Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles X: Life on Mira.

[Soren]

Digital Foundry: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-vs-xenoblade-chronicles-x

Xenoblade X delivers results in line with other games on the system. That means a 1280x720 rendering resolution with a helping of post-process anti-aliasing and trilinear texture filtering.

More impressively, nearly every inch of the game world can be explored in full with nary a loading screen - aside from a couple short instances in New Los Angeles, of course.

Running through the city, you'll see huge Skells and crowds of NPCs appear out of thin air just metres from the player. Thankfully, we only found this distracting while exploring New Los Angeles, the game's central hub. Once out in the wild, pop-in can still be observed but it becomes somewhat less noticeable.

Xenoblade X operates at 30 frames per second with vertical sync engaged at all times and it manages to stick very closely to this target throughout. Open world games such as this often struggle with performance on consoles but we were pleasantly surprised by just how stable this game really is. We encountered a handful of drops in our 15 hours we spent with the game, but by and large, a locked 30fps is achieved. It seems that a great number of the aforementioned compromises were made in pursuit of stable performance. Given the results, we feel the team has made the right choice.

We're not looking at the latest in graphics technology here, but what the team at Monolith has achieved remains impressive nonetheless.

[Triforce Hermit]

Well at least it isn't Fallout 4 is which ALL OF FUCKING BOSTON IS A FUCKING FPS DIPPING ZONE.

[Soren]

Giant Bomb's quick look, pretty fun stuff.

[broodwars]

Well, I've been informed that Xeno X is definitely not on my Christmas lineup, so I guess I'm picking up my copy tomorrow with the rest of you. No idea when I'll have time to play it, though. Never bothered finishing the 1st Xenoblade.

[Enner]

Sadly, I went for the cheap shipping from Gamestop and won't get my copy until well in to next week (maybe even the week after that if things turn sour). Alas, I did not take the initiative to change my shipping to store pick-up when my schedule changed to free my Fridays. Ah, I really wanted to start on 12/4 because I wanted to be there at the start with all the online features.

[Soren]

It begins...



Also, when are we starting up the NWR BLADE Squad?

[Evan_B]

Depends. Which guild are you joining?

[Khushrenada]

I'm in. Just bought my copy at lunch. Will start it up tonight. Been a long, long time since I've bought a game on the same day it released and started playing it but I'd like to do that one more time in life.

[Soren]

Depends. Which guild are you joining?

I've chosen Pathfinders, but I take it you can switch pretty freely as the game goes along.

[ejamer]

Sadly, I went for the cheap shipping from Gamestop and won't get my copy until well in to next week (maybe even the week after that if things turn sour).  ...

I'm in the same state of waiting (from a different retailer, but not expecting it to arrive until late next week at best).


Not a huge deal for me because I don't care about online features... but really jealous of those who are already enjoying the game.  Can hardly believe it's finally released after years of anticipation.
 

[Khushrenada]

So, I'm in NLA at the moment. Have finished the prologue and met Lin when I saved. I've just been taking my time trying to learn the controls and figure things out. The game seems and feels dense. There's a lot I need to learn and I'm hoping the game teaches you about it at some point. Thought the prologue might do more than it did in that regard.

When it comes to the battle system, I read up on the controls in the manual and did a bunch of battles with smaller creatures to test things out. Things seem to be working at the moment but I have no idea if that is do to me or having Elma around. I'm just sort of hitting some buttons that seem to be working for me since I've been successful in battle so far but not sure if that's because I'm playing smart or playing easy. The prologue boss seemed to go by pretty fast and easy and so I feel like that's a good sign but right now, when it comes to battle, I still feel true understanding eludes me.

One thing that struck me lately is that the camera reminds me a lot of Super Mario Sunshine. The way I can control it with the R stick to move around for different views. I can bring the camera into first person mode to look around like Sunshine. You can sort of freeze to pan in and out. It's been a long time since I've played with camera controls like that so it's taking some getting used to.

I remember a lot of the prologue from the 2014 E3 Treehouse. I'm now finally in new territory and looking forward to all there is to discover. That said, being able to play the prologue even having been spoiled a bit about it is still pretty amazing. I just enjoyed being able to walk along and take my time to explore all the different views and watch the wildlife. Man, there are some impressive beasts about already. The prologue is already worth the price of admission. I was able to jump up to the top of a steep hill / mountain along the way and even though you get nothing for it, I just enjoyed that experience of exploring and trying to see what I can do and where I can go. I have a feeling I'm going to take a long time with this game because of my play style.

I also probably spent way too long designing a character but, if I'm going to play a game that could be 100 hours plus, I want a character worth looking at it, goldarn it! That said, why is my character mute? There were voice options! I sampled them all and finally selected one I thought was good for the character. So why can't my character now speak in that voice? It's more distracting to have the character always mute while everyone else is able to talk. It honestly doesn't make me feel like I'm the character when the person acts like a mute because I'm not a mute. I'm also not talking to the TV screen and joining in the conversations with the other non-playable characters while the character stays mute so how is this supposed to make me more related to the action and story? And what's up with the weird options of look interested / look puzzled? Just play the cutscene! I highly doubt that a different scene or story is suddenly going to happen in the game now based on this decision. It's just sort of silly.

As for the story, I really do like how the story begins with these two great alien nations at war who just don't give a rip about Earth as it becomes collateral damage in their dispute. That said, it seemed Earth knew they were coming and had their escape pods ready. And the fact that one of those alien races later attacked the white whale suggests that they may not be completely disinterested or apathetic about Earthlings after all. Wasn't expecting the sudden director general story bit on entering NLA. Not sure what to think of it yet but it strikes me as potentially cliché which is too bad as the game feels rather fresh up to that point. But it's early so I guess we'll see how it develops. I also find the whole amnesia of your character I bit odd. Is it supposed to be a way of making the player imagine they had amnesia on the destruction of Earth and the space flight? Is it supposed to be a cute way of why the player's character has to learn everything of how to operate in this world? Or will it be a story twist later on with the character's memory returning? One potential theory I thought of is that the opening cutscene mentions how one brave person was able to fight back the alien menace enough for NLA to survive the attack. Maybe you are that person. Or maybe you'll meet that person later on. Guess we'll see but something I was thinking about as I was playing.

Well, that's my take on things for today. Guess we'll see what tomorrow brings.

[Enner]

I'm in the same state of waiting (from a different retailer, but not expecting it to arrive until late next week at best).

Not a huge deal for me because I don't care about online features... but really jealous of those who are already enjoying the game.  Can hardly believe it's finally released after years of anticipation.
 

The online stuff looks really neat (an over view on Reddit), and it's interesting that it has multiple levels of engagement to it. I really want to try out the Squad Missions, the 4-player co-op of the online feature set.

Depends. Which guild are you joining?

I've chosen Pathfinders, but I take it you can switch pretty freely as the game goes along.

It costs money to switch between Divisions, and the cost depends on how populated that Division is. But you shouldn't need to swap as I think Squad mates can have different Divisions mingle.


EDIT:

I also probably spent way too long designing a character but, if I'm going to play a game that could be 100 hours plus, I want a character worth looking at it, goldarn it! That said, why is my character mute? There were voice options! I sampled them all and finally selected one I thought was good for the character. So why can't my character now speak in that voice? It's more distracting to have the character always mute while everyone else is able to talk. It honestly doesn't make me feel like I'm the character when the person acts like a mute because I'm not a mute. I'm also not talking to the TV screen and joining in the conversations with the other non-playable characters while the character stays mute so how is this supposed to make me more related to the action and story? And what's up with the weird options of look interested / look puzzled? Just play the cutscene! I highly doubt that a different scene or story is suddenly going to happen in the game now based on this decision. It's just sort of silly.

The character is mute in Story sequences because hell if Nintendo is going to pay for 16 tracks of cut scene dialog. And the choices in the Story sequences are there mainly to affect the Player Character's Affinity to Non-Player Characters, I've been lead to believe.

These are compromises made with the midway change from a predefined character to a player-created character. That change seems to have been brought about with the decision to expand the online features of the game.

[Evan_B]

I'm in. Just bought my copy at lunch. Will start it up tonight. Been a long, long time since I've bought a game on the same day it released and started playing it but I'd like to do that one more time in life.

I think the next, and possibly last time I'll do that again is with the next Zelda.

[Soren]

I've messed around a bit with the multiplayer stuff, and I have to say it adds a layer of depth that Xenoblade on Wii didn't have. I've already spent more time with this game than with the Wii version, and I think the game while not perfect still does so many things well. The absolute desire to just go somewhere and explore is there from the very beginning.

I like that the game immediately gates progress to the 4th chapter by requiring you to go travel a good distance away from NLA ("The Probe-fessional" mission). It can be real easy to get bogged down in the areas close to the administrative district. But the game is like "no, you should explore the world now).

EDIT: The usb soundtrack has crazy DRM because of course it has. On top of not working on Mac as advertised because Japan hates Apple, the tracks can't be moved from the stick without a workaround, and it basically hijacks your Y drive letter. Just download it.

[broodwars]

Had a bad experience starting up a game last night: got through the character creator & started doing some basic exploration & combat. Then I got up to the first real cutscene that reveals the expanse of the game world and...the game crashed, citing issues with my external HDD (despite me playing via disc). When I rebooted & loaded up my save, I'd lost 40 minutes of progress. So yeah...not a great start. Haven't gone back to it since.

[Enner]

I think the game is telling you that you're open-world-ed out.

[Khushrenada]

The character is mute in Story sequences because hell if Nintendo is going to pay for 16 tracks of cut scene dialog. And the choices in the Story sequences are there mainly to affect the Player Character's Affinity to Non-Player Characters, I've been lead to believe.

Yeah, sometimes the choices do affect the affinity rating which you can tell by the heart that will appear over another character's head on your choice. But there are others that do not have this affect and are more story based which I doubt affects anything whichever choice you make. As for the voice acting, they may not have to pay 16 people for the entire stories worth but there are plenty of times where just a little bit of dialogue like "yes", "no", "sounds good", "I understand", "please explain more" or "what do you mean" would be quite sufficient and make things a bit more seamless. They already have a few lines done in 16 voices. Would it really by that much trouble for a bit more like that?


So, on to other topics, who is everyone else playing as? After the character creation gauntlet of going through and testing all manner of the different options, I ended up with Veronica.



With Elma and Lin as your early teammates, it's made the game more unique by being so female-centric.

I went through chapters 1-3 today and am in the gap where I could select Chapter 4 and start it but am now just trying out various missions. As such, I've been able to select my division. I was interested in a couple of them. Pathfinders is a pretty tempting choice but with Soren mentioning earlier that he went with that, I wanted to do something different. Curators and even Mediators also sounded a bit intriguing. Intercepters, Harriors, Prospectors and Outfitters just didn't interest me because, like I mentioned in an earlier post of possible Civilization gameplay similarities, I'm more about exploring than battling. So, I'm with the Reclaimers. I'm up for going on treasure hunts and installing different data probes. Seemed like a good fit for me.

Haven't tried out any multiplayer and may not for awhile and maybe not until I get myself a skell. Still have a lot to learn about how to battle first and I want to keep levelling up and get some better gear before joining the great online world.

Now for some story stuff. I was right that Earth seemed to be prepared. It would seem Elma is an alien considering she wonders if her being on Earth attracted the aliens. I wouldn't have thought she was an alien but it seems there is more to her backstory. That's the way I understood things. I love how convoluted the BLADE acronym is. Why make it an acronym even? I'm not sure what I think of the Prone. They just seemed out of place with the rest of the world so far. Like they would fit in more with Rayman's world or even Star Fox. Same goes with Tatsu looking out of place. The major storyline mission seems to be locating the Lifehold. I'm intrigued to see where that leads. I'm also waiting to understand what the meaning of the giant tower's percentage sign is about. It was at 60% when I arrived at NLA but now it's down to 55% yet no one has mentioned anything about it.

There's more I'd like to get into but it is late so I'll leave it at that. However, as I posted on Miiverse, one thing that really impresses me about this game is how with all these Skells around and the sci-fi city and elements, it feels like I'm playing in an anime come to life. I mean, just look at this:




And I can maneuver through it all. When you go to the first page of this thread, there's still a link to the original E3 trailer for this game. The way that trailer started with the player character going to his skell has always made so excited about this game with that Gundam like connection and I'm so glad this game has seemed to fulfill that feeling despite me not even piloting a single skell yet!

[Evan_B]

Met up with Veronica while I was playing general squads, but I'm going to switch to friends only because I'm sick of the shameless "L+A begging" posts.

In case you run across Dyphrantes, that's me.

I reached Chapter 4 myself but instead grabbed Irina and Lin an went out into Primordial to complete quests. Irina is pretty reliable but pretty bland as a character, so I'll probably just switch back to Elma. I am an Outfitter, because it sounded like an unconventional guild and the equipment system in the game is so disgustingly complex and deep I decided it would be best to always be prepared for different situations. I already have the Skell support armor classes, so that's neat!

Loving the streamlined questing and warping in the game, but landmarks feel a bit fewer an farther between. The way tat enemies are placed definitely makes it clear that you cannot just complete a continent's frontier net and move on, and I do also like how they try to shepard you to the next logical story and continent, though the quests are a little less forgiving. I'm going to start Chapter 4 tonight, and delve deeper into Noctilium. This game is giving me everything I need, and by goodness, it's exhilarating to vault around on the edges of mountains, avoiding overpowered mobs.

[Khushrenada]

Met up with Veronica while I was playing general squads, but I'm going to switch to friends only because I'm sick of the shameless "L+A begging" posts.

In case you run across Dyphrantes, that's me.

That's an interesting name. How'd you come up with that? I'll keep an eye out for you. I'd like to team up with other people from NWR at some point. It seems like the multiplayer is similar to my understanding of Monster Hunter where you team up with other players to take down fearsome beasts. Not sure if there are other aspects than that but I'd like to try it out a few times.

Also, I noticed various messages about L+A popping up on my screen too after I become a full BLADE member. I take it has something to do with the online multiplayer squad aspect and that room in the barracks for online missions. I just don't get why I'm seeing those messages as I'm pretty much just friends or have friend codes with people on NWR so how can they be friend messages? I guess it comes from ignorance of the multiplayer aspect so I'll have to spend some time reading about that in the manual as well and maybe adjusting my settings.

One sad consequence of the recent Nintendo profitless years is that instruction manuals seem to be going the way of the dodo and that’s too bad as I’ve always liked instruction manuals and Nintendo’s had some great ones. Now if I want to read the instruction manual, I’ve got to boot the Wii U and just read it on there. I wish it was just a paper booklet I could read without being tied to the system because if I’m booting up the Wii U, I want to be playing the game not reading the manual. Oh well.

I reached Chapter 4 myself but instead grabbed Irina and Lin an went out into Primordial to complete quests. Irina is pretty reliable but pretty bland as a character, so I'll probably just switch back to Elma. I am an Outfitter, because it sounded like an unconventional guild and the equipment system in the game is so disgustingly complex and deep I decided it would be best to always be prepared for different situations. I already have the Skell support armor classes, so that's neat!

I did pretty much the same thing. After chapter 3 was done, I went and grabbed all the missions I could and then just went out to explore and complete some. I grabbed Elma, Lin, and Gwin and went out exploring. I saw some interesting things like an island way out west of Primordia sort of behind the opening Starlight Valley. I decided to put the game's claim of if you can see it then you can reach it to the test and after an inhumanly possible long swim, my characters made it to the island when somehow my main of Veronica was attacked and instantly ko'd and that was the end of my island visit. I also made it to the Silent Mire. It was weird to have the Primordia music suddenly change for this one section in Primordia. Maybe there will be more special music spots then. I'm thinking I might go back and change out Elma and Lin for Irina and Doug. I was reading an article about XCX on Gamesrader called Things I wish I knew before I started Xenoblade Chronicles X. For the most part, I've figured out most of the stuff in that article and some I was just happening to do by pure luck/chance/my-innate-super-gameplaying-ability. But one thing it did mention was to keep swapping out party members to ensure they are all levelling up at a good pace and you don't get bogged needing to buff one member up to reach the others. It's a typical RPG trope/strategy but with the way the game has presented other party members, they seemed entrenched in certain classes and I wasn't sure what sort of levelling up I actually had to do with them so I found it a useful reminder and thought I'd pass it on.

Loving the streamlined questing and warping in the game, but landmarks feel a bit fewer an farther between. The way that enemies are placed definitely makes it clear that you cannot just complete a continent's frontier net and move on, and I do also like how they try to shepard you to the next logical story and continent, though the quests are a little less forgiving. I'm going to start Chapter 4 tonight, and delve deeper into Noctilium. This game is giving me everything I need, and by goodness, it's exhilarating to vault around on the edges of mountains, avoiding overpowered mobs.

Yes, yes, yes! I like how this game seems to blend a lot of different games together. There's a little bit of platforming with jumping around and trying to figure out how or if you can get to different areas. There's stealth-like missions as you creep around unfriendlies. For some reason, I got this Battalion Wars like vibe while going through the Prone base. Having the enemy soldiers stand around guarding different areas and then attacking and picking off a little group with guns a-blazing. Afterwards, regrouping and preparing for the next tactical strike while keeping the element of surprise and not getting overwhelmed, it just gave me this feeling like I was now playing a different game for a moment. It took me a bit to figure out where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to be doing but eventually I figured out to just keep following the sort of line of low HP enemies and avoid the high HP enemy section of enemies. Obviously, I'll be coming back to take out that base later on in the game. Although it bugs me story wise that I'm not seeing a group of skells mobilizing for battle against the Prone now that NLA knows about them.

As for not being able to complete the frontier net, I was bugged when I got to one probe in Primordia not too far away from home base and close to others. It required sneaking past some pretty potent grexes. When I reached it, it turned out I didn't have a high enough level to activate which was a surprise and a bummer. There's definitely a plan and pathways like you mention but I do like the feeling you have where you almost think maybe you can sequence break the game like in Metroid. As for fast-warping, I was initially resistant to the idea because I wanted to make this as semi-realistic as possible in my mind and have my characters travelling these distances day and night like I'd do in Zelda games with this illusion in my mind of a grand journey. But I finally started giving up on that and warping around. There's just so much to do and see that walking everywhere would probably add too much extra time.

[oohhboy]

L+A is to favourite/boost a post. The L+A posts got in early so tehy are like a virus, wasting screen space. Just black list them. So far the posts are 100% worthless.

Don't take the bulletin board missions as the pay is rubbish and it is 100% busy work.

I wish the game had a much stronger single player focus as I miss the future sight stuff. The new system is a weak replacement for it.

A small problem I have right now is I am a little under levelled for where I am in the game story wise so off to grind I go!

[Evan_B]

You mean the Blade board? It might be busy work but lots of them contribute to your personal Blade rank, which is arguably the most important part of exploration. I'm particularly pleased (yet also a little annoyed) with setting myself up as an Outfitter, as their Blade assignments boost rank very fast (because of their low frequency) and their other function, which is to improve armory alley, relies heavily on Miranium mining. My current Miranium storage is around 12000 units so I'm steadily raising my Blade rank. However, the Outfitter based quests also rely on class and weapon experimentation, which means I can't sit in my class of choice for very long if I want to complete them.

The nature and purpose of questing in this game makes a lot more sense to me, seeing as you are trying to survive and explore and you being one of the only people capable of doing so. They may feel like busy work to some, but I quite enjoy the feeling of going out and hunting down a rare material or defeat a Tyrant, which are much more frequent in this game. I can't agree with you on the battle system, however. The balance of melee and ranged attacks and pretty much Soul Voice in general are vast improvements to the system, and while chain attacks would have definitely been nice I feel that future sight was a suitable gimmick for the original but really has no place here. Soul Voice in particular has a ridiculous amount of applications and I highly suggest anyone who is past Chapter 4 taking a look at the various Soul Voice modifcations.

In regards to the other parts of New LA, I have briefly entered the industrial and residential areas but they are largely untouched. I'll have to explore them eventually, of course. I was initially hesitant about Noctilium, as it's design felt a bit strange and I had a little sensory overload from the fauna, but upon completing Chapter 4 and realizing that entire segment took place in one quarter of the map I realized I didn't really have much of an opinion on the region as a whole. I did stumble across a strange level 60 Tyrant that I hope gets a little more fleshing-out.

[Soren]

So is there anywhere in the menu where I can find my current recruited members and their locations? I know Elma and Lin are inside the barracks, and Irina is just outside them, but I have no idea where to find the rest...

Also, look at this nice NWR meeting I found near the barracks!



And here's my character's stats before I completed Chapter 4 tonight.

[oohhboy]

It turned out I wasn't under levelled. I ran into a bit of bad game design in chapter 5 which required the use of a skill you wouldn't normally use for said purpose.

The Soul Voice system is more flexible especially because they removed the long chain attacks which were a pain to execute, something I don't miss. I miss the future sight system as it gave you a way to say "**** you" back at whatever you're attacking and feel clever for it. You don't get that with the SVS because the benefits feel nebulous.

[Khushrenada]

So is there anywhere in the menu where I can find my current recruited members and their locations? I know Elma and Lin are inside the barracks, and Irina is just outside them, but I have no idea where to find the rest...

I discovered them by tapping on my map to figure out what some gold shields were. For instance, Gwin is the area with the gold shield at the top by the x to close the pop-up on this map:



As for Doug, he's the top gold shield of the two that are covered by the pop-up message in that map picture. Thought I grabbed a screenshot of it also but I guess I didn't. Unfortunately, there's no better way to tell where to find characters than just tapping your map screen from what I can tell. With Doug, I had to go down a floor which the map doesn't really tell you from looking at it.

I put off starting level to do a bunch of BLADE missions and boost my level up to 15 as it seemed that was the next grade for some armor and weapons. However, I only seem to have gone from 10 - 12 in this time. Maybe I need to do more battling but then the game mentions stuff like leaving the animals in peace and not starting fights. I'm so confused. However, I do think I'm getting the hang of the battle system a bit more. I just went and did one quick mission before bed and I took down a couple Suids on the way. They were only level 6 and 7 but I took them out fast. I noticed a stagger message come up on both in the battle and moved to art that was supposed to have a topple effect and the topple worked both times I activated it. Then I switched to my melee weapon, moved in and used a strong melee attack art and that pretty much did it for them with my party's help. Might seem obvious to the rest of you at this point but I felt pretty good with how my skill was increasing in battle and putting things together. Anyways, this is where I'm at if we are posting these messages now.



I think I saw oohhboy was at level 24 or something when looking at my favorites list. What? Are you not sleeping? Holy! I suppose I should start Chapter 4 now and finally visit Noctilum yet there's still so much of Primordia and NLA I've yet to explore and want to see. Decisions, decisions.

Also, I didn't recognize the other two NWR members in Soren's picture. Right now my favorites list is oohhboy, RABicle, Evan_B, Soren, Jon Leung and Bill Aurion. From the people who have been posting in this thread so far, I'm not sure who else I'm missing. I suppose I should seek out and make sure I'm friended with ejamer and Enner if they are getting this game and joining in too. But are there other NWR members out there not posting in this thread we should be hooking up?

[oohhboy]

Sleep? pfff, that's what cats are for.

Not quite level 24, but slamming my head on Bosses. SOBs are hard, I really should swap back to my more advanced build to crank out the damage faster instead of playing medic.

Don't worry about finding those people to add as your 4th. Those characters don't level you unless they come with you. Go pick up randoms or use the scout computer to find someone to fill the spot, that way you can get peeps higher level than you are to help out.

Leaving animals alive is story fluff only. Kill all the wildlife you want. I am no expecting a Metal Gear Solid River of the Dead thing to happen.