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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Xenoblade 2 thoughts (no spoilers)

Nuvendil on 24 January 2018
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.



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curl-6 on 25 January 2018

Phew, okay, now that's done with, my final assessment.

Pros: 

- Superb soundtrack.

- Engaging story; especially loved how it ties into the first game, with the experiment from the first game splitting Klaus between the Xenoblade 1 and 2 universes, who tries to rebuild in the XBC2 while at the same time his other half becomes the antagonist of the first game, to the point where the finale of both games occur simulataneously across separate parallel universes. Very awesome.

- When it comes together, the battle system can be totally awesome.

 

Cons:

- It's attempts at humor mostly fall flat.

- Some encounters can be very frustrating.

 

Verdict: 8/10. Not as classic as the first game, but better than X.



killeryoshis on 25 January 2018

I dislike the fact that some Rare Blade Quests can only be done when the Blade has level 5 affinity. That's ridiculous! I only have one blade with that much affinity in Chapter 8 and its Poppi. There has to be a better way to build affinity then just spamming pouch items. At least Herald is stupid easy to max out. As is Sheba. Not Ursula though.



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Nuvendil on 25 January 2018
RolStoppable said:
Nuvendil said:

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.

All I've found on the internet so far is that even post-game farming takes hundreds of crystals to unlock the last few rare blades. But even if what you said is true, it's still incredibly stupid because you have to wait so long until you can start building trust.

You can get even more rare blades that aren't randomized. Only 20 of the 38 rare blades in the game are random and the game is generous with its odds until you are missing only five or six of the random rare blades. It's just so incredibly pointless to make it such a tedious process for completionists to get the remaining ones. That, and the nightmare of getting Ursula late because her quest is messed up, drags the game down from being completely awesome to yet another JRPG where some asshole of a game designer wasn't kept in check by the director. Anytime a game designer suggests such nonsense, they should get a punch in the face and a reminder that the goal of the development team is a great game.

I mean, this game is over 100 hours long to begin with, so there was no need whatsoever to artificially stretch its content.

Well, completionism stuff is very often the stuff that slips through the cracks in quality assurance unfortunately.

With Ursula, the fix is stupidly easy: just reduce the number of fans needed for the finale to something, you know, reasonable?  Or make gaining fans like 10x easier?  That way a neat concept doesn't turn into preposterous grind?  



Jumpin on 26 January 2018
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 found that the few dozen times to get her up to the second-last row is worthy enough. She has a very fast rate of growth, but then she halts after the second last row, and that is where the 50+ hours of grinding becomes unworthy. Then again, I would always pull her back to use for boss battles and mini-boss battles, so I might have been slower with her than I otherwise would have been.

Also, I don't think this game was designed for a player to be able to do everything in one playthrough. It was designed so that players would have different experiences across multiple playthroughs; some new treat on your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th playthroughs that you haven't seen before.

I plan to go through this game again once the New Game + comes out. All I hope for is that it keeps the Blade Catalogue (the one that records what Blades you've had, not the actual inventory of Blades).

I didn't actually realize there was post-game stuff. Maybe I'll pick up the game again this weekend.

 

Speaking of the post-game, has anyone played it yet? Is it a grand experience like Dragon Quest 9 or Lunar: Eternal Blue? Or is it more or less just big enemies to grind with no real purpose other than to get big levels and over-powered items like most RPGs?

Last edited by Jumpin - on 26 January 2018

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Iveyboi on 26 January 2018

Just finished the game, ah man so sad to be done. MELTED the final boss with 4 orbs burst hehe. Masterpiece of a game, will miss it



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osed125 on 26 January 2018

After a very long journey (125 hours) I finally finished the game.

I can say that it truly is an amazing game; combat and music in particular are simply spectacular. 

Story was a hit and miss for me. Similar to the first Xenoblade, there a lot of anime cliche moments which I personally don't like, and more than the fan service and love jokes is the "heroes are always the good guys who don't kill people and want to forgive EVERYONE", it happened in XC1 with Egil (god how much I hated that), and it happened here...to a lesser degree at least, trying to forgive the Torna guys was handled a lot better than Egil in XC1; Jin, Malos, Akhos, Mikhael and Patroka are much more likable, and I think have a better purpose and meaning than just simple vengeance.

Since I went in to the spiral of compering the two games, I will continue to say that in terms of 'plot twist' moments, XC1 is still better, I think it impacted me more, but XC2 definitely has better characters and character development, especially the bad guys.

The series still has somewhat lackluster side quests, I didn't play XCX, but XC1 had monotonous sidequests with very few good stories in them, the only thing that keep the first game sidequests passable was the amazing combat.

XC2 improves in a few aspects, it has a little more variety (merc missions for example), but it still is the same 'talk to x guy', 'fight x monster', 'gather x number of x item', type of quests; and in the same vein of the previous game, the main thing that keeps the sidequests interesting is the amazing combat system; gathering is much much better at least, thanks to collection points. And now there are better stories, thanks to blade quests and having a little more emphasis on quality over quantity.

Those are the main points I wanted to share really; I want to do same post game stuff and finish some Blade quest I left unfinished, but I have to take a break after 125 hours lol.

Also, big spoiler but: 

Pyra/Mythra should have stayed dead at the end of the game...and yes I have no heart.

Last edited by osed125 - on 26 January 2018

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Lonely_Dolphin on 26 January 2018
Jumpin 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 found that the few dozen times to get her up to the second-last row is worthy enough. She has a very fast rate of growth, but then she halts after the second last row, and that is where the 50+ hours of grinding becomes unworthy. Then again, I would always pull her back to use for boss battles and mini-boss battles, so I might have been slower with her than I otherwise would have been.

Also, I don't think this game was designed for a player to be able to do everything in one playthrough. It was designed so that players would have different experiences across multiple playthroughs; some new treat on your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th playthroughs that you haven't seen before.

I plan to go through this game again once the New Game + comes out. All I hope for is that it keeps the Blade Catalogue (the one that records what Blades you've had, not the actual inventory of Blades).

I didn't actually realize there was post-game stuff. Maybe I'll pick up the game again this weekend.

 

Speaking of the post-game, has anyone played it yet? Is it a grand experience like Dragon Quest 9 or Lunar: Eternal Blue? Or is it more or less just big enemies to grind with no real purpose other than to get big levels and over-powered items like most RPGs?

Aside from bosses there's no real post-game, just whatever unexplored areas and unfinished sidequest you have left.

 

osed125 said:

After a very long journey (125 hours) I finally finished the game.

I can say that it truly is an amazing game; gameplay, soundtrack, music are spectacular. 

Story was a hit and miss for me. Similar to the first Xenoblade, there a lot of anime cliche moments which I personally don't like, and more than the fan service and love jokes is the "heroes are always the good guys who don't kill people and want to forgive EVERYONE", it happened in XC1 with Egil (god how much I hated that), and it happened here...to a lesser degree at least, trying to forgive the Torna guys was handled a lot better than Egil in XC1; Jin, Malos, Akhos, Mikhael and Patroka are much more likable, and I think have a better purpose and meaning than just simple vengeance.

Since I went in to the spiral of compering the two games, I will continue to say that in terms of 'plot twist' moments, XC1 is still better, I think it impacted me more, but XC2 definitely has better characters and character development, especially the bad guys.

The series still has somewhat lackluster side quests, I didn't play XCX, but XC1 had monotonous sidequests with very few good stories in them, the only thing that keep the first game sidequests passable was the amazing cambat.

XC2 improves in a few aspects, it has a little more variety (merc missions for examples), but it still is the same 'talk to x guy', 'fight x monster', 'gather x number of x item', type of quests; and in the same vein of the previous game, the main thing that keeps the sidequests interesting is the amazing combat system; gathering is much much better at least, thanks to collection points. And now there are better stories, thanks to blade quests and having a little more emphasis on quality over quantity.

Those are the main points I wanted to share really; I want to do same post game stuff and finish some Blade quest I left unfinished, but I have to take a break after 125 hours lol.

Also, big spoiler but: 

Pyra/Mythra should have stayed dead at the end of the game...and yes I have no heart.

Agreed, them returning made the last 10 minutes of cutscenes completely pointless.



curl-6 on 26 January 2018

Honestly, while I enjoyed the game's story as a whole, especially the developments of chapters 8-10, and the awesome way they tied it into Xenoblade 1, the very ending was a tad weak IMHO.

That said, I am still glad Pyra/Mythra didn't die, if only because ending a 90-hour game sadly would be kind of a downer.



osed125 on 26 January 2018
curl-6 said:

Honestly, while I enjoyed the game's story as a whole, especially the developments of chapters 8-10, and the awesome way they tied it into Xenoblade 1, the very ending was a tad weak IMHO.

That said, I am still glad Pyra/Mythra didn't die, if only because ending a 90-hour game sadly would be kind of a downer.

I have to agree on your first point, that was honestly the biggest 'mind blown' of the game. 

Kind of sad to think about the people who didn't play the first game, they are gonna miss some pretty freaking awesome stuff.



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