LogFAQs > #967764312

Revelation34 posted...

I had to fight then right away since most of the locations are inaccessible later.

If you just reached Mechonis, you've got a ways to go before anything becomes inaccessible. The boss fight at the end of Agniritha is what triggers the first large wave of stuff becoming inaccessible, so until you get there, you're fine and you can take your time.

There also honestly isn't that much reason to go out of your way to kill every UM in 1, except as a personal challenge. You get more than enough skill coins to enable the more powerful builds even if you miss every single missable UM (there are 33 missables, I believe, out of 157 UM's and a maximum of 256 skill coins per playthrough, and even then I'm pretty sure you have to kill some of those 33), so unless you're trying to be a completionist, you don't have to be concerned about missing a few.

agesboy posted...

also got a proper ogre break setup going and how the hell was i managing to live without this

Given how much combat strategy revolves around Breaking, I feel like they just should have lowered everybody's Break resistance across the board by the same amount as the Ogre skill does and removed that skill (or maybe reclassified combos as something other than reactions so Ogre could keep the "I'm good at knockback and blowdown" niche they were obviously going for). That, or given a few other classes similar mechanisms to increase break chance. As it stands, you all but need an Ogre in your party to take advantage of anything related to combos when dealing the the more difficult enemies in the game, and given that there's a strong incentive to make Sena that Ogre, it really works against the incredible flexibility the game otherwise offers.

agesboy posted...

another spoilery endgame xenoblade 3 thought: I think for sure 3 is my favorite game of the series, and possibly in my top 3 games of all time (RF4 and Rance 10 (if you count gameplay heavy vns) are hurdles man). It isn't a perfect game by far, but it hits so well so often.

I'm inclined to agree. It's got its share of flaws (like STOP OVERRIDING THE AWESOME BOSS MUSIC THAT I'LL NEVER HEAR AGAIN WITH THE CHAIN ATTACK THEME THAT I'VE HEARD 578,000 TIMES) and I can see why some would prefer a longer, more direct story over this fairly short story that gets most of its value from making you contemplate it afterwards and relate it to the worldbuilding from sidequests and the like, but I'm really, really enjoying myself. Whether it stays at the top after I've had more time for the experience to settle remains to be seen, but for now I think it's dethroned Xenoblade 1 as one of my favourite games every. It's just so good in all the right ways.

One thing that definitely won't change with more time: This is absolutely the best Xenoblade party and quite possibly one of the best video game parties full stop. Individually, some of the characters might not necessarily measure up to others (though they're still fantastic and genuinely believable in their own rights), but the chemistry they have with each other and the way their relationships develop has been nothing short of an absolute joy to participate in. This game has been an epic journey with a bunch of people that I've genuinely loved hanging out with and being able to immerse myself among, which in turn has made their personal struggles and experiences hit that much harder, and that's really been incredible.

Chapter 5/6 spoilers:

agesboy posted...

End of ch5 -> early ch6 is absolute peak Xenoblade moments. Throws an infodump at you but also challenges you to think about why this is even being relayed to you, until time resumes and the gambit pays off. So much begins to make sense during the most bleak phase of the entire series. Noah faces despair and- unlike N, because he faces it in a different way- doesn't succumb to it.

Indeed. I especially love just how much more layered everything gets with the relevation of M's gambit and what that meant for all of the interactions surrounding it. The one that really gets me was Mio acknowledging that, after spending time with Noah and everyone else, she no longer felt ambivalent about her own survival and had decided that she really wanted to live. In context, it was a beautiful moment (reminiscent of Pyra/Mythra's "I love this world because you're in it"), made excruciatingly tragic by her impending execution and ultimately seeing her die and therefore never getting to really take advantage of that newfound love of life.

Except it wasn't really Mio. It was M, who had spent countless eons wishing for death because N chained her to an immortal existence that she didn't want. She finally found and seized a way to end that torment, but after sharing Mio's memories and within a few short days of hearing Noah on the other side of the cell wall, she came to love her life enough to want to live again (with "my Noah," which takes on a whole new meaning now). Instead of Mio's broad ambivalence, M went from actively seeking death to wanting more time with Noah, making the tragedy of her sacrifice even more pronounced. I just cri ever tim.

Bonus points where I went to bed after the post-Chapter 5 save, which resulted in genuinely losing sleep over speculating how they could possibly get out of it (or if they even could). I knew there was still game left and that the same people were still around for the endgame in some capacity, so they weren't *really* going to kill off the entire party, except for the part where they had established the cycle of reincarnation and also vaguely hinted at some sort of time loop deal with N and M's existence. They very easily could have killed everyone off and picked up the story a few years later with their reborn selves trying again. They could have sent Noah back in time to try again. There were enough plausible possibilities for killing everyone off without having to invent a solution that had no foreshadowing that I genuinely couldn't tell whether or not they were going to go there, especially where the time for "last-minute save because anime" had already passed when apparently-Mio evaporated. Some absolutely fantastic storytelling there, easily the highest point of the whole series.

agesboy posted...

like losing battles in jrpgs when ur cranked and ezwin

By and large, I don't mind that too much. Scripted losses can be a bit lazy as a storytelling mechanic, but I generally accept the ludonarrative dissonance of facerolling the boss but still taking a scripted loss if I've gone out of my way to be far more powerful than I'm supposed to be at that point in the story. In that case, I've chosen to break the game, so I don't mind the game being broken.

What I'm less forgiving of is when it happens when I'm not doing anything special, which happened several times in this game. I deliberately stayed at-level with the story content for the whole game and picked classes according to what needed levelling instead of anything min/maxed, but I was still pretty consistently able to take bosses from 50% (or higher) to dead with a single chain attack. That made for quite a few instances where I killed them with that chain attack, but then still "lost" in the cutscene. I'm pretty sure that's just an issue with HP cutoffs for scripted losses not interrupting chain attacks, which should be an easy fix, but it was still pretty annoying.