Poll of the Day > Hot take: I think the Xenoblade series is mediocre.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Just feels like MMORPG lite to me.

Idk. I really like Xenoblade Chronicles X. Probably my favorite. I just liked it the most. 2 would be next for me. Then the first one. But I still liked them all... I will be getting the new one coming out soon...
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It's not for everybody. For me personally, I freakin love it. One of my all-time favorite series.
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You're mediocre

I'll take it one further. It isn't even good.

I don't understand why people would want to play a MMO as a single player experience. To each their own, I guess.

How is this a hot take?
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Bad gameplay bad writing

Yeah it's pretty bad. It's for people who can turn their brain off and don't need to be challenged

It's a wannabe MMO for nerds who have no friends, so yeah, it kind of sucks.
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I only played the one on 3DS for about ten hours but I would say "mediocre" is being way to generous. The battle system was just awful, you just kind of waited to attack while running around.

JTekashiro posted...

I only played the one on 3DS for about ten hours but I would say "mediocre" is being way to generous. The battle system was just awful, you just kind of waited to attack while running around.

I will say that, of the three, the first one was the worst for taking a while for the battle system to come into its own. It's great once you have enough arts that you constantly have something to do and can more reliably weave combos together, but waiting nine seconds between Back Slashes with nothing else to use is just tedious. The other two give a little more variety earlier on, which means there's a bit less progression in that regard, but it makes the early game go a bit more smoothly.

HagenEx posted...

It's a wannabe MMO for nerds who have no friends, so yeah, it kind of sucks.

lol yeah tru...i play these games up to 30 hours then stop usually

i love DQ11 though
even tho people rave about persona i find the dungeons to be boring to the point I don't even play past the first one usually

Say what you want about the gameplay, but this series has some of the best damn music I've ever heard (not just in a game..., but anywhere).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVZMCY2bnBE" data-time="
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The voice acting annoys me.

thebestestbest posted...

Bad gameplay bad writing

Yeah it's pretty bad. It's for people who can turn their brain off and don't need to be challenged

That's how I felt playing Pokemon.

That game needs a hard mode.

I've on played the first game. It's true that early in there aren't many Arts to use, but there also isn't much of a focus on strategy early in the game. And if there is, it's a plot point.

In any case, it's not fair to say you can just turn your brain off, because that could also be said for a great deal of RPG's. If you grind enough, you can brute force your way through almost anything. The "no friends" thing doesn't work either because that could be said of any single player game with more than one character working together. Just because Xenoblade's style is mostly associated with MMO's doesn't mean that has to be the case.
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shipwreckers posted...

Say what you want about the gameplay, but this series has some of the best damn music I've ever heard (not just in a game..., but anywhere).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVZMCY2bnBE" data-time="

That is very true. X's soundtrack is very hit-or-miss, with pretty much no middle ground (though when it's good, it is very good), but the other two are phenomenal all around.

Yellow posted...

thebestestbest posted...

Bad gameplay bad writing

Yeah it's pretty bad. It's for people who can turn their brain off and don't need to be challenged

That's how I felt playing Pokemon.

That game needs a hard mode.

If you're strictly playing Pokemon single-player, you're really not playing it right if a challenge is what you want. Competitive battling is where the actual strategy comes into play.
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It literally is.
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adjl posted...

If you're strictly playing Pokemon single-player, you're really not playing it right if a challenge is what you want. Competitive battling is where the actual strategy comes into play.

I had a 95% winrate in Pokemon White triple battles. Even before I got my team fully bred and EV trained, I could easily win 90% of the time just by being the better player.

Then after I discovered my broken combo? Anyone that wasn't running my exact team or a hard counter lost. It was pretty great.

The single mode was ruined by net teams from Smogon. Zero skill was involved.

But that wasn't what killed pokemon for me. What killed it was the 40 hour long tutorial you have to get through before you can start playing the game.

Yellow posted...

adjl posted...

If you're strictly playing Pokemon single-player, you're really not playing it right if a challenge is what you want. Competitive battling is where the actual strategy comes into play.

I had a 95% winrate in Pokemon White triple battles. Even before I got my team fully bred and EV trained, I could easily win 90% of the time just by being the better player.

Then after I discovered my broken combo? Anyone that wasn't running my exact team or a hard counter lost. It was pretty great.

The single mode was ruined by net teams from Smogon. Zero skill was involved.

But that wasn't what killed pokemon for me. What killed it was the 40 hour long tutorial you have to get through before you can start playing the game.

"My broken team in a mode no one cared about was great"
"Their broken teams in the mode people do care about is skillless garbage"

I enjoyed the first one with Shulk, it got repetitive though. I didn't play X. I was pretty disappointed in 2. Shoddy graphics, terrible voice acting and the same problem the first one had with the gameplay becoming repetitive. I didn't even finish it sadly.
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thebestestbest posted...

"Their broken teams in the mode people do care about is skillless garbage"

Yeah, because I came up with my team.

It's basically every meta ever. The most popular modes have their tier lists and net decks that people just copy.

Never played the first game due to price inflation (Wii) and lack of availability ("New" 3DS).

Never played the sequels due to not having the consoles on which they were released.

....

I miss Xenogears and Xenosaga.
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Yellow posted...

thebestestbest posted...

"Their broken teams in the mode people do care about is skillless garbage"

Yeah, because I came up with my team.

It's basically every meta ever. The most popular modes have their tier lists and net decks that people just copy.

If it works, it works. Eventually, some teams would have been the same, anyway... There are only so many pokemon usually usable in certain games. I don't think yours is better just because you came up with it. A broken team is a broken team. Somebody had to come up with the team that everybody else is copying...
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Well... It's not as bad as White Knight Chronicles.
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The_tall_midget posted...

Well... It's not as bad as White Knight Chronicles.

White Knight Chronicles had so much potential. I actually played through the entire story, and couldn't bring myself to go through the sequel. It just felt so lifeless.

At least the story in Xenoblade is decent (though cheesy at times). But, to be fair, most JRPGs are cheesy.
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