Xenoblade has been out for a while, how are you liking it? (Also tip thread)

Now that a few days have passed, and I spent roughly a third of my weekend (24 out of 72 hours) playing it, I was wondering how other people were liking it. I'm enjoying the combat a lot (pre skell) and I am looking forward to getting my skellin on tonight. My biggest issue is information, or rather the lack there of. I have been playing with a few friends all on Skype and thank god for that because some of us have missed entire game play systems without realizing it. I guess this can be used as a general tip thread as well but no unmarked spoilers!

• Secondary cool-downs are the outside green circle that fills, makes ability last long/do more damage/insta recastable
• A melee skill's secondary CD only charges with a melee weapon out, same with ranged skills
• 3000 TP is required for resurrecting, never trust your AI to res you, (they might res you, they might res someone else, they might just sorta stand there)
• Switching from to a new class with new weapons means new arts, and you can't use your old arts. Keep in mind that can mean going from 5-6 arts to 2 and a drastic decrease in power. Get a few ranks and arts before going back to what you were fighting.
• Keep cycling party members, never know when a mission might require one or two.
• AI's have no idea how to hold agro, neither do I for that matter really.
• Invest in the Mechanic skill ASAP, its tied to probes.
• All multiplayer missions are time sensitive, so don't get one you think is interesting and then wait an hour, do it right away.
• Nemesis Bosses are no joke, don't do them yet. If they say they scale to level 60, make sure you are about level 60 and not 10 like I was...
• SAVE. SAVE ALL THE TIME. Maybe my download is bad, but I've crashed around 6 times so far and lost 7-8 hours total, including a good 4 hour chunk that was very painful. SAVE NOW.
• Get your Skell ASAP. Changes the way combat works and vastly increases your combat abilities. Not to even mention the increase in mobility. Get your damn skell.
• Fashion gear is a godsend, my guy would look like a space age hooker if not for fashion armor.
• Start adding GB people and getting in our squads, just pick the one that has the most of us. That way you will have people you sorta know to help with multiplayer missions.
• More to be added?

Overall I'm really positive about the game, and the story, despite what people told me, is pretty cool. We have a GB NNID thread HERE, I am Slyspider, thanks to Razzuel for setting that up!

• Make sure to fill out your Collectopedia for some Battle Points and other things
• In relation to the Collectopedia, make sure an item you can turn in to the Collectpedia isn't required for a quest. It's led to some confusion where you turn in an item into the Collectopedia and then you cant finish the quest due to lack of items. "The Repair Job" is victim to this since the dialogue from the NPC is the worst for telling you what you're missing. Also, your quest log doesn't update to say you're short on an item if you had enough and then got rid of one -.-

@slyspider:Saw it somewhere on the xenoblade subreddit, but you can unlock the use of a class' weapon by any other class once you max the rank of the last class in that tier. I think the example they gave was using the gatling gun/shield weapon combo with the class that switches you to raygun/knives weapon combo.

If I really hated the previous game after 100 hours and finishing the game, should I give this one a shot? Or is it more of the same.

When I first played Xenoblade Chronicles on its release, the combat immediately felt uninteresting to me, but over time I've come around on it, and in XCX I'm really liking it. After playing games like Witcher 3, and Legend of Legacy all year, I've got on this kick where I want to do a lot of exploring in games (usually I mainline games), so XCX is really scratching that itch. I've only managed to play a handful of hours, so I don't have much in the way of tips, but I'll throw a couple up:

• Press R3 when an enemy's appendage is targeted to lock onto it and keep attacking it. Usually, positioning around an enemy or moving the camera will focus you on a different appendage. Destroying an appendage will prevent that enemy from using attacks that need it.
• Sprinting makes you jump higher and you can enter sprint state from a standing position (i.e. if you're trying to make a precarious jump, you can prep a sprint-jump before you start moving).
• You can sprint during battle to make positioning for arts easier, and also to close the gap if you end up needing to suddenly use a melee art while you're at a distance.
• Save your BP for leveling arts on weapon classes that you like. They don't come by easily, and I've heard that the late-game is balanced around having maxed-out arts.
• Watch out for your avatar or party members calling out things in battle. The color of the speech bubble indicates what type of art you need to use to activate Soul Voice, which is really useful. You know you did it when the game slows down as you use the art. You won't always get a QTE pop-up as far as I can tell, though.

Depends on what parts were getting on your nerves. The combat was improved in my opinion, and exploring is way more fun (bigger emphasis on platforming and Skells).

Some thing from the 50+ hours I've played thus far.

• Do missions! I've seen some people saying the game is really hard to them, but I have been cruising relatively easy due to balancing story mission, exploration, and always having tons of Basic Missions active. So far I haven't been challenge much by a story or affinity mission.
• Don't take gathering missions. You can press ZR to see what materials are required, and if you have any of them. You can keep the mission on the board until you have it all, then accept it and it will auto-complete. Saves room since you can only have 20 missions board missions at a time.
• Rotate party members commonly. This is useful because affinity missions can often require one character you may have used a lot for story quests, but then another you haven't touched much. So it helps to try to keep everyone as balanced as possible. I recommend only having one of the big story characters with you for all non-story stuff, that way you have 2 other slots for other characters. My current set up currently is Myself, Lin as my tanky tank, L cause blue Pegasus is awesome, and Hope, cause she seems rad.
• After you hit rank 10 in the final class of a line, you get access to that class's weapons and arts for any other class. So you can level other classes for completion/Skills you may want, but do so entirely as a set up you may be more comfortable with. Also this allows for some neat Range/Melee set ups that mix Arts that wouldn't normally be mixed.
• I didn't go too deep into my first Skell from the quest rewards, but as soon as you hit level 30, buy the most expensive Skell at the market, and pimp it out with weapons in every slot. It is amazing, and I feel like a god right now in the game.
• Do squad missions! The reward tickets can be used to trade in for rarer crafting materials, and they are kinda fun. They are short and sweet, but the remind me of mini-PSO missions. Also when you can use one, having 3-4 people in a Skell authorized mission, meching shit up, its pretty rad.
• Get good at focusing on specific body parts. Destroying limbs can make enemies weaker and take more damage. Click in the right thumbstick to lock onto a limb, then you can move around, in case you use positional abilities. If you don't lock on a specific part of the monster, when you or it moves, attacks will auto target the closest part of the monster.
• After every story chapter, take a stroll through every zone in NLA. A lot of quests pop up from random people, and they don't always have a "find the quest" mission on the mission board.
• Don't press L + A

Great tips OP. I also came across this article from Games Radar that helped me out as well: http://www.gamesradar.com/things-i-wish-i-knew-i-started-xenoblade-chronicles-x/

I've put in about 12 hours so far and am loving it (level 13/14 and am at the end of mission 4). I've been waiting awhile for a new JRPG to pull me in.

And I found using a Pro Controller and having the GamePad just below my TV (to view the map and such) was a more enjoyable way of playing.

Everything I liked and disliked about the original Xenoblade pretty much applies to this game, so far. The most obvious improvement is movement, it actually feels good to move around the world compared to the previous game. Just like that game though, it does a poor job at explaining itself most of the time, layering mechanic after subsystem after mechanic after subsystem without any regard to pacing (which is a common complaint, I hear). Having played OG Xenoblade for about 110 hours, I got the hang of it pretty well, but had I not played the previous game I would definitely be frustrated with how they've laid out everything before you.

Has anyone found a way to look at what augments actually do on armor/weapons? There is the obvious stuff like 'Melee Damage Up 1/2/3', but then there are tons of weird sounding effects. I've found all sorts of equipment that has some effect on it and the name doesn't explain itself. For example, I have no goddamn clue what a 'Supercharge IV' is, and I haven't found a way to look up what it does. Maybe go into the augment creation station (that's a fun thing to say) and try to find Supercharge to look it up? Like I said, there are areas of the game where it is incredibly obtuse for no reason, other than a lack of foresight.

Also, it seems I am in store for another 100-200 (I'm guessing this thing is pretty long) hours of Adam Howden yelling "Back Slash". I don't see myself giving up Dual Swords. I think half of his lines might be straight from Xenoblade, too. They sure seem familiar.

@doctordonkey: My friend told me that Supercharge art makes the next art attack do double damage, I can't confirm this as I have an art that supercharges but I haven't used it yet. I really should just to know. No clue what supercharge on armor does though, maybe a percent chance to give supercharge? I'm similarly lost on what the fuckshit the potential stat does, seems to effect art damage and healing? Maybe soul voice related?

Easly best game this year. Best RPG since well..the first game.

Important stuff like stats and status effects should really be explained better in-game. Thankfully, all of the stats and status effects are explained in the digital manual. I never played the first Xenoblade, but maybe some of these mechanics carry over from that? It feels like the developers expected most people playing this game to already be familiar with those concepts.

Any mission that is required to progress to the next story quest, and also requires gathering random junk off the ground, makes me want to tear my eyeballs out. After going through the hassle of getting my skell license tonight, my policy going forward is to immediately look up where to find that stuff next time a mission like that comes up.

That said, the world design and sense of scale are top-notch. It feels really good to just go exploring. There's just enough in the way of hidden items, neat little side areas, and surprise named enemies lurking in the nooks and crannies around each zone to make surveying an area feel like a worthwhile experience on its own. Doing that exploring in a giant motorcycle the size of bus is just a bonus.

You'll be using Elma and Lin a bunch on story missions so why not swap to other dudes and ladies inbetween story missions just for the sake of banging out some missions/grind up some affinity. Affinity Missions are where you get the character moments and those are the best moments in the game.

On that token, you're gonna wanna at least get Gwin's affinity up a rank and since you can use him early on...go ahead and do that.

I must be weird in that i like this style more compared to the first xenoblade; the more sci fi feel just seems cooler to me. My god there's some anime ass characters in this. It's also odd that my character has green skin and so far has looked the most normal/least anime, heh. I really like this type of combat even if it's mostly automatic and watching bars fill; there's something addictive about it. I wonder if the majority of it is killing hapless wildlife or if it will include other people as antagonists or the aliens will return (i suppose they will, it just amuses and kind of irks me that ive been doing nothing but mostly provoking and killing alien flora and fauna that meant me no harm).

I do like the premise but i heard in vague terms that the story sort of fizzles out? People don't seem to miss earth that much.

Also: i feel the menus are cumbersome but not sure how they could have been streamlined any better. That seemed the case with the first xenoblade too, at least on 3ds.

I have a dumb question. How does the game handle having a story with a blank slate main character? Is the main character more of a Shepard, mostly prewritten kind of PC or more of a Crono total blank slate badass with nothing useful to say?

@veektarius: Your character has amnesia, so that's how they explain away needing much of a background. The choices you get in dialog are more or less to raise party members affinity, based on what you pick and what they like. The leading character for main story is probably Elma. But I don't feel like they do the blank slate character too badly, you aren't made out to be the last savior or anything. You are just some person who showed up, willingly joins the BLADEs, then starts kicking ass and they respect you for it.

Yeah, I'm still having difficulty issues. I got my ass kicked at the end of chapter 4, and in H.B.'s affinity mission. I mean H.B.'s affinity mission said required level 12 and I was 16. I'm not sure if that means I'm underleveled, I just suck, or I'm misunderstanding some fundamental aspect(s) of the game.

Also, does the seemingly non-existent continuity or lack of weight in the story bother anyone else? For example, when you first run into the Prone (Ganglion/Asscaves), I was under the impression I was the first person to discover them on Mira. Yet we didn't run back to NLA and hold an emergency council. No, we just ran in there and killed them. Although, I will give them credit for Elma trying to make peace with them. Then later on, I wander into Oblivia. There's a Curators outpost there right next a huge Prone base. Uh, are they really that unobservant? I thought I found the Prone first? I don't know. Stuff like that just really bothers me. Like they didn't really think their fiction through, especially with its relation to the game world.

Oh, and ugh, I did not want a silent protagonist. It's even weirder when my character has no problem talking during battle.

Anyway, I'm really enjoying the game despite its issues so far. The scale of the world is unlike anything I've seen, except maybe Xenoblade Chronicles, but that even pales in comparison to this. Everything is just so big! Then there's Sawano's soundtrack which is just everything I wanted. This game sounds so good! Ungh!

Hot new battle tip that I forgot to post before: your ranged and melee weapon auto-attacks are on separate timers, so switching between the auto-attacks can get some more damage going. For example, my knife has a auto-attack cooldown of 1 second, and my beam rifle has a cooldown of 2 seconds; I auto-attack with my knife, switch to my gun and auto-attack immediately, then switch back to the knife and get a second auto-attack. One second later and I can do it again. Useful if you're waiting for an art's initial cooldown to complete, since the secondary cooldowns only charge while you have that weapon equipped.

it's pretty dense, i'm already at about 40 hours and like at chapter 6? Haven't even touched any online stuff yet.

I feel like I only have the most tenuous grasp on how it all works at 10 hours in, but I'm generally enjoying myself. I hope it keeps up.

But man, Tatsu is pretty much the worst.

I still think the difficulty in this game is fucked. I was worried about starting chapter 5 and my worries came true. There's three things I gotta destroy but the mobs surrounding those things are too high a level for me. I was able to somehow get two of them, but the third is like in the middle of a fucking hell hole. And oops you die, start killing everything in the way all over again. I don't think I can go do an affinity mission either while on a story mission. I guess I need to just go grind? Or find a map for these damn collectible missions, since the monster ones are usually too high a level.

Maybe I just suck. I don't know. Level 17 with 16 hours, by the way.

If you need to know where absolutely anything is located, use this.

Anything you could possibly think of is on it, except weapons/armour (it's still under construction).

that's actually a nice spreadsheet, quests that require gathering materials are especially annoying if you don't know which area you can gather them in.

Important thing that you may have forgotten or don't know if you didn't play the first game. Make sure you have a way to stagger AND topple in your party, because staggered enemies auto topple when hit with abilities that cause it. One of your MCs soul voices (I believe engaging with melee equipped on engage) can auto stagger enemies if you don't have any staggers in your party (of the characters I have so far, only Elma seems to have one....)

My main complaint right now is how bad Lin's first affinity quest is, with having a rare drop (but you can buy it with tickets thank god) and having to wait for probes to mine up 5 of a material, and of course you can't advance the story once you take that quest.

Also glad someone mentioned that mastering an entire tree unlocks the arts/weapons for the other trees, so now I'll likely just finish going down the sword + assault rifle tree so I can use those arts in the other trees.

One thing i don't really understand is how mana or "TP" as they call it works.. Guess i'm used to no mana like in the previous game, also health restores so fast but not TP.

I feel like ive been absolutely fumbling through this shit but so far it's been okay. Finally got a sort of grasp on how to time my attacks and how soul voices work. Ive only been playing as my main generated character and havent been arsed to find out how to switch (which i probably should, it may get dull playing the same duder constantly).

Chose pathfinders but im guessing that makes no difference really.

The pacing of the cutscenes is maddening to me, I think I've lost my tolerance for jrpgs in this way. Every time there's a cutscene there's about twice as much dialog that's needed to convey a point and it's filled with lots of pauses, random camera pans, and awful attempts from characters to be clever. It feels like there's a lot of gameplay here so I want to keep going though.

I'm not far yet but is the armor in the BLADE station the only stuff? I don't like the look of the armor/pants there that much.

I got my Skell yesterday and that was one of the most satisfying moments in gaming to me. Damn I feel so powerful now, and it looks incredible. I am absolutely loving the game, despite it having quite a few flaws that I recognize. I think overall its just amazing game. I love the soul voice stuff, its a really neat way to make a game where you have a party but only control one character work well.

TP Is not like mana at all. Its an overdrive meter, that you can use for certain abilities. It starts at 0, and builds up. You get overdrive later that you can use it all on, or the abilities marked "TP". You can also build it up max before boss fights to use all there.

@radish: There's a console to the right of where you buy equipment that is used to upgrade various arms manufacturers by spending miranium or using their gear in combat. Upgrading them unlocks new gear.

My sweet sweet Collector's Edition copy came in Monday but I got caught up in the whirlwind hype around FFVII so now I'm replaying it on PS4. Gunna get that platinum trophy THEN I'll jump over to X-Chron-X.

Really looking forward to the game. I dug Xenoblade 1 some, and I'm a HUGE fan of Xenogears and the Xenosaga games. I feel like, from everything I've read, it sounds like the storytelling and narrative takes a real backseat in this game, which is a bummer since that's always been my fave part of Takahashi's games. I felt similarly ambivalent about Xenoblade 1's storytelling. That said, the huge mechs and gameplay of XCX looks like a huge step forward. Is anyone in this thread digging the storyline?

Really looking forward to playing it! I will say my one reservation is all the characters look like super bland Xenosaga rejects... but I'm hoping they'll have more character and emotion than the handful of screenshots I've seen let on. Any of the characters working for y'all?

Takahasi said from day one that this game would be much less about story than Xenoblade Chronicles, and it definitely is the case.

Though, I read it described as the story creeping up on you. And I do agree with that, I thought there were some really cool story stuff like 20 hours into the game. It just takes some time, but its there at least somewhat and I am enjoying it. Its just not the focus at all.

I'm still in the first few hours and watching a lot of chatter so really looking forward to actually playing it and not watching people talk as much.

Mostly though I just find myself wishing you could turn certain music tracks off. Not a fan of the butt-rock that plays in New LA or the Country/Rap that plays there either (or whatever that "yeah, uh, huh, come on" nonsense is). The traditional RPG music's good, so if I could listen to that instead it would be better.

Personally I've found a lot of the tracks I wasn't as big a fan of have grown on me over time. My one big complaint with the music is when they have it mixed too high (especially tracks with vocals) during dialogue cut scenes. It is such a strange decision.

I just got used to having my remote handy and muting the audio after every talking cut-scene when I'm in town.. It's frustrating for sure.

So, I've played the game for about 12 hours now and I still feel completely lost. For a game that works so hard to implement the game mechanics into the "story" it sure does a bad job of actually telling you what to do. After scrambling around trying to do whatever things I could find to level up/get better gear I finally beat chapter 4 after beating my head against the boss for a while. And now I'm sort of out of options. All the bounties I've tried has been for monsters that just one-shot people, I've unlocked all the probes I could find, been trying to do harvest missions but I never find any of the items I need. I've got the best gear I can buy from the normal store (no idea how I acquire the AM gear I've unlocked). What am I missing ? I must be doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what. I guess I finally unlocked some affinity missions by reaching level 15.

@ares42: Sounds like you might not be exploring enough. I don't think I did chapter 4 until the mid 20's. Go out and adventure! Take on a lot of creatures you see, stealthily dodge things too hard for you, probe and hunt for archaeological/mechanical/biological sites.

I would also suggest never accepting harvest missions from the mission board. You can see what they take before selecting them, and if you have them it will auto-complete. I would only take social/bounty missions, while collecting everything you see while out and about. You will eventually have tons of gathering missions worth of stuff, and can just go through the board and see if you can complete any.

For the AM things you are unlocking, some of it is purchasable at the terminal next to it, and others just unlock the ability to craft an item from the AM terminal. I wouldn't worry about those though, crafting is more or less an end game thing. Drops and vendor weapons/gear will be more then what you need for a long time. The materials needed to craft stuff isn't a joke, so I wouldn't use anything on stuff under 50.

Keep at it and try not to get too discouraged, this is a huge game and a ton of it is intended for late game consumption. I'd say you are more or less still in the first 15% of the game.

Cresting 50 hours now and boy, this game is freaking massive. Having a skell completely changes how the game is played right now and I haven't fought anything on foot except for 1 cave for around 6 levels. Almost level 30 and I just started exploring the lower of the top 2 continents. I cant wait till I have a party of 4 Skells, already have like 1.8 million saved for outfitting those things. Gonna add some more tips to the original post in the morning I think

@slyspider: Skells are sooooooo good, and I made a huge mistake about not getting my other teammates in one until like level 50, made the final story encounter a huge pain. But now that I've rectified that, it is so much fun. I still use a lot of ground combat though, especially against ground tyrants. If you time entering or exiting your skell right when a big guy on the ground does a huge attack, you don't take damage in either form, at least I haven't yet. Gonna abuse the heck out of this for some encounters...though the mean things in the air still hurt.

Only jrpg style game I have really ever played properly is tales of symphonia. Am I likely to get into this? I'm not against the grind. Is it actually an interesting story?

hmm it's not action oriented like Tales games and has a more cooldown position oriented mmo style combat system, but as for the story it's been interesting for me personally as it gives me that mass effect vibe of interacting with alien species and trying to cohabit with them.

@marz: ok that actually works for me. Thanks bro!

Man i really got in to this game. About 25 hours in and still haven't done chapter 4. All the side stuff keep distracting me. Loving the game so far, was planning to play fallout 4 all this month but i enjoy Xeno X much more.

I'm 34 hours in and level 24. I just started chapter 6 and I'm getting wrecked again. I can handle a level 23 germivore, but when it's more than one at a time, I get fucked. Then there's a level 40 tyrant thallus waiting outside the cave I have to go through. That's fucked too.

So here I am making sure I do every single god damn side quest that's available. This has happened every single time I've tried to progress in the game. Uh oh, too hard, better go do everything the game is offering me right now. That's bullshit. I shouldn't have to do EVERYTHING.

I'm like 25 hours in with a level 23 character. I'm having a pretty good time. I think they strike a nice balance between quest and exploration. It feels very MMO-ish ,like when I walk past all of the scary monsters to do my thing. Though looking for shit is pretty annoying. Or worse was when they ask for a specific rare drop. There a quest to get a rare drop from the early game suids that I didn't get it until 15 hours in. Those things aside its pretty fun.

I'm a little confused about the "quest board" quests. Am I reading it wrong or do they give like no exp compared to quests from NPCs? And do they unlock more quests on completion? I swear I'm never finding those crush rings.

@iamterics: It's super minor exp. Some quests open up others, but a lot of it is just the basic gathering/bounty stuff as extra stuff to do. I think it's meant more for affinity then leveling your characters, though the money and item rewards aren't bad for later things. Just murdering lots of big enemies seems like the fastest way to level up, but spamming board quests is the best way to get affinity up with party member, until you beat the store and some other stuff unlocks.

@takayamasama:Think I finally figured things out and it was sort of the opposite problem really. I had been exploring all over the place (even areas where all the enemies were way over my level), but I hadn't really figured out the NLA stuff. The main problem was probably that I had misunderstood the mission board, thinking it was a list of set missions (Monster Hunter style) and not just a cycling list of random stuff to do. I had also been sorta scared off from doing affinity quests because of the initial level requirements. So basically I had just spent a lot of time trying to do random bounties etc that I really shouldn't have been looking at at all.

@razzuel: At that level chapter 6 is totally doable. A lot of the game is about learning to sneak past the nasty monsters and set things up in your favor fighting them in the right place. Saying this as someone who just cleared chapter 6 and got his Skell yesterday.

Personally I need to start cleaning up my bounty quests to make room for more, I've been lax on that front and I suspect it is slowing down my party affinity improvement. Having so many characters to level (and I still haven't found all of them...) is tough. How many characters is everyone else juggling so far? Beyond the main two I've been working on Doug, Lao, sorta Hope (yay healer), HB, Irina, and Gwin I think. Probably going to spend more time with L soon since he's a primary story character.

@westernwizard: I'm not sure if I can sneak past that level 40 tyrant since it basically spawns when entering the cave, but I'll try, try again. If I'm just supposed to run, then that's not good design, seeing as there are level 24 thallus in the cave too.

This game is just wholly inconsistent, and it's really frustrating sometimes. Like there was a mission where I was told Skells were getting wrecked by grexes, but then my team, that doesn't have a Skell, is told to go take care of them. If they can't handle it with Skells, then how am I supposed to handle it? I was overleveled for that quest so it ended up being fine, but it felt like it shouldn't have been fine. One because what I just mentioned about the skells, and because they were over twice my size and there were six of them. They didn't even put a scratch on me. Granted they were all level 12, but then I go fight one level 31 papil that is my size and it gives me a run for my money. It just doesn't feel like the game is adhering to its own rules and fiction.

I've been juggling all the characters I've encountered. So far, Phog is my favorite. He has a launch ability that is just awesome. If you haven't unlocked him, go do the quest at the water purification plant.

@westernwizard: The amount of characters is pretty intense early to halfway on. I started using people besides Lin and Elma, since they are used for every story mission and a handful of affinity missions also. Even post beating the story, I still haven't touched HB or Alexa yet, but that's ok. After you beat the story, they open up some super easy and quick ways to get massive affinity, so you can boost up all those you haven't used yet. Also use L...because he is just awesome :D

Light spoilers for people who may want to 100% complete everything: Max Lao's affinity before you take and complete chapter 9. He becomes unusable, for good.

hey, do you need to use the big game pad for this, or can i just use a normal controller?

@tajasaurus: You can play the game with a pro controller, but the gamepad is used for fast travelling and some other meta-game stuff as well.