I hated both Xenogears and the xenosaga games. I skipped Xenoblade for that reason. I seriously hope that this game is more likeable for the people who aren't into the series alread. I want to try it out but I'm definitely nervous about buying another Xeno game.

I'm surprised I haven't seen a detailed analysis of the gameplay video yet, so I'll give it a shot.

First of all, I noticed that the player character the video focuses on ("Tester" in the sidebar) switches freely between a sword and gun multiple times throughout the battle. It appears you can have multiple weapons assigned to each character, and can switch between them at will even during battles.

I decided to focus on the Arts being used, and the video made this easy for me. I believe Tester gets a single auto-attack in right off the bat, dealing 166 damage. He then selects the first Art to the left of the Talent Art, which triggers three swipes of his sword in quick succession, dealing 205/miss/247 damage. This Art has a cooldown of about 12 seconds.

The second Battle Art used is the second to the left of the Talent Art, and can be seen in the bottom gif posted by Wyrdness just above me. Tester's sword seems to catch fire and deliver three consecutive strikes for miss/412/411 damage. The cooldown of this Art is about 16 seconds.

The third Art used, a kind of spiraling uppercut, is the third to the left of the Talent Art. As it takes Tester high into the air, we cannot see from our perspective what kind of damage this attack does, and I can't spot any visible signs of status effects ailing the enemy after its completion. Although the cooldown is cut short about 75% of the way through by Tester entering his mech, I estimate that it is about 40 seconds.

The fourth Art used is (you guessed it) the farthest to the left. Tester strokes his blade, seemingly coating it with fire. This is immediately followed by a button prompt (Succeeded), during which Tester strikes the enemy with his sword for 177 damage, and after which his sword spontaneously becomes a big ol' machine gun. It's worth noting that immediately upon completion of the button prompt, a green 225 appears over Tester's legs. It's a bit confusing as to what's happening here, but my guess is that this Art triggers the button prompt, which applies a buff to Tester when successful; the animation for the art ends before the Art is completed, so Tester returns to auto-attacking while the player activates the prompt. As for the switch to gun mode, I'm guessing that switching between weapons has its own designated button, and is not represented in the UI (as far as I can tell). Again, the cooldown is cutshort about midway through, and my best guess it that it would be about 45 seconds.

Tester gets off a few auto-attacks with his newly equipped gun before the player selects the Battle Art on the far right. Tester shoots straight up into the air, he in enveloped by a green aura, and the number 323 appears over him about once per second for about the next 15 seconds (at which point he enters his mech and the Art's effect is presumably cut short). It appears to be an ability that restores health to the user over time, but an apparent side-effect of this Art is that Tester's whole team acquires a new icon to the right of their status bars -- some kind of buff? Anyway, I estimate that this Art has a cooldown of about 60 seconds.

Immediately after the previous Art's animation is finished, Tester activates his final Battle Art, the first one to the right of the Talent Art. This one looks straightforward: he fires a massive volley from his gun, dealing 252/245 damage right on top of each other, and possibly more (other damage indicators trigger at the same time, but they might be the results of attacks from the other players). This Art appears to have a cooldown of about 40 seconds.

Another part of the UI caught my eye. Just above and to the right of the Battle Arts bar, some small text reads "FRONT/MIDDLE" for most of this battle. While the player is using his uppercut attack, this changes to "front/high," and it shifts between "side/middle" and "back/middle" as well at times. In Xenoblade, certain Arts would have bonuses such as extra damage or status effects when they struck an enemy from the front, side, or back. However, with excessively large or oddly-shaped enemies, sometimes it was difficult to tell where you stood relative to your opponent's "front." This new UI feature seems to alleviate the issue, and may allow for even more depth (perhaps Arts that are more effective when striking the top of the enemy, as suggested by the "middle" and "high" designations).

(Right about now I'm quite thankful that some of the text in this gameplay footage was in English, even if half of it is nonsensical like Huge Succeeded.)

There's an odd, final detail I want to address about the Battle Arts. As I established, the sword Arts are arranged to the left of the Talent Art, while the gunner Arts are to its right. At the start of the battle, the circumferences of the sword Arts begin filling up clockwise with a green bar. Those green bars vanish as Tester uses each Art in turn. The bar seems to be filling up much more quickly on the first two Arts used. When Tester switches to his gun, green bars begin filling up for the gunner Arts, again disappearing as he uses them.

After Tester exits his mech towards the end of the battle, the damage-dealing gunner Art's green bar is full, and the healing/buffing gunner Art's green bar seems to be holding steady at about 80% full. It appears that the two gunner Arts were "charging" while he was in his mech, while the sword Arts were not. This may be because Tester had his gun equipped when he entered the mech. The sword Arts begin charging as soon as he leaves his mech, even before he has readied his weapon. Shortly after this, Tester activates his Talent Art, which appears to hasten the charging of his Battle Arts. The Battle Arts also seem to be doing significantly more damage while his Talent Art is active, but whether this is the direct result of his Talent Art (2.5x damage to Battle Arts or something) or a side effect of using "charged" Battle Arts (could they be that powerful?), I cannot say.

I'm at a loss here. No clue what these green bars represent. I'll take a closer look at the mech's Arts later. I'm sure I also missed loads of random stuff in there. There's quite a lot to analyze in this bit of gameplay.

So is Xenoblade again :)


what do you think guys?

Yup, as suspected and feared, Nintendo was the beginning of the end of the xeno series.

no, is not. Nintendo is the savior of Xeno series. Deal with it

You should face with the reality, boy

You should face with the reality, boy

Game looks like the RPG of the generation. True to Xenoblade, but improved all around. Hyped!!

Which reality?