Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles Wii / 3DS / Definitive Edition

[gbuell]

This immediately after the RFN crew stated definitively that there was NO CHANCE Pandora's Tower would ever come to the US. They might need to work on their prediction-fu...

[ejamer]

This immediately after the RFN crew stated definitively that there was NO CHANCE Pandora's Tower would ever come to the US. They might need to work on their prediction-fu...

That said, looking at the results of predictions from the previous year should've been fair warning about trusting their predictions from this show.  Discussion: good. Predictions: well, the discussion is good.
 

[pokepal148]

I loved in like episode 185 when greg used the powerof editing to gloat about galaxy 2s release date with James
That said amazon burn in hell 180 dollars is not a reasonable price for any wii game
Where can i find a copy at regular price

[EasyCure]

I loved in like episode 185 when greg used the powerof editing to gloat about galaxy 2s release date with James
That said amazon burn in hell 180 dollars is not a reasonable price for any wii game
Where can i find a copy at regular price

good luck, I bought mine either last month or month prior and it was close to $80, most I've ever paid for a single video game; it did come with an artwork book which I had NO idea about but that still is way too much for a game. I caved because I kept hearing rave reviews about it here on NWR and because the price has only been going up and up on sites like amazon..

[TrueNerd]

So I picked this game back up after a couple months of neglecting it because of the reveal of the Wii U sequel/spinoff/whatever. THIS GAME IS SO GOOD OMG. I will say that I'm not a fan of the cutscenes. I think there's a decent large scale video game story there but the execution of the dialog and the excessive use of slow mo and making EVERYTHING AS DRAMATIC AS POSSIBLE is kind of laughable. In a world of Uncharted and Mass Effect and Rockstar's games, this is where Xenoblade feels dated to me. But it doesn't matter. The game itself is so good. I'll never get over how huge this game is. If I don't have a Wii U by the time "X" comes out, I will buy one just for that game. No question. Also, I feel like I should grab The Last Story and Pandora's Tower just out of principle because this game is so amazing. I should probably finish this first though.

I just got to Satorl Marsh, which looks nothing like anything I've seen thus far. I love it.

[Enner]

It's been a while since I've played the game, but I didn't find the dialog of Xenoblade to compare unfavorably to other games. Mass Effect and Rockstar games are blunt & hammy in their own ways. In the case of slow motion, Mass Effect definitely milks some moments, GTA4 has you executing characters in slow motion, and both Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3 have dramatic bullet time everywhere.

Sure, Xenoblade's story shows its Japanese roots in how earnest the melodrama can be, but I think that's just a style that hasn't been well represented in recent console games. From skimming Youtube videos, it seems to be have been poorly represented in Final Fantasy 13.

[TrueNerd]

It's been a while since I've played the game, but I didn't find the dialog of Xenoblade to compare unfavorably to other games.

I really disagree. The difference is Xenoblade milks ALL of the moments. I don't think there's an action cutscene that doesn't use tons of slow mo. The rest of those games exercise restraint in this regard. In general the writing and voice acting in those games is several notches higher than Xenoblade's.

[Enner]

Fair enough. Honestly, the last things I did with the game before letting a friend borrow it was whacking enemies, save-scumming to get specific skill books, and playing the ending one or two more times. My recollection of the first ten or so hours is very spotty aside from the excellent title card sequence and walking around Colony 9.

[Oblivion]

It's been a while since I've played the game, but I didn't find the dialog of Xenoblade to compare unfavorably to other games.

I really disagree. The difference is Xenoblade milks ALL of the moments. I don't think there's an action cutscene that doesn't use tons of slow mo. The rest of those games exercise restraint in this regard. In general the writing and voice acting in those games is several notches higher than Xenoblade's.

I'm replaying the game, and I've yet to see a slow-motion moment in a cutscene. The voice acting in Xenoblade is amazing, I don't know what you're talking about. And hell, it's a Japanese RPG. Of COURSE it's going be melodramatic. Is this your first JRPG?

[EasyCure]

I dusted off this game after being hooked back into Rune Factory Frontier;

Last save point was after getting to Bionis' Leg for the first time and I spent 4 hours wandering around between that start point and the quest to save Juju just battling monsters and trying to do quest. This game is going to take me a loooong time to finish...

One question for you guys regarding monster quest; I was asked by one of the refugees to take care of the giant Turkin in their little hide-out. I actually beat his ass BEFORE the request and it was the first time the game didn't recognize my accomplishment. I've gone back to the Turkin Hideout multiple time and that stupid giant won't appear. Has any one else had this trouble with other monster quests?? Part of the reason I was wandering around not progressing the story was because of this and other monster quest I tried to complete before moving on since they seem to be time sensitive and I didn't want to miss them (that's what the clock icon means on the quest right? If I go beyond a certain point I might miss the chance??). With that said, what about the monster I'm supposed to find at the lake but ONLY during a thunder-storm does that mean an actual thunder storm because I didn't notice any thunder (or lighting for that matter) when its raining lol I don't know how literal they're being but I can't seem to find this stupid thing at the lake and I want to take it out before I move on...

Help!

[ejamer]

@EasyCure:

Putting spoiler tag on the whole thing. Don't think it gives away anything specific at all... but just in case people don't want to know anything about the answers.


I've done that before too - defeat a special monster before getting the actual quest, then have trouble getting it to respawn.  They will return eventually, but after you defeat it once the respawn seems pretty random. In the worst case, you can just save in the area and then reload until he shows up... or leave it and come back later.

In the location you describe, there should be a lot of time for you to come back and finish that quest if you want to move on for now. I'd say easily more than twice as much game as you've already seen before it's a problem going back. And you will need to revisit that area after moving farther ahead to finish some other specific sidequests... so don't get too worried about the clock in this case.

As for the thunder storm, yes.  Some storms just have rain while others have lightning.  They are being pretty literal in this case.

[EasyCure]

@EasyCure:


[/size]Putting spoiler tag on the whole thing. Don't think it gives away anything specific at all... but just in case people don't want to know anything about the answers.


I've done that before too - defeat a special monster before getting the actual quest, then have trouble getting it to respawn.  They will return eventually, but after you defeat it once the respawn seems pretty random. In the worst case, you can just save in the area and then reload until he shows up... or leave it and come back later.

In the location you describe, there should be a lot of time for you to come back and finish that quest if you want to move on for now. I'd say easily more than twice as much game as you've already seen before it's a problem going back. And you will need to revisit that area after moving farther ahead to finish some other specific sidequests... so don't get too worried about the clock in this case.

As for the thunder storm, yes.  Some storms just have rain while others have thunder.  They are being pretty literal in this case.

Thanks! Good to know not to sweat it. I'm still curious about that one specific monster... it would be so interesting to battle in a thunderstorm. I'm playing RFF again, I'll go back to the Xenoblade in a few and hopefully make some more progress.

edit: Ok so I just started the fight to save Juj and I must say, that was a really cool scene and monolith did a great fucking job with the soundtrack. That was so intense, I'm sitting here worried that I'm too inebriated to take on this boss right now. It's just way too epic.

edit: Ok so I found one of the monsters for a quest the lake monser, not the turkin that I've already beat but haven't gotten credit for and I use the map jump feature to where I just was spiral valley and there I am, teleported right in front of an Immovable Gonzalez WTF IS THAT BEAST!? This game feels more and more like Monster Hunter as I play.. shiiiiittt

[Enner]

You won't be able to move Gonzalez as it's a level ~95 monster. Well, at least for the time being.

As eJamer wrote, for unique monsters you can always try save-scumming. That's where you save and then load a save file until the monster respawns.

For the weather, I find manually changing the time forward or back 6+ hours at a time usually gives you the special weather effects sooner or later.


EDIT: Corrected EasyCure to eJamer.

[EasyCure]

You won't be able to move Gonzalez as it's a level ~95 monster. Well, at least for the time being.

As EasyCure wrote, for unique monsters you can always try save-scumming. That's where you save and then load a save file until the monster respawns.

For the weather, I find manually changing the time forward or back 6+ hours at a time usually gives you the special weather effects sooner or later.

Hahaha I wasn't even going to dare try it. It was bad enough I found myself being attacked by that giant enemy crab in the northern region of the Bionis leg, Dakesha something or other? and losing; that thing was only level 32! No way am I taking on Gonzalez any time soon.

As for the thunderstorm, I happened to be wandering around when it started so I warped back to the lake and found what I was looking for. I'll try the "save-scumming" trick with the other beast. Thanks for the tips guys!

[Mop it up]

I think there's a decent large scale video game story there but the execution of the dialog and the excessive use of slow mo and making EVERYTHING AS DRAMATIC AS POSSIBLE is kind of laughable.

I'd have to agree with this, a lot of the dialogue felt like they were saying the same thing in slightly different ways. They also make a lot of the twists obvious and predictable. I wonder if part of the reason the story is like that is to make sure people remember what's going on if they haven't played in a while. It's tough to have a story that stretches out over the length of a game like Xenoblade.

[negative_zero]

If any of you guys are interested, I wrote a top 10 wishlist for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 / X over on Negative World:


http://www.negativeworld.org/topten/9332/top-10-improvements-that-i-would-like-to-see-in-xenoblade-chronicles-2-aka-x


It really just focuses on things that were already in Xenoblade and can be improved.  I wasn't throwing totally new stuff in there.

[leahsdad]

I think there's a decent large scale video game story there but the execution of the dialog and the excessive use of slow mo and making EVERYTHING AS DRAMATIC AS POSSIBLE is kind of laughable.

I'd have to agree with this, a lot of the dialogue felt like they were saying the same thing in slightly different ways. They also make a lot of the twists obvious and predictable. I wonder if part of the reason the story is like that is to make sure people remember what's going on if they haven't played in a while. It's tough to have a story that stretches out over the length of a game like Xenoblade.

Eeh...some people make call a twist "obvious."  Others might call it properly telegraphed.  One thing for sure, nothing is completely out of the blue.  Everything that happens late-game is hinted at by something in the early game.   And I'm not just talking about the super-ominous conversations between   Lorithia, Alvis, and Dickson

[leahsdad]

If any of you guys are interested, I wrote a top 10 wishlist for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 / X over on Negative World:


http://www.negativeworld.org/topten/9332/top-10-improvements-that-i-would-like-to-see-in-xenoblade-chronicles-2-aka-x


It really just focuses on things that were already in Xenoblade and can be improved.  I wasn't throwing totally new stuff in there.

Hey, great article!  Just read it, you have a lot of good points.   I'm commenting here, because I'm not on Negative World's boards.  But everyone should give it a read.

However, I strongly disagree with you on #3 (Changing the Chain Attack System).   You have a lot of good points on this one.  You're right, the risk/reward gap is HUGE -- losing those revives is an incredible risk, especially in the last 20 hours of the game, where the bosses are just ridiculously difficult.  But at the same time, the stress and "tension" it adds to the game (I've got to be careful saying "tension" as it is also a Xenoblade term) really adds to the appeal to gamers like me, who are attracted to high-difficulty games. 

Also, to be honest, if you have to revive anyone, including yourself, more than a few times in a boss fight, then your strategy for that boss is seriously flawed, and you will not win.   I don't care whose auras you stack or how high your tension is,  there is no way you can revive...oh, let's say your tank, more than 4 or 5 times in a fight and keep pace with your party gauge.   And if it's not your tank that's dying that much, then you have got to manage your aggro differently.  I'm generalizing, sure, but I think what I'm describing here neatly applies to every post-lvl69 boss fight.  Especially the one at Level 69.

And the chain attack system, more than anything else, encourages you to organize your skills so that you maximize the damage you get from the color coded (especially, the red) multipliers.   Even for the toughest bosses, if you can string 5 strong reds in a row, then you can maybe knock a tenth off of a boss's health.   Add to that if you can topple and daze that boss BEFORE you initiate that string, then oh my, you are a damage dealing machine.  I will admit, at least, that if you aren't exploiting the chain attack system in this way, then you shouldn't bother using chain attacks.  Well, maybe to do some topple/daze's, but you don't really need to do that within a chain attack, it just makes it easier.

[noname2200]

Hey, great article!  Just read it, you have a lot of good points.   I'm commenting here, because I'm not on Negative World's boards.  But everyone should give it a read.

However, I strongly disagree with you on #3 (Changing the Chain Attack System).   You have a lot of good points on this one.  You're right, the risk/reward gap is HUGE -- losing those revives is an incredible risk, especially in the last 20 hours of the game, where the bosses are just ridiculously difficult.  But at the same time, the stress and "tension" it adds to the game (I've got to be careful saying "tension" as it is also a Xenoblade term) really adds to the appeal to gamers like me, who are attracted to high-difficulty games. 

Also, to be honest, if you have to revive anyone, including yourself, more than a few times in a boss fight, then your strategy for that boss is seriously flawed, and you will not win.   I don't care whose auras you stack or how high your tension is,  there is no way you can revive...oh, let's say your tank, more than 4 or 5 times in a fight and keep pace with your party gauge.   And if it's not your tank that's dying that much, then you have got to manage your aggro differently.  I'm generalizing, sure, but I think what I'm describing here neatly applies to every post-lvl69 boss fight.  Especially the one at Level 69.

And the chain attack system, more than anything else, encourages you to organize your skills so that you maximize the damage you get from the color coded (especially, the red) multipliers.   Even for the toughest bosses, if you can string 5 strong reds in a row, then you can maybe knock a tenth off of a boss's health.   Add to that if you can topple and daze that boss BEFORE you initiate that string, then oh my, you are a damage dealing machine.  I will admit, at least, that if you aren't exploiting the chain attack system in this way, then you shouldn't bother using chain attacks.  Well, maybe to do some topple/daze's, but you don't really need to do that within a chain attack, it just makes it easier.

Agreed completely. By the late game, enemies, even those that are twenty+ levels above you, shouldn't be hurting you because you're abusing the chain attack system to ensure that they stay toppled/dazed/incapacitated throughout. The flipside being, of course, that if you screw up your chains you're going to die. It's a well-balanced system.

[EasyCure]

sounds like I should start practicing, I'm getting lucky skating by these battles and I'm only about level 22-28(?)

[Khushrenada]

Bumping to post in a bit later and not have to search for the thread. If one is interested in seeing the impressions of the game at the time of release back in 2012 then head to around page 18 if you do a 25 posts per page forum view.

[pokepal148]

I'm playing this on my new 3DS. Who needs a Switch when you have the beat grass in Xenoblade history.

[ejamer]

I loved this game so much on Wii, and put a ton of hours into it... but my second play through on 3DS fizzled after the first 15 hours or so. Are people playing through the game now (perhaps in different formats)?  Might be time to pick it back up.

Still think it's better on a big screen though. The exploration aspects just seem more grand that way.

[Khushrenada]

I came close to trying this on 3DS especially when the NEW 3DS came out and it is one of the few games requiring that system. But I was and still am trying to catch up on other 3DS games I didn't get around to while spending so much time in New Leaf. Link Between Worlds, FE: Awakening, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Planet Robobot and WarioWare Gold are just some of the titles I still want to tackle for the system. Plus, I'd started XCX and always felt I'd finish that first and haven't gotten back to it while BotW came out later and then I got obsessed into that game. So, knowing this would probably be a long game for me too meant I kept pushing it off for games I thought I could do sooner.

But with Covid playing havoc on TV and Film production and sports, diving into a 100 hour epic game is no longer a problem with my entertainment schedule. So, it released at the right time for Switch to finally get me to dive in. Plus, knowing it would be a bit more refined experience also helped since I was still nervous about how well I'd do with the battle system and other systems in the game after getting lost in XCX with all that was happening and opening up to me.

With this being the first game and seeing others comments that compared the series, it sounded like XC1 was the way to go in learning the core of the series with how it progressed out information. And that assessment has been correct. There are things here that now click for me in XCX (which makes me want to go back to that and get back in the action there but maybe I should start over since I'm not sure what kind of decisions I'd made back then when first playing) and I'm getting more and more confident with keeping track of all sorts of things to remember in battle.

I received my copy on Jun. 11 but first wrapped up getting the 50 Star Rank in Balloon World for Mario Odyssey and prepared to open my time for long sessions. Started it late on Friday Jun. 12 and played for an hour taking in the introduction lessons and story and setting. Since I was pretty tired from work, an hour was all my brain could take from all this new info it was now taking in and went to bed soon thereafter.

Got back into mid-Saturday afternoon and then just kept playing it late into the night. I wanted to get to the Gaur Plains and by 10 - 11 hours in, I was there. By Wednesday evening, I had over 30 hours into the game. I slowed down a bit in playtime over Thursday and Friday. Maybe getting in an hour each day. Needed to do other things in life like cleaning, getting groceries, vacuuming, etc. Plus, by Wednesday, I'd gotten to Frontier Village which is something I pushed for even though it was already getting late when I first got to Makna Forest. But I knew I was obviously close to adding Melia (due to a cutscene when entering) and Riki since the NPC's were saying the Nopon village was ahead and it felt like that would make a good ending point for the night.

However, it was also a case of now getting two new characters I needed to learn about and a whole big new city in which to get quests and meet people to add to the Affinity Chart in addition to knowing that I needed to start cleaning up a lot of the inventory I was carrying around for weapons, armors, gems and collectibles. So, I mainly just checked in to start doing some research and figuring out how I wanted to start arranging the stats of my party. Saturday allowed me to dive back in to the game and go through Frontier Village which continued on Sunday while also go back to past locales for more quests and to finish off some older ones. I thought I'd covered Colony 9 so well but then I discovered two more people I hadn't met during all my time and return trips there. It struck me again how easy it is to miss things with the size of some of these locales.

But finally got to a point where I was ready to start progressing the story again and move on in the exploration of Makna Forest. Sitting at 45 hours so far. I think I'm around the halfway point though judging by how my Affinity Chart of characters looks like and my suspicion of how the Collectopedia may be broken down. What I'm kind of glad about is that I've really never been spoiled on the story of XC. I guess I've always stayed away from much discussion of it since I always felt I'd get to it at some point. That goes for X and 2 as well. I really don't know how those unfold. So, I'm excited to see where this going to go. There are certain things I suspect and wonder about but even in this thread, where I was worried about possible spoilers, people thankfully formatted their posts with spoiler tags so that I didn't end up glancing or noticing anything I was aware of at this point. However, there was quite a bit of helpful information like stuff on gem crafting that I'm glad to have seen and read. Way to go, NWR class of 2012!

[ejamer]

"... However, it was also a case of now getting two new characters I needed to learn about... "

One fun question: which characters are you actually playing as during the game?
My first time through, I don't remember changing up my lineup at all for the first 2/3 of the game, so I learned to use a few characters really well and then spent the rest of the game experimenting with the others as supplementary/specialty characters in my party.