I hope Curl-6 doesn't do Zenobia's quest. It will end him with the field skill requirements

I also recommend sending common blades to do mercenary missions if they can level up field skills. Eventually they will be more useful that way. I call them field mastery slaves.

killeryoshis said: I hope Curl-6 doesn't do Zenobia's quest. It will end him with the field skill requirements I also recommend sending common blades to do mercenary missions if they can level up field skills. Eventually they will be more useful that way. I call them field mastery slaves.

Thankfully most rare blade quests are entirely superfluous.  They provide boosts but the blades are already very powerful before that.  The only blade sidequests I've pursued are Electra's and Herald's.  And I've only finished Herald's cause to be honest, that quest was pretty darn easy.  In fact, Herald's whole progression is really easy.  

I guess I got lucky with Field Skills. I didn’t get blocked at any point on the main story (except at a point in Chapter 4 where I TGOUGHT I got blocked, but after some exploration it turned out I was only going the wrong way; otherwise, it was always just a matter of equipping the correct people.
I also didn’t do any special extra grinding to get them. Although I did have most to all my extra Rare Blades constantly on merc missions getting constant bonus XP (especially those quick turnaround Ursula missions)

As for the Ancient Wisdom part you guys are discussing. I believe I simply equipped a fresh new Aegeon to get past it - remember, Aegeon is to be specifically bonded to a certain character, the game won’t let you Bond it to other characters. He had the Ancient Wisdom skill from birth, and I don’t think it involved any of my beefed up merc Mission Blades. The rest of the Ancient Wisdom points were already on my existing members, and I think they’re basically all on Blades that couldn’t be avoided in the story.

I’ll also note I didn’t use Poppi either, I dropped Tora from my main lineup at the first opportunity. And don’t worry too much about sending people on Missions as you can cancel Missions at any time.

Also, in terms of Blade Power, I did a few of the quest lines (mostly around chapter 4 where I thought I was stuck), but not many. I spent a lot of time on Ursula, but never ended up finishing. I got her to about 2500 of the 5000 fans, and by that point she was already the most powerful Rare Blade on my Roster, so I don’t recommend going all out for her on the first play through, maybe New Game +

I’m looking forward to New Game+ mostly because I want to play through the story without the difficulty spikes and map confusion on the Gormotti and Uraya Titans I ran into (yeah, I got lost in Chapter 2 and 3!).

But anyway, Chapter 7 was the last chapter I died on or had any map navigation issues; after that the game kind of morphed into something resembling (from a pacing/map design/gameplay standpoint) what almost felt like Xenosaga Episode 3 (or 4) with a much higher polish budget. I think they definitely spent more time polishing the later chapters than the earlier ones.

killeryoshis said: I hope Curl-6 doesn't do Zenobia's quest. It will end him with the field skill requirements I also recommend sending common blades to do mercenary missions if they can level up field skills. Eventually they will be more useful that way. I call them field mastery slaves.

Yeah, that one is a complete pain in the ass, arf. I used a guide to complete it, arf.

Yeah, I'm about 27 hours in and finding it completely uneven. At times I love it, but I find the only consistently brilliant thing is the soundtrack. The battle-system can work brilliantly but is hampered by poor tutorials and frustrating enemy placement (getting rushed by large groups is frustrating, especially when they are deliberately placed near side-quest objectives), the map/quick travel system is almost incomprehensibly useless and particularly disappointing after how well X's map was integrated into the gameplay. It just feels messier than either X or Chronicles, and I do wonder if that's down to a shortened development cycle; though ostensibly X took ages because of the demands of adjusting to HD development and because of the decision to incorporate online features. It lacks the staggering ambition of X or the refinement and pacing of the first game.

That said, when it comes together, it's excellent. Large stretches of the story have been quite basic so far (go from point A to point B for reason C), but it works well enough and Monolith Soft design fantastical worlds unlike any other developer. The two cities I've been to so far are particularly inspired, if a little confusing in terms of lay-out. I just feel like next time Monolith Soft need to reign themselves in - stop throwing every single mechanic and idea at the wall and seeing what sticks, and actually develop a handful of mechanics while ensuring they're accessible. It'd be good to see something different from them, too; especially between the 5 and 20 hour mark, I couldn't help but compare this negatively to the original game. While many found X's story disappointing (and I agree it's a weak part of that game), I found the emphasis on exploration-driven gameplay refreshing after the narrative thrust of Chronicles. 2 returns to that narrative thrust but with less focus.

I don't mean to sound overwhelmingly negative because I will continue with this game. The Xenoblade series is unlike anything in contemporary game design, but this time that feels like as much of a curse as it is a blessing. Maybe that'll change as I get into the middle and later stages.

My main issue with the field skills is that the blade who has it has to be actively engaged on someone meaning the are times you have to stop to bring up the menu to engage them in order to activate the skill, this is annoying in areas where the are two spots that require differing skills in a short amount of time. I can understand the skill not being activated if the blade is away on merc missions but a quality of life change should have been considered to allow the skills of non engaged blades to be used.

Just a note on the battle system - it gets a lot better once you complete chapter 7 - but it can also be heavily improved by unlocking all three skills that fill your ARTs for the beginning of the battle. The devs didn’t seem to have much focus on polishing the gameplay experience for players who are under 40 or so hours in; the battle system is slow and not very fun during that stage. I had a lot of fun with it in the later chapters though.

As for story, it takes a bit of a turn during chapter 7, and becomes a very different sort of a game. In fact, from chapter 7 onward it is easily the strongest that story telling has been in Xenoblade, and is reminiscent of the higher points of the Xenosaga games. The first 6 chapters are a series of loosely linked scenarios with a very light approach to them - but are mostly character development; the later portions are, as I said, more of a serious Xenosaga style.

Despite Xenoblade Chronicles X not having a linear plot driven story, it did end up having about twice the number of cut scenes as Xenoblade Chronicles, even though the absolute must view cutscenes amount to a lower amount (8 hours on XCX vs 10 hours on XC). I am not sure the amount of time of the cutscenes in XC2, but it seems to be a lot higher than XC.

Not entirely true on the combat, the early chapters  focus more on combos as well as utilizing the break/topple/launch/smash structure and then in C3 you unlock the chain attack. That's a lot of depth as the break structure not only deals significant damage outside of combos but requires you pay attention to the attacks arts you equip on characters and use while combos not only seal certain actions and statuses enemies use but activate element orbs which in turn makes the player consider what blades to engage,  this depth is comes into play against high powered enemies as you want to trigger many element orbs so you can go into the chain attack to have multiple bursts to multiply damage.

All of this is well before level 40, it's only slow when you first start the game up to about level 10 or so, the end of chapter 8 just adds a final layer of depth to consider as an option.

For me, I found it slow until Pneuma is unlocked. Also, in later chapters, characters charge up their meters a lot more quickly, so it is fast to get off combos which not only do a lot of extra damage to the target but all surrounding enemies. I found it somewhat challenging to make it all the way up to even one combo in regular battles in the early game but was hitting them all the time in the late game.

But then again, I never took advantage of the topple system beyond using Rex's Anchor shot to topple them. I suppose I could have done a lot better if I would have focused on more than that. I was also kind of bad at using combos early on, Chapter 4 is when I actually began utilizing them. So, leave it up to me to be a shit at Xenoblade, which is probably why I found the late game battle system a lot faster, more engaging, and more fun.

Combos can be done quickly using the stutter cancel where you tap the analogue as an auto attack connects, this then allows the character to attack again straight away building up arts faster which in turn charges specials. Rex by himself can perform the first and second part of the combo using this which allows other characters to charge up to the third part, this allows consistent combos in the early game.

For topple pay attention to the arts you equip on characters, they'll say what effect they have on them as some will cause break others topple and so on, the order goes Break>Topple>Launch>Smash.