Xenoblade Chronicles X discussion (keep spoilers in tags)

So xenoblade chronicles x just came out in the U.S. and I thought making this thread would be a good idea.

So I will just start with my first impressions.

Aesthetic :
While the graphics are a bit rough around the edges what I have seen so far is absolutely breath taking. The world has this incredible scale to it, making this world seem like this living breathing entity, it really is awesome.

Characters:
I'll just start this part off talking about the avatar and creation of avatar. I find it pretty interesting that instead of putting an actual character as the person you control but rather an avatar, I am not sure how I feel about this yet. And I just want to say a that I haven't seen much as far as really interesting characters yet but the part about lin and the fan fiction had me laughing so hard so so far lin is the most interesting character I have seen. Also unless there is a big reveal they make the or one of the villains way obvious

Music:
The music in this game is kind of disappointing to be honest, I am not a fan of most of the music, maybe it might grow on me, I don't know. I think I came in with the expectations of hearing xenoblade's music and that is why I am disappointed. Also it could be because I really hate rap.

Combat:
Really seems similar to xenoblade, I'll elaborate when I get a bit farther in the game.

Miss:
Just one thing I want to point out is that moon jumping is gone, the characters have weight now... if it weren't for the sprint jump. sprinting jumps are so much fun. A bit rediculous? yes. But I have spent about 20 minutes of my time in xenoblade chronicles x just jumping like a crazy person and I love it.
 
I don't have access to online play yet, but I'm loving this game so far. Anyone else interested in organizing some co-op games?


edit: I registered the channel #xenopals because why not

also my NNID is minwu325
 
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Focus

Ubers Tester Extraordinaire
Man I wish I could play this game more, but school is :(. Here are some impressions from the middle of chapter 6 because why not.

Good stuff:
The music is soooo good. As divisive as the music choice seems to be, I'm firmly in the "love it" camp. The overworld music is outstanding and so is the battle music. All of it. I sure hope this quality keeps up. As it is, it's hard to get a handle on just how much more opening up the game can do. I haven't even ridden in a skell yet, but I can't wait!

Maybe I've been living under a rock for way too long, but you have no idea how excited I saw one of those awesome dragon-horses in Oblivia actually sitting down! It's the little touches like that in the enemy designs and mannerisms that go a long way to make this world feel organic and fleshed out. Even from only setting foot in Primordia, Noctulum, and Oblivia, it is abundantly clear how intricate and well thought-out the landscape is. There are few places that are inaccessible by foot, but the remoteness and wonder for the places just out of reach is for me the most compelling driving force keeping the game moving forward. Bionis may still get the slight edge in terms of impressiveness, but that's from from the sheer audacity of having Xenoblade take place all over a friggin' titan and is no fault of XCX. On Mira though there is something new and exciting to see around every corner, which makes for good times all around. I haven't yet seen any places as annoying to navigate as, say, the water part of Eryth Sea.

The battle system takes some experimenting and fine-tuning, but boy are battles fun. I chose the bottom branch of character classes, the "hard" route. It can be stressful sorting out the Soul Voice shenanigans though, which seems almost necessary for that series of classes. I don't know whether I am just better at playing the game compared to my first Xenoblade outing or what, but fighting a level 25 monster with a level 15-20 crew isn't nearly the death sentence it was in the first game. Four characters is clearly better than three, I suppose. Well, better read the manual some more to see what is up with Overdrive.

Grumble...:
The characters. This is one of the few parts that seem like a step down from the first Xenoblade. There are loads and loads of characters, and pretty much all of them fall flat. Tatsu is the lone life preserver that keeps the proverbial ship afloat. He's awesome. Everyone else seems to have just one personality trait with no hint of complexity. But again, I've mostly been doing just the story missions. It seems that the vast majority of character development seems to be tucked away in affinity missions. First impressions are not good, but I'm expecting this to improve as the game goes on. Don't let me down.

Also that thing where Lin jokes about cooking Tatsu is still not funny. Like wow, it's almost a sight to behold how dedicated this game is to running that joke into the ground. At least L's weirdness gets a few groans out of me rather than just a prolonged hate-filled glare. (On a lighter note, having Elma wear an animal nose with whiskers does wonders to undermine her perpetual seriousness. It's kinda awesome.)

...And speaking characters, lemme say that I'm not a fan of this character avatar. Okay, he/she is clearly meant to be a blank slate to project a personality on, but that just doesn't resonate with me in the slightest, and it never has. It doesn't even help that the linear story progression makes the decisions ultimately not matter, even if the game occasionally has the decency to present an illusion of choice. A giant freaking monster is threatening somebody? Screw that, I'm really underleveled and just don't want to deal with that right now...but nope. I'm forced to fight it before doing anything else. Look, you're not fooling anyone when the options are like "yeah, we can take it on" and "come on, let's fight it." Why can't you just let my character be a pansy for a change?

Huh?:
The jank. At times it's like the whole game took notice of Valak Mountain's bonkers physics and ran with it. It's kinda fun just running around and jumping like an imbecile. I also appreciate how you can Skyrim your way up some steep cliffs. No fall damage brings it all together as a net positive imo. Besides, skip travel is the bomb.

I don't know what's up with all the hidden caves, but it's reminding me a bit of Pikmin 2 and not in a good way. Also does choosing your character's assignment affect anything important, or is it mostly just for that weird online scoreboard thing and a nominal boost to a stat?

Speaking of online stuff, I haven't really gotten into it yet. For all I know it's just a thing that takes up a good chunk of the screen and maybe gives me free stuff once in a while. There are also what appear to be other peoples' avatars all over the place with occasionally lewd greetings. Haven't used them yet. I also couldn't help but look at all the items you can buy online with the in-game currency, and I noticed some interesting things for sale that may or may not indicate later spoilers....
Wow, are Telethia in this game, or those Telethia items just a random reference to the first Xenoblade? (Don't tell me, please!) I wonder what their deal is.
 
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Focus

Ubers Tester Extraordinaire
So...jumping into a bottomless pit pretty much wrecks your Skell. Maybe I'm just dumb or didn't read the text on-screen, but it took me way too long to figure out how to get it back. (Go to the Blade Barracks and interact with the customization terminal.) And somehow I didn't think to actually put Skell Gear on the Skell, which explains why it was kinda bad at fighting. Don't be like me.

I also want to take a moment to say just how hilarious running over enemies with a Skell is. It is utterly glorious. Before, there was an absurd amount of strategy and detail to combat, but then with a Skell you can just run around in a circle over a small enemy until it dies. Just....incredible.
 
I really love this game, but I think Xenoblade Chronicles set my hopes too high in a lot of ways.

-Mira is huge and pretty awesome tbh, but nothing's gonna top the creativity of the universe literally existing on the bodies of two titans. I guess that's not a drawback of XCX so much as a boon of XC. Mira looks incredible on the Wii U though, and I would've loved to see the first game in HD.

-I really can't care about Elma's story, or the main character's. I miss Shulk ACTUALLY TALKING, and the friendships and romance in the first game. I guess it's harder to make a fleshed out character when they're customizable, but even FE Awakening did that 100x better. I like L and HB though.

-Still really fucking excited for Skells but I haven't rode one yet :(
 
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Focus

Ubers Tester Extraordinaire
I really love this game, but I think Xenoblade Chronicles set my hopes too high in a lot of ways.

-Mira is huge and pretty awesome tbh, but nothing's gonna top the creativity of the universe literally existing on the bodies of two titans. I guess that's not a drawback of XCX so much as a boon of XC. Mira looks incredible on the Wii U though, and I would've loved to see the first game in HD.

-I really can't care about Elma's story, or the main characters. I miss Shulk ACTUALLY TALKING, and the friendships and romance in the first game. I guess it's harder to make a fleshed out character when they're customizable, but even FE Awakening did that 100x better. I like L and HB though.

-Still really fucking excited for Skells but I haven't rode one yet :(
I still haven't recruited HB after chapter 9, but ditto everything else. I've been revisiting the first Xenoblade, and it still holds up remarkably well in every aspect except the graphics. The only real drawbacks of that game for me have been fixed in XCX, but at the cost of a lot of what made it my #1 favorite game of all time.

That being said, holy shit does XCX have some high points. Let's just say that skells are worth all the hype and then some.
 
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knocking level 50+ bugs around in a level 30 skell while your teammates open fire on it is hilarious and rewarding

also this is the first time i have ever seen an openly gay character in a first party nintendo game (a BLADE NPC)
 

Focus

Ubers Tester Extraordinaire
Those horn-bird-things are such dorks. I love them. Kudos to whomever decided on the enemy placement.

In other news, that requirement for the lobster sidequest almost gave me a heart attack. Just....ugh.
 
yeah, thankfully the main story only makes you use characters that aren't elma and lin a few times, but it is still annoying having dead weight Irina or Doug for some of the prereq missions. I feel like the first Xenoblade handled the party system a lot better, where you could switch between any of the 7 characters at any time after they join up. Writing and pacing wise X doesn't really hold up to par (except for chapter 12, god damn that was a ride)


what class setups are you guys using? i'm working my way through mastering them all, but I've been sticking with dual swords + sniper rifle and going for pure melee arts. Shadowrunner, Upper Hand, Backslash, Shadowstrike, Hundred Shells, Thirsty Edge, Electric Surge, and Blood Sacrifice have done it for me for most of the game. There's 3 arts with a backstab bonus in there and then a multi-hit, AoE art that makes your overdrive count skyrocket. Against a horde of enemies you can extend your overdrive to last until you kill everything.
 
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shaian

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yeah it'd be better as well if the affinity missions were interesting but so far the only enjoyable ones were Celica's, Mia's, and L's ( which made me grind the ares 90 in order to beat it). Boze, Yelv, and Frye are just so painfully generic, and Phog, Gwin, Hope, and Irina are so boring. The first Xenoblade is definitely better in this regard, but the exploration is so much better in X.
 
Yeah, I'd have to agree with a lot of the posts earlier in the thread; X is definitely a good game, but the characters (really, the story in general, but that's another rant) just fall flat on so many levels. As far as the playable characters go I think the only one I can consider a well-written character is Lao, and while L is a good comic-relief I don't think I can consider him a well-written character. As far as antagonists go, there's... Ga Jiarg, I guess? Really grasping at straws here.

Lao isn't even a well-written character until Chapter 11 where he pulls a face-heel turn, and that even in itself is an extremely-cliché thing to do and it's only salvaged by the fact that he actually had a good reason for it (play Chapter 11 to see what I mean by that), and he redeems himself by the end of Chapter 12. Luxaar is a poor man's Zanza; while neither Luxaar and Zanza were well-written antagonists, Zanza was at least a real threat near the end of Xenoblade Chronicles' plot, whereas Luxaar pretty much has to wait until Chapter 12 to do anything directly threatening, whereupon he's literally stabbed in the back by Lao in the aforementioned redeeming. Ga Jiarg, too, is a poor man's Egil; don't think I need to explain this one, if you've played to the Mechonis Core event in Xenoblade Chronicles and seen Ga Jiarg at all in X, you'll know what I mean.

On another note, it's very worth your time to do Yelv's last Affinity Mission. Trust me on this; if you need to look up a guide to find the two mimeosome legs, do it.


The Longsword + Dual Guns "Ether Blossom Dance" build seems to be the most popular endgame build right now (or, at least, it was a couple months ago), and indeed that was what I was using the last time I played X. It's nearly perfect other than the fact that you can't take on Millesaurs with it because of that "Dino Meteor" combo attack they have.
 
i was a huge fucking fan of the first xenoblade my god was that game beautiful. So obviously I was hyped asf when xenoblade x was announced. It was actually the main reason, along with smash, why i bought a wii-u in the first place. I put in around 105 hours into the game. So did it live to the hype...?

EHHHH i don't know. The story was ridiculously bad I'm going to say it straight up. So much potential wasted. The dialogue was cheesy and the characters were like generic anime side characters. The "DAE TASTUE IS FOOD!" joke was shoved down my neck every single hour. The villains were all stupid and can't remember a single one of their names but can recall most of xenoblade 1's even though i finished it like 3 years ago. The affinity missions were pretty nice tho but they could've fleshed characters out better by making you take them to story missions instead of elma and lin for every single one.

The true beauty of this game's writing is actually in the side-quests. They're all pretty good and have some pretty funny dialogue. They put you in better scenarios than the actual story tbh. I did a shitload of them and plan to do them all some time in the future.

The map and monster designs were beautiful. Took more screenshots than I want to admit.

Didn't like the music that much. There were a few good tracks here and there but Xenoblade 1's soundtrack was so much better. I recently listened to a few of it's tracks and i choked on nostalgia. Seriously listen to some of these tracks


Gameplay was pretty fun. Took mechanics out of the first game and made them better. The endgame is pretty fucking grindy tho. Making those late-game augments takes so many materials.

Overall I would say it didn't live up to hype. Not saying the game was bad, but it didn't live up to the hype. Mainly because of the dogshit story. 7/10
 

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