Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles Wii / 3DS / Definitive Edition

[Khushrenada]

Some thoughts from past comments.

This game has triggered my horrible obsessive compulsions with MMORPGs or open-world games. I spent the first three hours of the game walking around Colony 9 and the surrounding area gathering collectibles and speaking to every named non-player character in the town. I think I've only completed about 3 story quests! The last thing I did was deliver a lunch and return home. And by "return home" I mean swim to the opposite shore, walk around an island, and get my party knocked out by a high level monster that suddenly appeared when night time set.

I'm loving this game.

This sounds exactly like my first 3 hours playing.

Ha! This is exactly my experience so far. I'm now about 5.5 hours in and just about to enter a cave with three party members. I can actually find my way around colony 9 now and have done a LOT of swimming.

Isn't that everybody's experience with this game? Besides XCX flashbacks for obvious reasons, I find this game reminding me of my time in Breath of the Wild. BotW is pretty much my first open world game aside from the 20 or so hours I think I spend in XCX. At the time open-worlds were growing in gaming, there weren't many that appeared on Nintendo consoles. By the time they did with Arkham City or Assassin's Creed and such, I was getting back into gaming again but primarily through the 3DS and its "smaller" offerings as well as playing older generation games. So perhaps I'd have a different view if I was more aware of other entries in the genre.

I bring it up because I remember when I played Super Mario 3D Land on 3DS. It felt like such a fresh Mario experience. A few years later, when I finally played Super Mario Galaxy 2, it was sort of like the missing link that allowed me to see how Mario games went from Galaxy 1 to 3D Land. There were elements about Galaxy 2 I recognized in 3D Land and so it no longer seemed to be this game that just came into being somehow on its own. Xenoblade Chronicles reminds me of that. It’s like the missing link to how BotW came into existence and now I feel I can see this sort of path of development on Nintendo’s side of how it came into being.

Colony 9 is like the Great Plateau region. A gentle introduction to the game and the abilities and systems in play. A large contained space that I wanted to explore all of it before moving on. Wanting to meet and talk to every NPC in town was my equivalent of climbing multiple trees and surfaces to new heights when first playing BotW. Tackling the enemies around the colony was the same as learning the various ways you could beat up Moblins. Only ready to move on once I’d fully covered the area. Taking in the views and consulting the game map with what I was seeing and exploring.

Had a big ol' 4 hour play session last night after a break from playing for a bit (life always interferes with my gaming dagnabbit).


I had stopped just after the first Mechon attack. Story says I'm supposed to head to another colony now. So what did I do? Spent the whole time in and around my hometown doing sidequests, raising affinities, gem crafting, leveling up some different arts and swapping out gear.
 
THOROUGHLY enjoyed myself. I'm getting better at the craziness of combat. And thank-you to gbuell about the suggestion to switch to the classic controller. I broke down and sprung for a CCPro (had a regular one that has become sticky with myriad "children-juice"). It has made a huge difference.
 
You know, I think this Xenoblade Chronicles thing just might be a pretty darn good game. 

Heck yeah! I find it hard to tear myself away from Colony 9 even when I return to it now. Still trying to connect a few people on the affinity chart and the music is just so inviting.

[Khushrenada]

 

"... 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.

I've been sort of patting myself on the back a bit after reading through these older comments as there seems to be a lot of things I've been staying aware and trying to keep up with or doing that a few others missed or learned about until much later in the game when it become more necessary. I think a big part of that is the affinity chart and wanting to up the affinity within my party.

After I had Sharla join and played around a bit with her on the party, it was soon after that her and Reyn were learning more arts than could actually be used in battle. I began figuring out what options I wanted them to perform in battle and starting to see how some arts connected. Doing that made me see how they offered different tactics in battle. This did lead to me switching up who was the leader for a bit to see how that might go and what the AI might do with Shulk. I wondered if I might learn something there that I was not doing or missing while controlling Shulk. However, I didn’t really notice much change in tactics with Reyn and I felt constrained with Sharla who has limited attacks nor did I require much healing. Didn’t notice anything special from AI Shulk either. Soon I encountered a bunch of Mechon through the end of Bionis Leg into the Ether Mine thus went back to Shulk and just kept refining how I used him and the Monado.

After though, I did switch to Dunban as party leader to try and start building affinity with him and the other members. Shulk and Reyn were maxed in their affinity and Sharla was mid-level with both of them leaving Dunban starting from the bottom with all. I’m pretty sure I went through the Marsh completely as Dunban exploring it all with Sharla for all the flying enemies and swapping in Shulk and Reyn a bit. I went back to Shulk though once I had Riki and Melia join in order to build up affinity with him and them. I feel that it is probably Shulk have good affinity with all members for chain attacks since the Monado should be important in most battles and he is the main character. Plus, Shulk gets more Experience with completing quests thanks to a skill tree unlock so with all the Frontier Village questing I began doing with Riki and Melia along (plus return trips to previous areas), I wanted him in the lead.

Once I was ready to finish exploring Makna Forest, I did make Riki leader to try him out a bit. Ended up switching to Shulk when it came time to fight the boss. Overall, not clear yet what I think of Riki. It was at this point I began reading these past comments and how Mannypon was highly praising Riki so I was excited to see the result with him in battle. By the time I got back into the story and exploring, my party was levelled pretty high for the area. Even the boss, I was 5 levels higher so it wasn’t much of a sweat thanks to all that questing before.

However, by switching to Riki, it did get me to start thinking more about Aggro and the effect it has in battle. Like Shulk, Riki has a couple attacks that do more damage on a different side of an enemy besides the front. But if I’m controlling Riki and starting battles then that usually means he’ll have the monster facing him most battle unless another character can create more aggro after awhile. So, near the end of Makna Forest, I’d often start a battle with Shulk doing a backslash on an enemy for big instant damage. Then with the enemy focused on Shulk, I’d start moving forward away from the group so that the enemy would keep turning to face me and expose its backside to Riki while Melia did… her thing. She’s helping but I still haven’t really done much in depth with her yet to know how well she’s helping.

In any case, moving around in battle seems to be making a difference both in limiting enemy damage and giving me more battle affinity attacks but, again, I was pretty overpowered at the end. I either had enemies way too strong that I wasn’t going to fight or quite a bit under that there was no challenge so I couldn’t really pick on someone my own size to accurately judge if it is the movement or just my stats. It has got me thinking about going back to Reyn though since I think that is probably the way he is meant to be used. With his high HP and increased aggro attacks, I should be using him to keep the enemies main attacks and attention on me in order to position them in ways to make it easy for the CPU to maximize their attacks and position. I don’t think Reyn has any attacks that require hitting an enemy on the side or back which means he can stay in front of an enemy.

So, while there is definitely more I have to learn with the characters and I’m sure I could be improving my battle strategies further (like tension is something I only have a theoretical understanding of still), thanks to my focus on building affinity and switching around the team to build up with chain attacks, battles and some quests, it has at least kept me mindful of testing the other members in situations.

[Order.RSS]

Pretty fun to read over some of the initial impressions compared to your current ones, Khush. Do you think you'd like it as much back in the day?

The Xenoblade series is one of the great white whales in my backlog. Own two of them, Xenoblade 1 was very cheap on Virtual Console once, and Xenoblade X I have maybe 5 hours in total. Might need to turn one of these into a Summer project.

[broodwars]

I have been catching up on Xenoblade in recent weeks, as I never finished the Wii version. I got up to Sword Valley & then got stuck in the reeds trying to catch up on the sidequests (particularly the Colony 6 ones). The sidequests in Xenoblade are so spectacularly boring & nigh-uncompletable in the original version, so I eventually got bored & frustrated & put it down.

Playing the Definitive Version on Switch, there's a lot of quality of life stuff I appreciate here that does a lot to negate my issues with the original release. The ability to track quests now is a godsend, since the game will now mark anywhere you need to go and what you need to interact with IF it's present in the game world at that time. This along makes the sidequests way more do-able without a Wiki, though Wiki you will still need to complete more than 1/4 of them because of their obscure unlock conditions and arbitrarily-stupidly RNG collectables.

I appreciate the rearranged soundtrack, though in most cases it's not that different from the original soundtrack. Unfinished Battle STILL should have been used a lot more than the 1 time it gets used in the main game (yes, I know Future Connect corrects this). The new models are great. The environments, though...yeah, they still kind of suck, with bland and blurry textures a lot of the time and simple geometry.

In any case, I've reached the Mechonis capital, so I'm way beyond where I originally was in the Wii version. Unfortunately, I think the game pretty much peaks with the events in Sword Valley. Xenoblade has something of the "Far Cry 3 issue", where the first 1/2 - 2/3 of the game are very strong. You traverse a wide variety of environments that THEMSELVES change greatly depending on whether it's day or night, and you have a strong narrative hook in chasing Metal Face. Then Metal Face gets Vaased, and now I have to slog through the most boring, uninspired, unchanging portion of the game to take on a new villain I do not care about at all and the game's really given me no reason to. He's just a dime a dozen "destroy everything" villain, regardless of the justification the game shoehorns in there. I don't care, and it doesn't help that the game's already made it clear that even HE'S not the big villain I have to care about.

Seriously, the Mechonis portion of the game is so obviously rushed & uninspired that it feels like it's only here because Monolith thought people would get angry if you never walked on it. You go from the open, secret-packed world of the Bionis to a series of linear corridors & and endless combat rooms.

I seem to be nearing the end of the game, and I've pretty much settled on a battle party of Shulk, Battle Angel Alita, & Sharla for general exploration & Shulk, Dunban, & Sharla for when things actually get serious. Tried other combinations over the course of the game, but Melia is too useless when not directly controlled & I prefer having a combination DPS & Tank over having a dedicated Tank when Shulk's in the party. And you need the Monado, so you're going to have Shulk.

[Lemonade]

I have played this on Switch for about 13 hour so far. I definitely like it more than the 3DS version, the map and quest log improvements are really good and the casual mode is making it so battles arent a constant struggle.

It also looks significantly better than the 3DS version, especially the faces.

[pokepal148]

The 3D effect in the 3DS version certainly has it's moments. Manka Forest in particular is a real treat. Unfortunately the 3D effect itself is kind of weak. With how much of a sense of scale Xenoblade's worlds have it should lend itself quite nicely to the Stereoscopic effect but unfortunately we didn't quite get there.

[Khushrenada]

You're going casual? I've ignored it and stayed expert although I have wondered about trying it out. There was just something about the way it doled out or handled EXP that when reading it I thought it better to stick with Expert mode and learn the battle system more. Plus, that's what I wanted by starting this game so that I'd understand it for the other games in the series.

I stopped reading Broodwars post because he decided to go in full on spoilers there near the middle. Yes, I know it is an 8-year old game that is sort of on its 4th release but I'd made a point about how I bumped this thread since it was pretty spoiler-safe. Tsk tsk. But from the first couple paragraphs I did read, it seems like XCX refined the XC experience and is perhaps the model it has followed since. (My knowledge of XC2 is so sparse that I'm completely in the dark with how it plays in comparision.) XCX also would make it easier find materials or enemies needed in a quest and marked on the map. A lot of the menus seem similar to the XCX set-up so it seems they've just copied that refinement over to this Definitive Edition. It's great for me since that is what I'm sort of familiar with from my XCX playtime and I'm understanding things I wondered about and wasn't quite catching on in X.

[Khushrenada]

Pretty fun to read over some of the initial impressions compared to your current ones, Khush. Do you think you'd like it as much back in the day?

It's hard to say because, again, the DE edition is obviously a bit more refined by its menus and options thanks to the lessons learned since its original release and sequels. So, I don't know how great the difficulty might have been in some of the sidequests compared to how I'm finding them by playing the game in this version.

Even with that Caveat, I'm pretty sure I'd have liked it if I had played it in 2012. In fact, there's a chance I'd have liked it more because the large environments would have been more impressive going through them at the time rather than coming to them after seeing XCX and BotW. Those are now my standards for large scale worlds/maps/lands. These are still big lands but seeing Gaur Plains/Bionis Leg for the first time this game felt good because you were no longer surrounded by walls like Colony 9 or the Tephra Cave and could obviously travel around a great distance. But partly what drew me to X was when watching a bit of it on Nintendo Treehouse where they showed the beginning and you quickly come to a high vista leading to a quick cutscene showing you this huge open landscape of Primordia with massive creatures and a game map that stretches in all directions with the huge New Los Angeles ahead which was also a huge town to explore. Then BotW kind of topped that by having you leaving the Resurrection Cave and see the massive world of Hyrule all around you within 10 minutes.

The effect is that XC:DE hasn't exactly felt like a fresh new experience like it probably would have in 2012 since I wouldn't have had those comparisons at the time and the largest worlds I can think of would have been like Wind Waker or Twilight Princess. Sort of Metroid Prime stuff but that's a lot of interconnected rooms and not really open spaces even if they form a large area together. Perhaps if I had then I might have felt more like Mop it up who was never quite over the moon on BotW like other users here although she still enjoyed it. Maybe that came from seeing similarities in BotW to XC elements or maybe not. I was going to make a joke about some of her posts in this thread of how she once again proved to be the most negative poster on NWR because she seemed to be poo-pooing a few other peoples claims of this game being revolutionary. Clearly she wasn't that hyped by XC back in the day either.   

[Khushrenada]

The Xenoblade series is one of the great white whales in my backlog. Own two of them, Xenoblade 1 was very cheap on Virtual Console once, and Xenoblade X I have maybe 5 hours in total. Might need to turn one of these into a Summer project.

I get it. People always talked about the amount of time they played with this game and since I usually seem to move slower and take my time more in a game, I figured it would be an even longer playtime for me so I'd put it off with the idea of playing some other stuff that was shorter. Maybe if I took a bite out of my collection/backlog then I'd be fine with spending a longer amount of time with one game as it potentially piled up some more. But that plan didn't often work out either with me spending a long time on games I thought would be shorter. Like, when I played Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, I figured that would be something I'd finish in a couple weeks but then it was two months later and in my top ten of longest playtimes on my 3DS by the time it was over. I never expected to put 500 some hours into Animal Crossing: New Leaf but that happened too. So, I guess I just don't know what will be a long or short experience and it depends on how dogged I want to be with completing it top to bottom.

Personally, I had no plans to get the DE version when it was announced and, in my head, if I was going to play an XC game then it was going to be X where I finish what I started. But I didn't see myself doing that for another couple years. However, having recently tackled a bunch of games I'd sort of put to the top of my backlog to finally play like Chrono Trigger and Metroid: Other M along with some others like a bunch of the Game Boy Virtual Console games I was inspired to buy from the eShop series I've been doing (and need to get back to), I guess I felt like I had been taking a bite out of the backlog even if it might not have been as sizeable as I imagine. As mentioned before, with mostly staying inside from Covid and most social activities paused along with movie theaters shut down and television series sort of ending early as channels scramble to find programming to fill the air in the meantime or play reruns, playing a 100 game didn't seem like that much of a challenge. Heck, it's been two weeks and I'm into hour 65 as of last night. I think I'm over the 50% mark so maybe I wrap this up in another couple weeks with how things are but the timing just felt so right for doing this now.

It helped that there wasn't much for gaming news and, if you weren't playing Animal Crossing, XC:DE was pretty much the only other thing Nintendo was kind of talking about for an upcoming release. The result was that I started feeling some hype about the game and it's release and seriously thinking about just finally playing it instead of putting it off as a future project. Plus, a few people on the NWR Discord were talking about the release and I knew a person or two in a different chat that were also looking forward to it so the game was getting the most hype it may have had in 8 years. I'd say what really drew me to it the most was this trailer that was on the Switch News Channel for some time:

The BnM trademarked link


Watch at your own peril though since it will have some spoiler-y things about it as it tries to show a bunch of entertaining moments that can be encountered and give you some part of the story to hook you into buying and playing the game as a trailer should. Even though I was know seriously planning to play it, I wasn't necessarily planning on getting the Switch version. I was thinking of playing my Wii version but I was playing Super Paper Mario as the release got close and disliked the amount of time it would take to start my Wii U and go to Wii Mode and then launch a game compared to how quickly I could start my Switch and get going into Tetris 99 battles or Mario Odyssey. Plus, I don't have a classic or pro controller for the Wii/Wii U and do for Switch and wondered how much I'd be charging and swapping batteries. Nintendo was so right to focus on getting the Switch interface to start quickly and get you playing a game fast. It's almost a bigger selling point than being able to play it as a console or portable.

I do also have the 3DS version and that was the route I was leaning towards the most. Pokepal's been playing it this way and I actually have a twinge of regret that I'm not doing it that way also since I'm a big 3D effect proponent. Yet, with the lack of upcoming game announcements from Nintendo coupled with the fact that I ended up getting a $40.00 gift card with Amazon and could thus by the Special Edition Switch version for cheaper than the regular Switch version by using it, I opted for the big TV experience and quick Switch interface. Aside from not playing it with a 3D visual effect, I have no regrets with the decision. It's worth the money. (Is it worth buying it 3 times over to finally play it once? Well.... let's not get into that.  :-[ :-X )

And with Pokepal's recent report,

The 3D effect in the 3DS version certainly has it's moments. Manka Forest in particular is a real treat. Unfortunately the 3D effect itself is kind of weak. With how much of a sense of scale Xenoblade's worlds have it should lend itself quite nicely to the Stereoscopic effect but unfortunately we didn't quite get there.

I feel even less regret with waiting until now to play the game and do so with the DE version.

[Khushrenada]

One more thing while I'm typing up a storm, (still got it when it comes to walls of text!), despite feeling the game has been surpassed a bit by what has come since through some other titles, I've enjoyed much of what it has to offer like some large towns to explore and the affinity chart of connecting these simple NPC characters and doing those fetch quests. I love to explore in games and see every nook and cranny in a world and this game still delivers in doing that. The main thing that sets it apart from the experience of X at this point for me is the story.

When it comes to the story, I think that is a big part of what has held me back from playing this game until now. X had a story hook that grabbed my imagination and drew me right in with the idea of Earth getting destroyed as collateral damage in a war between two other vastly advanced species fighting amongst themselves with a small surviving Earth contingent escaping into space and crashing onto a unknown planet. Now the survivors have to explore this unknown danger and unlock the secrets of this new planet/home.

XC2 also has an appeal in having like 40 different Titans that these characters and different cultures live on and are sort of fighting amongst each other for supremacy in the universe they exist in while searching for a mythical ancient land of Elysium and the secret power it supposedly has. Unlike XC1, the idea of all these different sized Titans that were still living and moving sort of took the idea of XC and its two unmoving titans and upped the ante.

As for XC1, my idea of the story from what I had pieced together from various bits of info from other users discussions or trailers was that Shulk lived in a world where they constantly battled robots from a distant land. In developing tech to fight the robots, the Monado was invented but the person who was using it dies in an attack and Shulk ends up grabbing it in desperation only to see visions of the future in battle and win the day. With this power, he and his friends set on a journey across a vast landscape to topple the robot empire. I knew they lived on this giant dead being and you could apparently explore as far as the eye could see and that part intrigued me. As for the rest of it, it sounds fine for a videogame story or perhaps even a movie but not that fresh or exciting to draw me into playing it like the others kind of did.

The reality is not quite like what I had imagined from others discussion of the game. At the time, I imagined something like BotW in which all areas are basically open and connected and you can constantly see all across Hyrule from high and low. I thought with Xenoblade Chronicles, the Bionis was the same with being able to just keep going from top to bottom or vice versa. It's actually still sectioned areas that you explore but you can kind of see the connection they have to each other. I'd relate it to Super Mario Sunshine (because everything great comes back to Sunshine! ) where you can see other Delfino areas/levels in the distance but you can't just travel across the land or water to them. Like you can see Ricco Harbor, Gelato Beach and Sirena (hotel?) in the distance or background from different parts of Pinna Park. While it creates the impression of a singular world, each area is still separate from the other and you have to travel through pipes/warps to get around between them.

While the singular overworld I imagined doesn't quite exist, the story has ended up being more engrossing than I expected as it unfolds at times in unexpected ways and with me trying to guess as to what it might be leading up to or what the answers may be to some of the questions it has created. It has been doing its job of getting me to stick with it and keep playing even if I do let it sit on the backburner at times in order to explore and muck about in the NPC villages or try and build up affinity so I can see a new Heart to Heart. Even then, it still makes for an itch I want to scratch and get back to soon because I want to see it keep unfolding. Since XC1 seems to have been designed with a bit of an easier difficulty curve and how it doles out information on its systems and leaving you with more time to practice something you've just learned or are trying to figure out, it makes it easier for me to keep playing and keep moving the story forward.

I do appreciate X for not waiting around to really throw a player into the action with giving you multiple party members you can use right away, a massive central hub to craft weapons and get quests and wide areas that you can explore in any direction although you're bound to encounter a lot of overpowering stuff due to a course the game still has charted out for progession not to mention all the mapping system that was going on as well. It was a lot of information being put on a player at once and without the experience of XC1, I felt like I was just keeping my head above water at times. I was still progressing a bit and keeping the story moving but I just felt like I could be doing better with how to understand the battles I was engaging in or tactics to deploy and confused about the benefits or disadvantages certain things could bring. Now, so much more of it has clicked and questions I had have been answered. I feel now I was doing a lot of the right things in X so I should have just kept plugging away. There are still some things about it that I will need to look into that aren't in XC1 like mapping the lands and crafting weapons (which may be the equivalent of gem crafting in this game. Can't recall if gems were in X) and the different classes/faction you could be a part of. But at least I'll now feel confident about a lot of the basics in that game to be able to build off and see how those connect to them.

[broodwars]

I stopped reading Broodwars post because he decided to go in full on spoilers there near the middle. Yes, I know it is an 8-year old game that is sort of on its 4th release but I'd made a point about how I bumped this thread since it was pretty spoiler-safe. Tsk tsk.

As you said, it's an 8 year old game on its 4th re-release. Get over it. I didn't even spoil anything major, and in fact went out of my way to not spoil one particular thing newcomers would have run into early on.

But don't worry. Like the rest of the forums, I won't bother posting here again. Maybe it's time to close this account down and just be done with this site in general.

[Khushrenada]

In the end, the best pitch I feel I can make about this game is that if you like Breath of the Wild then I think a person should be able to like this game. It's got no breakable weapons so right there a lot of people should already be excited to play it. At times, playing this game has made me feel like it has taken Breath of the Wild and complicated it a bit more (or vice-versa and BotW took this game and uncomplicated and streamlined it). If I had the option, I'd chose BotW's action combat over the battle system in this game but I think real-time battling is more fun and engaging then entering in an attack command when your meter allows in between the automatic attacking the characters do when fighting. However, some people really like the XC battle system (like Evan_B) so perhaps it is preferable to others, particularly those who always complained about a weapon breaking in BotW.

Like BotW, Monolithsoft has done a good job of crafting a world I want to keep spending time in and exploring to find new surprises and take in the world from different vantage points. The total journey may be 100+ hours but at 65 hours in, I've enjoyed them more than some games I may have spent 20 hours in and they felt much longer. That's my pitch to Steefosaurus and anyone else reading this if they are still on the fence.

[Khushrenada]

I stopped reading Broodwars post because he decided to go in full on spoilers there near the middle. Yes, I know it is an 8-year old game that is sort of on its 4th release but I'd made a point about how I bumped this thread since it was pretty spoiler-safe. Tsk tsk.

As you said, it's an 8 year old game on its 4th re-release. Get over it. I didn't even spoil anything major, and in fact went out of my way to not spoil one particular thing newcomers would have run into early on.

But don't worry. Like the rest of the forums, I won't bother posting here again. Maybe it's time to close this account down and just be done with this site in general.

Maybe so if you are going to react like that from a post.

Looking back at it, I can see one reading it and thinking I might have had an angry tone with the mad emoji. Just to make it clear, that wasn't my tone or emotion in writing that or what I felt from your post. I did have an "Aww, really?" reaction when I was first reading it and started seeing some of this later game stuff mentioned but it didn't make me furious at you or anything. I meant it more as gentle ribbing while just using the moment to politely remind anyone who might be reading these current discussions and might be thinking of joining in to hopefully be wary of spoilers even though I'm aware it isn't a fresh new game. Right after that, I was then chiming in agreement with a lot of what you had written because I wasn't upset about it and want to keep the discussion going. I knew engaging in any discussion on this game while I play it risks an unintentional spoiler but I'm willing to risk that because playing it makes me want to talk about it.

At work, there are people I joke around with and sometimes you give a person a hard time about something they did like it really exasperated you or "they've really done it now!" with a mistake they might have made but it is in jest and just faux-anger. That was the intent and why I wrote my post that way 'cause you've really done it now, Broodwars.



But that is not my intent with my first line in this post. You've posted stuff on here that has set me off or made me furious and yet I've held my tongue on a lot of it but there have still been times I felt compelled to make a response to. So, I can't exactly hold it against you when a natural reaction of getting upset is to reply back in anger or critically of someone. Yet, I've said it before and it just seems like I keep coming back to it which is that you just seem to always seem to choose the intent of a post as an attack on you and reply back with an angry post thereby causing you to get attacked in response and validate you opinion as to the intent of the "offending" post being an attack all along. Granted, I know that stance has been valid at times. As I said, you have a way of wording things to set people off and if it has happened to me then it has obviously happened to others and these forums have examples of you and other users getting into a big or small flame war over something that was posted.

To use the old cliche that when your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail then perhaps those past experiences have caused you to see in all sorts of posts an attack that isn't actually there. At this point, I don't know if your thinking that way can be prevented or if you can reply back in a manner that isn't aggressive to keep from suddenly escalating a moment and putting heat to a situation that had none.

Like with your reply, even if you thought I was upset and attacking you, why could you not have replied something like: "Sorry* but, even you admitted, it's an 8 year old game on its 4th re-release. I felt my post was common knowledge at this point and therefore wouldn't spoil anything major for both your enjoyment and others. I thought I was being careful since I remembered something newcomers would have run into early on and removed it from the post but one can't always predict what might be a spoiler for some and not for others. But I really wasn't trying to be careless in what I said.

*Dang it. Now everyone is going to know I'm Canadian for sure by starting an example reply with sorry.

Instead, it's "Get over it." and "I didn't even spoil anything major," (an implication to defend how you are in the right and I'm in the wrong because you've determined what is a major spoiler) followed by "and in fact went out of my way to not spoil one particular thing newcomers would have run into early on." (aka you should actually be thanking me for the restraint and incredible effort I showed in the info I had in my post and was more considerate to you than you've just been to me.) And I'm not going to touch the whole "Won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" second part.

Now, am I reading the intent of your post wrong? It's possible. You'd be able to tell me. I've certainly put my spin and the emotion I feel was behind those words in my explanation and paraphrasing of them. Maybe that wasn't the tone or thinking you had in making it. That's the danger of text only without voices and facial expressions. Maybe you and I are just two people with different personalities who will just always be unable to understand the other.

A while ago, I thought pokepal had made a pointless and dumb actual attack or cheapshot towards you based on old history that seemed to be over. I thought I'd intervene on your behalf and end what seemed to be an unnecessary rabble-rousing situation by calling him out on the thread only for you to show up and thank him for the thread because he actually said something about it being your birthday. I threw up my hands in the air at that because I did not see that response coming or that you would actually be thanking him for that thread. Meanwhile, I'm doing a tongue-in-cheek tsk tsk and that is the last straw for you and these forums. I don't know. It's such mood whiplash that I don't know how any post will connect with you.

I don't know if that is the same for other people on here or not or if it is just me. But if I'm not alone then maybe by posting this and trying to give you more of an explanation of my intent and viewpoint about something like this then maybe you'll remember it in the future and try to make peace and not war as your first reply. Perhaps it is all the time I've had doing customer service or inter-company work in which you have to deal with randos and different employees each day and trying to keep the peace with all of them. I think I've developed some skills to defuse a tense situation or at least keep it from escalating. I want to think I've applied that to my time in communicating with others here but I know that hasn't always been the case and I've been the one at fault in a matter. Yet, it is still my intent to try and build bridges with everyone that comes here and resist burning them including you, Broodwars, because a person can always learn something from any other person no matter who it is. But right now, I don't know what your intent is with these forums or the bonds you want with the users here based on some of the replies you make.

[ejamer]

..., Xenoblade 1 was very cheap on Virtual Console once, ...

Are you in Europe, perhaps?  Asking because I really wanted to buy Xenoblade on Wii U VC but never once saw it go on sale in North America, which was a real bummer.  Maybe I just missed it?

[Order.RSS]

But don't worry. Like the rest of the forums, I won't bother posting here again. Maybe it's time to close this account down and just be done with this site in general.

Would be a shame to see you go BroodW. I always like reading your sceptical, grounded & hype-resilient perspective on things. Do what you think is best obviously, you don't owe us your time or company, but just want to selfishly say I hope you reconsider this decision.
If not, thanks for the good times, and I hope things go well for you in the future. Know that you're welcome here if you ever want to return. One day I'll find that PSP copy of Split/Second you recommended me a while back.

Are you in Europe, perhaps?  Asking because I really wanted to buy Xenoblade on Wii U VC but never once saw it go on sale in North America, which was a real bummer.  Maybe I just missed it?

Don't recall if it was a MyNintendo Gold Coins kinda thing, a regular sale, or one of those personalised birthday discounts, sorry. It's a bummer they stopped doing VC sales, I got one of the EarthBound games for like 5$ (and never played it), and things like the GBA Castlevanias and Majora's Mask would show up in the Halloween sales too. Still have a lot of VC games wishlisted which seemingly never went on sale (DKC2, Onimusha Tactics, Lost in Shadow).
I was gonna get Xenoblade regardless though, since 20$ is a good deal for this game given the scarcity of Wii discs thanks to the Gamestop exclusivity. You can also get it cheaper if you buy the digital code card elsewhere with external discounts. Amazon sells those codes still for sure.

In the end, the best pitch I feel I can make about this game is that if you like Breath of the Wild then I think a person should be able to like this game.

Helluva pitch Khush haha, but yeah makes sense given Monolith's involvement on BOTW as well. Will try to get to it this Summer.

[Khushrenada]

I thought I’d cross the 100 mark yesterday but didn’t start playing until much later in the day then expected. Ended at around 98:13. Thus, it will be tonight that I hit the triple digit mark. Currently at Level 56 for most, if not all, in my party. Back in the day, Mop it up talked about basically being level with the time played so like level 30 at 30 hours in and level 76 at 76-77 hours played. I was like that for awhile until around 34 hours in when I got to Frontier Village and then began SIIIIIIIIIDE-questing! That gap in character level and time grew even greater on reaching the next town and now doing quests across 4 places. Plus, that 4th town is very annoying to traverse in. Such wide empty spacing with little warping to reach some areas.

Now, why was I so obsessed with side-questing? Because every one had a timer next to them indicating at some point these quests would cease to exist. I wasn’t going to miss out and lose all of that. Since I had no idea when the deadline would be with this place, it was imperative I take care of it all now. Part of it wasn’t a big deal since I had the area outside of 4th village to still explore so I could take out a bunch of quests at the same time as I did that and work them together. Still, I did hold back from going to the place of the big confrontation the game had been building towards from Shulk’s early visions because I didn’t know what was going to happen after.

It wasn’t all a chore though. There were some interesting quests that happened like the Red Pollen problem and some that opened up additional skill trees for characters. It adds some more depth to the lore and mysteries of this world so I’m still willing to sink the time in and keep checking with all sorts of people for any potential new progress of connecting people on the Affinity chart or having them move to where they will connect. The end result is when I did go on to Prison Island, I was 10 levels over the enemies there. I think it was supposed to be more of a battle with them attacking me but they all left me alone. In fact, it’s been a pretty basic cruise at the moment as I’ve progressed through the next couple worlds.

I think it was Wednesday last week that I hit 5 star affinity with Colony 9. By this past Tuesday, I had gotten 5 star with Middle and Upper Bionis and am at 3 star with Colony 6. And on Tuesday, I finally built up the affinity enough between Melia and Sharla to end a sidequest I'd had in my log since like the second day of playing. The result is that as I begin going through the Valek Mountain region, I didn't have any active sidequests. Picked up a few in that zone and checking other places after and cleared them out quickly and once again in the next area I had no sidequests remaining. Woo! I'm getting closer to connecting the world on the Affinity chart. I had three large separate groups in Upper Bionis that I was able to finally chain together on Tuesday and they are no connected with almost all of Colony 9 and 6. There's one group in Colony 9 I still haven't been able to chain to everyone else along with a couple people I'm know are just waiting to move to Colony 6. The biggest thing has been trying to get the bottom left of the affinity chart of Frontier Village people to hook up. I've got some people just not connecting and not sure what it will take to get that resolved yet.

And I discovered one more new person in Colony 9. Can't believe I'd missed them after all the times I'd been through there but I know why. Unfortunately, I may have missed a potential quest with them since when I talk to the person, they say their problem has already been solved and I think I know why since there is another person I'd talk to who moved who seemed to do the same work as this person I just discovered. Oh well. I've gotten better with handling the NPCs which is what led me to discovering this latest person but stuff like that is just part of the learning process.

[Khushrenada]

With pokepal and ejamer playing this on 3DS now, it did get me curious to see what the difference is like. I've gone through the beginning and cruised through Colony 9 a bit. Having done that, I'm not sure what I'd have thought about this game playing it that way for the first time. The refinements in the menu system of the DE edition compared to the 3DS (and I'm assuming original) really make a difference. I can live with the rougher look in graphics and characters although I really needed to zoom in with the camera to see some of the enemies in the area. The 3D effect is alright but pokepal is right. It seems kind of muted. There doesn't seem to be a great draw distance or depth to the 3D effect like some other titles even with it at max. It really feels like it is a great option for people who have played the game before and want it portable so they can play it again in bits and bites. With Switch portable and the game upgraded, it seems this version has already been obsoleted. I just can't help but think of the ways the game could be better because of being introduced to it via the Switch version.

On the plus side, I did learn something I had missed the first time around in one of the tutorials so there's been some positives to this comparison. 

[Khushrenada]

Now some questions that I'm hoping someone can answer in a spoiler-free way since I'd like to know the info but don't want to look it up in case I encounter some other stuff.

1. After worrying about the 4th village Alcamoth and its timed quests, there's been nothing so far to indicate why this is the case. I know there are a few people there that need to move and I've got some Heart-to-Hearts to collect there so how long do I have? When do I have to worry about whatever the game is hinting at is coming?

2. Like others in the past, I made the mistake of finding the Tarkin home first and removing the leader only to get a quest later asking to take out that leader and having to do it again. Thus, I started leaving the special named enemies alone besides when they are way overpowered to me in case I get a request later to take them down and not have to double my effort. However, I've also noticed that there are special named enemies in an area that don't get a sidequest to take down. Will I be taking them down later? Will there be a hit list of these special baddies showing who I've defeated and who's left or is that up to me to keep track of? Is it necessary to bother with them all?

3. There are some achievements in the game that talk about taking on an enemy stronger than your party and winning and taking on a battle against an enemy I shouldn't be able to defeat and winning. Yet, when I've tried of late to take on strong enemies, it's always a guick defeat. I seem to make no damage or dent against level 80 or 90 type enemies and even stuff in level 70 I'm getting rocked with my characters around level 56/57. I've got strong armor and gems and have continued to build up my arts as I can. Is there anything tips for this? Is there a certain level equivalency of what can and can't be taken out at a certain level? How is this achievement measured? Do I need to just wait until I'm stronger like into late level 70s to take out level 90 enemies and this would count?

4. I can see from a map and then investigating that there are some parts of an area I just can't get to or access. I've heard of there being some postgame content? Does this mean I have to wait until after the story is over to see these areas or will there be some backtracking coming up later in the game? It bugs me in that I want to complete an area and move on with it done and not have loose threads. Sort of like how I want to collect all the stars in an area before moving on in Mario. No loose threads!

[pokepal148]

Now some questions that I'm hoping someone can answer in a spoiler-free way since I'd like to know the info but don't want to look it up in case I encounter some other stuff.

1. After worrying about the 4th village Alcamoth and its timed quests, there's been nothing so far to indicate why this is the case. I know there are a few people there that need to move and I've got some Heart-to-Hearts to collect there so how long do I have? When do I have to worry about whatever the game is hinting at is coming?

You have until you reach a place called the Mechonis Core to do those ones.

[Khushrenada]

Well, I'm a little bit stumped at the moment. Some of the materials seem to be places I've been at according to the hints so I'm thinking they might be higher level enemies. But I figured the collectables would just be in the next places I get to as they had been up to this point. Some of the Level 2 reconstruction was done with Eryth Sea doodads and some required collectables at Vanek Mountain which I got later on when reaching it. So, I expected to see things in Sword Valley for these Level 3 requirements but nothing and am now in Galahad Fortress and still not seeing any there. I'm not sure how many areas there are until I'd reach the Mechanos Core you mention but I'm getting close to that. Although, typing this up just reminded me that there were no collectables when the group briefly traveled through the Bionis Interior and there was definitely more to that area based on the map. So maybe that's where they are and I'll have to return there soon. C'mon people. You need to start moving to Colony 6 already!! Quit waiting around.

[Khushrenada]

On the subject of Sword Valley, I'm going around and having a grand time picking on any Mechon I feel like. There are these huge tank like Mechon which I like picking on because of their size and they are a bit closer in level to where I'm at. There are a few special named Mechon I'm encountering and taking them out because I'm about 5 - 10 levels stronger than most enemies around. Even when facing Metal Face here, I'm 4 levels stronger and the battle isn't difficult at all. Then I encounter this large tank Mechon called Mischievious Naberius. It's level 57 so its equal to my party. I start fighting it and it starts taking down my party pretty quickly and wins. It's been awhile since I've had a loss or tough fight but this is good. I've been wondering for awhile now how good I am at navigating a battle since I've been overpowered for some time without facing a challenge. So, I fight this thing again and lose again. And again and again and again.

Now I'm going through all my characters and swapping up equipment (which is something I should have done awhile ago as I discovered) and swapping part members. Still getting my butt kicked. Now, I'm trying different gems and doing some gem crafting to make some new and more powerful ones to hopefully counter its attacks. I'm swapping the arts out for my party to try some different tactics and hope the AI can use them in a good way. Still, nothing seems to be working. Meanwhile, my characters are slowly leveling up from these losing battles so I'm like level 58/59 against it and getting AP to increase an art some more. Finally, I decide to look this thing up and see just what its stats are and understand its attacks to counter it which I find at this site here. Scrolled in the comments a bit and saw some different strategies of people talking about it. The comments seemed to mention this enemy as being one of the toughest in the game despite its level so it eased the frustration a bit. Thought about leaving it and getting back to it later but I'd spent so much time on it now and the comments had people talking about beating it at the same level my party was at so I knew it could be done.

One bit of advice was to play as Sharla to do the healing for the group and get to a height in the area to avoid some of its attacks, particularly Titan Stamp which was the attack that was ruining my party all the time. Playing as Shulk, I could avoid it with the Monado.... Speed art, I think. But it would still affect other members of the party. I had been playing as Sharla at first to control the healing but it just didn't seem to be doing much so I started trying others. Early on when I was around level 36/37, I was facing an enemy called Gentle Rodriguez who was Level 40 and he kept taking out my party as well. I think it was 10 or so tries before I took him down. In that battle, I ended up using Shulk's Shield Monado art to counter its hardest hitting attack and that made the difference. But Shield was not doing anything to help me in this battle or to stop this enemy's powerful Titan Stomp attack.

In addition to the height advice was to use Sharla's Tranq Art and put the enemy to sleep when it was going to take unleash Titan Stomp or other attacks. The problem with that strategy is that I've hardly bothered with upgrading or using a lot of the purple arts for characters that involve doing things like sleep, poison, paralysis, burn, etc. They either don't do any damage or little damage that it doesn't seem worth keeping in the mix especially since the break/topple/daze triangle seems to be emphasized more in the game as a tactic versus enemies and bosses. Toppling and dazing would be the same effect as a sleep or paralysis effect to me and those attacks usually have greater damage on their own even if that particular effect doesn't work. In fact, as more arts have opened up, I'm pretty much going with all the red, green and yellow attacks I can with a bit of blue healing mixed in and just a couple purple arts that have a big attack value. But most of the purple and orange arts are out of the mix which worries me because I don't really see their purpose and then I get into an encounter like this where the enemy is not susceptible to break or topple and now I've got basic and undeveloped arts that have effects which could be used. It's that ignoring of Auras and purple and orange arts that led to my early question number 3 and facing off against stronger enemies. Would those make the difference and not a powerful damaging attack?

Fortunately, Sharla's Tranq art was 4/12 since I developed a bit early in the game with her before she started getting other arts bumping it out of rotation. However, that meant that the sleep effect didn't always work when using it. I was also able to get up the side walkways some distance up and start the battle there. It did lead to a bit of awkwardness in trying to get my other two members of Dunban and Riki to the ground to better fight the enemy as they wanted to stay near me at the top but it got worked out. Sure enough, I was safe from the Titan Stomp attack and this allowed me to focus on healing Dunban and Riki as they did the major damage attacks. I pretty much cleared Sharla's arts of any attacking and filled it with healing options and the Tranq which worked from time to time. I also changed up my gem strategy of trying to counter its Blaze attacks or Daze effects from Titan Stomp and just went with my normal focus in an RPG - character HP. I raised the HP of the characters a bunch more taking away the gems being used by my other party not in the fight. That way, they could at least absorb the damage of some of the attacks when I might be stuck in cooldown or waiting for a healing power to become active again. That did it and I finally took the thing down. Ended up being a large chunk of my playtime last night and a mixed reaction. I'm glad I finally won the fight but I felt like I cheesed it a bit and had to go looking for help even though I was sort of on the right track early but didn't see results. I had tried using Sharla from a height but it didn't seem to make difference and I was still getting damaged hard when I first tried it. So, I thought it was an incorrect strategy and abandoned it.

When playing an RPG, if given the option, I'm usually increasing my HP more with each new level (although I'll include attack power here and there). I usually don't bother with other stats as the main thing to winning later battles is to match or exceed the HP of your enemies to survive attacks and take out their HP with your own powerful attacks. XC doesn't let you choose certain stats to increase but with the gems you can adjust things and add abilities. Up to this point, I'd mainly been focusing on attack power and strength for stronger attacks with a bit of additional HP and defense mixed in based on the availability of gems. After this battle, I'm contemplating stripping down all my characters and re-examining all my equipment while focusing on higher HP with some attacking power mixed in and just brute forcing encounters in the tried and true method. Although maybe I'll go back to the tutorials to double check about aura stuff again also.

[Khushrenada]

One other note, I do think that area may be the first area now where I've cleared out every special/unique/named enemy so that's a plus.

[ejamer]

I'm a little behind that in my current play-through, but remember the enemy you were battling quite vividly. I don't recall it being "the hardest" battle, but do remember it ripping through my party a bunch of times... so maybe I just chose not to battle it until being over-leveled later?

Either way, great job and good persistence to keep looking for ways to overcome in the end.

Much of my time recently was spent gem crafting. My inventory couldn't hold any more crystals, and even though I probably should've just sold off all low level ones I invested some time remembering how to craft effectively and try to get some gems that would give my characters a bit of a boost.

[Khushrenada]

A few days ago, my material inventory was at max. Having crafted some lower end gems, I just felt it wasn't worth the process to do that especially since the game was giving me better crystals and materials to work with now for higher gems. I just rid myself of all level 1 materials since I couldn't combine level 1 with 2 or 3. Didn't even bother to sell them. Just didn't seem worth that either. 

[Khushrenada]

I don't recall it being "the hardest" battle, but do remember it ripping through my party a bunch of times

I'm sure there are probably harder battles in the game. As mentioned, there are high level enemies I cannot do anything to in a fight still. But that has been the toughest battle I've faced since I've begun playing this game especially with an enemy in which I'm sort of "evenly" matched.