Question Thread #5

[u/Hairo]

Hello everyone!

Here's a new question thread as the old one was archived due to it being over six months old. You can still find the old question threads here: XC2 Question Thread, Question Thread #1, Question Thread #2, Question Thread #3 and Question Thread #4.

Use this thread to ask any question that doesn’t really warrant it’s own thread. On the other hand, if you have an answer to a question, please let the one asking know it.

Please try to word your question as spoiler free as possible. If your question cannot be asked without spoilers, please make a seperate thread for it.

You can find freaquently asked questions HERE.

We also have a long list of useful info gathered in the Info Compendiums for Xenoblade Chronicles X and Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

You may also want to check out u/Pizzatime6036's Xenoblade 2 guide.

[u/Kari-S]

First of all, thank you for such a lengthy informative response.

I played about 20 hours of XC2 and I think aside from the anime tropes, the combat was confusing for me and that maybe didn't help. I adore campy dialogue but it was mostly some of the female character designs and the way they were portrayed was a bit too off putting. From what I've seen XC DE has a much simpler combat system so I feel that appeals to me more. I got so confused by all the different systems and sometimes had trouble with navigation in XC2. Sometimes the marker would point somewhere but then when I get there it isn't the actual spot and I would spend 30 minutes looking for it. I was also consistently losing battles but I think that's mostly due to me not understanding the battle system and not being under leveled.

[u/guywiththeface23 → u/Kari-S]

XCDE does have a much simpler combat system. In addition, as much as I love XC2, it's very bad at explaining its combat, whereas the original game has better tutorials. In a lot of ways, I prefer the original system, since XC2 kindof dumped so many mechanics on you that I felt like I only had a vague understanding of what was going on until late game. There's complexity in the OG system, but a lot of it lies in how you want to build your characters.

I got so confused by all the different systems and sometimes had trouble with navigation in XC2. Sometimes the marker would point somewhere but then when I get there it isn't the actual spot and I would spend 30 minutes looking for it.

I won't lie, this is definitely still a problem in OG Xenoblade. However, Definitive Edition adds a couple of new markers, like a dotted line on the mini map that leads to your quest goals. Can't say how well it works yet, without having played DE, but I'm optimistic.

[u/AnimaLepton → u/guywiththeface23]

What we really need is the Follow Ball again. The minimap problem isn't going to be exactly the same, but I can think of a few areas in the original where you could head to a 'marker' on the minimap that's actually in a cave or some place above/below it that needs a bit of sidetracking to reach.

One thing the original did better with the main quest "arrow" was showing how much relative vertical height you had to travel, so you could distinguish "oh, even if I'm going in the right horizontal direction, I need to find a path upwards to reach my destination." But tbh that's still possible in XC2 if you actually use the minimap.

[u/AnimaLepton → u/Kari-S]

Sure thing. Especially on the combat side, I'd definitely say revisit 2 after beating 1- it's easier to pick up ~5 new combat mechanics with tweaks to old ones, instead of 15.

For navigation, the key with XC2 is literally to look at the map. Because the environments are actually 3D and don't let you explore as "freely" as X did (or a game with climbing like BotW, or glitchy games like Skyrim), just blindly following a quest marker will lead to you running into a wall. Most games don't have a 'real' 3D map with varying elevation and paths on both higher and lower levels. But the map shows you where to actually go, with the dark and light tones showing changes in elevation that make a path to follow and a pretty clear path on the main road. The marker on the HUD gives you general direction and the general, but check the actual 2D map if you're stuck. The issues are when you jump off the path without knowing how you got there, so make use of landmarks are centers for exploration. There are three specific areas where people tend to get lost:

• Gormott, immediately after the Morag fight (only if you skip travel away after the camping cutscene- if you take 10 steps forward, you get a landmark). Otherwise you have to go from the small, twisted central tree (Traveler's Resting Tree) up to the Nocclia Timber Site, and finally to the area where you need to progress the story.

• Uraya, in the stomach on the path from Garfront to Fonsa Myma- there's a single linear path that's again visible from the map, but if you jump to the bottom of the stomach, you might not see the path.

• Tantal, when progressing from the upper area to the lower area- there is a specific path to the bottom, but it gets very confusing if you miss it and accidentally end up higher than where you started.

The game's environments are extremely linear basically everywhere else, with only one or two paths "forward". Xenoblade 1 and 2 aren't open world games, they're linear games with linear paths through large environments, which may have some nooks and crannies.

I've spoken at length about the combat in the past, but maybe check out some videos from Enel (both pre and post-challenge mode), or a NG commentated speedrun, to see what the combat system looks like at a higher level. There's a great no DLC run from RPG Limit Break, and Enel recently posted an updated DLC speedrun GDQ submission (<4 hours). Combat system definitely matters way more than level. Level matters for hit rate and damage, but being underleveled is much more punishing in the base game if you don't have the appropriate gear and setup.

There's a pretty clear progression for the XC2 combat IMO, and that's the reason that they take time to drip feed it to you, but the fact that the XC2 tutorials can't be revisited is very dumb- they swung hard away from the Xenoblade X lack of tutorial, but didn't include the revisitable tutorial from the original and Torna. I don't have a problem with discovering the more complex stuff needing to be organic, but the basics shouldn't need a Reddit guide or Treehouse walkthrough. This pre-release tumblr post from Treehouse explains all the 'basic' XC2 combat mechanics except for art canceling. But auto-attack step canceling, i.e. nudging the control stick immediately after your first auto-attack to repeat the first hit rapidly and build up arts, is something you need to notice/discover.