I'm looking forward to revisiting XC1 with the knowledge of just how heavily they weight things toward using your chain attack effectively. I staggered through XC1 the first time because I expected to need a dedicated healer character and hoo boy that just doesn't work.
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
I'm looking forward to revisiting XC1 with the knowledge of just how heavily they weight things toward using your chain attack effectively. I staggered through XC1 the first time because I expected to need a dedicated healer character and hoo boy that just doesn't work.
My usual favorite team was Melia (controlled by me because the AI does not know how to Melia), Heropon Riki, and Herohom Dunban.
I would try to either keep Ice or Wind up, to improve Dunban's defenses against a particular kind of attack.
Gonna try more varied teams this run, though. Maybe try playing as Reynn or Seven on occasion.
Man, I'm hoping they tweak Melia's AI a little. It sounds like they're taking a lot of feedback into account for DE, I so I'm a little optimistic? Even just programming her to keep two spirits summoned at all times would be an improvement
It will be interesting to see! I love controlling Melia, as her playstyle is super fun. But it would be great if the AI could do it too! I honestly doubt they'll make it particularly great, as you can juggle a lot of different auras with Melia and it would be pretty impressive to see the AI do something similar.
This will be my first foray into Xeno* games, I'm excited. It looks like a good one to jump in on.
Be ready for a pretty long game. My first playthrough was 80+ hours. It starts off faster than most Xeno games (I can't comment on XCX as I never played it), but Xeno games are generally a pretty long, slow burn. If there's one word I'd use to describe them, it's meaty. There's almost always a ton of lore, lots of attention to detail, and a lot of time establishing the game's status quo.
The AI in Xenoblade 1 was totally fine at tanking and healing. Those are the two roles I essentially never touched, because they did a very solid job!
The AI just had no idea how to deal with positional attacks, or Melia. Melia is a weird mage type character, but it's not just straight "target elemental weakness" stuff. Most of her spells have two functions -- a passive aura when you cast it, and then damage or a more active effect when you "release" the aura. In my experience there's a lot of mixing and matching to get the best effects on her that way, which is why I'm skeptical of it working well without giving us some sort of rudimentary scripting controls like in FF12 and other RPGs.
It's not impossible, but I will definitely be pleasantly surprised if they do a good job.
There’s a surprising number of Melia builds and strategies, such that I’m never entirely sure of mine.
Do I maintain one aura, or two? Should I keep Thunder active all the time to boost her damage, or Flare to boost the others’? Or do I maintain a defensive aura at all times, or fire them off for that delicious damage-over-time effect? Is Spear Break/Starlight Kick as much of a lock as I think it should be? Do I want to use her healing gift?
It’s the problem of having almost no bad options, but only 8 slots to hold them.
So are folks gonna do the Future Connected thing before replaying the main game?
I'm guessing doing it doesn't provide anything in the main game, since it sounds like it's separate like Golden Country (particularly since you can play any time), so there shouldn't really be any reason to wait, if you've played the main game before.
It'll be interesting to see if *XC1/XC2 spoilers, probably major ones* and just general babbling.
the "future" it connects to is some further link to XC2 more than XC2 had (there's a ton of different ways they can go about doing this, having the universes re-align in some manner)? Or if the "future" is simply for Melia as she was left in a fairly bad spot by the end of XC1? Or if it's more the future of the new world in XC1 and it won't connect really any more to XC2? Or if it'll be something to point toward a potential XC3?
I could totally understand why they would make the extra stuff relatively self-contained in the XC1 world, though I think fans of the series would be somewhat disappointed by that. Then again, we don't really yet know if the main game has had any alterations to the narrative to better link XC1 & 2, or at least make the connections as clear as they did in XC2. Maybe it is just Alvis's necklace. But I also suspect at minimum some re-recorded lines toward the end of the game to clarify further what Alvis actually is, and probably having the Klaus cutscene redone to match XC2 better.
It has been pointed out, and it may simply be an asset reuse and nothing significant, but the "portal" or tear or whatever over Alcamoth, and now seen there are more via more recent trailers, that they sure do resemble the sort of way some of the artifices attack in XC2. Might not be at all related.
I just want to put in writing though, after spending more time than is really reasonable comparing models of Alcamoth and the tech of the space station in XC1/2, with the knowledge from side-content (i.e. the lore on the Siren model that was apparently only sold in Japan) of there being two more "beanstalks" and thus likely more orbit stations my theory is thus: Alcamoth is actually one of the other orbit stations that got transferred when Klaus pushed the button, and that the origin of the Entia is a result of mutations of some manner of the survivors of that station, and Melia will discover this in the "dlc", and subsequently find some sort of means of communication or link or something, to the world of XC2. It isn't super clear if the other stations mentioned are elsewhere around the original planet (presumably earth, or if you want to get more into the rabbit hole, lost jerusalem) or if they're the higher orbit stations above the low orbit one that is of note in XC2, very very briefly during the XC2 ending we get a quick barely discernable glimpse at another station much higher above the low orbit station they're on (and Elysium resides in), so Alcamoth could be one of the higher stations. However, a weird bit in the ending of XC2 leaves open the possibility that the worlds are already linked at the end, and we just didn't see it. Again, it's probably just me overthinking it, but first, when the party reached the land at the end, there was already a bunch of land there, that looked old and pre-existing. Now, I think the most obvious response to this is that this was just the graveyard of massive Titans who had already died, and I can see that. But what sticks out to me is the second weird thing; that after they're flying down on Gramps we're not getting to see what happens between when they see the cloud sea dissipating (and Morytha still below them in ruins) and suddenly they're crossing some "rift" where everything goes white and next thing they know Morytha is gone and they're flying over a massive ocean, and stumble across a large landmass that the other Titans land on. Given how the ending of XC2 goes out of its way to align itself with the ending of XC1, the "rift" could coincide with Shulk handing over reigns of creation to life and a new world being born. That just so happens to be a massive ocean with a landmass that consists of parts of Bionis that sure does resemble the same sort of terrain as the Titans and would appear as a already existing continent to some folks flying in on their dragon, coming out of a rift. :rotate:
Or not. Who knows. I'm probably 100% off, I just like speculating. I would be not even slightly bothered if we find Rex and others in tow bunkering up in the otherwise empty Alcamoth, and Melia/Shulk discovering them. I also think that if the "future connected" actually means what the name implies and they're connecting things for the future (XC3 is all but inevitable, XC2 sold really well, and XC1 did too, and was popular enough to warrant this remaster) then there's a lot of reasons it'd make sense to have Alcamoth be more linked to the world before the start of XC1 to make an XC3 move forward from the end of XC1 and 2, which occur simultaneously. I suppose, if they wanted to really double down on that Siren lore, and Alcamoth is one of the other 2 stations, XC3 could potentially take place also simultaneously, and have the 3rd be somehow significant, or the third station is relevant moving forward and not another simultaneous story (but, we got 2 "splits" from Klaus, and one from Galea, that XC2 makes a point to actually name, maybe a 3rd could have her be more central to its story like Klaus is with 2, as I'd say they shared 1). It could also be that Alcamoth is just a city created by the Entia over some unknowable period of time that XC1 takes place over (never says how many repeats there had been, however with the ruins that exist in the game, its implied there have been multiple, at minimum), and the 3 orbit stations was just a tidbit that isn't really relevant.
I'm also fine if the Future Connected doesn't attempt to connect more to XC2, though I think it would be a missed opportunity. Particularly with how mind blowing the reveal was in XC2 and how it retroactively changed what was already a mind-blowing final act in XC1 (by final act I mean basically everything after Zanza re-appears after the fight with Egil), and them having to know fans want more info. But if it simply gives Melia more of a better ending, as XC1 never addressed what is left for her at the end, that's completely ok too. The last thing she mentions is thinking about the future, and then the rest of the ending is all about everyone else and she's not even seen again. They're all happy and getting along, but she's not part of it, and what she says to Fiora sounds more like a goodbye than anything. I mean, Shulk is in the new content, so at the very least we know she doesn't outright leave, but it seems clear that she doesn't feel as part of things as everyone else (and isn't paired off like the rest, minus Dunban I guess, but he's hanging out with Vanea, though nothing is implied, and by JRPG standards, he's an "old man"). So, what I'm saying is, it would be totally valid to also give her some closure or purpose that isn't sidelined by connecting more to XC2.
EDIT: Also I suppose it should be said that afaik it isn't 100% confirmed that it takes place after the ending, but it also kind of is? Maybe it is is, and I just haven't watched the more recent english trailer (not the character one). I should leave some space in my brain for it to be a pre-ending thing and maybe not have all of the information they have after the ending.
Again, who knows. We will see soon enough. I'm stupid excited for this either way, even if Future Connected isn't anything special, the main game sure as hell is, and I am eager to throw a couple hundred more hours at it again.
I'm actually surprised no one seems to have gotten access to the game early and spoiled it already. Seems rare anymore that a game can release and not already have youtube flooded with spoilers. Given how much Xeno-series content I've been consuming lately, if it had been, it would certainly have shown up in my feed already.
I'm super excited and this'll be the fourth time I bought this game!!!
And yeah I'm gonna play the main game all the way through first. Been a year or so since I last touched the 3DS version so it'll be nice to just experience everything again with all the improvements before diving into FC.
The fancy collector's edition of Xenoblade Chronicles is sold out unless you go the eBay route. Sucky. Tired of the scalpers.
Does this remake have new cutscenes?
Yeah. When I had checked all the usual suspects were sold out(Amazon, Best Buy, EB Games). Oddly enough I found it still up for pre-order at Walmart though, so was able to put in an order for that. Hopefully it will be fulfilled when the time comes. But maybe try some lesser considered places and see if they might still have it available for pre-order.
Congrats on getting a copy. I'm surprised that they still had it up for pre-order. I hope that means that they got lots of stock and the fact that when people think video games they don't think of Walmart(I only found it because it was fourth on the google search and it was the only one that still let me pre-order).
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
I've always heard not to bother with the sidequests in this game, that there's way too many and doing them all means you break the difficulty curve - is there any kinda shortlist of the stuff that is worth doing, or any kinda guideline to what type of sidequest ya should do?
If you want to unlock extra skill trees for your characters you're going to need to do a lot of sidequests. The quests to unlock them only appear when a towns overal affinity gets to a certain star level, and the only way to increase that is to do that area's sidequest (and talk to NPCs)
I've always heard not to bother with the sidequests in this game, that there's way too many and doing them all means you break the difficulty curve - is there any kinda shortlist of the stuff that is worth doing, or any kinda guideline to what type of sidequest ya should do?
I played the original like this! I love Xenoblade 1, but I'm just not into grindy collection sidequests. I loved the game enough that I did a few, but pretty quickly just went into "let's just beat the game" mode, because even without sidequests it's a very lengthy game.
I'm not aware of if they're making changes to this in the remake, but in the original you're correct that they will outlevel you very quickly. Xenoblade isn't a JRPG where you need to grind or do lots of sidequests for the main story -- it's the opposite, where sidequests will overlevel you. If you don't just skip tons of enemies on the way to objectives in the main story, you'll generally be about the right level.
The only ones you really need to do are the first level of all of the Colony 6 quests. You'll see when you get there, it's relatively early in the game (15-20 hours?) and gives you a mobile ether furnace. You'll be doing a lot of upgrading of your ether crystals, and without the mobile furnace you have to go back to town to do it. No one likes that, so get the furnace.
All the characters have two skill trees locked behind sidequests, and in order to do many (all?) of them you need to level up the locations affinity, which means functionally doing as many side quests as possible in order to do so.
The skill trees aren't necessary to beat the game, but they are pretty helpful in doing the "end game" stuff, like super bosses etc, many who drop skill books that you want to make your characters stronger to do...end game stuff. EDIT: also, not being ahead of the curve at least somewhat, will make doing unique enemies as you play through the game a lot more difficult, and potentially impossible. While only a small handful later in the game are actually missable, they all drop potentially really good equipment, for the level you can defeat them; they're just generally a much larger challenge. Though if you've played XC2 or XCX I'm sure most people already know the deal there.
So yeah, if you're only in it for the story, you can skip most of the side quest stuff, though you will miss out on a lot of side-story stuff. Sure there's a ton of "kill x monster" quests, but there's also some good stuff just as far as little contained stories, along with a handful of quests for more important characters that help flesh out some of those side characters. At least one of those side characters, it appears from the previews, are important in the DLC, so that's something to consider.
Plus, doing the side quests give you access to a lot of items that you'd otherwise be grinding for, gems and whatnot, so from a reward perspective, they're definitely worth doing. And from numerous previews, the sidequest system is greatly improved both by showing quest givers on the map, but also marking quest locations, enemies, and pretty damn amazingly, even collectable items on the ground, which was always one of the biggest headaches with sidequests.
What I suspect didn't get improved much is the way the affinity system works for NPC's and how its related to unlocking some side quests, which requires a lot of dialogue with NPC's and it's never really clear when they have something new to say, or even where they are at what time of day, etc. As a made up example, sometimes you have to talk to a handful of people numerous times at different points in order to get dialogue referencing others, building up their affinities toward eachother, before one may give you a sidequest that might have a useful reward. While XC2 mostly avoided this, both XC1 and XCX had a lot of it, but iirc XCX had some indication if someone had something new to say, but I may be mixing it up with the way they did NPC dialogue in XC2 where an NPC with new things to say would have a star over their head. I haven't seen any mention of that sort of improvement in the DE, so while the quest system has improvements, it seems like the affinity system is still going to be a pain in the ass, and will likely mean many players just ignore it entirely.
And also the colony 6 stuff, from all previews, didn't get the side quest improvements, so you have to still manually keep track of what you need to collect and where to collect it. Still, even then though, a good amount of the construction items are shared with quest items, so one could, with some prep work, take advantage of sidequests collecting similar things, to gather the needed colony items.
Also, it's solely a matter of preference, but I don't know I'd say that doing sidequests overpowers you substantially. The gear and xp you get via it can be gotten just by killing/trading and shops. And most sidequests are gated behind story content, so you can only do so many at any given time anyway. Plus, some of the bosses, if you haven't done any prep work, can be really difficult, and there's several that I could easily see as being game stoppers for people who are just playing the story and not wanting to do sidequests or grinding.
Which, again, preference, but ultimately, if you're getting into a Xenoblade game, you're getting into a sprawling sidequest heavy pseudo-mmo. XC1 is my favorite JRPG, but I would definitely give someone who was more interested in experiencing a linear story based RPG some heads up about what they're getting into. Huge swaths of the content in these games are "not for everyone", and XC1 probably the one with the most of that stuff. Though, its main story is top notch; as much can't be said for XCX, which was carried on gameplay primarily alone.
Anyway, that's just a lot of words to say, yeah, if you want to skip sidequests you can, but you're missing out on stuff that may or may not matter to you, and you're potentially making the game a lot more difficult (or trading off sidequests for just grinding).
Personally, even to someone mainly avoiding sidequests, I'd say at least do the timed ones, so if you change your mind later on and want to go back and do other sidequests, you'll have at least done the ones that get locked out by the story. The game always lets you know which those are, and while there might be a small handful of other sidequests that are missable that don't have a clock, I don't believe there are more than a few, if any.
Totally unrelated, watching this preview I noticed that, weirdly, outside of lighting, and their trunks, the trees in the original look better. They blow in the wind, and have a less generic texture for the leaves and such. Some of the textures (the crabble limbs) aren't really improved much, and others (terrain) are slightly improved, but still look better simply because of lighting, more saturated colors, and in some cases seemingly more geometry. Also anti-aliasing seems to help, compare particularly when Colony 9 comes into the picture, how much better the features look when they're not jaggy messes shimmering across the distance.
In the original... a particular skill from a sidequest tree is responsible for me finding out that it's possible for enemies to just give up and reset on you.
The way the penalty for being underleveled a lot worked... well, a certain level 99 enemy ended up being unable to hurt my party at all, and I could barely hit it, so... eventually it would just reset itself while only 20% dead and still engaged in combat. Took like 5 minutes to get to that point, and even with the level gap it couldn't touch me.
Personally, I think the best reward for doing sidequests in XC1 is seeing the affinity chart just explode in size till it's linking hundreds of people across the whole world. It's immensely satisfying to me.
You can get around being underleveled by focusing entirely on Agility for almost everyone. So if someone was avoiding sidequests, I'd probably recommend they do whatever they can to get as much agility as they can; they miss less, get hit less, and can hit higher level enemies easier. EDIT: Granted there's a cap from gems, but you can get more agi via skills and borrowing skills (though that requires coins from killing uniques...it's a vicious cycle)
Hey, I totally thought the "works" edition came with the soundtrack for the game, but that appears to not be the case. Well, it appears to not be the case in the US anyway, and the vinyl it comes with in the UK is just a selection.
I can't imagine they won't release a soundtrack for sale, but does anyone know anything more firm on this? I've got all the other Xeno soundtracks, I'm sure as hell gonna get this one if possible.
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16 days to go...
Heropon very cool. Happy, happy time!
This totally screwed my Affinity tho.
I would try to either keep Ice or Wind up, to improve Dunban's defenses against a particular kind of attack.
Gonna try more varied teams this run, though. Maybe try playing as Reynn or Seven on occasion.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Seven always used to be ridiculous fun to play as, for the infinite crit spam. I wonder if they've tuned up the AI this time around.
E: I suspect not either, but we can always hope
Honestly I think they did. The game is pretty remade here.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Be ready for a pretty long game. My first playthrough was 80+ hours. It starts off faster than most Xeno games (I can't comment on XCX as I never played it), but Xeno games are generally a pretty long, slow burn. If there's one word I'd use to describe them, it's meaty. There's almost always a ton of lore, lots of attention to detail, and a lot of time establishing the game's status quo.
It would be a shame if that took a step backwards for the Xenoblade 1 Definitive Edition, since everything else is looking so good!
The AI just had no idea how to deal with positional attacks, or Melia. Melia is a weird mage type character, but it's not just straight "target elemental weakness" stuff. Most of her spells have two functions -- a passive aura when you cast it, and then damage or a more active effect when you "release" the aura. In my experience there's a lot of mixing and matching to get the best effects on her that way, which is why I'm skeptical of it working well without giving us some sort of rudimentary scripting controls like in FF12 and other RPGs.
It's not impossible, but I will definitely be pleasantly surprised if they do a good job.
Do I maintain one aura, or two? Should I keep Thunder active all the time to boost her damage, or Flare to boost the others’? Or do I maintain a defensive aura at all times, or fire them off for that delicious damage-over-time effect? Is Spear Break/Starlight Kick as much of a lock as I think it should be? Do I want to use her healing gift?
It’s the problem of having almost no bad options, but only 8 slots to hold them.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Of course, that’s not so fun when the enemy has Topple Spikes.
I'm pretty sure it was possible for Melia to topple lock an enemy on her own.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
They're ambitious as fuck and each game feels pretty grand.
Note to self: make Topple Duration gems next run.
I'm guessing doing it doesn't provide anything in the main game, since it sounds like it's separate like Golden Country (particularly since you can play any time), so there shouldn't really be any reason to wait, if you've played the main game before.
It'll be interesting to see if *XC1/XC2 spoilers, probably major ones* and just general babbling.
I could totally understand why they would make the extra stuff relatively self-contained in the XC1 world, though I think fans of the series would be somewhat disappointed by that. Then again, we don't really yet know if the main game has had any alterations to the narrative to better link XC1 & 2, or at least make the connections as clear as they did in XC2. Maybe it is just Alvis's necklace. But I also suspect at minimum some re-recorded lines toward the end of the game to clarify further what Alvis actually is, and probably having the Klaus cutscene redone to match XC2 better.
It has been pointed out, and it may simply be an asset reuse and nothing significant, but the "portal" or tear or whatever over Alcamoth, and now seen there are more via more recent trailers, that they sure do resemble the sort of way some of the artifices attack in XC2. Might not be at all related.
I just want to put in writing though, after spending more time than is really reasonable comparing models of Alcamoth and the tech of the space station in XC1/2, with the knowledge from side-content (i.e. the lore on the Siren model that was apparently only sold in Japan) of there being two more "beanstalks" and thus likely more orbit stations my theory is thus: Alcamoth is actually one of the other orbit stations that got transferred when Klaus pushed the button, and that the origin of the Entia is a result of mutations of some manner of the survivors of that station, and Melia will discover this in the "dlc", and subsequently find some sort of means of communication or link or something, to the world of XC2. It isn't super clear if the other stations mentioned are elsewhere around the original planet (presumably earth, or if you want to get more into the rabbit hole, lost jerusalem) or if they're the higher orbit stations above the low orbit one that is of note in XC2, very very briefly during the XC2 ending we get a quick barely discernable glimpse at another station much higher above the low orbit station they're on (and Elysium resides in), so Alcamoth could be one of the higher stations. However, a weird bit in the ending of XC2 leaves open the possibility that the worlds are already linked at the end, and we just didn't see it. Again, it's probably just me overthinking it, but first, when the party reached the land at the end, there was already a bunch of land there, that looked old and pre-existing. Now, I think the most obvious response to this is that this was just the graveyard of massive Titans who had already died, and I can see that. But what sticks out to me is the second weird thing; that after they're flying down on Gramps we're not getting to see what happens between when they see the cloud sea dissipating (and Morytha still below them in ruins) and suddenly they're crossing some "rift" where everything goes white and next thing they know Morytha is gone and they're flying over a massive ocean, and stumble across a large landmass that the other Titans land on. Given how the ending of XC2 goes out of its way to align itself with the ending of XC1, the "rift" could coincide with Shulk handing over reigns of creation to life and a new world being born. That just so happens to be a massive ocean with a landmass that consists of parts of Bionis that sure does resemble the same sort of terrain as the Titans and would appear as a already existing continent to some folks flying in on their dragon, coming out of a rift. :rotate:
Or not. Who knows. I'm probably 100% off, I just like speculating. I would be not even slightly bothered if we find Rex and others in tow bunkering up in the otherwise empty Alcamoth, and Melia/Shulk discovering them. I also think that if the "future connected" actually means what the name implies and they're connecting things for the future (XC3 is all but inevitable, XC2 sold really well, and XC1 did too, and was popular enough to warrant this remaster) then there's a lot of reasons it'd make sense to have Alcamoth be more linked to the world before the start of XC1 to make an XC3 move forward from the end of XC1 and 2, which occur simultaneously. I suppose, if they wanted to really double down on that Siren lore, and Alcamoth is one of the other 2 stations, XC3 could potentially take place also simultaneously, and have the 3rd be somehow significant, or the third station is relevant moving forward and not another simultaneous story (but, we got 2 "splits" from Klaus, and one from Galea, that XC2 makes a point to actually name, maybe a 3rd could have her be more central to its story like Klaus is with 2, as I'd say they shared 1). It could also be that Alcamoth is just a city created by the Entia over some unknowable period of time that XC1 takes place over (never says how many repeats there had been, however with the ruins that exist in the game, its implied there have been multiple, at minimum), and the 3 orbit stations was just a tidbit that isn't really relevant.
I'm also fine if the Future Connected doesn't attempt to connect more to XC2, though I think it would be a missed opportunity. Particularly with how mind blowing the reveal was in XC2 and how it retroactively changed what was already a mind-blowing final act in XC1 (by final act I mean basically everything after Zanza re-appears after the fight with Egil), and them having to know fans want more info. But if it simply gives Melia more of a better ending, as XC1 never addressed what is left for her at the end, that's completely ok too. The last thing she mentions is thinking about the future, and then the rest of the ending is all about everyone else and she's not even seen again. They're all happy and getting along, but she's not part of it, and what she says to Fiora sounds more like a goodbye than anything. I mean, Shulk is in the new content, so at the very least we know she doesn't outright leave, but it seems clear that she doesn't feel as part of things as everyone else (and isn't paired off like the rest, minus Dunban I guess, but he's hanging out with Vanea, though nothing is implied, and by JRPG standards, he's an "old man"). So, what I'm saying is, it would be totally valid to also give her some closure or purpose that isn't sidelined by connecting more to XC2.
EDIT: Also I suppose it should be said that afaik it isn't 100% confirmed that it takes place after the ending, but it also kind of is? Maybe it is is, and I just haven't watched the more recent english trailer (not the character one). I should leave some space in my brain for it to be a pre-ending thing and maybe not have all of the information they have after the ending.
Again, who knows. We will see soon enough. I'm stupid excited for this either way, even if Future Connected isn't anything special, the main game sure as hell is, and I am eager to throw a couple hundred more hours at it again.
I'm actually surprised no one seems to have gotten access to the game early and spoiled it already. Seems rare anymore that a game can release and not already have youtube flooded with spoilers. Given how much Xeno-series content I've been consuming lately, if it had been, it would certainly have shown up in my feed already.
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And yeah I'm gonna play the main game all the way through first. Been a year or so since I last touched the 3DS version so it'll be nice to just experience everything again with all the improvements before diving into FC.
Yeah. When I had checked all the usual suspects were sold out(Amazon, Best Buy, EB Games). Oddly enough I found it still up for pre-order at Walmart though, so was able to put in an order for that. Hopefully it will be fulfilled when the time comes. But maybe try some lesser considered places and see if they might still have it available for pre-order.
I played the original like this! I love Xenoblade 1, but I'm just not into grindy collection sidequests. I loved the game enough that I did a few, but pretty quickly just went into "let's just beat the game" mode, because even without sidequests it's a very lengthy game.
I'm not aware of if they're making changes to this in the remake, but in the original you're correct that they will outlevel you very quickly. Xenoblade isn't a JRPG where you need to grind or do lots of sidequests for the main story -- it's the opposite, where sidequests will overlevel you. If you don't just skip tons of enemies on the way to objectives in the main story, you'll generally be about the right level.
The only ones you really need to do are the first level of all of the Colony 6 quests. You'll see when you get there, it's relatively early in the game (15-20 hours?) and gives you a mobile ether furnace. You'll be doing a lot of upgrading of your ether crystals, and without the mobile furnace you have to go back to town to do it. No one likes that, so get the furnace.
The skill trees aren't necessary to beat the game, but they are pretty helpful in doing the "end game" stuff, like super bosses etc, many who drop skill books that you want to make your characters stronger to do...end game stuff. EDIT: also, not being ahead of the curve at least somewhat, will make doing unique enemies as you play through the game a lot more difficult, and potentially impossible. While only a small handful later in the game are actually missable, they all drop potentially really good equipment, for the level you can defeat them; they're just generally a much larger challenge. Though if you've played XC2 or XCX I'm sure most people already know the deal there.
So yeah, if you're only in it for the story, you can skip most of the side quest stuff, though you will miss out on a lot of side-story stuff. Sure there's a ton of "kill x monster" quests, but there's also some good stuff just as far as little contained stories, along with a handful of quests for more important characters that help flesh out some of those side characters. At least one of those side characters, it appears from the previews, are important in the DLC, so that's something to consider.
Plus, doing the side quests give you access to a lot of items that you'd otherwise be grinding for, gems and whatnot, so from a reward perspective, they're definitely worth doing. And from numerous previews, the sidequest system is greatly improved both by showing quest givers on the map, but also marking quest locations, enemies, and pretty damn amazingly, even collectable items on the ground, which was always one of the biggest headaches with sidequests.
What I suspect didn't get improved much is the way the affinity system works for NPC's and how its related to unlocking some side quests, which requires a lot of dialogue with NPC's and it's never really clear when they have something new to say, or even where they are at what time of day, etc. As a made up example, sometimes you have to talk to a handful of people numerous times at different points in order to get dialogue referencing others, building up their affinities toward eachother, before one may give you a sidequest that might have a useful reward. While XC2 mostly avoided this, both XC1 and XCX had a lot of it, but iirc XCX had some indication if someone had something new to say, but I may be mixing it up with the way they did NPC dialogue in XC2 where an NPC with new things to say would have a star over their head. I haven't seen any mention of that sort of improvement in the DE, so while the quest system has improvements, it seems like the affinity system is still going to be a pain in the ass, and will likely mean many players just ignore it entirely.
And also the colony 6 stuff, from all previews, didn't get the side quest improvements, so you have to still manually keep track of what you need to collect and where to collect it. Still, even then though, a good amount of the construction items are shared with quest items, so one could, with some prep work, take advantage of sidequests collecting similar things, to gather the needed colony items.
Also, it's solely a matter of preference, but I don't know I'd say that doing sidequests overpowers you substantially. The gear and xp you get via it can be gotten just by killing/trading and shops. And most sidequests are gated behind story content, so you can only do so many at any given time anyway. Plus, some of the bosses, if you haven't done any prep work, can be really difficult, and there's several that I could easily see as being game stoppers for people who are just playing the story and not wanting to do sidequests or grinding.
Which, again, preference, but ultimately, if you're getting into a Xenoblade game, you're getting into a sprawling sidequest heavy pseudo-mmo. XC1 is my favorite JRPG, but I would definitely give someone who was more interested in experiencing a linear story based RPG some heads up about what they're getting into. Huge swaths of the content in these games are "not for everyone", and XC1 probably the one with the most of that stuff. Though, its main story is top notch; as much can't be said for XCX, which was carried on gameplay primarily alone.
Anyway, that's just a lot of words to say, yeah, if you want to skip sidequests you can, but you're missing out on stuff that may or may not matter to you, and you're potentially making the game a lot more difficult (or trading off sidequests for just grinding).
Personally, even to someone mainly avoiding sidequests, I'd say at least do the timed ones, so if you change your mind later on and want to go back and do other sidequests, you'll have at least done the ones that get locked out by the story. The game always lets you know which those are, and while there might be a small handful of other sidequests that are missable that don't have a clock, I don't believe there are more than a few, if any.
Totally unrelated, watching this preview I noticed that, weirdly, outside of lighting, and their trunks, the trees in the original look better. They blow in the wind, and have a less generic texture for the leaves and such. Some of the textures (the crabble limbs) aren't really improved much, and others (terrain) are slightly improved, but still look better simply because of lighting, more saturated colors, and in some cases seemingly more geometry. Also anti-aliasing seems to help, compare particularly when Colony 9 comes into the picture, how much better the features look when they're not jaggy messes shimmering across the distance.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
The way the penalty for being underleveled a lot worked... well, a certain level 99 enemy ended up being unable to hurt my party at all, and I could barely hit it, so... eventually it would just reset itself while only 20% dead and still engaged in combat. Took like 5 minutes to get to that point, and even with the level gap it couldn't touch me.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Hey, I totally thought the "works" edition came with the soundtrack for the game, but that appears to not be the case. Well, it appears to not be the case in the US anyway, and the vinyl it comes with in the UK is just a selection.
I can't imagine they won't release a soundtrack for sale, but does anyone know anything more firm on this? I've got all the other Xeno soundtracks, I'm sure as hell gonna get this one if possible.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
only other soundtrack I imported was Gravity Rush 2.