Current Events > Playing Xenoblade Chronicles 1. Do I need to worry about party affinity?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I just started chapter 9. Do I need to be raising affinity and doing heart-to-hearts? There's a few that are available to me right now but idk if I necessarily need to do them. I can't remember in all honesty - I have a habit of starting and stopping the same playthrough for two years now.

I think the only thing you need for a general playthrough of the game is to make use of knockback attacks to power grind levels in the gaur plains. Don't know if there is a 100 percent completion bonus.

Not really, unless you're a masochist.

character affinity is useful for sharing certain skills but it's not mandatory to beat the game.. tho some area affinities are important if u want all of shulk's artes and every1's 4th and 5th skill tree

You don't NEED to, but affinities do have their bonuses. The heart-to-hearts are nice, small moments that give the cast more interaction, but not necessary.

More important is for gem crafting, as it gets substantially better/easier with high affinities.

Also, affinity levels unlock additional skill link slots on the skill tree, letting you augment your characters' builds more. If you're just sticking to the main story, you can probably get away with ignoring that, but if you're gonna tackle any endgame/post-game content at all, definitely do not

It's extremely useful to raise as many affinities as possible for gem crafting, skill links, and chain attacks (though the latter only care about the active party). However, it's not necessary to do so to beat the game, unless you are using Expert Mode to intentionally de-level yourself so enemies are 3+ or even 6+ levels higher (which is doable with experience and makes things like linking Riki's cooldown skills, Sharla's agility buff, Shulk's chain attack chance, Melia's Enlightenment, and so on MUCH more important, as well as making megaheating certain gems as early as you can very valuable). You will generally be better off trying to rotate the party around to build affinity in the long run, though in the short term it means switching off the best compositions (e.g. Shulk/Reyn/Dunban); you can also do so when in towns to avoid the free affinity from accepting and finishing quests going towards characters that are already at max affinity with each other.