Xenoblade 2 thoughts (no spoilers)

[Nuvendil]

RolStoppable said:

Lonely_Dolphin said:
I said it before I think but it has to be restated, Ursula is not worth it the constant gameplay interuption and taking up a merc mission slot. Even if you get her as early as possible, you most likely will not complete her mission before beating the game, so you'll be investing so much time into a tool you'll rarely use. I started on her right after I got Zeke (Ch.5/6?), didn't finish until like 50 hours after beating the game. Her mission is singlehandedly the worst thing about this game, I only completed it because I must hate myself. Would really have to question the devs if this doesn't get patched.

I got Ursula on my second file early on (15 hours of playtime; didn't get her on my first playthrough) and completed her sidequest in 35 hours. The sad thing is that this isn't the worst thing about the game because she is bearable if she is among the first rare blades you draw.

The worst thing is that the draw rate for rare blades becomes unbearable once you miss only five of them. You can spend dozens of core crystals without getting anything while the game trolls you with tips like "the more you resonate, the better your chances at a rare blade." In reality, the more rare blades you have, the lower your chances get.

I am missing three rare blades at this point and it's a damn lottery. It messes up completion so hard because it postpones building trust with blades. I do not even know if I'll be lucky enough to get all of the missing blades. Either they patch this and make it reasonable or they implement a new game+ that allows you to carry over all unlocked blades including their affinity charts while resetting the odds of drawing rare blades.

I think the easy fix here is to have a core crystal type that always produces rares but only drops in post game, from Super Bosses for example.  So a completionist oriented feature.  And making odds for a Rare Blade fixed rates according to crystal type.

From a pure gameplay perspective, I will say in hindsight the game is generous enough to make deeling with the system not as necessary.  You can get 7 rares from outside the crystal system.  Vess, Herald, Sheba, Wulfric, Kasandra,  Roc, and Aegaeon are all obtained from unrandomized cores gained in sidequests, side activities, or in the course of the story.  With that you can have 3 DPS on Rex, 3 tanks of Morag, 3 DPS on Zeke, and 2 healers on Nia.  And of course you can get two more forms of Poppi for Tora.  That means you just need 1 healer rare for Nia.  So that's good for those who don't want to deal with the RNG much.