Board 8 > Starting Xenoblade Chronicles shortly. Gimme some tips

(+) Yeah! (+)

This may also turn into a half-assed playthrough topic.

I know y'all are big on this game. What are some spoiler-free tips I should have going into this game?
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you don't need to do every sidequest
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i had heard that and was curious about it.

is it easy to tell which ones are going to have some kind of interesting story or character interactions to them, and which are just busy work?
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don't stress about sidequests at all
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pxlated posted...

i had heard that and was curious about it.

is it easy to tell which ones are going to have some kind of interesting story or character interactions to them, and which are just busy work?

from what i remember, except for a very clear set of quests a few chapters in, the rest are all busywork
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A lot of them are fun in a way. I am sure there's a spoilerfree FAQ out there for which ones you can skip.
Though I feel sidequests were one of the things XCX improved upon.

Also I dont remember if partymembers get experience when they're not in the party, because there are times where they leave temporarily for plotreasons.
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I did some of the busy work quests that had me go poking around and fighting enemies because I enjoyed the combat/exploration. I didn't bother with quests that didn't interest me.

The inventory system in the game isn't great.

The areas and music are amazing and I wanna see your reactions to each place.

There are some other things I know you'll post about, but, I figure you should just deal with that when it comes and experience the game naturally.
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i see, i'll keep this stuff in mind

about to set up dolphin and get started. depending on how well it runs i might eventually try the HD texture packs but i'm not too concerned about that.

theoretically, i could stream this but i don't really feel like talking and it feels weird streaming and not talking at all
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the game is beautiful

if you stream it, you will talk. Because you will be quoting the characters
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Don't lose your head though.
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my last foray into streaming, i just kept getting dudes telling me how sexy my voice was and that's kind of uncomfortable

and then one dude flipped out when he sent me a ps4 message and i didn't respond immediately and it just kind of put me off the whole thing

i'm always like "oh i should stream more" and then remember that stuff
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if any of you are actually interested in watching i guess let me know and maybe i can be convinced though
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I purchased all three games from Operation Rainfall, yet haven't played any of them. I really should get to doing that... perhaps this topic will inspire me!
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isn't the 3ds version just kind of an enhanced port?

and while i've been interested in the first game for a long while, i have absolutely 0 interest in 2. it looks like hot garbage
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Spoilers for Xenoblade Chronicles from here on out!

The intro was pretty alright. Interesting world concept. Battle is ehhh but most rpg battle systems start out pretty bland. I was expecting something more action-y but that's not necessarily a problem. Music is great!
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good thing i'm here! no? anyone?
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You don't need much in the way of advice other than to ignore most of the sidequests.
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pxlated posted...

isn't the 3ds version just kind of an enhanced port?

and while i've been interested in the first game for a long while, i have absolutely 0 interest in 2. it looks like hot garbage

3ds version is a neat technical achievement but not too hot for controlling

i started with the 3ds version but it was just a blurry mess that drove me insane, so i went to dolphin with the HD pack and never looked back
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Just installed hd textures and 60fps hack. With these two together I can only run the game at 2x native resolution (720p) but its still very nice. Nice and smooth.

Time to actually dig in.
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pxlated posted...

Battle is ehhh but most rpg battle systems start out pretty bland. I was expecting something more action-y but that's not necessarily a problem.

Wut.

I can't imagine anybody calling Xenoblade's battle system "bland". I mean, I understand you don't have a lot of arts or abilities yet, but even then in comparison to other RPGs it's pretty dynamic. It's one of the best things I like about the series, since even fighting a bunch of ordinary battles is fast-paced and fun.
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Grand Kirby posted...

pxlated posted...

Battle is ehhh but most rpg battle systems start out pretty bland. I was expecting something more action-y but that's not necessarily a problem.

Wut.

I can't imagine anybody calling Xenoblade's battle system "bland". I mean, I understand you don't have a lot of arts or abilities yet, but even then in comparison to other RPGs it's pretty dynamic. It's one of the best things I like about the series, since even fighting a bunch of ordinary battles is fast-paced and fun.

Probably because she doesn't have a lot of arts and abilities yet.
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i mean, when i come in expecting an action system and what i get is essentially a fancyturn based system that only looks like an action system, i'm gonna be underwhelmed

i'm enjoying it so far but it's just not what i expected
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pxlated posted...

is it easy to tell which ones are going to have some kind of interesting story or character interactions to them, and which are just busy work?

Very clear

Namely, the busy work sidequests auto-complete, while the story ones make you go back to the NPC. So definitely take all the grindy sidequests you can find, cuz they help direct you around the big levels and give you cool things to do. But don't feel held back by them at all.

Battling is way deeper than it seems at first. It's all about DPS and getting huge combo attacks by managing cooldowns. There's also an aspect of aggro that ends up very important. It's very similar to WoW in that sense. Healing is way less important than other RPGs. Try to kill the enemy before they kill you, don't necessarily try to stay at max health like in other RPGs. There's a reason you auto-heal between battles. You can play with different characters as the lead, and you can equip different abilities to them. Try lots of options because they change the game drastically.

Dolphin always had messed up audio for me (music cutting out sometimes) but other than that it's insanely gorgeous in high def, and you can get texture packs for PS4 buttons and such.
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i didnt bother with the button texture packs.

the only time i've had audio issues is when the game wasn't running at full speed (which i've resolved now)

and yeah, i can tell the battle system will be good, it's just not what i was expecting. i'm huge into action rpgs so anything that's not that when i'm expecting one is gonna be a let down at first.

question:

is this one of those games where i want to save all the material drops from enemies for crafting or can i sell all this shit i picked up on the way to town?
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what do you miss out on when you don't do sidequests?
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The problem I have with Xenoblade's combat is that the basic attacks are done automatically every so often. It just feels like I'm not really in control. If it was just on a short cooldown, but still waited for input before attacking, I'd like it a lot more.

Although you do gradually get stuff to activate manually, so maybe it's just that it would be too much to manage if you also had to time your main attacks?
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pxlated posted...

is this one of those games where i want to save all the material drops from enemies for crafting or can i sell all this s*** i picked up on the way to town?

Crafting items no. Once you get higher level materials the older ones aren't really any useful at all.

Other enemy drops yeah. There's a ton of quest that are like "hey remember that thing you randomly picked up 20 hours ago? Well I need 5 of them". Oh, and you have a limited inventory too. So good luck.
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pxlated posted...

i mean, when i come in expecting an action system and what i get is essentially a fancyturn based system that only looks like an action system, i'm gonna be underwhelmed

i'm enjoying it so far but it's just not what i expected

The battle system is very simple at the start. Once you start to rack up abilities, you're not going to have any downtime and it more or less becomes an action system.
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Yeah I was also the best part of Xenoblade 2 when you upgraded your abilities enough to where you eliminated cooldowns completely
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Yeah it starts off with your guys taking slow automatic whacks at things, and then you use a cooldown ability, but it will become a bit more advanced. I don't want to say too much about what to expect, but, the battle system will feel a bit different later on.

what do you miss out on when you don't do sidequests?

being over-leveled, really.
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KommunistKoala posted...

you don't need to do every sidequest

I actually wanted to say this. I got bogged down in them and drowned early on, never finishing the game. The areas are so huge and everyone wants you to do a million things for them.

I remember the junk items being very clearly marked. Quest items are also clearly marked.

The trick is there's another menu of items that are "gifts" that you can give to your party members for affinity. Didn't find that until 60 hours in.
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okay, going to play more now. didn't actually get far earlier. got to the colony, got a little overwhelmed by all the people to talk to and nooks to explore and decided to watch ducktales and sleep instead

the music is great, although as a result i've had gerudo valley stuck in my head. one of these songs really reminds me of that
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it is way too easy to jump over the railing into the water below the city
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Best moment in early game tbh
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foolm0r0n posted...

I remember the junk items being very clearly marked. Quest items are also clearly marked.

The trick is there's another menu of items that are "gifts" that you can give to your party members for affinity. Didn't find that until 60 hours in.

uh what
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foolm0r0n posted...

Best moment in early game tbh

the first time i fell was a pretty cool moment. i was expecting the usual things games do where it fades to black and your position is reset to where you were before jumping out of bounds. the realization that that wasn't going to happen was neat, and gives a sense of the scale of this game
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If you do tons of sidequests you'll get overleveled eventually, and Xenoblade's combat system is really level based. Being higher/lower level than an enemy (enough for their names to be listed as yellow/red) gives significant boosts/penalties to damage and accuracy. Eventually that can be overcome, but it can make fighting a higher level monster very frustrating (and fighting a lower level enemy becomes a joke)
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welp. my game broke during a cutscene and i hadn't saved in maybe half an hour so that kills my drive to play for now. will probably go back to it before too long.
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Is it normal to take like 4 seconds to open the inventory, or is that just a problem with my Dolphin setup?
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ninkendo posted...

This.

This right here is why I was disappointed with xenoblade 2.
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Except that's all XCX had. That gif basically spoils the whole game.
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Zenithian Legend posted...

I purchased all three games from Operation Rainfall, yet haven't played any of them. I really should get to doing that... perhaps this topic will inspire me!

Do it, all three are great.

Keep in mind that Xenoblade is probably twice the length of the other two combined, though, so if the inspiration does strike you you might want to start with TLS or Pandora's Tower.
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DeepsPraw posted...

Is it normal to take like 4 seconds to open the inventory, or is that just a problem with my Dolphin setup?

In the graphics menu, is "store efb copies to texture only" checked? It fixed this problem and some other speed issues for me. It will break the screenshot function of your saves but the tradeoff is worth it
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I was curious, so I tried it on real hardware and it was just as bad. Regular load times were longer, too
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I do remember the big menu being slow to open on Wii
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DeepsPraw posted...

I was curious, so I tried it on real hardware and it was just as bad. Regular load times were longer, too

This may be, but changing the setting I mentioned fixed this issue and a number of others for me
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