things to keep track of, effects to combine and to time right to get the most out of it. Blade switching to get access to different passive skills and elements, maybe to a healer to survive that next blow the enemy might be preparing.

Comments like "always doing the same thing" make me feel like we are not actually playing the same game.
To me, there is more going on with this system than most other combat systems I know of, including the previous Xenoblade games.

Some enemies just seem like sponges, so I like this. Rather them hit harder than take forever to down.

@Kirgo My only (but fairly big) complaint about this game's combat is that there's not much defensive/gimmick options. Now granted, RPGs tend to not have a lot of defensive options in general, it's almost always just about offense. I'm playing Ys VIII right now and you literally only have a dodge and parry, it's all about just hitting the enemy.

But in Xenoblade's case with MMO elements further fleshing out the tank elements, Xenoblade 1 and X allowed you a more consistent defensive way of killing bosses, Xenoblade X going as far as to being able to destroy fools with reflect builds while Xenoblade 1's Arts facilitated tanking like Reyn just soaking damage while Dunban amplified his evasion with how much auras he had at his disposal. Xenoblade 2 doesn't have that as much, but to make up for it the offense game is almost the best it has ever been (narrowly losing the edge to Xenoblade X because Overdrive was so fun to use), drastically shortening the amount of time waiting between Arts (sans Overdrive in Xenoblade X) and adding the layers of combat with Blade/Fusion Combos adds to the offensive game.

That's really the only complaint I have with the combat though. Everything else is fantastic. But because of that, Xenoblade X still remains as my favorite combat system since it had everything done really well instead of just offense done amazingly.

@EvilLucario I am thinking in a similar direction at this point.
Maybe some people overlevel making fights easy, but because they don't know how to properly deal a lot of damage the fights still take forever.
The game doesn't make the best job in explaining how everything works and overleveling is easily possible as well through overusing bonus exp.
Maybe even grinding up way too high, because enemies seem impossible might be a thing.

I won't go as far as to say anyone who has complains has this problems, but in some cases I could see it happening.

About your later post: I agree with the lack of defense options. You have some possibilities depending on the drive/blade combination, but all in all it is a system that focuses a lot on the offensive part.

@Kirgo Honestly, I actually did do a second playthrough and even when I blitzed through the game and claimed no bonus XP, I wasn't ever so drastically underleveled. As long as you Chain Attack enemies and get a high multiplier, you're going to get enough XP to never need grinding at all.

Then you get into the fact that discovering Landmarks/locations also gives bonus XP, there should never, ever be a point in time where you need to grind for levels at all. You can just go from point A to point B in the story with no hassle.

@Heavyarms55 It's to make the game harder, not easier.

@EvilLucario That is what I did as well. I never used bonus exp on my first playthrough and was still never really underleveled, but I know quite a lot of people just using all of their bonus exp because "why not?", thus massively overleveling.
I meant at least people who didn't understand everything about the combat who also don't really do sidequests might feel the need for grinding to get to the point of overleveling that they need.

Ugh. I saw this news from some other source on my news feed (only because the Google News application won't let me add Nintendo Life as a source), and the title was all like "Xenoblade Chronicles will add this thing blah blah blah". Then I clicked on it, found out the details, and THEN I found the "oh by the way data miners found this" part. So what would have been a pleasant surprise (whether or not I'll actually use it) was ruined by... what exactly is the goal of "data miners"? People who spoil POSSIBLE upcoming additions to games for their own personal glory? By which I mean "internet glory", which means... what, more "likes" on some kind of social network? Seriously, what is the point? Who are these people? And why do game news sites post articles about EVERYTHING that data miners leak? To be fair, Nintendo Life did a better job of not just outright spoiling it than that other site is, but still, I wish these articles didn't exist. Or at least that they were better labeled as possible spoilers so I don't click on them.

Well Im at the World Tree trying to kill Amalthus, all my drivers are LVL 72 or better but I cant kill him no matter what I try. Im just off grinding through affinity trees atm to try and gain some levels. So if theres a difficulty adjustor, I may use it to fight Amalthus. But for the most part, I never had much trouble in this game in general, difficulty-wise. It just sucks because there's nothing else to do right now except progress the main story and I'm stuck. Ive loved this game to death so I have every intention of finishing, whatever it takes.

@Innerclimb The battles can take a while if you haven’t figured out all of the mechanics yet. The game explains them but there’s a lot to keep track of. Once you start regularly using Driver Combos, Blade Combos, and Chain Attacks, though, things speed up considerably.

Sadly none of these settings fix the many flaws of this game.

Despite these not really being necessary, I think they're a fine bonus to throw in for players.

@rushiosan The only times enemies can become damage sponges is in Chapter 3 and maybe first half of 7, but even then you still have Blade/Fusion Combos to kill things. In Xenoblade 1, enemies were quick to kill because DPSing in the combat system with Shulk was nothing more than Slit Edge -> Shadow Eye -> Back Slash -> Monado Buster, get a Topple off, then just spam your red Arts in your Chain Attack to kill things or just continue Topple locking the enemy. Other characters also ended up like that, just replace Shulk's Arts with their appropriate ones. Battles were always "spam these Arts for maximum damage". The only ways you can make offensive combat really fun in Xenoblade 1 was controlling Melia (who is the best part of the combat system and is extremely fun) and choosing what type of Arts to use in a Chain Attack to either prioritize Topple locking or just mad damage by chaining the same type of Arts together. Compared to Xenoblade 2 which requires more finesse in offensive capabilities, it's no wonder that people complain about enemies being HP sponges when they don't grasp how they can fully destroy enemies by taking advantage of Blade/Fusion Combos, Chain Attacks, or simply looking at their Blade skills.

It's just as bad as people complaining about Xenoblade 1's combat being trash when all they do is keep Sharla in their party, slowing down combat in that game too, or complaining about Xenoblade X's combat also feeling spongy because they can't figure out how to properly use Overdrive.

Most of your complaints are about UI, which can be fair but has nothing to do with combat. What are you talking about XP, SP, and WP not being shown though? Were you even paying attention to your characters' heads in battle after killing enemies? It's all there.

Inns critical to XP? They're not lol, it was intended to be completely optional. If you've 100%ed Xenoblade 1, you'd know that if you did every sidequest and explored every inch of the worlds around you, the entire main game becomes even more of a cakewalk with you being grossly overpowered because of Xenoblade 1's absolutely stupid buffs when either you or the enemy is like 6+ levels higher than the other, which Xenoblade X and 2 toned down to a massive degree. While Xenoblade X drastically nerfed sidequest and exploration XP, Xenoblade 2 just makes them bonus XP to claim at any time if you so desire, which is 100% an improvement over the past two games.

And I'm sorry, but if you're getting killed by enemies only 1-2 levels higher then that speaks less of the game and more on the player. Anything in this game, even Challenge Mode's hardest challenges, can be done with Blades at D-C trust with low levels, and especially in the story where both Xenoblade 1 and 2 are cakewalks in difficulty. You should never be struggling with the common fry in either game. If you are, you need to change how you approach stuff.

Most of people's complaints about Xenoblade 2 (and by extension X) are people not bothering to understand how anything really works, thinking they can get away with faffing about like they did in Xenoblade 1 then complain that enemies have too much health and combat is "a slog and tedious".

I may be coming off as an elitist prick here, but I'm personally fed up with how much people parrot the same "combat takes forever lol" nonsense everywhere, so I apologize in advance if I come off as annoyed or rude. But it's something that really annoys me so I'm getting it off my chest here.

@rushiosan
Reading that, I think what it comes down to is a problem I agree on the game having: It doesn't do a good job in explaining everything, especially the terminology in the beginning can be confusing.
I think I can explain everything you listed though:

-damage sponges: There are some enemie types that really take quite a beating before actually going down. Most enemies however go down quite fast if you at least allign your blade combos well, and make use of blade switching appropriately. Driver Combos, Chain Attacks help later on as well, of course.

-Equipment can certainly be a bit confusing at first. You can upgrade your blade weapons, there is typical equipment on drivers, though very simple and you can give each blade further enhancements... Since these things work kinda different from each other than can be confusing in the beginning.

-Permanent upgrades for weapons: It is probably so that you can't just buy three weapons per driver and whenever you exchange a blade from the party you would just reequip all the weapons to the new blades which would discourage changing blades more than it does now.

-Splitting of driver and blade menus: You can access your equiped blades from the driver menu as well, just like you access the drivers themselfes. The specific blade menu is only needed to access blades that are not currently equiped.

-Inns for leveling up: They are not needed at all, if you do a lot of sidequests, you will never be underleveled even without spending bonus exp at an inn. If you don't do enough sidequests and you end up underleveled, then you can use the inns to prevent level grinding. This is to prevent players from massively overleveling just because they actually do the sidequests. This way anyone, no matter the playstyle, can always have the level he needs.

-Display exp etc: exp and other points earned after defeating an enemie are actually shown right in the middle of the screen.
Though they are easy to miss, since there is usually a lot going on in battle.

-If you have big problems with normal enemies just 1 - 2 level above you, you are doing something wrong, even without the driver combos (break, tople...). We are back at what I wrote first though. The game does not make a good job in explaining and it is easy to do something wrong.
Driver combos at least up to tople can actually be done earlier in the game as well, you need to have luck with finding a blade that can do it though. The reason why you get them so late is probably because you are supposed to get accustomed with all the other stuff you already learned and you kinda still learn new stuff all the time, even after that point.

-The third blade slot being locked is probably also them trying to not throw too much at a time at you, which they still kinda fail at.

-overcomplicate: Everything about this game is actually simple, there are just a few different mechanics that seem way more complicated after the explanation than they actually are.

I hope I could clarify some things.

@rushiosan I hope that wasn't too much text, I tried to keep the different points apart, so it is still readable.

@EvilLucario I'm with you. You don't even need to master it to get by, just have to bother to pay attention to the mechanics a bit.

A lot of the complaints stem from people who aren't willing to spend the time or invest in the game properly - it's simply not the genre for you if that's case, not a flaw of the game.

I’m gonna lower all difficulty levels to the minimum cause I suck at this game!

@Jeronan I think the main issue is the nasty sharpening filter used in handheld mode, and to a lesser extent (present in both docked and handheld mode), the hyper-aggressive post-process anti-aliasing used that makes everything extremely blurry.

The sharpening really kills the beauty in the game while playing in handheld mode, though.

I’ll start by saying I have beaten the game. I played on normal until the battle with Malos and Jinn before Moratha and then after getting slaughtered over and over (and not being allowed to get any other blades through quests because the game was like, “nope you need somebody who’s not in your party for EVERYTHING” I was like, screw it, let’s try easy mode.

Then I got half way up the world tree on easy not wanting to switch back to normal because I thought the game was only letting me have two party members because they gave me back the party members but didn’t put them in my party. So I just had Rex and Moraig with a certain healing blade and I made my way through.

Eventually I realized I could have thre party members again because I couldn’t imagine the game having that bad of a difficulty spike, and then it got easy and I didn’t feel like going back to normal. I maxed out Sheba and Xenobia and it was nice to be able to a
Slaughter everything but level 91 monsters.

The frustrating thing for me was always how certain monsters would soak up damage for a good twenty minutes, then get enraged and murder you at almost full health.

It felt like the major mechanics you were supposed to worry about were topple, launch, smash, but there’s no way to get that consistently playing with characters that I wanted to play with. Also the terms for things often were hard to keep track of. Overall the parts of the battle system that make it easy are the least fun parts of the game.

I enjoyed the weird, chaotic story. I rolled my eyes at the jiggle physics and the way they managed to specialize a woman with rabbit feet (oh Japan). (Okay another side note, this game would have been so much better if a couple of western bull dykes could have kicked the crap out of the developers at least once.)

There were some great things about this game. But the battle system always felt like it wasn’t really in my control. It wasn’t something fun to play with and experiment. It was something to just get a handle of so I could kill the things and progress the story. (Also how does punching something make a potion that restores your health?! Don’t drink random liquids that come out of animals you’re fighting kids!)

@Heavyarms55 I think XC2 is a fine enough game. I do think that a lot of the female character designs are rather fanservicey crap that felt unneeded in the game. Otherwise outside of some funny/cringy english vo it's a fine game

@DavidMac The mechanic you have to worry about the most isn't driver combos (break, topple, launch, smash).
That is a big one that can help alot, but there aren't even that many blades that can even do smash.

If I had to decide on a single mechanic that is the most important, that would be blade combos (the elemental blade attacks).
Completing blade combos already does tons of damage If you keep track of the enemies resistance and the already present elemental orbs. Depending on your party those combos can be done very quickly and if not, you can help with temporary items that increase your arts speed.
Quickly accumulate some orbs through blade combos and you can literally deal millions of damage with a chain attack, defeating even the strongest enemies quickly. ( Heck, I completely destroyed the endboss with a single chain attack while he still had about 40% of his life...).

By the way I am very sure you could have fought this Malos and Jin battle with 3 party members as well. Still, it might even be the hardest story fight in the whole game.

@Oat I agree. It's a good game but the female characters are all ridiculously off and got the body of porn stars or some other fan service crap. It's the kinda thing that can turn me off a lot of Japanese games, but luckily if the game is still fun enough it doesn't stop me from enjoying them.

@Oat I do agree on the unneeded level of fan service, but there was really only one blade I distinctly think is crappy design. And said blade was literally designed by a hentai artist so it is unsurprising she looks that way. It is surprising that they would hire a porn artist for a T rated game however.

@brimat Mind If I ask what kind of quest is the problem exactly? I mean, the game literally shows you were to go and you usually don't need to go to places with too strong enemies.
There are some specific quests were the way is still hard to find, because there is no direct way. Maybe I can help there in some way?

If by second city you mean Garfont, I can kinda imagine which quest might be the problem.

and yet we still can't turn off the inane and annoying as well battle chatter BS. I want to hear the music without the constant talking that overlaps. You don't need to announce the attack every single time.

@earthinheritor You can adjust the volume of that in the sound settings. If they annoy you that much, even turn them completely off that way.

@Kirgo I tried but none of the volume controlls seemed to alter the battle voices. The sound effects changes, voices in other content changes but not the battle voices. I thought i tried all the settings but i will try it again.

@brimat I can see where you are coming from in case of side quests. There are quite a lot where the stuff is quite hard to find, sometimes even VERY hard to find, though I would argue that is intentional.

If you are not sure how to find something even though you are at the right spot, you can apply some rules of thumb:
-Items that seem like they could be part of nature can be found in collection points
-Items that seem to be technological or super strange are found though salvaging.
-You generally don't need to gather items from monsters unless the quest makes it obvious.
-For Items that are just lying around in a very specific spot, the quest will point exactly to that spot.

I don't know of your goal is to 100% the game but otherwise I would advise to not get too hung up on some sidequests where you can't find the way to the target. As mentioned there are a few quests that are just extremely hard search quests, it can take forever to solve them.

Quests were you just have to gather all kinds of items I would consider just doing them along the way. At some point you will probably have what you need, If you don't avoid gathering stuff.

Main quest are in most cases pretty straight forward. There are only few exceptions to that (like finding the way to Fonsa Myma in Uraya)

And If you ever want to find more of an item that you already have, but can't remember which titan it was on, the item menu tells you that.

EDIT: And about the poison ivy quest, I had problems with that as well. I think you needed to search especially around big trees and not the smaller ones. If nothing helps, after finding one in one spot you can try to respawn that point and collect from the same spot again and again. Takes some time but works.

@earthinheritor I just checked, it should be the fourth option from below. I think "Voices (Game)", but I don't have the english version, so I am not sure if it is called that.

I never really tried it myself though, since I personally like the voices in battle. (To me, they give the game more live in battles and they are sometimes funny too.)

I'd like this. I got the game for Christmas, and I'm still only about halfway through it with around 50 hours played. It's a long game, so if I could make it go a little faster that might be good.

Game is alright. 5 chapters in, it's about a 6 out of 10 for me. Interesting world and combat are what mainly carry it for me. Cut-and-paste side-quests, merely ok story, and poor portable optimization really bring things down though.