Xenoblade sneaks onto Nintendo's Facebook page

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Xenoblade sneaks onto Nintendo's Facebook page

I haven't had much time to put into it with the errands I've had to run today, but I'm about to settle in and focus on it. What I've played thus far I've liked, the characters I've encountered are either instantly likeable or instantly love-to-hate. That's a world of difference compared to how I felt toward the other xeno games. I never liked anything in Xenogears and it took me a looooong time to warm-up to XenoSaga - like getting on board the Elsa (which took too long considering how little gameplay there was in getting there).

This one drops you into the action right away and has a nice balance of Japanese and Western sensibilities.

Pre US sales were at 350k, there were about 187k pre-orders for the US according to VG Charts. if it between 500 and 600k total worldwide that will hopefully shake NOA out of its apathy. For what its worth i was one of four people that showed up in the first hour after opening to pick it up, so that gives me hope.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Xenoblade sneaks onto Nintendo's Facebook page

I'm still actually not that far past Colony 9 in Xenoblade ATM, but just to round out a great deal of my impressions take Solitude from Skyrim and its almost half as big Colony 9. The difference being you can't break in to every house much less go in every one. At any rate, the place is huge and its just this tiny little spot on the back of a dead god's calf. Its not like Skyrim where you can just wander off in any direction, but it doesn't feel as on-rails as FFXIII. It feels more like the sense of scope FFXI has except if you can see it far off in the distance, you'll eventually be able to go there.

And yes, you live on a massive dead god, your enemies live on the other massive dead god.

Anyway, avoiding spoilers the quest structure to this game is quite brilliant. Your standard fetch quests now lack the "fetching" so once you kill X number of monsters or collect Y amount of stuff, you're just done and receive your money and EXP. There are exceptions to this, but if you're forced to run back to an NPC or back and forth between more than one, there's usually a good item or weapon thrown in for your trouble. Even that's not much of an issue, though, as it has a fast travel option akin to western RPGs.

There are quite a bit of these quests, but if you're looking for story-based quests, those are there as well. Every now and again an particular NPC will have a larger social problem to deal with and our hero, Shulk, will have a future vision of this situation by way of the power of his Monado, enabling him to make connections to other NPCs and help resolve the problem. This isn't just a plot device, however, Shulk also has these visions in combat situation and you're given a chance to change the future of a battle by warning an ally, buffing them or drawing the enemy's attention elsewhere. Its pretty cool to see these visions aren't just a plot device.

Combat feels akin to an MMO, even moreso than FFXII did. Unlike FFXII, however, positioning enemies for back or side attacks, drawing or diverting aggro, tanking, pulling, having to worry about links, aggro types and all that stuff that in FFXI and other MMOs is in here. Thankfully your AI controlled allies aren't stupid and tend to play into chain attack concepts pretty well. They sometimes can be rendered inactive by standing too deep in water or stuff like that, but otherwise they keep up and keep the pressure on.

There's no ability to pause and queue things like in FFXII or Mass Effect, however. This might sound like it makes it overwhelming for a singleplayer game, but Nintendo and Monolith Soft layered it all in just right. Its not like five pages of fancy, overblown prompts that SE throws at you in FFXIII or Kingdom Hearts, just maybe one or tow straight-forward, easy-to-read ones.

As for the story - worlds better than any of the other Xeno games I've played. Cutscene turn on, do their thing and are usually done in less than five mintues, if that. There's no 45 minute spans of inactivity, the story never gets in the way of the game which is a HUGE problem other Xeno games had. Also gone is the excess melodrama and its replaced with a refreshingly mature tone and cast. There's no excess philosophical babble, no women that scream and squeal like banshees or annoyingly frequent made-up words to process aside from the Monado, race and world names. Its not entirely without JRPG tropes, there are some characters that are distinctly anime in appearance and the changable armor can get to be a tad flamboyant at times but aside from those things it fairly different from the pack.

The Gem creation system is also rather fun and addictive. Think of it like Materia, but if Materia came in bits in pieces from fallen enemies and you have to fuse them together. Some weapons and armor has slots to equip the stuff, some don't. Some armors come pre-equpped with gems you can't remove. Each smaller gem has a point value and to make a gem you have to reach 100 points. You'll be stopped at 100 or just over that amount based on the gem. gems with lesser properties can be added in and have their values upped during the fusion process. So in a way, the system feeds itself so other gem parts get boosted with the main gem so they can come closer to being fused into a gem as well.

Its a lot of stuff, and I'm not really that far in yet. Great stuff so far, though.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Xenoblade sneaks onto Nintendo's Facebook page

OK, I've spent the last few days alone on the Bionis' Leg, the Ether Mine, Satorl Marsh and Makana Forest. I just got past that last one to Frontier Village and out to Eryth Sea.

Every overworld zone in this game is MASSIVE. You could be in these places hunting NMs, questing or leveling up and still miss a few things. Not to mention there are high level NMs in these areas too that you might just want to avoid pestering this soon.

Frontier Village is like Heaven's Tower on steroids. A village in a massive tree. When someone told me I had to meet them back down at the bottom floor I almost winced, but then decided to just jump down. Had I landed on anything hard the fall would have killed me but I landed in the pool just beneath the ground floor. To contrast - Heaven's Tower is a fourth as tall as this place.

The gameplay system keeps expanding, the zones don't stop being big, there's almost more loot here than I could want and now if i do quests for to help one place out I'll get all these extra benefits. Its almost taken me off the main quest and on to doing all that.

If Nintendo of America holds stuff back from Monolith Soft again, there are going to be problems. I want whatever these guys have planned for 3DS and Wii U.

[Icemage]

Re: Xenoblade sneaks onto Nintendo's Facebook page

I haven't invested quite as much time into Xenoblade, only just reached the Leg (zone 2).

I started playing on the Wiimote + nunchuck but that was a complete disaster. The default controls suck horribly for the camera, to the point of being nearly useless. Switching to the Classic Controller attachment improves things a lot; I strongly recommend that anyone who wants to play this game get one - the difference is night and day in terms of playability because the camera is mapped to the 2nd analog stick (CC) instead of C + d-pad (default Wiimote + nunchuk).

Areas are indeed quite large - comparable to your average outdoor zone in FF11, with a lot more verticality (plus you can jump a very short distance to hop over small fences or terrain).

Combat is ... interesting? It plays out a bit like FF12, minus the gambits and replacing it with a (somewhat intelligent) AI for your party members. Every ability has a cooldown timer. You spend a lot of time spamming abilities and then waiting for the timers to replenish, though it does at least give you something like 9 abilities you can set (maximum), so it's not quite as boring as it might sound. You can spend skill points earned from combat to level up and increase the potency and reduce the cooldown timers on your skills, and buy training manuals from shops to expand the maximum level of each skill.

There's LOTS of loot. Tons of it. Every encounter sees at least "something" drop from virtually every enemy, often multiple somethings - equipment, crystals use for gem-smithing (see below), or random trade-bait/quest items. There's even more randomized loot in the field. A lot of it will be used for "something" at some point, and eventually the game starts giving you hints about what particular items you encounter are for and marks them in your inventory so you don't accidentally sell or trade off something you need to fulfill a quest. You have a fairly large inventory maximum, categorized neatly.

There's a gem-crafting system that is poorly explained, but basically amounts to "know all those random things you got from monsters? Some of them can be turned into things you can put on your equipment to give it specialized bonus like more defense, more HP, more attack, etc." Different pieces of gear have different base stats and different amounts of gem slots. Some gear has no slots (but tends to have better general stats), other gear is relatively weak but have multiple slots.

There's a relationship sim element to the game to, where you can develop your trust level between party members. Every time your current party accomplishes tasks together, the members grow closer to one another. This improves two things; the first is the skill link system, where teammates can learn some of another team member's skills. The second affects the gem-crafting above: when you're crafting a gem, you pick two team members to do so, and the stronger the link between the two, the more potent the final result "tends" to be.

The storyline is interesting and the characters are likable, so that's a big plus as well.

Overall, a pretty good game so far. Not without its flaws, but they're minor, and there's a lot to like elsewhere (as long as you have a Classic Controller).


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Xenoblade sneaks onto Nintendo's Facebook page

Just too add, once you crack the second tier of crafting gems you have the chance at breaking into the next tier if you achieve "heat" status. Remember that detail about being able to get just over 100 before it forces you to stop adding gems. Well, if you have the right mix of values, shoot for the highest one possible past 100. If your affinities are high enough you may have enough turns to get to 200 creating a third tier gem.

Letting Reyn control the flame and Shulk be the "shooter" in this process will yield better results, but at the expense of being able to salvage leftover crystals into cylinders. Sharla, on the other hand, is more about salvaging as much as possible so she won't risk stronger flames so often instead triggering gentle flames more often, allowing you to have more cylinders for reuse. The risk is there if you want it to be

[Icemage]

Re: Xenoblade sneaks onto Nintendo's Facebook page

Just too add, once you crack the second tier of crafting gems you have the chance at breaking into the next tier if you achieve "heat" status. Remember that detail about being able to get just over 100 before it forces you to stop adding gems. Well, if you have the right mix of values, shoot for the highest one possible past 100. If your affinities are high enough you may have enough turns to get to 200 creating a third tier gem.

Getting to 200%+ quality does not produce a higher quality gem. It does guarantee that you have the highest quality for that tier, and gives you 2 of those max-quality gems.

Letting Reyn control the flame and Shulk be the "shooter" in this process will yield better results, but at the expense of being able to salvage leftover crystals into cylinders. Sharla, on the other hand, is more about salvaging as much as possible so she won't risk stronger flames so often instead triggering gentle flames more often, allowing you to have more cylinders for reuse. The risk is there if you want it to be

Every character has their own crafting profile in either the "shooter" or "engineer" roles, but that doesn't come into play until later when you really want to min-max your gear.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Xenoblade sneaks onto Nintendo's Facebook page

Getting to 200%+ quality does not produce a higher quality gem. It does guarantee that you have the highest quality for that tier, and gives you 2 of those max-quality gems.

I have absolutely gotten Tier III gems out of Tier II materials when I've gotten "heat." I had two Strength IIIs created from materials I picked up between the Bionis Leg and Satorl Marsh. I used Shulk as shooter and Reyn as engineer and I have repeated this with different gems several times now.

You're confusing Heat and Mega Heat. Mega Heat is really important when you have not where else to go but Tier V, but before that Heat can give you an edge in the low and intermediate parts of the game

When crafting, if a quality's strength exceeds 100% it will become a gem. If the strength exceeds 200% it receives "Heat" status and the resultant gem becomes one grade higher than its components. Furthermore, if the value of one quality goes about 300% it receives "Mega Heat" status, in which case two full-strength gems are acquired for that quality, instead of just one.

Gem Crafting - Xenoblade Wiki

[Icemage]

Re: Xenoblade sneaks onto Nintendo's Facebook page

One thing that is getting on my nerves with this game is the darkness in some areas. I just went through the Ether Mine, and one of the cutscenes deposits you into a tiny room with a small tunnel leading out to a dead end. There is a virtually pitch black side passage (barely visible from the mini-map), but no visual cues on-screen to indicate where it is. I had to walk back and forth for several minutes before accidentally stumbling into it.

Also annoying is the "Oh please kill 2 of these monsters for me, I don't feel safe" quests from an NPC after I just slaughtered a dozen of that monster on my way to that location, yet it doesn't give you credit for it. Ditto for NM-style hunts. I must have killed the first NM (Evil Rangrot) three times before getting the quest to kill him, and of course by the time I got the quest he didn't want to respawn. I had to come back much later to see if he had finally respawned.

Still liking the game a lot, though.


Icemage

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Re: Xenoblade sneaks onto Nintendo's Facebook page

Got the "Looking for Trouble" achievement.

Now I have to pick a bigger fight.

[Nestama]

Re: Xenoblade sneaks onto Nintendo's Facebook page

I must have killed the first NM (Evil Rangrot) three times before getting the quest to kill him, and of course by the time I got the quest he didn't want to respawn. I had to come back much later to see if he had finally respawned.

An easy way to deal with this is to save the game and repeatedly load the game until it respawns. Also helps for "kill those monsters for me" and "collect those things from the monster for me" quests if you don't feel like using the "quick travel respawn" method, as there's a likely chance the monsters they want you to fight are a fair distance away from the travel point.