Just when I thought I'd killed the completionist asshole in me Xenoblade Chronicles comes along. I want to do everything. Nevermind the amount of sidequests and the collectopedia probably being annoying later, it's the heart to hearts that are stessing me.

These, above all else, I want to do all of. They seem like good little character moments. Slight spoiler for 20ish hours in: Dunban just joined my party a bit ago, I'm in Satorl marsh. Now, I have 4 people. If I leave Shulk as my party leader for pretty much the entire game and just swap other people around to build their affinities will I be able to see all the heart to hearts without intentionally grinding batlles or am I gonna have to make all sorts of different party combinations with different leaders and such? Assume I'm doing to do every sidequest.

Yeah, I'm going total completionist asshole with Xenoblade Chronicles, too, so I feel ya.

First things first, leaving Shulk as your party leader is really doing a disservice to the other characters you'll be running into soon. Needless to say, just past where you are now, I'm having more fun putting Shulk on the bench.

As far as grinding out hearts, yeah, you will probably have to do that. There are 63 Heart-to-Hearts in the game, 3 for relationship (3 for Shulk and Rein, 3 for Shulk and Sharla, 3 for Shulk and Dunban, etc.). Outside of gifting collectibles (which don't forget you can do), the only really way to boost those relationships is being the party member and doing the affinity bursts in battle.

There are some ways to exploit the system though. You get 2 hearts whenever you wake a member from sleep during battle and there are monsters much later in the game that will sleep your characters with each hit... basically just hang out beside the character and spam the "Wake Up" button.

I'm totally prepared to do that should side questing, gifting, and swapping out party members don't get me to max affinity with each character.

Characters build affinity primarily with the party leader so you're encouraged to swap out Shulk for one of the other guys more often than not. Plus, it's just more fun to play with everyone and not just Shulk (I was excited to get rid of him for a while once I finally got a 4th party member). Since you as party leader do more affinity-building actions, the leader gains more affinity with the other two characters in the party AND this sometimes affects conversations during quests (where you gain affinity as well).

So do yourself a favor and play around with your team. In Satorl Marsh, I played around with Sharla as party leader for most of it. Besides granting a nice distraction from the standard fare, this also teaches you about the other character's skills which you will need sooner or later (knowing which skills suck or are extremely helpful is quite useful when spending upgrade points and also once you have to "change the future" during battles more often.

And besides, the game is extreeeeeeeeemely long so you'll grow tired of playing Shulk anyway :P

@DeF said:

Characters build affinity primarily with the party leader so you're encouraged to swap out Shulk for one of the other guys more often than not. Plus, it's just more fun to play with everyone and not just Shulk (I was excited to get rid of him for a while once I finally got a 4th party member). Since you as party leader do more affinity-building actions, the leader gains more affinity with the other two characters in the party AND this sometimes affects conversations during quests (where you gain affinity as well).

So do yourself a favor and play around with your team. In Satorl Marsh, I played around with Sharla as party leader for most of it. Besides granting a nice distraction from the standard fare, this also teaches you about the other character's skills which you will need sooner or later (knowing which skills suck or are extremely helpful is quite useful when spending upgrade points and also once you have to "change the future" during battles more often.

And besides, the game is extreeeeeeeeemely long so you'll grow tired of playing Shulk anyway :P

I enjoy playing Shulk, but he and Melia are really the only two characters I've spent significant time in direct control of. I've tried playing Riki and didn't do very well, but that might have been more due to the fact that I decided to take on a sidequest involving a powerful monster and ended up getting curb stomped.

@Hailinel: yea, definitely not every character combo works for challenging fights ... I'm currently having trouble in the Mechon base with some of the unique dudes...

<Minor Spoiler>

Once you made Heropon your leader, you'll never go back. I was sad to have to switch back to Melia in order to complete that Affinity subquest in Colony 9.