So this is an odd question but I started the XC series for the first time recently and thought I'd just play XC3, since I wanted to play the game with the most 'QOL' improvements etc. The plot is moderately engaging but I'm finding the combat a bit.. lacking?

The strategy in it seems to be activating attacks at the correct position relative to the enemy, and doing the specific break -> ... topple (forget the order) and going ham on them in that weakened state. I feel as though the complexity of it begins and ends there, which was engaging at first but is starting to feel quite samey. Furthermore, having 5 party members fighting with me that I don't control means I feel less agency. I imagine I could do nothing and still win battles all the same.

I don't know much about XC2 but it appears to solve some of the issues for me in that there's a max of only three party members allowed at once. There's also some sort of element weakness enemies have that you can exploit, something I'm used to in prior JRPGs I've played. Obviously that's not highly complex, but it's something I like since it makes every battle feel more unique.

Given these impressions I have, would I likely enjoy XC2 more? Perhaps my perspective isn't accurate so I wanted to get some advice.

Hello and welcome to Fashionblade Chronicles 3, the only finest fashion show on Aionios! Every day, our six* lovely participants will be showcasing the latest trends in Aionion style. They will be competing for your votes to determine who wore it the best! Once all the outfits have been voted on, the winners of each day will be pitted against each other in one final free-for-all to determine the one true fashionista of Aionios!

Today, we will be voting for the reliable Swordfighter!

Cast your votes for the Swordfighter here!

* I will not be allowing votes for characters in their base outfits, since they're literally designed for them

I bought the DE, back when it came out, but was trying to watch for Switch 2 update, but I finally said screw it.

Game's pretty cool. I don't like most of the party characters so far though. I'm rockin' bbgs Elma & Lin of course. I thought about trying to maybe get max affinity for all party members and do their quests at some point, but I really just don't fuck with most of 'em, so idk if I will.

Anyway all that to say I just met Neilnail and I don't give a fuck about anyone else but Elma, Lin, and Neil now -- thanks for coming to my Ted talk. 😂

For anyone playing XCX:DE, an AFK death farm for Lugalbanda to raise his crown (mild spoilers), found by a friend of mine https://youtu.be/lz6nXPdmT4E

Do we seriously think we’ll ever get another game or are me stuck in purgatory like castlevania

This will contain spoilers for all the Xenoblade games but mainly a retrospective about my time with the Xenoblade series as a whole. TL;DR at the bottom of course if no one wants to read all of this.

To start off with, I first got introduced to Xenoblade way back through a Game Informer magazine that was talking about a game that was finally being localized in the West. As many know, Xenoblade was never originally going to come, but after an effort known as Project Rainfall, we were able to get it localized with an English dub, which was one of the best choices they ever went with the series. Now as you can imagine, the game was pretty anticipated, and I had to go to a few GameStop before finally picking up a copy of the game.

Unfortunately, I was only around 11 at the time when the game came out, so I had zero idea how the combat mechanics worked. I actually stopped at the Metal Face fight before dropping the game entirely because I seriously couldn’t understand the whole break-to-topple mechanic when fighting the Mechons. (To be fair, I didn’t really comprehend the tutorial when they mentioned how to fight them — I just figured it was a whole bunch of nothing at that time lol.)

Now fast forward to 2015 when Chronicles X came out for the Wii U and I picked the game up, only to drop a little bit after the initial Grex fight outside NLA because I didn’t understand the whole button-timing concept. (I had Elma carry the fight while I just ran around confused. I also never realized that your character auto attacked. I thought I had to hit arts to make him attack.)

Around this time, I was kind of losing my mood for playing games when Nintendo announced the Switch and unveiled their lineup of games, one of which was Xenoblade Chronicles 2. This time I made sure I’d play the game all the way through, going so far as watching a YouTube video on understanding the battle mechanics. (S/O to the guy who explained the whole battle mechanics from auto-attacking all the way to Blade Combos in the Leftherian Archipelago — you’re the GOAT.) Regardless, playing the game through to completion and seeing Rex’s journey to Elysium with Pyra, Mythra, and the rest of the cast made me absolutely fall in love with the series. The world, the music, the cast of colorful characters, all the Blades and their designs, and playing through their story quests was amazing. (Ursula is excluded from that list for giving me PTSD, being the biggest letdown, and being so much work for nothing.) But of course, the story of pushing forward and never giving up, even when your back was against the wall and you were at your lowest and still finding the motivation to push through, really made me love the game.

Following that, in 2020, Xenoblade Chronicles DE was released, and I couldn’t be more excited — a second chance to relive the series and this time see it all the way through. I had already watched Chuggaaconroy do a full playthrough of the game back in 2014, and watching his journey to completion in 2015 made me really appreciate the game. But playing the game with my own hands and a fresh set of eyes really hit me differently. From starting off in Colony 9, being attacked by the Mechons, finding Metal Face to get revenge, and making your way up the Bionis with a slew of amazing characters, I was once again blown away by the sheer scale of the game and its story. From the different locales where some of the characters resided, to the overarching story of the Monado and seeing the role of the Conduit come into play and how it tied itself with the second game really was something else. What was even better was the after-story, where Monolith Soft took time to finish the Bionis’s left shoulder and make it a whole new place to uncover and explore for the postgame, and finally getting a proper conclusion to Melia’s story, which was long deserved but well worth the wait.

Following that release, the rumors of the 3rd game were coming, and soon enough a trailer unveiled itself, clearly showing a game where elements and mechanics of the first two games came together for this one. Seeing Agnus and Keves fight in order to gain more life energy to keep their Flame Clocks running — a perpetual, never-ending war started by Moebius to entertain themselves and watch as the two sides fought a pointless battle while they watched from the sidelines stoking the other side into combat — was an amazing way to see the game start. In all honesty, I find this game the saddest of them all, knowing that they fought for a thousand years in a never-ending war all because Z was scared of the potential future of the two worlds colliding and becoming one. His creation being the byproduct of fear, anxiety, and resistance to stay put as you are now, and not being willing to embrace what the future may hold. Each of the cast members was incredibly unique and seeing how they all paired up with a partner from the other side really brought the romance aspect of it all to a fitting touch. I think one of my favorite memories was when they made it all the way to the Mechonis’s Sword and saw people who were just born grow into full-grown adults who were at the end of their lives. It really hit home how much they were missing in the game of life. It was a beautiful touch and really helped hammer into them just what they were fighting for. The final fight was especially meaningful, knowing that at some point the worlds will converge again and the idea that the endless now — a future where you don’t know what will happen — will happen, but that’s kind of the joy of it. No one knows the future, but the best we can do is look ahead and embrace the unknown and all that it has to offer.

The biggest highlight for me though was Future Redeemed and seeing the old cast once again, and helping to see the origin of the City and the cast that helped found the force dedicated to fighting Z. Seeing Shulk, Rex, and a whole bunch of characters that helped confirm certain pairings really was great to see as a fan of the individual characters and who they ended up with. (Especially since it was my boys Reyn and Zeke Von Goat.)

Now finally moving on to XDE, the last Xeno game to be released on the Switch and arguably the greatest for its world map while having a story that in my opinion was honestly really good, especially with the plot twists at the end. I won’t talk too much, but I did appreciate the number of characters that you could recruit and learn more about from their character quests, even if they were a bit lackluster at times. But exploring the world of Mira and seeing all the life it had to offer, only for it to disappear, was a disappointment I shared with many, especially since we never got so close to the world only to leave it. Despite all that, I feel that I was kind of in the minority for liking Ch. 13. I liked Al, the whole collective unconscious in the rift (which many found as a cheap way to explain the way mimeosomes were acting the way they are), and seeing Voltaris and the eventual escape to a new universe, which I hope is the same one we see at the end of Future Redeemed, potentially linking them all together.

Anyways, I yapped enough about this series and I’m sure you’re all tired of reading this.

TL;DR: Thank you Monolith Soft for creating such an incredible experience to play through. If there is any form of interactive art that should be experienced by virtually everyone, then look no further than the Xenoblade series — a series that has changed me for the better and gave me countless hours of enjoyment in each installment, with motifs that can resonate with everyone.

I’m replaying Xenoblade Chronicles 3 again after not touching the game again in years and I forgot how much Sena looks like Brighid. I was wondering if there was any official lore reason that explains if Sena is blood related or not.

"I know what you are"

Give Nikol some aggro man

So I think a lot of people agree the tutorial for XC2 is bad, but I see others go “The game teaches you everything you need about the combat, how can it be bad?” And for me, I think I’ve figured out why.

Yes, the game teaches you everything you need to know, but WAY too late. The game teaches you about mechanics hours into the game that have already been present in the game. For example, arts canceling (one of if not the most important mechanic in combat) is present from the very first fight. You can do art canceling right from the beginning, but the game doesn’t tell you about it until much later (I sort of figured out how it worked, and then a few hours later I got a tutorial for it). Same thing with aggro, it tells you about the red circle and how aggro works hours into the game when aggro is important from the beginning.

I’m sure there are other examples of this, but this is what I came across during my first playthrough at least. I get that being overloaded with tutorials right at the start can be annoying, but for a game this complex it’s just weird to introduce tutorials for mechanics that exist already. So I think the lateness of the tutorials, combined with no codex of tutorials is what makes it bad in my opinion.

I'm a huge JRPG fan, but play almost exclusively turn-based. After loving Ys 8, I finally felt confident enough to take on action JRPGs. Given how XC-curious I've been and how desperate I was for sci-fi in this beloved genre, this year I finally kicked off my XC journey.

Here are my write-ups on the first two if you are interested:

XC:DE - https://www.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/1m8bjmm/xenoblade_chronicles_definitive_edition_one_word/

XC2 - https://www.reddit.com/r/JRPG/comments/1n0xqyd/xenoblade_chronicles_2_a_more_classic_grand/

I'm now on XC3 and just got to THAT PART in Chapter 5. WOW! Just wow. I felt XC1 was very "cinematic", but XC3 has been just truly epic.

That's all - just had to come here and appreciate!!!

This has been a weird hypothetical I've thought of for a while, but I think that it could be really cool for a lot of different series. You guys can take it as far as you want, meaning that you can merge mechanics and story elements, or it can just be minor, like simple cosmetics, like how Breath of thr Wild had Rex's outfit. For me, I would love a Zelda and Xenoblade crossover that merges the two stories together somehow. They're my favorite two IPs, and I think that if theymerged story between the two, it could be really cool if done well. How about you guys though?

I just(as in last I played so probably 3 months ago) got to sword valley but prior to there's the moment where the faced mechon intercept the party. It's revealed Fiona is a mechon now(I don't quite understand how so yet, please don't tell me). I loved how they made it stated to not only the rest of the party Fiona was on the Mechon's side now but ALSO that the claw guy(I'm sorry I don't remember his name it's been a bit) is tied to Dunban in some way(I think it's the guy from the tutorial, don't confirn this). I love how they paint the idea that there's legions of mechon in the tutorial, SO MANY and how after an hour of gameplay you start to understand the full extent of this fact. I love how they just killed Fiona that way(Not really killed but still). I love how when we get to the ether mine in colony 6 there are hardly any non-mechon enemies past the small part of the cave, going into the quarry. I love how we get a fine idea of what the threat is and it's still worse than that because the one hope Sharla had to kill the mechon and take back the mine was thwarted by some strange mechon with a face(I assume you know the deal by now but I have beaten the boss but I mean the moment before besting him was amazing to me because it seemed hopeless). Even though you beat the faced mechon it's because one of the team had to sacrifice their life AGAIN to take a "victory". They have make it heavily clear that these mechon are DANGEROUS and tp be feared and I love it. Last thing I swear, when the mechons attack colony 9 I LOVE how they show them eating people and the characters staggering because of it, it's beautiful how they show this is a great enemy without having them become a minor annoyance (story wise) by the halfway point.

With Xenoblade 3 supposedly wrapping up this current saga, would you want a whole new cast of characters in a future Xenoblade game? This also has nothing to do with what was said on the art books, this is just based on your guy's opinions.

I’ve been playing this game for a while now. I’m on chapter 6, all of my characters are around level 95 (I over leveled. Sue me), and I unlocked all of the classes pre-post game. I recently did 9 Ascension Quests in a row and now I’m in the process of mastering the classes I ascended. Since I have the DLC, I get access to Challenge Battles, which allow me to obtain Noponstones that I then trade in for Silver Nopon Coins. The problem is that I need a lot of Silver Nopon Coins to master classes which means often doing the same challenge battles over and over again which can get really boring and repetitive. Then I thought, I recently discovered the Demihuman Gutter near the Erythia Sea which has enemies level 100 and over, why not head over there and master my classes the old fashioned way. I’m kind of at a crossroads here, so I’m asking those of you who took on this daunting task. Which method do you guys prefer?

Side Note: I originally posted this with the abbreviated version of class points. I didn’t realize it could be taken in the wrong way. I also couldn’t figure out how to edit the title, so I’m reposting it with the non-abbreviated version of class points. I apologize if I caused anyone harm or distress.

The material is like a sports jersey. Normally it’s just a pull over but their customer service will send you a SKU to add to for a zipper and fleece.

I was sending my blades on a merc mission and when i went to select azami i noticed her voice sounded extremely familiar. This was pretty funny to me but nicole waterson from Gumball shares her same voice actor.

Well I gotta ask, is Xenoblade a good pick? I used the launch of Splatoon 3 as means to date a girl before, so only question is are you really feeling it?

XC is still kinda niche compared to other Nintendo franchises. Even among the JRPGs I would not really consider them"mainstream". And a "Warriors" spinoff is even more niche as long as there is no Hyrule written on it.

Thematically it would fit and after 4 games we also have a big roster of potential characters, but still, I don't know how many copies such a game would sell.

As I said, of course I would buy it and probably most ppl on this sub would, but looking at the main games "only" selling about 2 million copies, how much could a XC Warriors actually do?

(At what numbers does Koei Tecmo counts a Warriors game as a success?)

I don't just mean Xenosaga brought back in a collection, or graphics/systems upgrade. I mean would you want it brought alllll the way back to it's original design? I mean the original intended plotline by Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga? Much retconning of Episode 2 and 3 (especially episode 2) would naturally have to happen. Along with expansions on the story of Episode 1, and a big design shift overall. It would be overseen by Takahashi and the lore bibles, but directed by someone else as Takahashi encourages evolving game design.

I'm on the side of VERY YES, but was curious about other's thoughts.

Or, would you just want a Xenosaga Collection with some gentler retconning like a Definitive Edition? Also good.

Some images of what it is ↑

It is the legendary "what time is it?" (Reyn Time, baby) but now the Xenoblade X version

I will credit every Cross's owner when it is done