Xenoblade 3 is pretty good so far.

Liking the combat and world. These games never really miss.

goated game, and the expansion is extremely good too

main complaint I have is the chain attack theme overwriting almost everything, you might not even realize most boss themes have a low HP version

agesboy posted...

main complaint I have is the chain attack theme overwriting almost everything, you might not even realize most boss themes have a low HP version

Yep. This and CP gain scaling based on level differences (at least with the level-down option locked behind postgame), which is particularly bothersome in a game that has some of the best sidequesting in all of gaming.

Probably the best expansion too, which is high praise given Gorden Circle was also excellent

I was hoping age and adjl would show up.

So, I only started chapter 2...the whole point of class switching is to permanently get class skills more or less, yeah?

Also, during chain attacks, what is the point of the healers preventing damage above 99%?

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

I was hoping age and adjl would show up.

I never pass up a chance to fanboy about Xenoblade 3.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

So, I only started chapter 2...the whole point of class switching is to permanently get class skills more or less, yeah?

Yep. It's very similar to X's class system. You'll unlock passive skills and arts from each class to be used with other classes, which forms the backbone of the character building system. Levelling up a class also gives some stat boosts, but those only apply while using that class (this does, however, mean that if a boss fight's coming up, you might want to switch to a class you've got at a higher rank).

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Also, during chain attacks, what is the point of the healers preventing damage above 99%?

TP isn't directly a measure of damage. It dictates when the round ends and what bonuses you get when it does. When you hit 100 TP or more, the round ends with that turn and you perform the round finisher, but there are bonuses for finishing the round with higher amounts of TP. Most significantly, if you only break 100 TP, you only get back one character for the next round, but if you hit 150+, you get two, and hitting 200+ gives you three. The chain attack ends when you run out of characters, so getting more in there helps get more rounds. Higher TP also gets you a bigger damage bonus from each round (capping at the bonus that 200+ gives you, IIRC), so you're incentivized to stack it as high as you can each round.

Effectively, the strategy boils down to:
-Start with an attacker to get a big initial TP boost
-Use a healer to cap it at 99
-Use a defender to guarantee that the next round gives you back whoever's TP is highest, hopefully pushing past 150 (this often doesn't happen on round 1 unless you've built for it)

The next round, repeat that, but instead of the defender, use the attacker you used in the first round (whose TP will likely be in the 50-80 range, depending on their starting value and what bonuses you got) to push yourself into 150+ or 200+ territory and get more characters back for the third round. The third round will be the last one (for now), so then you can squeeze a bit more damage/buff opportunities out by using every remaining healer before going over 100 with the final character and triggering the finisher.

It's not the most intuitive system, but once you get a handle on how TP works it turns into a very satisfying puzzle to maximize the damage you get out of it. A few more extra mechanics end up in there (notably, once you get Heroes, they provide their own unique bonuses instead of whatever their role suggests they will), but that's the basic gist of it.

The ideal is to use everyone in every round of a chain attack, so you often end up with more healers than you'd expect. Which is good because they tend to be pretty useful overall, especially when compared to defenders lol.

Also, don't be surprised if you struggle to get long chain attacks at first. Doing so with only six party members is pretty tricky; once you add a hero into the mix for a 7th, that helps things tremendously. Early on, you also probably don't have a full palette of Fusion Arts (since you need to unlock arts from multiple classes to do that), and Fusion Arts give significantly more TP than regular ones do.

A side note, don't stress if you can't 100% explore a map, even the early ones. You can't explore everything until later in the game. I wasted hours trying to find out why I couldn't get to one little area on the map, thinking it was a platforming issue...

And yeah, heroes are a gamechanger when it comes to chain attacks. I think for most of the game I used heroes specifically for their chain attack shenanigans. so only ashera l m a o

Ahhh, thank for the tips. I think that makes sense. So far, X3 has been easier for me to grasp than X2, combat wise. Can't recall if that's because X2 didn't do a good job explaining it, or if I just didn't pay attention. I do like how X3 pretty much forces you to see how stuff works, step by step.

I did the Chain Attack forced tutorial but, then the holiday week came around. I'll dive back into the game next week.
I do miss the X2 combat announcer yelling OUTSTANDING and MAGNIFICENT and whatnot.

2 does a piss-poor job of explaining pretty much everything, made even worse by the fact that its combat system is probably the most complex of the four (though Overdrive in X is also pretty unintuitive and not explained very well in-game). Grasping 3 more easily than 2 is not remotely surprising.

While the combat announcements are missing, the voice actor that did those announcements does play a character you'll encounter later (chapter 5, iirc). He's pretty great in his own right.

Chain attacks become tiresome after awhile.

adjl posted...

2 does a piss-poor job of explaining pretty much everything, made even worse by the fact that its combat system is probably the most complex of the four (though Overdrive in X is also pretty unintuitive and not explained very well in-game).

Phew, so it wasn't just me. Once the mechanics, especially the elemental stuff in chain attacks in 2 clicked, it was really fun. I also did like the Art icons more. But I will say the launch in 3 is hilarious, where an enemy spins at like Mach 3 for 10 whole seconds.

So, is there a point where it finally makes sense to stop class switching, and just settle on a class per character, or should all of them really learn every other class? I'm also on Chapter 3, where I had Ethel for like 2 seconds and could have started to learn her class, so clearly there's many more classes. So, maybe less learning them all, more focusing on a handful? I assume I'll get Ethel again later.

The skills you can get from mastering classes work really well with other classes a lot of the time. I'd try to have your dedicated healer master all the healer classes eventually, etc, but you don't have to go out of your way to be a completionist.

I generally just tried to have everyone on a class with a similar affinity level at any given time (the affinity just dictates how quickly they'll level that class, not anything to do with their relative power) so that everybody was levelling more or less evenly. Regardless of what you do, you'll still have some grinding to do at endgame to max out all the classes (if nothing else, because CP gain goes down as you level relative to the enemies you fight and you need the postgame level-down option to keep making reasonable progress), so don't get too bogged down trying to spread the wealth.

That said, with my approach, I found that I was mastering classes at roughly the correct pace to give me an interesting variety of gameplay experiences bouncing between classes, rather than feeling like a slog that I was min-maxing. Your mileage may vary, but I do recommend trying out a variety of classes both for their unlocks and for the fun of it.

I think I'm on...3 classes each? In chapter 3? Or 2, if you don't count starting classes.

Think Noah has gone Sword >Zephyr>Defender bug Sword guy currently.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

I think I'm on...3 classes each? In chapter 3? Or 2, if you don't count starting classes.

Think Noah has gone Sword >Zephyr>Defender bug Sword guy currently.

What kind roles did shulk plays in this sequel pororin.

Pororin posted...

What kind roles did shulk plays in this sequel pororin.

Nothing in the base game, but he's playable in the expansion.