Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited April 26
So I was thinking about this last night and I think this DLC is giving me a way better idea of how Aionios is constructed, in terms of Xenoblade 1 areas anyways.
I'll spoiler this just in case anyone hasn't gotten far in base game (no real DLC spoilers, just stuff I realized cuz of the DLC)
What I always guessed with the Bionis shoulder (southern Fornis) is actually Sartorial Marsh (actually I think basically all of Fornis), but like, not very marsh-y anymore (which makes it hard to tell). It's kinda cool to see these areas I recognize from base game without like an additional 100 years of annihilation events eating away at them.
Which actually makes me think Hovering Reefs is the sad remains of the Bionis Shoulder (minus the Mor Ardain parts anyways), which thinking about it now makes so much more sense as that's the last place Alcamoth was anyways and literally it was flying because of float stones or whatever they called them. I guess they just built a town there around the castle (which I've honestly since come to realize, Fort O'Virbus is where the opening cutscene takes place and *maybe* a build up of Gran Dell?). I might be wrong on this but it seems like it makes sense to me.
Still wanna see someone do a damn one-to-one Aionios landmass comparison video.
So Future Redeemed is like a Torna / Future Connected, where mechanically it's completely disconnected from base XC3? I was never interested in any other component of the DLC pass, but all-new plot that I'm not expected to have powered up with the bonus heroes to clear is right up my alley.
As for the difficulty... yeah, I wish that there was something between Normal and Hard. I like the added threat level from enemies having better attack stats, but on Hard bosses become absolute mountains of HP, which turns "exciting" into "exhausting".
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
If it's like the base game it also nerfs the chain attack damage multipliers. Which I mean, sure. Basically every fight in normal is just over as soon as you can activate chain attack (and this isn't even a factor of levels or builds so much as lolol 1000% damage when you can reliably fire full chains) This is probably the easiest of the games to utterly break chain attack in, because it's inherently broken from the start.
In fairness, the fight that really walled me on Hard was the Moebius fight in the sidequest for one of the first Heroes you get, which is before you really have all your tools available and pretty much whoever you assign to be Healers can easily be CC'd and spike-damaged (in the sense of "one gigantic packet of damage delivered in a very short time) out of the fight at a moment's notice. Maybe I should have just left that quest line for later and come back when I was more powerful, but it really felt like the numbers delta was hitting in a way I didn't want to engage with. (And XC3 took me way too many hours to finish even on Normal afterward.)
That reminds me of an thought-stream that I never typed up... the Chain Attack is a persistent thorn in the side of the Xenoblade series in its ability to explode to gigantic amounts of damage without really giving the enemy a chance to respond. The fight is the first 10% of the enemy's HP, or however long it takes to fill the Chain Attack gauge, followed by the Chain Attack obliterating the remaining 90% of their HP. So: what if the Chain Attack weren't implemented as a time stop, but instead some kind of massive cooldown reduction? I don't have specific rules in mind, but some general features would include:
- You activate the Chain Attack with your current character. This grants them the Chain Attacking state/buff which allows them to use their Arts without regard to cooldown status.
- Some kind of rule governs how the Chain Attack buff passes between characters.
- If a Chain Attack-enabled Art isn't used within a specific amount of time, the Chain Attack ends.
- There is a (controlled) boost in damage / effect of Arts used within a Chain Attack. Like, +10% per previous move, not +200%.
- Some kind of rule governs whether you can use a Chain Attack to ignore the cooldown of an Art multiple times within the same Chain Attack.
The main idea being that Chain Attacks are less "the super sentai pull out the Sword The Always Works" and more "you get more actions and more damage if you can think faster than the regular flow of battle, and you're also risking whatever resources you spent to start the Chain Attack".
My favorite musical instrument is the air-raid siren.
XC3 chain attacks are especially broken though. It's not nearly as easy to just instantly delete a boss in the previous games without specifically setting up for it. (Not that you can't - you can find videos of chain attacks instantly murdering superbosses in the prior games too, it just takes actual setup)
XC2 in particular you needed to set up orbs on the boss to enable chain attack length and such. (I mean, or be using endgame nonsense to just do eleventy billion damage from the start, but)
So Future Redeemed is like a Torna / Future Connected, where mechanically it's completely disconnected from base XC3? I was never interested in any other component of the DLC pass, but all-new plot that I'm not expected to have powered up with the bonus heroes to clear is right up my alley.
As for the difficulty... yeah, I wish that there was something between Normal and Hard. I like the added threat level from enemies having better attack stats, but on Hard bosses become absolute mountains of HP, which turns "exciting" into "exhausting".
Yeah, it's completely disconnected, at least gameplay-wise. I'm not sure how stand-alone it works narratively as it sometimes feels like they expect you to already know basic worldbuilding from the base game (though there are some bare bones explanations of stuff if you don't... like a very nuts and bolts explanation of Moebius, Keves, Agnes, etc) but otherwise yeah, it's its own thing.
As far as I have seen, Heroes do not exist at all in the DLC. It plays much more like classic XC1/XC2 where characters are fixed classes but with some added stuff on there. (If you played the Gauntlet mode at all it's somewhat similar). It's possible that may change later on but so far there's been none.
Regarding difficulty, I'm not sure how you played through the base game, but I found if I *never ever* used bonus XP it was reasonable. Still a little on the easy side (if you do all the sidequests, etc) but reasonable. I watched someone start on Hard and it looked like a SLOG though. They ended up dumbing down to normal because they couldn't continue dying to the same boss 20 times without getting frustrated (also they were streaming and not doing a ton of the side content which didn't help - I feel like the Hard mode is explicitly tuned around you doing all side content you can find). I can't speak for Hard here in the DLC, but from what I've seen of Normal, it's very much still in line with the base game, if not a little easier as there's significantly more side content that encourages you to get XP. So Hard might be the way to go here? I've been debating myself but I'll just stick with Normal (because ultimately I don't care, I just wanna experience the story and game). But yeah, just trying to do all the collection challenges and crap that the game encourages has left me fairly overleveled already. Of all the QoL stuff this DLC adds to the game, they still haven't fixed the level curve :P (or maybe the fix is just "play on hard")
(speaking of which, very much looking forward to some of this crap getting porting over into Xenoblade 4 or whatever is next... there is some nice QoL here)
In fairness, the fight that really walled me on Hard was the Moebius fight in the sidequest for one of the first Heroes you get, which is before you really have all your tools available and pretty much whoever you assign to be Healers can easily be CC'd and spike-damaged (in the sense of "one gigantic packet of damage delivered in a very short time) out of the fight at a moment's notice. Maybe I should have just left that quest line for later and come back when I was more powerful, but it really felt like the numbers delta was hitting in a way I didn't want to engage with. (And XC3 took me way too many hours to finish even on Normal afterward.)
That reminds me of an thought-stream that I never typed up... the Chain Attack is a persistent thorn in the side of the Xenoblade series in its ability to explode to gigantic amounts of damage without really giving the enemy a chance to respond. The fight is the first 10% of the enemy's HP, or however long it takes to fill the Chain Attack gauge, followed by the Chain Attack obliterating the remaining 90% of their HP. So: what if the Chain Attack weren't implemented as a time stop, but instead some kind of massive cooldown reduction? I don't have specific rules in mind, but some general features would include:
- You activate the Chain Attack with your current character. This grants them the Chain Attacking state/buff which allows them to use their Arts without regard to cooldown status.
- Some kind of rule governs how the Chain Attack buff passes between characters.
- If a Chain Attack-enabled Art isn't used within a specific amount of time, the Chain Attack ends.
- There is a (controlled) boost in damage / effect of Arts used within a Chain Attack. Like, +10% per previous move, not +200%.
- Some kind of rule governs whether you can use a Chain Attack to ignore the cooldown of an Art multiple times within the same Chain Attack.
The main idea being that Chain Attacks are less "the super sentai pull out the Sword The Always Works" and more "you get more actions and more damage if you can think faster than the regular flow of battle, and you're also risking whatever resources you spent to start the Chain Attack".
Xenoblade X's Overdrive is sort of that, but with only a single character.
In fairness, the fight that really walled me on Hard was the Moebius fight in the sidequest for one of the first Heroes you get, which is before you really have all your tools available and pretty much whoever you assign to be Healers can easily be CC'd and spike-damaged (in the sense of "one gigantic packet of damage delivered in a very short time) out of the fight at a moment's notice. Maybe I should have just left that quest line for later and come back when I was more powerful, but it really felt like the numbers delta was hitting in a way I didn't want to engage with. (And XC3 took me way too many hours to finish even on Normal afterward.)
That reminds me of an thought-stream that I never typed up... the Chain Attack is a persistent thorn in the side of the Xenoblade series in its ability to explode to gigantic amounts of damage without really giving the enemy a chance to respond. The fight is the first 10% of the enemy's HP, or however long it takes to fill the Chain Attack gauge, followed by the Chain Attack obliterating the remaining 90% of their HP. So: what if the Chain Attack weren't implemented as a time stop, but instead some kind of massive cooldown reduction? I don't have specific rules in mind, but some general features would include:
- You activate the Chain Attack with your current character. This grants them the Chain Attacking state/buff which allows them to use their Arts without regard to cooldown status.
- Some kind of rule governs how the Chain Attack buff passes between characters.
- If a Chain Attack-enabled Art isn't used within a specific amount of time, the Chain Attack ends.
- There is a (controlled) boost in damage / effect of Arts used within a Chain Attack. Like, +10% per previous move, not +200%.
- Some kind of rule governs whether you can use a Chain Attack to ignore the cooldown of an Art multiple times within the same Chain Attack.
The main idea being that Chain Attacks are less "the super sentai pull out the Sword The Always Works" and more "you get more actions and more damage if you can think faster than the regular flow of battle, and you're also risking whatever resources you spent to start the Chain Attack".
Xenoblade X's Overdrive is sort of that, but with only a single character.
XCX having a completely different system for skells was a bit funny there though too. Random cockpit procs completing resetting all your cooldowns... basically became spam everything at times.
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Hmm just rumblings so far but I will definitely be asking for all of your input as you play the DLC but..
but i hear it really really may just be fully focused on telling a pre-xc3 story
which kinda kills my desire for it.
I was hoping given the name it was gonna be time-y wime-y shenanigans that leads to showing where things end up afterwards
but if it really is just foing a "fill in the the gap" story i just have a really hard time caring.
I bought the season pass but I’d have paid the Future Redeemed price to get this battle challenge that gives you Rex and Shulk as Heroes for the main game.
Viskod on
0
Brainiac 8Don't call me Shirley...Registered Userregular
I wonder if they'll release a physical copy for this like they did torna.
I wonder if they'll release a physical copy for this like they did torna.
Aside from it being a little late, this is not designed like a stand-alone. They don't bother tutorializing base game mechanics, whereas Torna had tutorialized that even more than XC2 itself.
Edit: also gotta say size-wise, this is shaping up to be more like half a Torna. So a bit of a harder sell as a standalone.
I wonder if they'll release a physical copy for this like they did torna.
Aside from it being a little late, this is not designed like a stand-alone. They don't bother tutorializing base game mechanics, whereas Torna had tutorialized that even more than XC2 itself.
Edit: also gotta say size-wise, this is shaping up to be more like half a Torna. So a bit of a harder sell as a standalone.
Really?
I'm what feels like about halfway through, and that seems to be somewhat verified by the Affinity Goals, and I'm about 11 hours, and I think Torna took me ~20 hours to finish, and maybe a chunk more to fully complete it.
This seems in that same ballpark?
Anyway, if I'm being totally honest, I feel like, at least from what I have played, this feels like what I think everyone kinda expected/hoped XC3 was going to be when they talked about it being the end of the "trilogy". For sure this story wouldn't be working without the backdrop of what happened in XC3, but yeah.
Which is to say I'm loving it!
It seems to be reusing music from XC3 a lot more than Torna did, I'd be interested to see the numbers at some point if anyone runs it down, how much new music they added relative to Torna. There's certainly new music, and it's all great, but there's still a lot of XC3's stuff in there (which isn't a problem, just an observation), whereas Torna was almost entirely all new or at least arrangements of XC2 stuff.
Definitely missing the class switching of the main game, though. Having set things certainly streamlines things simliarly to Torna, and still feels good, but since it's not as customizable, it's not as easy to get a setup that suits you.
I'm going to refrain from talking about plot really until I complete it, but I noticed something strange about the voice acting, at least in the English version, that may be nothing at all, but is really noticable.
I'm not spoiling anything, to my knowledge, but I'll put it behind spoilers anyway just in case
There's a really weird pause every single time anyone refers to Matthew by name, where when they say "Matthew" it doesn't feel like it is part of the same voice line as the rest. And there's a pause. It's not just certain characters, it's literally every single one. And as far as I can tell they don't do this with anyone elses name, just Matthew.
I'm wondering if they changed his name late in the process and had to do some wonky stuff to the voice lines?
Or if it's something story related (which I doubt).
Once I noticed it, I can't unnotice it and it's consistent in the entire DLC thus far.
I'm what feels like about halfway through, and that seems to be somewhat verified by the Affinity Goals, and I'm about 11 hours, and I think Torna took me ~20 hours to finish, and maybe a chunk more to fully complete it. [/spoiler]
I spent like 50+ hours in Torna and didn't even take all the superbosses.
Granted it probably took longer because I played that before XC2 main game, but still.
If you've got half the affinity goals you're halfway to overall completion, not mere story completion.
rahkeesh2000 on
+1
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
I wonder if they'll release a physical copy for this like they did torna.
Aside from it being a little late, this is not designed like a stand-alone. They don't bother tutorializing base game mechanics, whereas Torna had tutorialized that even more than XC2 itself.
Edit: also gotta say size-wise, this is shaping up to be more like half a Torna. So a bit of a harder sell as a standalone.
More specifically, there are actually tutorials that say "unlike the base game" or otherwise make comparisons to the full game. They definitely expect you've at least played the base game enough to unlock all the systems (camping, chain attacks, etc etc). So like, early Fornis at least.
Honestly too like half the premise of the DLC is pretty big spoilers for base game, chapter 5 and 6 in particular. I'd argue much more than Torna which at best gives some context to stuff you start hearing about like an hour in. Like, if you play Torna before even meeting Pyra, yeah, spoilers for something you might be able to guess at anyways.. but after that you have a basic idea of who the good guys and bad guys are even if you don't know the motivations.. worst spoiler is the existence of Mythra which I mean, Smash Bros already spoiled that for probably everyone at this point :P
Edit: Oh also
whereas Torna had tutorialized that even more than XC2 itself
Aka "there were actually tutorials" :P Still don't know what happened with that when XC1 had such excellent tutorials. XC2 is like the only game where they didn't bother.
Ok, I loaded up Torna to see my playtime, and it's almost 60 hours.
However that includes an extreme amount of completion, i.e 3 of every accessory, 6 of every core, etc.
This definitely isn't going to have that much to do something similar. Once you have access to all the tools and such, cleaning up the maps is fairly quick, and there seems to only be a handful of UMs that are very high level to challenge. It seems more like Future Connected in regards to how much there is to do, though it seems to have decently larger map, and considerably more story content.
So yeah, as far as scope, definitely more Future Connected than Torna, which makes sense I suppose.
Still, it looks more like maybe 20-25 for full completion (maybe another 10 or so for extreme completion for getting accessories?). That's nothing to sneeze at for a dlc, hell that's be a good amount for a full game that isn't like an assassin's Creed level of bloat.
Also a tentative warning to people still early in the dlc or yet to start:
Hold off on opening containers until you reach a certain side quest that is fairly obvious.
I'm doing the math and unless you can get certain items from UMs as drops on subsequent kills, I may have screwed being able to complete this quest.
Hopefully it is still doable, its pretty rare that they have quests that are unable to be completed like this, but we will see.
EDIT: I still completed it, maybe it doesn't matter when you start collecting the things. I got the last thing I needed from the last story leveled UM, so it seemed intentional.
It's like they got in my head and pulled out all the headcannon stuff I've been formulating over the years trying to connect all the Xeno games into one universe.
But they actually god damned did it.
I'm sure some folks will argue that it was just easter eggs.
And yeah, I mean, obviously; but the important thing is that they absolutely didn't have to directly reference XCX, let aloneXenosaga.
Yet they did.
I feel pretty good about myself! A lot of how I figured it connected was pretty spot on. I mean, much of it kinda had to be how it went down, but still. I'll take the win.
Having said all that, I know this isn't going to be the ending folks who were really wanting a follow up to the end of XC3 to have, but if you read between the lines, it kind of is?
It confirms the two worlds ended up merging, in the end, and that the future can be what they make of it.
But it did leave out a lot of explaining about how that can be, while also having things "return to how they used to be" as stated by Rex and Shulk in the end. Or at the very least, it didn't explain at all what happened to anyone else in XC1/2, and why none of them were around at all.
I had read it as implied that they were on the Ark, but that definitely leaves some questions open about why they did, and why none of them were helping. Like...why would Pyra and Mythra go and leave Rex? Were Shulk and Rex supposed to join everyone else on the Ark and somehow got diverted when Alpha went nuts? We've got kids from the XC1/2 characters around here, but it's stated that at least Panacea and Lyttle (I'm pretty sure that's not her name, but I can't recall it right now) weren't saved from flame clocks, but were naturally born citizens, which implies that some of the characters from the previous games were still around post-merge. Or maybe I missed something there?
I'm going to have to think about it more, maybe watch some cutscenes over again.
I'm sure I'll have way more to say later.
About what's next: (again, spoilers, but less specific, I'd still avoid it until you've finished the DLC)
I know some folks are going to want another DLC, but I don't expect that.
What I do expect is sometime in the next year an announcement of a XCX remaster, and either simultaneously or subsequently, an XCX2.
Also, while it's unlikely, it'd be super awesome if there was a
All I've got left to do, besides possibly farm for accessories, is beat the last few superbosses. The level 80 one seems ultra hard, and unless I missed some accessories along the way, I'm not entirely sure how to deal with it. Off the bat it just puts everyone to sleep, and it's semi-permanent sleep it seems, and I don't recall any sleep status protection accessories. I'll have to look it up tomorrow.
I'm a bit confused about something semi-related, or at least I thought, to beating the game (spoilers for main game rewards for beating the DLC):
The blurb for the Mythra/Pyra amiibos said that they'd unlock their swords to use, but that you could also unlock them via other means in the game without the amiibo. I had assumed that meant beating the DLC, but nope. You do get rewards, and decent ones (though not sharing the classes suck, they do have their own battle music, so that's something), but not those cosmetics.
Which leads me to believe that even if it's not another major DLC, something more is coming down the line, particularly if they're doing a Noah/Mio amiibo too. So maybe they're not done with XC3, still.
If someone had asked me, after playing the Xenosaga series, and it was done, waaaaaay back in the day; if I ever imagined a future where it'd just be Xeno-games for miles and miles, I'd have just laughed at their vivid imagination.
Encountered a weird bug. Saved, then noticed "Items" in the menu was highlighted though I was sure I had cleared them all already; checked and seems I missed getting a Gemstone. Without doing anything else I saved again and "Items" was highlighted again, got another Gemstone. Saved another time and sure enough, it seems I'm getting a Gemstone added to my inventory every time I save at the moment.
Encountered a weird bug. Saved, then noticed "Items" in the menu was highlighted though I was sure I had cleared them all already; checked and seems I missed getting a Gemstone. Without doing anything else I saved again and "Items" was highlighted again, got another Gemstone. Saved another time and sure enough, it seems I'm getting a Gemstone added to my inventory every time I save at the moment.
Sounds like its right up there with "luring an enemy from the front with Matthew causes *the enemy* to get fast recharge instead of your party."
Also a tentative warning to people still early in the dlc or yet to start:
Hold off on opening containers until you reach a certain side quest that is fairly obvious.
I'm doing the math and unless you can get certain items from UMs as drops on subsequent kills, I may have screwed being able to complete this quest.
Hopefully it is still doable, its pretty rare that they have quests that are unable to be completed like this, but we will see.
EDIT: I still completed it, maybe it doesn't matter when you start collecting the things. I got the last thing I needed from the last story leveled UM, so it seemed intentional.
The quest status has no relation to you receiving the items. Just one of them on a well-hidden boss near the end in Chapter 4.
Fogbeat Laia on a bridge in the Black Mountains that only comes out during thunderstorm! One or two fog portals with the same restriction there.
Encountered a weird bug. Saved, then noticed "Items" in the menu was highlighted though I was sure I had cleared them all already; checked and seems I missed getting a Gemstone. Without doing anything else I saved again and "Items" was highlighted again, got another Gemstone. Saved another time and sure enough, it seems I'm getting a Gemstone added to my inventory every time I save at the moment.
Sounds like its right up there with "luring an enemy from the front with Matthew causes *the enemy* to get fast recharge instead of your party."
That doesn't seem like a bug, I've only had that happen when the enemy has an exclamation point icon on their HP bar that indicates they'll use a skill when the fight starts, if I initiate from the back it my party gets it like it should.
Encountered a weird bug. Saved, then noticed "Items" in the menu was highlighted though I was sure I had cleared them all already; checked and seems I missed getting a Gemstone. Without doing anything else I saved again and "Items" was highlighted again, got another Gemstone. Saved another time and sure enough, it seems I'm getting a Gemstone added to my inventory every time I save at the moment.
Sounds like its right up there with "luring an enemy from the front with Matthew causes *the enemy* to get fast recharge instead of your party."
That doesn't seem like a bug, I've only had that happen when the enemy has an exclamation point icon on their HP bar that indicates they'll use a skill when the fight starts, if I initiate from the back it my party gets it like it should.
Indeed the "bug" is I thought Matthew was supposed to activate it from the front, like his attack arts! Guess recharge up is just a fairly common reaction from mobs.
I still just do not understand why they've never put in anything that makes it easier to get the level 10 gems.
Either scour the world for like 120-150 rare drops from rare enemies or hunker down and grind out 198,000 noponstones for 1 level 10 gem.
This is dumb.
I've put 220 hours into the third game, scoured the map, done all the sidequests, and I have next to zero of the level 10 gem mats.
+1
Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
edited May 1
I really wanted to play this more over the weekend but I ended up being busy so I didn't get far. I think I just made it to chapter 4 tho? (I'm not positive on the chapter numbers but there was just a huge exposition dump and I did get a chapter end thingy at one point)
Also god damn I think I see how Nikol and Glimmer are going to live beyond their 10 years as described in the founder statues...
Rip dads, sacrificing for their kids.
Also their reaction to Nikol and Glimmer wanting to go to Prison Island with them was so priceless. Poor kids were so confused. I hope they at least tell them eventually.
I still just do not understand why they've never put in anything that makes it easier to get the level 10 gems.
Either scour the world for like 120-150 rare drops from rare enemies or hunker down and grind out 198,000 noponstones for 1 level 10 gem.
This is dumb.
I've put 220 hours into the third game, scoured the map, done all the sidequests, and I have next to zero of the level 10 gem mats.
Huh that's very interesting. It definitely requires way too many items for level 10. No doubt there.
But I had most my characters decked out in all rank 10s by that point. There are some that require the super bosses to yet the mats which is just dumb so I skipped all those gems. But there a quite a few you can get from normal creatures plus a few from Nopon coins should have you pretty well set up.
Superboss mats aren't as annoying because you can continuously just burst them over and over and get a ton in one go. What's annoying are the enemies that are in a location that's a long treck from a fast travel point and then you've only got 2 or 3 so you have to reset and run back again and again and also level yourself down so you don't kill them instantly.
The other thing is that the level 10 gems aren't needed on normal at all either - I curbstomped all the superbosses on normal with just the 7s. Because ultimately chain attack is insanely, incredibly broken. Probably help for some of the challenge stuff? But it's hard to find motivation for that for me.
Superboss mats aren't as annoying because you can continuously just burst them over and over and get a ton in one go. What's annoying are the enemies that are in a location that's a long treck from a fast travel point and then you've only got 2 or 3 so you have to reset and run back again and again and also level yourself down so you don't kill them instantly.
Oh see for me superboss mats are the most annoying because if the superbosses are dead then I no longer have any reason to get the gems.
If I am farming the strongest enemies I don't really see much reason to be getting stronger haha. I wanted to get all my gem set-ups done before fighting the superbosses.
Superboss mats aren't as annoying because you can continuously just burst them over and over and get a ton in one go. What's annoying are the enemies that are in a location that's a long treck from a fast travel point and then you've only got 2 or 3 so you have to reset and run back again and again and also level yourself down so you don't kill them instantly.
Oh see for me superboss mats are the most annoying because if the superbosses are dead then I no longer have any reason to get the gems.
If I am farming the strongest enemies I don't really see much reason to be getting stronger haha. I wanted to get all my gem set-ups done before fighting the superbosses.
Some superbosses are more equal than other superbosses...
Once you kill them all once, you get to go at them again, except their levels go up while you still remain capped. You can repeat that loop four more times, so you're facing something lvl 200 by the end.
Superboss mats aren't as annoying because you can continuously just burst them over and over and get a ton in one go. What's annoying are the enemies that are in a location that's a long treck from a fast travel point and then you've only got 2 or 3 so you have to reset and run back again and again and also level yourself down so you don't kill them instantly.
Oh see for me superboss mats are the most annoying because if the superbosses are dead then I no longer have any reason to get the gems.
If I am farming the strongest enemies I don't really see much reason to be getting stronger haha. I wanted to get all my gem set-ups done before fighting the superbosses.
Some superbosses are more equal than other superbosses...
Once you kill them all once, you get to go at them again, except their levels go up while you still remain capped. You can repeat that loop four more times, so you're facing something lvl 200 by the end.
Was this added later or in the base game? Or some sorta post game nonsense?
Superboss mats aren't as annoying because you can continuously just burst them over and over and get a ton in one go. What's annoying are the enemies that are in a location that's a long treck from a fast travel point and then you've only got 2 or 3 so you have to reset and run back again and again and also level yourself down so you don't kill them instantly.
Oh see for me superboss mats are the most annoying because if the superbosses are dead then I no longer have any reason to get the gems.
If I am farming the strongest enemies I don't really see much reason to be getting stronger haha. I wanted to get all my gem set-ups done before fighting the superbosses.
Some superbosses are more equal than other superbosses...
Once you kill them all once, you get to go at them again, except their levels go up while you still remain capped. You can repeat that loop four more times, so you're facing something lvl 200 by the end.
Was this added later or in the base game? Or some sorta post game nonsense?
Base game, although you might have needed to pick up the quest from an NPC before killing all the bosses once. Nothing superboss related seems to be gated by completing the game.
0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Superboss mats aren't as annoying because you can continuously just burst them over and over and get a ton in one go. What's annoying are the enemies that are in a location that's a long treck from a fast travel point and then you've only got 2 or 3 so you have to reset and run back again and again and also level yourself down so you don't kill them instantly.
Oh see for me superboss mats are the most annoying because if the superbosses are dead then I no longer have any reason to get the gems.
If I am farming the strongest enemies I don't really see much reason to be getting stronger haha. I wanted to get all my gem set-ups done before fighting the superbosses.
Some superbosses are more equal than other superbosses...
Once you kill them all once, you get to go at them again, except their levels go up while you still remain capped. You can repeat that loop four more times, so you're facing something lvl 200 by the end.
Was this added later or in the base game? Or some sorta post game nonsense?
Base game, although you might have needed to pick up the quest from an NPC before killing all the bosses once. Nothing superboss related seems to be gated by completing the game.
Interesting! I did them all the normal way and didn't even know this was a thing.
Superboss mats aren't as annoying because you can continuously just burst them over and over and get a ton in one go. What's annoying are the enemies that are in a location that's a long treck from a fast travel point and then you've only got 2 or 3 so you have to reset and run back again and again and also level yourself down so you don't kill them instantly.
Oh see for me superboss mats are the most annoying because if the superbosses are dead then I no longer have any reason to get the gems.
If I am farming the strongest enemies I don't really see much reason to be getting stronger haha. I wanted to get all my gem set-ups done before fighting the superbosses.
Some superbosses are more equal than other superbosses...
Once you kill them all once, you get to go at them again, except their levels go up while you still remain capped. You can repeat that loop four more times, so you're facing something lvl 200 by the end.
Was this added later or in the base game? Or some sorta post game nonsense?
Base game, although you might have needed to pick up the quest from an NPC before killing all the bosses once. Nothing superboss related seems to be gated by completing the game.
Interesting! I did them all the normal way and didn't even know this was a thing.
You can tell by the gravestones, the superbosses have ones that are like glowy/fancy, and when you interact with them to respawn you can choose.
Also re: item farming for gems in base 3 (dlc only goes to 5, they're not bad to get), some of them are absolute shit, for sure. Definitely more time spent on that, than nearly any other single thing.
The only real tips, for what they're worth, that I can give is that sometimes higher level enemies can drop the white or yellow version of mats, but the rate isn't worth it if there's a lower level enemy that doesn't drop the purple version. What you can do, though, if you're farming from a non-boss enemy, is drop your level (assuming you're post game, which if you're farming X's I'd assume you would be) way below the enemy level, toss on some accuracy stuff, and treat it like a boss, and you can proceed to burst them for more drops. They still die way quicker than a boss, for sure, but even really low level enemies, you can usually get a few bursts out of with the right party setup, before needing to fast travel to respawn. I'm just saying that because some people might be tempted to go straight to a UM for farming, and in some cases that's not ideal. There's a dragon bone in particular that you need some white/yellow versions of, and those enemy types are few and far between, particularly lower level (of which I don't think there's anything under 70ish that wasn't a story related thing that is unrepeatable), and the obvious UM to go to farm literally will not drop the lower quality ones; or if it does, it didn't in over half hour of constant smashing.
There's a couple enemies, though one keves mech in particular, that there is (iirc) exactly one of, that is the only source for a specific item, that is behind a ton of enemies and tedious to get to from any fast travels. Saving, exiting to the Switch home, closing the game, and reloading, while not technically faster than fast travelling and running back (I timed it), it is far less irritating, particularly if you're doing it via lowering your level to get some bursts out of it, and getting through all the other enemies that aggro on sight.
Oh and make sure you have item drop food on.
Last thing is, I'm sure folks already know, is you can pin the materials. It doesn't show you where to find the enemies, but it will note them when you do find them. It's better than nothing, but still could be improved a lot; and they didn't improve it in the DLC, though since it only goes up to 5, it requires far fewer things.
If I were to recommend anything to a new player of XC3, aside from playing XC1/2 first (particularly for the DLC, where if you haven't played 1 at the very least, it's gonna be a lot of stuff that makes absolutely no sense), it would be to find a setup, as early in the game as physically possible, that lets you burst often. Not smash, smashing in this game doesn't give the loot. Just burst. And everything you fight, from normal enemies in the field to UM's, etc, prioritize bursting over everything, even if it makes combat go a bit slower. This is all at least if you think you're going to be trying to check everything off the list, get all the X gems, and all that. And if you find yourself overleveling (and you probably will), consider upping the difficulty to maximize the drops from bursting.
You just need so many things to get all the upgrades. Oh, also, if you're killing UM's as you come across them (and you might as well for the loot), you will have to kill them all again at some point, but it's not a big deal when you can fast travel to gravestones and having the gravestones for fast travel makes a lot of things easier throughout the game, and is a better way of doing it than waiting till you need to do the UM's much later in the game.
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I'll spoiler this just in case anyone hasn't gotten far in base game (no real DLC spoilers, just stuff I realized cuz of the DLC)
Which actually makes me think Hovering Reefs is the sad remains of the Bionis Shoulder (minus the Mor Ardain parts anyways), which thinking about it now makes so much more sense as that's the last place Alcamoth was anyways and literally it was flying because of float stones or whatever they called them. I guess they just built a town there around the castle (which I've honestly since come to realize, Fort O'Virbus is where the opening cutscene takes place and *maybe* a build up of Gran Dell?). I might be wrong on this but it seems like it makes sense to me.
Still wanna see someone do a damn one-to-one Aionios landmass comparison video.
And yes, my Kryptonite T_T I must check all the boxes
As for the difficulty... yeah, I wish that there was something between Normal and Hard. I like the added threat level from enemies having better attack stats, but on Hard bosses become absolute mountains of HP, which turns "exciting" into "exhausting".
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They basically needed to double HP to have any hope of battles having a back and forth.
That reminds me of an thought-stream that I never typed up... the Chain Attack is a persistent thorn in the side of the Xenoblade series in its ability to explode to gigantic amounts of damage without really giving the enemy a chance to respond. The fight is the first 10% of the enemy's HP, or however long it takes to fill the Chain Attack gauge, followed by the Chain Attack obliterating the remaining 90% of their HP. So: what if the Chain Attack weren't implemented as a time stop, but instead some kind of massive cooldown reduction? I don't have specific rules in mind, but some general features would include:
- You activate the Chain Attack with your current character. This grants them the Chain Attacking state/buff which allows them to use their Arts without regard to cooldown status.
- Some kind of rule governs how the Chain Attack buff passes between characters.
- If a Chain Attack-enabled Art isn't used within a specific amount of time, the Chain Attack ends.
- There is a (controlled) boost in damage / effect of Arts used within a Chain Attack. Like, +10% per previous move, not +200%.
- Some kind of rule governs whether you can use a Chain Attack to ignore the cooldown of an Art multiple times within the same Chain Attack.
The main idea being that Chain Attacks are less "the super sentai pull out the Sword The Always Works" and more "you get more actions and more damage if you can think faster than the regular flow of battle, and you're also risking whatever resources you spent to start the Chain Attack".
XC2 in particular you needed to set up orbs on the boss to enable chain attack length and such. (I mean, or be using endgame nonsense to just do eleventy billion damage from the start, but)
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Yeah, it's completely disconnected, at least gameplay-wise. I'm not sure how stand-alone it works narratively as it sometimes feels like they expect you to already know basic worldbuilding from the base game (though there are some bare bones explanations of stuff if you don't... like a very nuts and bolts explanation of Moebius, Keves, Agnes, etc) but otherwise yeah, it's its own thing.
As far as I have seen, Heroes do not exist at all in the DLC. It plays much more like classic XC1/XC2 where characters are fixed classes but with some added stuff on there. (If you played the Gauntlet mode at all it's somewhat similar). It's possible that may change later on but so far there's been none.
Regarding difficulty, I'm not sure how you played through the base game, but I found if I *never ever* used bonus XP it was reasonable. Still a little on the easy side (if you do all the sidequests, etc) but reasonable. I watched someone start on Hard and it looked like a SLOG though. They ended up dumbing down to normal because they couldn't continue dying to the same boss 20 times without getting frustrated (also they were streaming and not doing a ton of the side content which didn't help - I feel like the Hard mode is explicitly tuned around you doing all side content you can find). I can't speak for Hard here in the DLC, but from what I've seen of Normal, it's very much still in line with the base game, if not a little easier as there's significantly more side content that encourages you to get XP. So Hard might be the way to go here? I've been debating myself but I'll just stick with Normal (because ultimately I don't care, I just wanna experience the story and game). But yeah, just trying to do all the collection challenges and crap that the game encourages has left me fairly overleveled already. Of all the QoL stuff this DLC adds to the game, they still haven't fixed the level curve :P (or maybe the fix is just "play on hard")
(speaking of which, very much looking forward to some of this crap getting porting over into Xenoblade 4 or whatever is next... there is some nice QoL here)
Xenoblade X's Overdrive is sort of that, but with only a single character.
XCX having a completely different system for skells was a bit funny there though too. Random cockpit procs completing resetting all your cooldowns... basically became spam everything at times.
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which kinda kills my desire for it.
I was hoping given the name it was gonna be time-y wime-y shenanigans that leads to showing where things end up afterwards
but if it really is just foing a "fill in the the gap" story i just have a really hard time caring.
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Aside from it being a little late, this is not designed like a stand-alone. They don't bother tutorializing base game mechanics, whereas Torna had tutorialized that even more than XC2 itself.
Edit: also gotta say size-wise, this is shaping up to be more like half a Torna. So a bit of a harder sell as a standalone.
Really?
I'm what feels like about halfway through, and that seems to be somewhat verified by the Affinity Goals, and I'm about 11 hours, and I think Torna took me ~20 hours to finish, and maybe a chunk more to fully complete it.
This seems in that same ballpark?
Anyway, if I'm being totally honest, I feel like, at least from what I have played, this feels like what I think everyone kinda expected/hoped XC3 was going to be when they talked about it being the end of the "trilogy". For sure this story wouldn't be working without the backdrop of what happened in XC3, but yeah.
Which is to say I'm loving it!
It seems to be reusing music from XC3 a lot more than Torna did, I'd be interested to see the numbers at some point if anyone runs it down, how much new music they added relative to Torna. There's certainly new music, and it's all great, but there's still a lot of XC3's stuff in there (which isn't a problem, just an observation), whereas Torna was almost entirely all new or at least arrangements of XC2 stuff.
Definitely missing the class switching of the main game, though. Having set things certainly streamlines things simliarly to Torna, and still feels good, but since it's not as customizable, it's not as easy to get a setup that suits you.
I'm going to refrain from talking about plot really until I complete it, but I noticed something strange about the voice acting, at least in the English version, that may be nothing at all, but is really noticable.
I'm not spoiling anything, to my knowledge, but I'll put it behind spoilers anyway just in case
I'm wondering if they changed his name late in the process and had to do some wonky stuff to the voice lines?
Or if it's something story related (which I doubt).
Once I noticed it, I can't unnotice it and it's consistent in the entire DLC thus far.
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I spent like 50+ hours in Torna and didn't even take all the superbosses.
Granted it probably took longer because I played that before XC2 main game, but still.
If you've got half the affinity goals you're halfway to overall completion, not mere story completion.
More specifically, there are actually tutorials that say "unlike the base game" or otherwise make comparisons to the full game. They definitely expect you've at least played the base game enough to unlock all the systems (camping, chain attacks, etc etc). So like, early Fornis at least.
Honestly too like half the premise of the DLC is pretty big spoilers for base game, chapter 5 and 6 in particular. I'd argue much more than Torna which at best gives some context to stuff you start hearing about like an hour in. Like, if you play Torna before even meeting Pyra, yeah, spoilers for something you might be able to guess at anyways.. but after that you have a basic idea of who the good guys and bad guys are even if you don't know the motivations.. worst spoiler is the existence of Mythra which I mean, Smash Bros already spoiled that for probably everyone at this point :P
Edit: Oh also
Aka "there were actually tutorials" :P Still don't know what happened with that when XC1 had such excellent tutorials. XC2 is like the only game where they didn't bother.
However that includes an extreme amount of completion, i.e 3 of every accessory, 6 of every core, etc.
This definitely isn't going to have that much to do something similar. Once you have access to all the tools and such, cleaning up the maps is fairly quick, and there seems to only be a handful of UMs that are very high level to challenge. It seems more like Future Connected in regards to how much there is to do, though it seems to have decently larger map, and considerably more story content.
So yeah, as far as scope, definitely more Future Connected than Torna, which makes sense I suppose.
Still, it looks more like maybe 20-25 for full completion (maybe another 10 or so for extreme completion for getting accessories?). That's nothing to sneeze at for a dlc, hell that's be a good amount for a full game that isn't like an assassin's Creed level of bloat.
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Hold off on opening containers until you reach a certain side quest that is fairly obvious.
I'm doing the math and unless you can get certain items from UMs as drops on subsequent kills, I may have screwed being able to complete this quest.
Hopefully it is still doable, its pretty rare that they have quests that are unable to be completed like this, but we will see.
EDIT: I still completed it, maybe it doesn't matter when you start collecting the things. I got the last thing I needed from the last story leveled UM, so it seemed intentional.
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Christ.
Massive fucking ending spoiler stuff
Seriously, for real.
So. uh.
XCX is in the same universe.
So is Xenosaga.
It's like they got in my head and pulled out all the headcannon stuff I've been formulating over the years trying to connect all the Xeno games into one universe.
But they actually god damned did it.
I'm sure some folks will argue that it was just easter eggs.
And yeah, I mean, obviously; but the important thing is that they absolutely didn't have to directly reference XCX, let aloneXenosaga.
Yet they did.
I feel pretty good about myself!
Having said all that, I know this isn't going to be the ending folks who were really wanting a follow up to the end of XC3 to have, but if you read between the lines, it kind of is?
It confirms the two worlds ended up merging, in the end, and that the future can be what they make of it.
But it did leave out a lot of explaining about how that can be, while also having things "return to how they used to be" as stated by Rex and Shulk in the end. Or at the very least, it didn't explain at all what happened to anyone else in XC1/2, and why none of them were around at all.
I had read it as implied that they were on the Ark, but that definitely leaves some questions open about why they did, and why none of them were helping. Like...why would Pyra and Mythra go and leave Rex? Were Shulk and Rex supposed to join everyone else on the Ark and somehow got diverted when Alpha went nuts? We've got kids from the XC1/2 characters around here, but it's stated that at least Panacea and Lyttle (I'm pretty sure that's not her name, but I can't recall it right now) weren't saved from flame clocks, but were naturally born citizens, which implies that some of the characters from the previous games were still around post-merge. Or maybe I missed something there?
I'm going to have to think about it more, maybe watch some cutscenes over again.
I'm sure I'll have way more to say later.
About what's next: (again, spoilers, but less specific, I'd still avoid it until you've finished the DLC)
What I do expect is sometime in the next year an announcement of a XCX remaster, and either simultaneously or subsequently, an XCX2.
Also, while it's unlikely, it'd be super awesome if there was a
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All I've got left to do, besides possibly farm for accessories, is beat the last few superbosses. The level 80 one seems ultra hard, and unless I missed some accessories along the way, I'm not entirely sure how to deal with it. Off the bat it just puts everyone to sleep, and it's semi-permanent sleep it seems, and I don't recall any sleep status protection accessories. I'll have to look it up tomorrow.
I'm a bit confused about something semi-related, or at least I thought, to beating the game (spoilers for main game rewards for beating the DLC):
Which leads me to believe that even if it's not another major DLC, something more is coming down the line, particularly if they're doing a Noah/Mio amiibo too. So maybe they're not done with XC3, still.
If someone had asked me, after playing the Xenosaga series, and it was done, waaaaaay back in the day; if I ever imagined a future where it'd just be Xeno-games for miles and miles, I'd have just laughed at their vivid imagination.
Moar plx!
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Sounds like its right up there with "luring an enemy from the front with Matthew causes *the enemy* to get fast recharge instead of your party."
The quest status has no relation to you receiving the items. Just one of them on a well-hidden boss near the end in Chapter 4.
That doesn't seem like a bug, I've only had that happen when the enemy has an exclamation point icon on their HP bar that indicates they'll use a skill when the fight starts, if I initiate from the back it my party gets it like it should.
Indeed the "bug" is I thought Matthew was supposed to activate it from the front, like his attack arts! Guess recharge up is just a fairly common reaction from mobs.
Either scour the world for like 120-150 rare drops from rare enemies or hunker down and grind out 198,000 noponstones for 1 level 10 gem.
This is dumb.
I've put 220 hours into the third game, scoured the map, done all the sidequests, and I have next to zero of the level 10 gem mats.
Also god damn I think I see how Nikol and Glimmer are going to live beyond their 10 years as described in the founder statues...
Also their reaction to Nikol and Glimmer wanting to go to Prison Island with them was so priceless. Poor kids were so confused. I hope they at least tell them eventually.
Huh that's very interesting. It definitely requires way too many items for level 10. No doubt there.
But I had most my characters decked out in all rank 10s by that point. There are some that require the super bosses to yet the mats which is just dumb so I skipped all those gems. But there a quite a few you can get from normal creatures plus a few from Nopon coins should have you pretty well set up.
Sorry I worded that poorly. I meant after buying a few rank 10s with nopon coins.
Just make sure you use the coins on ones that are harder requirements such as the ones that come from superbosses only.
That way it leaves more of the normal mob one's to be gotten the standard way.
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Oh see for me superboss mats are the most annoying because if the superbosses are dead then I no longer have any reason to get the gems.
If I am farming the strongest enemies I don't really see much reason to be getting stronger haha. I wanted to get all my gem set-ups done before fighting the superbosses.
Some superbosses are more equal than other superbosses...
They are my Metal Face
Was this added later or in the base game? Or some sorta post game nonsense?
Base game, although you might have needed to pick up the quest from an NPC before killing all the bosses once. Nothing superboss related seems to be gated by completing the game.
Interesting! I did them all the normal way and didn't even know this was a thing.
You can tell by the gravestones, the superbosses have ones that are like glowy/fancy, and when you interact with them to respawn you can choose.
Also re: item farming for gems in base 3 (dlc only goes to 5, they're not bad to get), some of them are absolute shit, for sure. Definitely more time spent on that, than nearly any other single thing.
The only real tips, for what they're worth, that I can give is that sometimes higher level enemies can drop the white or yellow version of mats, but the rate isn't worth it if there's a lower level enemy that doesn't drop the purple version. What you can do, though, if you're farming from a non-boss enemy, is drop your level (assuming you're post game, which if you're farming X's I'd assume you would be) way below the enemy level, toss on some accuracy stuff, and treat it like a boss, and you can proceed to burst them for more drops. They still die way quicker than a boss, for sure, but even really low level enemies, you can usually get a few bursts out of with the right party setup, before needing to fast travel to respawn. I'm just saying that because some people might be tempted to go straight to a UM for farming, and in some cases that's not ideal. There's a dragon bone in particular that you need some white/yellow versions of, and those enemy types are few and far between, particularly lower level (of which I don't think there's anything under 70ish that wasn't a story related thing that is unrepeatable), and the obvious UM to go to farm literally will not drop the lower quality ones; or if it does, it didn't in over half hour of constant smashing.
There's a couple enemies, though one keves mech in particular, that there is (iirc) exactly one of, that is the only source for a specific item, that is behind a ton of enemies and tedious to get to from any fast travels. Saving, exiting to the Switch home, closing the game, and reloading, while not technically faster than fast travelling and running back (I timed it), it is far less irritating, particularly if you're doing it via lowering your level to get some bursts out of it, and getting through all the other enemies that aggro on sight.
Oh and make sure you have item drop food on.
Last thing is, I'm sure folks already know, is you can pin the materials. It doesn't show you where to find the enemies, but it will note them when you do find them. It's better than nothing, but still could be improved a lot; and they didn't improve it in the DLC, though since it only goes up to 5, it requires far fewer things.
If I were to recommend anything to a new player of XC3, aside from playing XC1/2 first (particularly for the DLC, where if you haven't played 1 at the very least, it's gonna be a lot of stuff that makes absolutely no sense), it would be to find a setup, as early in the game as physically possible, that lets you burst often. Not smash, smashing in this game doesn't give the loot. Just burst. And everything you fight, from normal enemies in the field to UM's, etc, prioritize bursting over everything, even if it makes combat go a bit slower. This is all at least if you think you're going to be trying to check everything off the list, get all the X gems, and all that. And if you find yourself overleveling (and you probably will), consider upping the difficulty to maximize the drops from bursting.
You just need so many things to get all the upgrades. Oh, also, if you're killing UM's as you come across them (and you might as well for the loot), you will have to kill them all again at some point, but it's not a big deal when you can fast travel to gravestones and having the gravestones for fast travel makes a lot of things easier throughout the game, and is a better way of doing it than waiting till you need to do the UM's much later in the game.
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