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Johnw1104 on 27 January 2018
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Nuvendil said:
Johnw1104 said:

Well I'm glad it worked for ya. I don't mean to suggest that I'd just nail the combat perfectly if it were all presented to me initially by any means, but I've always liked to have the tools presented to me early and learned for myself as increasing difficulty demands more from me as I go.

It's a bit like the Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis grand strategy games I adore; despite playing them for many hundreds of hours over a decade+ I still find myself learning new things from time to time (though some of that is due to the many expansions that keep it fresh), and the best way to learn those games really was to just throw yourself into the deep end, get your butt kicked, and adapt your strategy lol

I think this game (and others) could have used something akin to the "Newbie Island" of Crusader Kings known as Ireland, where you really get to experiment with the mechanics and such in an easier but still challenging setting (by virtue of being disunited and on the edge of the continent there isn't the same risk of instant death as other starts, though the Vikings will arrive soon enough :D). There's something fun about having all of the tools available and just trying to figure the game out for yourself with impending doom encouraging you to investigate the mechanics further. The challenge is to keep the interest high enough that players don't jump ship when confronted with that difficulty, and while Xeno 2 definitely did that for me, I can see why it's often not a risk studios want to take.

With all the glowing praise in this thread, though, I think I'll certainly press on with the game... I may just blitzkrieg through the rest of the early portion of the story until it really opens up into what I've been reading about in the comments here.

Just do pay attention to these tutorials, these systems all feed into each other.  If you brush them off as being shallow trinkets thrown at you, you are going to wind up in a position like some others have where you are the same level or higher than some bosses and getting absolutely destroyed because you aren't properly making use of all your options :P

I think I'm one of the rare types that doesn't mind dying at all in games heh... Heck, I remember very early on practicing against that lvl 8 Driver in the first major town until I found some means of defeating him without leveling or getting the extra party members (the latter a definite mistake in this teamwork-centric game), probably lost half a dozen times lol; similar efforts after forming the party in that same town with completing the available quests that were a bit higher level again had me learning about how best to use their abilities together to overcome the level gap. It was that effort, though, that had me looking through a great deal of information, and I learned quite a lot from it.

There's few things more gratifying to me than overcoming an obstacle or boss that had seemed insurmountable. I hope to feel that again one day when I kill that roaming asshole of a giant gorilla that's always sneaking up on me.

Nuvendil said:

Also, Monster Hunter and this game are in entirely different genres and this game has far more interlocking mechanics and statistics to come to grips with, not a very good comparison.  

There's truth to that, I was just trying to figure out what would appeal best to western audiences and Monster Hunter is the latest major Japanese title to try. Oddly, the one part of my brain that's being strained and tested when playing Xenoblade 2 is the one that I haven't really been using much in gaming since my raid leading days in various MMO's lol... More than any game I've played in a long time Xeno 2 feels like leading a party in a dungeon crawler, and I really enjoy that aspect of it.

Frankly, I may be permanently stuck in tutorials though as I spend far too much time just salvaging and seeing what monsters I can down ahead-of-schedule heh... Looking like I'll fix my home town's money woes before I hit chapter 4 :D

Last edited by Johnw1104 - on 27 January 2018