@westernwizard: I find that it's so powerful that I don't even consider the other option now. There isn't any source of healing in the game that seems able to compete once a battle has lasted long enough to build affinity.

I forget, does affinity with a blade stick across switching back and forth? If so starting with that blade and then swapping to Pyra part way in would be... interesting. Actually does it have any of the last 3 parts of a driver combo? Particularly smash would be nice... (I'm at work so can't check).

@westernwizard: It sticks but it builds separately on each Blade so you can't raise to max on one and switch to a new one and still have that.

It does not have any of the Driver combos, it's purely a healing Blade. When its tree is leveled up you essentially will almost constantly be healing from...something. It has Regen from Auto-attacks, Regen from taking hits, passive party Regen from having Max Affinity, damage from Specials converted to Health, and so on. If you have a good tank to pair it makes it very difficult to die.

@efesell:... I need to get in the habit of checking affinity trees on rare blades more. Christ. (just last night I went digging into some of them and figured out that certain blades weren't leveling on missions because I had to unlock their affinity trees with quests/etc). That sounds bananas. Will hate the downside of that short term, but long term it sounds worth it.

Yeah so this game has a ton of annoying fucking flaws, but I've sunk well over 100 hundred hours into it (not even done yet) and I still love it.

This is me. I find the combo system so stupidly satisfying. I'm taking it rather slow (in Ch. 4) and have been surprised that there is actually a lot of decent side-content (what starts as fetch quests usually have some story interspersed).

So I've opened around 40 core crystals total in search of a bitball blade for one of the quests and I've yet to get one. Are they supposed to be rare, am I missing something, or am I just really unlucky? Is there a way to manipulate the RNG with the bravery justice etc scores to make it more likely I get a bitball blade?

The boosters determine element not weapon type. I also took a while to get my first bit ball, but then I started getting them in droves. The RNG is very very streaky I find. Like the time I got 2 rare blades on 3 rare cores (w/o boosters), and that was after I already had like 18 rare blades not counting story ones.

@westernwizard: thanks, good to know. I guess the one upside is I got a 5* out of a common crystal which I didn't think was possible

You can get 5s from all 3 tiers of crystal, odds just improve with rarity. Sadly legendary crystals aren't guarantees, but seems you can farm them super late game so I guess I can see why.

Also think I'm at the end of the plot, so I'm detouring to work on side quests/etc. Finally hit 4 stars with Gormott after buying that 500k crystal (guaranteed specific 5* blade). And I know people say Ursula is a nightmare, but until you've experienced trying to hit 5 key affinity with her you cannot fully appreciate it, ungh. Finally got tier 4 lessons though so I'm making headway lol.

I think Boreas is my favorite 5s so far got him maxed and all I had to do was force fed him a bunch of food.

Although I just got Newt, and oof that intro.

Ursula was one of my first pulls so I luckily was able to get a ton of use out of her before noticing what leveling her affinity was like. She'll never be more than an extra for Merc missions now.

Now that 500k blade is a MONSTER though. The only reason I don't use her is that I already have too many Water blades.

My one downside is she was pulled on a tank, but I'm using her anyway because the gold bonuses she has are incredible.

@westernwizard: You can pick up Herald for another ridiculously powerful cannon Blade. It's an easy if somewhat tedious item collection shrine behind a wall in Thesoir.

God damn don't ever let your common cores pile up.

99/99 takes some time.

Finally led to KOS-MOS at least but the games almost over and I have a ton of strong Blades now, oh well.

Sounds like this game is a grower overall. Nine more days...

I've got... 2 Cannon rares right now? The shadow one and the 500k one. Both seem super good.

I like Ursula's design a lot, the polar bear is dope. Grinding them merc missions now, which I don't mind so much *yet* (tier 3). I'm also starting electra's sidequest, it's probably a breeze lategame but when I don't have the right levels/masteries yet it's a bit stop and go. But I found the intro scenes with her really endearing, even if it was mostly just playing to a stereotype. Just started chapter 5 but I've been doing a huge detour with side missions, especially since I just pulled a bunch of rare blades with side missions to rank them up.

The problem with Ursula is that in order to power her up you spend an inordinate amount of time not using her at all and by a certain point it becomes silly to not just use whatever you are replacing her with instead.

Like I think to max her affinity tree you would need 99 of each of those merc mission items.

Ursula needs 99 of each stamp to fully max out her tree. Even best case scenario for each mission that's still hours and hours of a character you're trying to power up not even being in your party.

I need to work on Electra, got her but haven't started her side quest chain yet. Actually stopped working on Ursula because I got a TON of other merc quests (mass of development rank ups in short order), so I'm working on all that stuff instead. I'd started to feel like this game had less side content then previous games, turns out it is just less obvious, and a good chunk of it is hidden in the rare blades.

It still feels like substantially less side content but the first Chronicles inflated it by having almost every named npc at least give you a go find me some random crap quest.

Honestly that's still what most of this games side stuff is as well but the Blade missions at least have some story going on.

While not my goty I’m surprised how high on my list it ended up. Aside from the English voice acting that I don’t like at all I’m having a great time with it.

Between this and persona 5 this year I haven’t finished a jrpg since persona 4. I don’t really do this but I tried to get all the rare blades but after a certain point I had 2/3rds and it was getting to be to much to deal with keeping them all even and then I hit chapter 8, and while I had generally guessed that twist, I’m now all in on the story and am barreling towards the end.

Also Electra is pretty adorable.

Her cutscenes are super cute though, even if I don't end up using her I'm doing it for those. Her and electra. I'm a sucker for the the anime as fuck girl trying her best storylines I guess

Going through all of Chapters 7/8 and seeing a few of the first cutscenes in Chapter 9 while sick this weekend is an interesting way to experience the anime dial being turned all the way up. Almost wish I was still sick so I don't have to think about everything I saw while working today because there sure is a lot to think about.

Haha just wait. Chapter 10 breaks off the dial and throws it into the incinerator. I still need to finish the game so maybe the final ending is a let down, but so much side stuff I want to finish first...

Credits have rolled and I think I'm going to need a few days to digest everything to see where I finally land on things. I feel conflicted about some aspects of this game but also I'm way into some other aspects. My gut feeling right now is that the good far outweighs the bad and it'll end up pretty high on my GOTY list.

I'm on chapter 10 right now and I feel like the game will be ending very soon. Like some other people have said here, I am surprised at how much I have been enjoying Xenoblade 2. While there are plenty of things about the game I could nick-pick, overall this has been a fantastic holiday game for me and a great end to the Switch's first year. Also: Nia > Mythra > Pyra.

It's definitely going to be a game where I'll be remembering all the things I loved about it and not how much I hated seeing a Field Skill icon.

I’m currently around 150 hours in and I can say that this is a fantastic game. I bounced off of the first Xenoblade Chronicles after chapter 3 or so and I really didn't like the character design in this game based on the trailers I saw beforehand so I honestly wasn't sure if I wanted to play it at all. I thought the main character looked lame and the main girl, Pyra, looked like way too much of a typical anime trope. But I was really bored one Sunday and bought it on a whim. I'm very glad I did. I really haven't played a JRPG since Final Fantasy XIII and if this game is anything to go off of then boy they sure have improved. The combat is very fun and engaging. There’s a lot going on, which does take some time to fully understand and get good at. Don’t worry about it too much though because the game keeps the tutorials coming way late into the game. It actually becomes fun to go grind out fights. There are so many systems and things to do in this game that you can never possibly be bored. There are a lot of options to how you want to approach combat as the main character. It can feel overwhelming at times but just know that almost everything is optional. You can play the style you want and level up the characters you want to use.

I have also really enjoyed the story so far. It may start out like a lot of anime or manga stories but they subvert a lot of your expectations and tropes of the genre. Some of the female characters may dress provocatively or look like a typically weak anime girl, but in this game they don’t act helpless. They’re actually usually pretty strong characters. There are a LOT of cut-scenes and they can be pretty lengthy too. That’s either a positive or negative depending on what you want to do. Sometimes you just want to go out and fight and sometimes you want to watch the story unfold. Lastly, as a big fan of anime this is probably the first time I have ever preferred the English voice acting as opposed to the Japanese. The characters sound stronger and more confident in English. In Japanese they sound whiny.

I really hope people don’t pass on this game. It’s worth experiencing. I can’t wait to give Xenoblade Chronicles X a chance after I beat this one.

Uh... Xenoblade Chronicles X is a different, flawed beast to XC2. You might want to read up the forum topics on that game on this website to see how your fellows took to that one. I enjoyed it, but it was a disappointment after loving XC1.

The new patch is here and all the little improvements are very welcome. As far as I can tell, the Easy Mode in Tiger, Tiger! takes out the wall collision damage which makes playing the minigame so less nerve-wrecking.

I've only just finished Chapter 4, but I must say that I simply adore how consistently spectacular the chapter ends are so far. The strong story moments were few and sporadic in XC1 and XCX. They are so much better in every way in XC2. Granted, Monolith is cribbing heavy from anime, but they are doing it with a confidence and grace that echoes my good times with Asura's Wrath.

Out of curiosity, when you complete the game and it puts you back to before the boss (but flagged as finishing the game) do you keep all the xp and loot you got? I ask because I THOUGHT I got an item that I'm not seeing in my inventory, but I also died first time I fought him so I'm wondering if my memory is bad and that was from the failed run. And it seemed like the final boss gives a TON of experience (not enough to warrant farming him, mind you...)

You make your clear save after killing the final boss which loads you back to right before that final door. So you keep everything you get from it.

It's not a bad way to bridge the gap to take on higher level uniques.

Question related to Chapter 8 and beyond, so spoilers for there below.

I read somewhere that they basically contracted out for the character designs, which might explain some of the more...provocative designs (cough cough Dahlia). It would also explain the discrepancy between the way the characters are dressed/their bust size and their actions.

Still only in chapter 5, spending a LONG ASS TIME GRINDING BOOSTERS (I need ONE MORE FUCKING ELECTRIC MASTERY for an Electra Quest check, I have level 2/3 electric blades on my other party members, and morag being morag I'm basically pulling 90% fire/water blades) and taking a break to play some other stuff. Still liking it a lot, it's become my "short time" game that I play while watching GB content and such

Anyone else think the movement with the pro controller is real odd? Maybe it's just me that played a whole lot of XC1 recently but it feels like like the difference between running full speed and running slightly slower is maybe 2 millimeters of movement on the left stick. Feels slightly better on Joycons.

Again, this might be partially because the movement on the first game was kind of the opposite, you basically either full sprint or stand still in that game.

@forcen: Hm, I definitely also occasionally felt this on the joycons but I also have the bad left joycon that I have to constantly nurse to get it to work right so I attributed it to that.

I almost bought a Pro controller to play this game and that would have been a hell of a day if it's actually more pronounced there.

After 160 hours, I finally got KOS-MOS, and can now officially deem this my personal game of the year!

I only got KOS MOS on the penultimate chapter and was only able to realize that by then she's just....kind of 'okay'.

Late to the party with my hot take, but I'm generally middling on the game (even if I have put over 100 hours into it). It's oddly compelling in some respects, the combat system is amazing as it unfolds, and it's a great game to relax, run around, and finish quests in. And I grew to like most of the characters, despite the ridiculous fan-service designs behind some. But the story is fairly underwhelming, the blade system is more of a detriment than an addition to the game (especially with the awful RNG lootbox system to unlock new unique blades), and there are a ton of little frustrations in design and bugs. Spending hours staring at your characters slowly opening cores and then deleting to make room for more filler cores is miserable design AND runs counter to some of the central themes of the game.

Most of the frustrations made for needlessly padding out game length too, missing dozens of quality of life improvements the game should have:

• The map is atrocious and easily gets bugged out by landmarks/quest markers to prevent you from skip traveling to places, so you have to walk in and out of places.
• You often have to jump to places or hunt around on multiple maps to find where quest markers are, necessitating several skip loads to get where you need to go.
• The affinity nodes for each individual blade are terribly organized and require to juggle a dozen blades and different menus to get a sense of what you need to unlock. And without a bestiary you're often left stumbling on the Internet to find certain enemies to finish a node. Especially unique monsters, which you might have to re-find and re-fight multiple times to fill out affinity charts for different characters.
• Completing most field tasks require you to juggle in and out a party of blades to make 4 lockpicking or 9 fire mastery, even if you know you can make that party. It's just minutes wasted in menus shuffling and sorting through your blades.
• Similarly the merc group missions just make you dive into menus every 30-60 minutes to sit through several minutes of animations and dialogue before shuffling through your entire deck of blades to get the proper party for a new mission. And you have to do that constantly if you want to build up the group levels or develop blades in the background.
• The number of blades you have and may equip at any one time means you're maintaining 15 chips, 30+ aux cores, 5+ pouch items, and 10 accessories for a fully equipped party. It's overwhelming and far less rewarding than equipping a cool new set of armor for one party member. I gave up trying to deal with anything besides buying or equipping the best chips every couple hours.

Overall it's a game filled with stuff. But the world, characters, story, and systems for delivering the stuff are just not as good as XC1. The backstory of the world and the concept of the titans are interesting on their own, but otherwise I was not pulled along the way Shulk's story did for me. I kept up just to keep seeing the new areas and see it through, but it's not a game I'll be talking about for years to come.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 version 1.3.0 details

No details on technical stuff, for those hoping for better Portable mode performance.

The additions and changes that are coming are really exciting, especially for me as I'm just only now entering the last few (I think) chapters of the game.

But I still don't see any inclusion of a pity rate for the core crystal system :(

Burned through three legendary Crystals without a single unique blade. I only have 7 to go and I really want to fill them all out. I did just hit level 90, basically went from 80-90 by farming the T-Rex's on Temprantina (spelling probably wrong?)

245 hours in, and I just maxed out every single rare blade's affinity chart. Just in time for the new blades in 1.3 to arrive! No rest for me!