Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

[cruel]

Remaster of Xenoblade Chronicles coming on May 29, only on Nintendo Switch:

https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/xenoblade-chronicles-definitive-edition-switch/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFHmaXhFEcQ


I see this was on of the highest rated games on Wii and 3DS:
https://www.metacritic.com/game/wii/xenoblade-chronicles
https://www.metacritic.com/game/3ds/xenoblade-chronicles-3d


I'm considering getting this, but then I looked at the combat in the video I posted, here:
https://youtu.be/bFHmaXhFEcQ?t=119

And it looks like shit :/ Hard to believe that a game rated so high has shit combat, are first impressions misleading, am I missing something? Is it worth getting on the Switch?

 

[Jenkem]

And it looks like shit :/ Hard to believe that a game rated so high has shit combat, are first impressions misleading, am I missing something?

you have no criticisms other than 'it's shit' what exactly do you want people to tel you?

 

[Perkel]

It is one of the greatest JRPGs it has its issues but overall it is amazing game. If you can stomach fetchquests this is one of few last true jrpgs Journeys with big J representing those jprgs that were prominent in 90s that went away replaced by soulless jrpgs on 00+ era. At times infantile but it takes concept and completely runs away with it making something new and refreshing. By far the start of the game is weakest part of game but it also needed to put into context voyage. If you can stomach first shock of pretty boring first village and fetch quest heavy design game will awake and will hold you tight to the rest of journey.

plus
- really unique world
- combat despite looking weird is actually pretty tactical
- has one of best OSTs in gaming
- worldbuilding is on another level
- Exploration of locations is great
- pretty good story for an anime
- plenty of optional side bosses
- progression system has really interesting depth to it

minus
- too many fetch quests
- some proper quests are masqueraded as fetch quests so if you want to learn lore or something you have to do those fetch quests
- infantile at times

Seriously, game is worth playing just for OST:

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Never played Xenoblade but watching gameplay of this game and kinda hyped.

The remaster looks so good and character design in this game IS way better than Xenoblade 2.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I didn't much care for it. I suppose cleaning up the graphics and such will be an improvement.

The story starts out good but devolves into some wannabe Evangelion bullshit. Don't expect any real answers. The world itself strains credulity most of the time but I guess it's interesting.

Combat is fun for the first dozen-odd levels until the MMO scaling kicks in. Damage modifiers based on level difference means all tactics and gear are obviated in favor of gaining levels. Encounter a tough enemy? Don't even try to beat it, just come back one level later and you'll faceroll it with the exact same gear. Stupid. The only difficult fights at all are in the first 5ish hours before you've had a chance to grind and in the last few hours where you're nearing the level cap. The other 95% is mind-numbingly effortless.

The quests? They're nuts. Every party member has a hidden skill tree to unlock, to get it you have to do a billion quests in each town. They show up based on things like hidden affection points, time of day, story events, and proximity. Its the worst system I have ever seen for character upgrades. I went through the whole game over 100 hours and never unlocked a single tree because I couldn't get the right quests to pop. Expect to sit with a guide open all the time and grind conversations and obscure BS quests if you have any hope of finding this stuff.

Also, one of your party members is a Nopon aka an entire race of Jar Jar Binks retards. Have fun listening to this cringe dialogue through the whole game.

 

[Perkel]

I didn't much care for it. I suppose cleaning up the graphics and such will be an improvement.

The story starts out good but devolves into some wannabe Evangelion bullshit. Don't expect any real answers. The world itself strains credulity most of the time but I guess it's interesting.

Combat is fun for the first dozen-odd levels until the MMO scaling kicks in. Damage modifiers based on level difference means all tactics and gear are obviated in favor of gaining levels. Encounter a tough enemy? Don't even try to beat it, just come back one level later and you'll faceroll it with the exact same gear. Stupid.

Aren't you confusing here XCX with XC ? I am pretty sure you can actually take on higher lvl enemies but like you said those 10lvls are important so don't expect to go for 30lvl beast with your 15 lvl guys. You end game around lvl 50-60 and you can frequently see monsters with lvl 60 even early game.

As of story aside from epilogue there isn't much evangelion here. Story is pretty straightforward until that ending epilogue but even with that epilogue it is still pretty easy to understand.

 

[cruel]

you have no criticisms other than 'it's shit' what exactly do you want people to tel you?

You're right, I should clarify. What bugs me is that it looks like characters are auto-attacking constantly, and the only thing you can do is choose few options while they are doing that. It looks pretty simplistic (which is not great), and also you need (?) to do all the choosing in real-time it seems, without having enough time to think? Seems like the worst possible combination of turn-based elements (but without time to think) and real-time (but without being able to actually attack)?

I already see two people in this thread saying that combat was fun, so probably I'm wrong (which is good, I want to like this game). Guess this is one of those games you need to try in action to form an opinion.

I can stand fetch quests if the rest of the game is worth it.

 

[Perkel]

Your character autoattacks with basic attack which basically does very little damage unless you create build for it, you pick manually pick skills and position yourself. Your AI companions use on their own attacks. There are various combos, some attacks require you to attack from back of monster from side etc.

This combines very nicely with kind of materia like system and equipment.

Combat is one of better things about game. Seems very simple at start but it blossoms later on and you can make a lot of different builds.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

As of story aside from epilogue there isn't much evangelion here.

Spoiler

The whole "everyone on bionis is part of it and destined to return to revive it" stuff smacked pretty strongly of Human Instrumentality to me. Then again that's a recurring Xeno theme with Deus in Xenogears but there it was executed about 1000 times better.

Aren't you confusing here XCX with XC ?

Am I? In XCX I had more luck changing out classes, weapons, builds, and tactics to try to tackle different enemies and threats, or just say fcuk it and get my giant robot. In XC it's level up or bust.

Seems very simple at start but it blossoms later on and you can make a lot of different builds.

Only three slots with a very strict DPS - tank - healer paradigm limits build options significantly. Shulk is hard coded DPS* + has the Monado Foresight, so the only real question is whether you want Reyn or Riki to tank.

*Although it's been awhile since I played it and as I said I never unlocked the extra skill trees because of the work involved so maybe I missed out on all the build diversity. Once I got past the earliest stages I found most of the combat tactics were pointless as I could auto-attack and faceroll 95% of the fights. One of the two games I have fallen asleep playing (the other being FF12). I was actually shocked by a late-game boss that required real tactics to fight since it had been so long since anything had been a challenge.

XCX gives you four characters with more flexible roles and allows you to make the hero into anything so I found that much more customizable.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

You're right, I should clarify. What bugs me is that it looks like characters are auto-attacking constantly, and the only thing you can do is choose few options while they are doing that. It looks pretty simplistic (which is not great), and also you need (?) to do all the choosing in real-time it seems, without having enough time to think? Seems like the worst possible combination of turn-based elements (but without time to think) and real-time (but without being able to actually attack)?

This is about how it is.

It's auto-attack + cooldown abilities, aka MMO combat. The abilities are meant to synergize with teammates. So person A will inflict Stagger, person B has a move that Topples targets with Stagger, and Person C has a move that does extra damage to Toppled targets. This sounds cool but it mostly becomes a chore when every enemy requires the exact same sequence of attacks to defeat and there's never any resources like Mana to worry about. Not to mention the damage scaling means once you gain a level past the enemies they lose any ability to hurt you and you can just spam all your moves until they die without any regard for combos.

The one gimmick it has is Shulk can see the future so you get a warning that a big attack is coming and you have a short window to use the proper counter. The problem is the counters are sort of junk anyway and most of the time you don't need them so it's a bit moot after the first 5 hours or so.

 

[Anonona]

If you played Guild Wars 1, the combat is pretty much like that game. You have a number of "arts" (active skills) and passive skills that you can mix and match whenever you want for each character but the main character (which sadly makes him the most boring to play of them all). Depending on which combinations you make characters play different roles. For example, Dunban can both tank using evasion, wearing no gear, or be a DPS, while Reyn can also play both roles. Furthermore, even within the same roles they can perform differently, so Reyn can use auras to reflect damage, or to reduce incoming damage. Each character also has one "signature art" which is usually very powerful but with some exceptions. Timing, having the right skills and knowing enemies weaknesses is very important, as well as finding synergies between your skills and party member skills. Gear is highly customizable and can be equipped with gems to do things from regular +ATK, to more specific things like giving you bonuses for fighting at night and such. Is quite a lot better than it looks although a bit flawed. Also you can totally fight enemies stronger than yourself, in fact level cap is 99, but enemies can reach up to 120 level. The trick to fighting stronger enemies is to customize you gear with enough accuracy to be able to hit them, so early game may seem impossible to do so and if you do not go out of your way to learn about gems and customizing your gear. I found it to be very satisfying to beat an enemy that is clearly stronger than your party.

One issues the game had is that it was way to easy to over level your character, and as Grampy-Bone said, a few levels can trivialize many encounters because of how leveling works specially if you do side-quests, so I recommend not doing many of them at first to avoid becoming too strong.

 

[SerratedBiz]

If you played Guild Wars 1, the combat is pretty much like that game.

dafuq

 

[Anonona]

If you played Guild Wars 1, the combat is pretty much like that game.

dafuq

Sorry, now I realize that stating it like that is quite misleading. Is more like the combat share a certain degree of similarities with Guild Wars, at least on a basic level. It is Real Time combat with auto-attacks, but it focus on using a limited pool of skills that can be customized anytime out of combat and change how your character perform and its role. It has cooldowns and it has a big focus on timing skills usage to maximize damage and CC enemies. There are many differences, but I think they are comparable to a certain degree, but yeah, stating they are the same is false, my bad.

 

[Jenkem]

The story starts out good but devolves into some wannabe Evangelion bullshit. Don't expect any real answers.

lmao is this your first Takahashi game? and yes there are real answers

 

[e-mailio estevez]

One issues the game had is that it was way to easy to over level your character, and as Grampy-Bone said, a few levels can trivialize many encounters because of how leveling works specially if you do side-quests, so I recommend not doing many of them at first to avoid becoming too strong.

This is one of those games where level is more important than any other stat when engaging an enemy. An enemy will appear 'orange' because he's 5 levels above you or somesuch, and you'll try to engage it and end up missing half of your attacks. Earn one level-up, suddenly the enemy is 'yellow' and you're not whiffing attacks any longer.

It's really my only criticism of the game. I really enjoyed it. Never even used Shulk, I mained Melia through most of the game. The fetch quests don't bother me, but when I played it I had been in the regular habit of playing MMOs so I guess it was par the course for the games I played.

 

[Talby]

Wait for XCX to get a Switch port, it's way better than the other games.

 

[aweigh]

haven't finished it but the combat in Xenoblade is good. very fun.

 

[Jenkem]

Wait for XCX to get a Switch port, it's way better than the other games.

I hpoe they bring it over but I'm afraid they won't for technical reasons. I heard some rumors that they were having trouble with it.. Not sure if true though. I appreciated being able to use Elma as a Blade in XBC2. For me, it's XBX > XBC2 > XBC because I prefer sci-fi

 

[Jenkem]

if you like anything about JRPGs you shoould play this game.

 

[Alphard]

I enjoyed the game a lot for the journey aspect of it and worldbuilding and lore. combat becomes more and more fun the more characters and skill you unlock, but towards end game start to bore and becomes tedious.
The worst part imo is the ending, like i never seen an ending so unneccessarely contriven and weird ( in a bad way).
overall a good game to play once. i recommend it if only for the atmosphere

 

[cruel]

I think that the ending is totally changed / expanded in the Definitive edition.

Also, looking at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1x9kY01OSE

It seems that better quest tracker is one of the improvements. It should probably help with those fetch quest and cryptic requirements Grampy_Bone mentioned before.

 

[Jenkem]

the ending makes perfect sense

 

[Jinn]

Looks like a lot of straight up decline, as far as the quest compass stuff goes.

 

[Stefan Vujovic]

Looks like a lot of straight up decline, as far as the quest compass stuff goes.

Seems like you haven't played the original...

 

[Jinn]

Seems like you haven't played the original...

I have and never had a problem with how quests worked before.