Xenoblade 2 thoughts (no spoilers)

[Jumpin]

A quick tip on field skills (for the questions above)

FIELD SKILL MENU NAVIGATION
* DO NOT enter the affinity menu to scroll over to check them, it will take you like 20 Minutes to see all the field skills.
* DO THIS:
1. Select + to access your main menu
2. Select Blade Management
3. Hit the L button 2 (maybe 3) times.
4. You will see the the list of field skills for the Blade selected, and you merely need to use the left joycon to navigate the menu in order to see each Blade’s field skill in a neat little list.

The UI in this game is not perfect, and there are a few traps. So if something seems overly hard to do, it is probably because there is an easy way.

While I am at it, another tip: FAST ATTACKS WITH SLOW BLADES

No one asked about it, but this is useful to everyone.
Some Blades, including Pyramid/Mythra have very long auto-attack animations. The initial hit only takes a very brief portion of the animation before the connection, however, the rest of the animation can take a while.
1. Stop, allow auto-attack to connect
2. When the weapon connects, TAP the directional stick- this will cancel the rest of the attack animation and your character will hit very quickly.

So you won’t want to do this for all Blade types, since some have much faster auto-attacks, and it will be faster to just stand still. But with someone like Pyra, you can move>tap>move>tap and get your ARTs up very very quickly.


Another tip: CHAIN & COMBO ATTACKS
For combos, wait until you have a clear chain of at least I, II, III between your characters before using these. I have seen some people using special moves before their party members have at least a II and a III, and while this can work some times, it is much safer to make sure you can launch a full combo. For those early in the game and aren’t sure on the combo system:
1. Look at your ARTs palate, the A button will be assigned a level, either blank, I, II, III, or IV.
2. Notice on your left and right you’ll see characters with 1, 2, or 3 little balls floating around them, these indicate their levels for their A button Art. You can chain these into an attack, and it causes lots of extra damage.
3. If you are Rex, and you use Pyra’s I, II, III, or IV A-Art, then in the upper right of the screen you will notice a little flow chart. In this case, it will show the next stages can be done by either a water or a red (fire) or blue (water) art.
4. If Nia has two or three of those little balls floating around her, then you can continue the chain by hitting the zL button, and it will take the combo up to level 2. Which leaves with a red (fire) art remaining.
5. Early in the game, it is likely only Pyra that can complete this combo (which actually makes my example bad for early players) so imagine you have a third character with a fire Blade, and they have 3 little balls floating around them, when executing the level 3 A-attack, it will finish the combo (but early on enemies deplete very slowly, so you can probably charge Pyra up to a III or IV to finish the combo.
6. Notice at the end of the combo there will be a floating red ball around the enemy. This will allow you to deal extra damage in your chain attacks (hitting the + button with a party gauge of 3 bars, this is in the upper left corner), and including water elementals (like Nia’s Dromach) in your chain.
7. If you do multiple different combos attacks, you can have multiple different balls floating around the enemy, and can break them all at once in one chain for hundreds of thousands of damage. Essentially you can Crush big enemies quickly.

Mastering the two attack strategies above pretty much makes everything from Chapter 4 or early chapter 5 onward to be fairly easy. I would use screen shots if I could, but I am currently on a train and have no access to a PC.