Nah skip the strong guys. The enemies you face in an hour award more exp then those guys in the cave, and you come back to the cave at a higher level not much later anyway.

When I played this myself it took me 2 hours to get passed the cave, when my girlfriend played (and she is much worse then me at this game) she took an hour and ten minutes, with me telling her to skip those guys. At the 3 hour point for her, and the 4 hour point for me, we had the same level and amount of story completion, and she did end up taking down those guys.

Experience is exponential in this game. If you're level 10 and kill a level 5 guy you get 1 or 2 exp, where a level 5 guy gets 28 exp. They made the game so it's always somewhat challenging, no matter how much you grind.

I arrived tonight at the Bionis Leg and it remind me of Final Fantasy 13 and now I got Shala very cool game. Finally I play my Wii a little bit

20 hours in. Just got to the forest. I can't stop playing. It is really that good. I don't remember the last time I played a game this much. Just it level 34 and going strong. The fights are now much more challenging.

It's a good point actually, but sadly experience gained from exploration and sidequests never scale down. Only enemy fights do...

The key point is, no matter what enemy you're fighting, if you're 4 or more levels above them you'll get on 1 SP. If you're level 80 and the enemy is level 75, you'll get the same amount of SP as if you fought a lv. 3 enemy. It's really the only thing that drastically scales...

Fortunately, there's fewer sidequests later on, but the enemy levels increase at the same rate, even if you're slowing down. So if you're overlevelled early on, you'd be much closer come endgame. Of course, it's best to not overlevel at all!

OT: I've just finished the story quest 'We Made It', and the party has re-united. My word, I love that scene...

Currently level 51, starting to feel things getting a bit difficult now...need to go around the area, kill some lower level enemies, do some sidequests and some exploration me thinks. Still a great game, loving it just as much the second time through, even though I know what's gonna happen...

I did the same thing! However, it's easier with this game, as one of the characters has a skill which drastically increase speed and defence if you're unarmoured. Trick is to get the affinity up with the other characters to get this skill link. Makes the game bearable!

I'm now ~45 hours in and having a grand ol' time. Every party member is now on Team Smeags and we're rockin' some Mechons.

I also finally started Gem Crafting (Because my mineral pocket finally filled up. )... and I guess I get how it works. It took me forever to start using the Blacksmith in Skyrim as well. I dunno, I'm just the type of gamer who much prefers to play the meat of the game instead of doing all these silly side-stuff to buff up characters. But hey, I guess it works.

Also: XenoBlade has one thing that annoys the heck outta me: Cut-scene>Run 30 meters>Cut-scene. They're always doing this to me! Just make it one big cut-scene and get it over with! Geeze!

One more thing: the scene where Shulk uses water from the spring to... um... yeah. Total cheese-fest.

Smeags said: I'm now ~45 hours in and having a grand ol' time. Every party member is now on Team Smeags and we're rockin' some Mechons. I also finally started Gem Crafting (Because my mineral pocket finally filled up. )... and I guess I get how it works. It took me forever to start using the Blacksmith in Skyrim as well. I dunno, I'm just the type of gamer who much prefers to play the meat of the game instead of doing all these silly side-stuff to buff up characters. But hey, I guess it works. Also: XenoBlade has one thing that annoys the heck outta me: Cut-scene>Run 30 meters>Cut-scene. They're always doing this to me! Just make it one big cut-scene and get it over with! Geeze! One more thing: the scene where Shulk uses water from the spring to... um... yeah. Total cheese-fest.

Yeah. I think I know where you mean...

It sorta recaps the story at that point whilst everyone's seperated. It shows you the relationships between characters and it also causes you to play with other characters (I ditched Reyn and Sharla, for example). The game stops being like that very soon, so don't worry! 

Also, the gem crafting is fairly simple. Choose two characters with a high affinity, make one of the the shooter, the other one the mechanic, chuck in crystals with as few attributes at as high a percentage as possible (1 attribute with 198% is ideal, but that's very hard), and leave the game to run. If those characters have affinity with other characters, they'll join in the fun too! 

Best combo IMO is Shulk as the mechanic and Reyn as the shooter, or the other way round...that way almost everything is a high flame increase...

Listening to soundtracks on youtube is not my thing, I wanna add the 4-disc set to my collection.  If the European download isn't the complete soundtrack, I'll just have to find it online somewhere.

Yeah, the EU soundtrack I had came when I registered it on Club Nintendo. Came with 10 tracks, including Satorl Marsh (Night), Gaur Plains, Engage the Enemy, One that stands in our way, and more!

Classic songs. But the full 85 track version, it was not.

I didn't like Satorl Marsh at all... until it turned night-time. O_O
Also I just got to the forest and OH MY SWEET GOODNESS it looks so big and artistically stunning. My jaw dropped when I realized you could actually go down the cliff and swim to the waterfalls.