Poll of the Day > I beat Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

I greatly enjoyed it. Far, FAR better story and characters than whatever XCX brought

The setting was amazing and badass, it was cool to go further and all.

I enjoyed combat much more in general compared to XCX. Everyone feels nice and has a neat gameplan

While the soundtrack is good, I dont think its better than XCXs soundtrack, and doesnt come near FF. The rearranged soundtrack is good tho.

Minor and Major Pros:
- Expert Mode is a godsend, Cant imagine playing the original without it
- I like all the playable cast, which is rare
- Grinding for rare drops is actually not bullshit like a lot of RPGs, mainly cuz %s are reasonable and the chests linger after loading
- Took a moment to get used to the voice acting, but now I love it
- World Building is GREAT
- Gem crafting is cool and simple
- Game loads very fast
- Getting stronger through story is very, very nice

Minor Cons;

- No always-on positional marker like XCX enemies turn and track very hard and often in this game compared to XCX. Kinda annoying
- A lot of empty areas. While the game looks nice, there isnt much reason to visit a lot of these areas
- Sharla feels under-powered
- No AI options. Should be in every game that has AI partners
- Lots of copy pasta 'Unique Enemies', only like 10 of them are notable
- Chain Attacks feel random at times. Shoulda been a timer
- Camera doesnt pan far back enough
- Mid-game, Nintendo released a patch that made the quest tracker somewhat worse/ different
- Only 3 save slots

Major Cons

- The Vision stuff is cool, but it gets old FAST, and kinda kills the pace of tougher fights. It also changes the music to something inferior
- The Level/Color Tag system is dumb. 1 level can make a difference between a reasonably tough fight, and a fight that seems impossible cuz you cant hit them. happened to me on a certain climax fight and the soured the whole moment
- 90% of Sidequests are generic as fuck and should have been regulated to a mission board. Theres so much tracking and backtracking for dumb shit. Cant imagine playing the original without the tracker
- 80% of the armor and stuff is ugly as shit

I give it a 8.5

The DE features definitely helped, cuz the original is a pretty ugly and messy looking game. XCX (a 8/10) has it beat in soundtrack and exploration. No plans on playing XC2 cuz it looks lame
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I like XC:DE. Though, I still really want an XCX port on switch. I like the games each for different reasons...
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What's Expert Mode do? I haven't paid a lot of attention to the DE's changes.

Personally, I'd disagree on the soundtrack comparison to X, but mostly just because of how bad X's lows were. Comparing their highs, they're roughly even, but nothing in 1 is as bad as the low parts of X, which gives 1 the edge on average.

Expert Mode allows you to change your level based on your exp reserves. You get a lot of exp for doing quests and would quickly be overleveled if it isnt on
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Ah, yeah, overlevelling was really easy in the original. It's easy enough to just not do sidequests if that's undesirable, but it would be nice to be able to adjust it more manually. I can see that being handy.

I'm playing through it now. I'm in Galahad Fortress in the story, but I'm going back to do some quests rn.
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Phantom_Nook posted...

I'm playing through it now. I'm in Galahad Fortress in the story, but I'm going back to do some quests rn.

Quick tip: Try to find at least 2 "Red Frontier"s for village reconstruction. They're only found in Sword Valley and without spoiling too much, they'll be pretty hard to find later on.

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Don't worry, I've played the game before. I know to get certain items before certain points in the story.

Getting those items was a pain in the ass on my first playthrough when I didn't do many quests.
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_AdjI_ posted...

What's Expert Mode do? I haven't paid a lot of attention to the DE's changes.

Personally, I'd disagree on the soundtrack comparison to X, but mostly just because of how bad X's lows were. Comparing their highs, they're roughly even, but nothing in 1 is as bad as the low parts of X, which gives 1 the edge on average.

Same. XCX has a good soundtrack, but the two NLA songs and the main battle themes for both ground and skell are abysmal, and you'll hear those 4 tracks like at least 30% of the time you're playing.

XC1 has no major flaws like that and its great songs are just as good as XCX's best.

MechaKirby posted...

Expert Mode allows you to change your level based on your exp reserves. You get a lot of exp for doing quests and would quickly be overleveled if it isnt on

Ironically, you can actually use expert mode to over level even more if you want.
Since you get more/less xp if you're lower/higher level than the enemy. And yes, that applies to those who are benched! Though they only get like 90% of the amount, so you have to have them like 8+ levels below the enemy for them to actually get more xp than the ones fighting. But yeah, you can actually set it up so the people doing the work make less than those sitting on the bench. There's a...current events / political analogy I could make here, but I won't. :p