Just run around talking to everyone and doing their bidding, it's not rocket science. You also basically need to be at Satorl Marsh or beyond to get Shulks and the beginning of Valak Mountain to get the final ones.
Well, except for CHARACTER REDACTED.
3DS CODE: 3093-7068-3576
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
You know, I figured out a long time ago who CHARACTER REDACTED was purely through context, and I'm sure others have as well :P Not saying don't spoiler it, I'm just sayin'....you guys talk about 7th/CHARACTER REDACTED so much, through context, it's easy to figure out :P
It's not rocket science but it's pretty obnoxiously tedious and poor design, especially in light of how otherwise forward thinking and player-friendly the game is.
I like the game a lot but there is no argument to justify how much this game makes you to run around massive places like Alcamoth, multiple times at varying times of day, in order to revisit every named NPC you can think of or spot to expand your affinity tree or randomly pick up a bonus, find and turn in quests. That's not even touching on how a lot of the more lazily conceived quests necessitate copious amounts of backtracking.
The game does justify that by making it all optional. I hate alcamoth because of its shitty music and wide open areas but there are ways to really game the quest system there, like you know, standing at the warp portals at 18:00 and 6:00.
3DS CODE: 3093-7068-3576
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
Yeah, that stuff is 100% optional. I haven't even tried to go back and open fourth trees, because I don't care at this point. I am focused mostly on the story and maybe i'll do a more complete play through, or go back post game, and do that stuff.
It's true the game doesn't force you to do anything but move to the next story marker, but just because the sidequests are optional doesn't make the bad design in them any less bad.
Yeah, the more I play the game, the more I kinda have a soft hearted bone to pick with the collective internet and such over the game. Everybody, including a lot of folks here, were singing from the rooftops about how utterly and immaculately perfect this game is in every conceivable way. And how it was the tragedy of tragedies that it was being ignored by Nintendo. And then again when NA reviewers weren't giving it its "deserved" 10/10's.
So after putting in a lot of quality hours into this... it's not. Don't get me wrong, it's still pretty dang good, but RPG perfection? Not by a long shot. There's quite a list of really stupid nits that can be picked. I would likely put the game in the top 10 list, but I couldn't in good conscience rank it as #1.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited April 2012
I haven't played a better JRPG since FF7, and even that's in question in my own head. I don't know about some bullshit about "deserving 10/10's", but I think it's certainly the best JRPG to hit American shores in well over a decade. I have to think back to things like Skies of Arcadia and FF7 to find JRPG's I've liked as much. It has restored my faith in a genre I had given up on completely.
No game is perfect, I don't care what anyone says...but this way more than "pretty dang good". This game is great, and deserves any reasonable praise it gets.
In terms of the quest system being "bad design", to you it might be, but for Japanese audiences raised on Monster Hunter, this is a "thing", a "thing" they like, and it's 100% optional if it's a thing you don't like. I don't like it much either, it's the reason I stopped playing MMO's....I don't like busy work in my games anymore...but I also don't feel like I am missing something fundamental by not doing it, and I also understand why the design is the way it is.
The thing about Xenoblade is that it rewards exactly for as much effort as you put into it
Do a side quest? Experience!
Discover a new area? Experience!
Earn an achievement? Experience!
Hell, most of the quests gave me no trouble at all because by simply exploring as much as I could of a new area and making sure to kill a few new beasties as I encountered them, most of the time I already whatever thingy a quest giver was looking for.
I always avoid killing things when I get to a new area just because I know I'm going to finish slaughtering a whole horde of things and then get a quest that asks me to slaughter that horde.
Yeah, the more I play the game, the more I kinda have a soft hearted bone to pick with the collective internet and such over the game. Everybody, including a lot of folks here, were singing from the rooftops about how utterly and immaculately perfect this game is in every conceivable way. And how it was the tragedy of tragedies that it was being ignored by Nintendo. And then again when NA reviewers weren't giving it its "deserved" 10/10's.
So after putting in a lot of quality hours into this... it's not. Don't get me wrong, it's still pretty dang good, but RPG perfection? Not by a long shot. There's quite a list of really stupid nits that can be picked. I would likely put the game in the top 10 list, but I couldn't in good conscience rank it as #1.
I don't think anybody said it was perfect in every way.
This is the second time I've played through it from scratch in under a year and I'm finding it just as charming as I did the first time. If I had told myself a year or two ago that I'd add a hundred hour jrpg to the list of games I'd replay every year or two I'd think I was going nuts.
But I have, and I will.
I wasn't speaking about you specifically, I was speaking more about the hyperbole surrounding the game a while ago.
Well that's nice but I don't think there is anyone on this forum more hyperbolic about this game then good old Xenoblade of Awesome.
I haven't played a better JRPG since FF7, and even that's in question in my own head. I don't know about some bullshit about "deserving 10/10's", but I think it's certainly the best JRPG to hit American shores in well over a decade.
NieR
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RentI'm always rightFuckin' deal with itRegistered Userregular
RentI'm always rightFuckin' deal with itRegistered Userregular
edited April 2012
Ahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahah NO
Ed: Gameplay wise, xeno blows NieR out of the water. Music is at least a slight NieR advantage, story blows xeno out of the water, voice acting is NieR advantage, graphics, npc interaction, sidequests are a push
don't get me wrong, this is the second-greatest JRPG of this gen and gameplay wise the greatest. but it's no NieR
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Warlock82Never pet a burning dogRegistered Userregular
The game does justify that by making it all optional. I hate alcamoth because of its shitty music and wide open areas but there are ways to really game the quest system there, like you know, standing at the warp portals at 18:00 and 6:00.
Oh man, really? Alcamoth at night is pretty decent. It's total Kingdom Hearts Hollow Bastion :P
Ahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahah NO
Ed: Gameplay wise, xeno blows NieR out of the water. Music is at least a slight NieR advantage, story blows xeno out of the water, voice acting is NieR advantage, graphics, npc interaction, sidequests are a push
don't get me wrong, this is the second-greatest JRPG of this gen and gameplay wise the greatest. but it's no NieR
GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
I couldn't stand NeiR, I don't think it even holds a candle to Xenoblade as the best RPG of this gen...so yeah, your mileage may very and all that.
But really, this is pretty typical. Whenever a game gets "big" on these forums, it's inevitable that people pop in the thread and tell everyone else how it's not as good as we say it is, it's being overhyped, blah blah. Nothing new at all. Go find any thread on these forums for a game that's getting universal praise, and it's there.
In terms of the quest system being "bad design", to you it might be, but for Japanese audiences raised on Monster Hunter, this is a "thing", a "thing" they like, and it's 100% optional if it's a thing you don't like. I don't like it much either, it's the reason I stopped playing MMO's....I don't like busy work in my games anymore...but I also don't feel like I am missing something fundamental by not doing it, and I also understand why the design is the way it is.
I really don't know why you're comparing this game's subquest design to MH, which has goddamn excellent quest design (and quest system) that is almost the complete opposite of Xeno's system. It's either an apples and oranges scenario or a counterindictment of your central thesis, but either way it doesn't help your case and is quite frankly kind of a confusing thing to post
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
edited April 2012
Are you saying Monster Hunter doesn't have mindless grind and grab quests? Have you played Monster Hunter?
Man you sure are amazing at posing your opinion as fact. Good stuff.
I'm working on a review of sorts right now where I'll go into detail on my feelings on the game, so I won't blow my load here. I think it's a good game worth owning. But I also think that it has genuine design flaws that need to be brought up if a proper critique is to be done.
I want to be clear, I have no real problem with the fact that most of the sidequests in Xenoblade are "kill x of these and grab y of those".
The real problems are with the 24-hour clock, individual NPCs having their own schedules making them difficult to find, having to regularly canvas entire towns to check in with every NPC you can find to pick up affinity boosts and see if new quests have been unlocked. All of these conspire together to make a system where the footwork surrounding the quests is often as annoying or more annoying than the actual task of the quest itself. Having to bring up the affinity chart and sort through every single character in a given town to find the one name you're looking for and often get a fairly obtuse description of their location and a time when they're active is not an elegant system.
It would be one thing if the game were like, say, Skyrim where the sidequests are mostly disconnected and there's no great loss for missing a few of them because you don't want to hunt down every single opportunity, but the biggest carrots for the sidequests are bonus skill trees, which are pretty substantial character boosts and to get enough affinity to unlock them it seems like you can't hardly miss anything for a given area.
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RentI'm always rightFuckin' deal with itRegistered Userregular
Are you saying Monster Hunter doesn't have mindless grind and grab quests? Have you played Monster Hunter?
Man you sure are amazing at posing your opinion as fact. Good stuff.
I'm not talking about content, I'm talking about the system.
Monster hunter has a centralized hub with only a couple of quest givers all in the same location, always at the same spot at all times. Taking a quest updates your map info and makes it graphically clear what you're doing and where you're going, with no confusion. the npc you turn quests in to is extremely easy to relocate, always in the same location, and quests have clear and definite goals
compare to xeno. half of the subquests become enraging pixel hunts where you have to talk to every goddamn npc in a HUGE AREA not once, but twice, at specific times of the day, and not even at a set "area"- npcs can and do move from their location. does it help build a real, living world? yeah, it's still incredibly fucking frustrating trying to find one asshole in a huge bunch, and could've been easily fixed with the addition of a "set this quest as the active one" button. literally, woulda fixed half the problems with the subquest system
and the entire game of MH is one endless grind and grab quest...so uh....what? you're pointing out mindless grinding in MH? is this seriously a thing you are doing? because...that's all the game is. nobody plays MH for its deep and engrossing story, and it doesn't sell itself as anything more than a "picking herbs and killing dinosaurs" simulator. hence my point that it's a bad comparison from the start to use to Xenoblade, but again, you made the bad analogy that doesn't make any sense, I'm just pointing out the fact that you made a bad analogy that doesn't make any sense.
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GnomeTankWhat the what?Portland, OregonRegistered Userregular
It makes perfect sense. The quests in Xenoblade being grindy were designed for an audience that likes grindy things. I never brought up anything about maps, or actives, or anything else.
I think most people would agree a "Set Active" button would be great, and should have been included, but wouldn't have fixed anything about the grindyness of the system or the rarity of some items. You either like stupid ass fetch quests and grindy things, or you don't. If you don't, you can just not do them! How great is that?
To be clear, I am, and always have been, talking about content, not the systems surrounding the content.
I want to be clear, I have no real problem with the fact that most of the sidequests in Xenoblade are "kill x of these and grab y of those".
The real problems are with the 24-hour clock, individual NPCs having their own schedules making them difficult to find, having to regularly canvas entire towns to check in with every NPC you can find to pick up affinity boosts and see if new quests have been unlocked. All of these conspire together to make a system where the footwork surrounding the quests is often as annoying or more annoying than the actual task of the quest itself. Having to bring up the affinity chart and sort through every single character in a given town to find the one name you're looking for and often get a fairly obtuse description of their location and a time when they're active is not an elegant system.
It would be one thing if the game were like, say, Skyrim where the sidequests are mostly disconnected and there's no great loss for missing a few of them because you don't want to hunt down every single opportunity, but the biggest carrots for the sidequests are bonus skill trees which are pretty substantial character boosts and to get enough affinity to unlock them you have to do everything for a given area.
this is basically it. i didn't give a shit about missing sidequests until i tried unlocking skill trees, when OH WHOOPS SUDDENLY NOW I HAVE TO DO ALL THE SIDEQUESTS FOREVER
and that is when it highlights how poorly implemented the sidequest system in xeno is. also, the character affinity chart is fucking useless, since there's no search function or even a way to select named characters, and it doesn't even list the area the named character is going to be in! it's literally a pixel hunt to find the character you're going to pixel hunt for! that's how bad finding NPCs is in Xeno
To be clear, I am, and always have been, talking about content, not the systems surrounding the content.
I can only speak for myself and probably Rent if I'm reading him right, but it seems like you interpreted the criticisms as slights against the grindy and simplistic nature of the quests in Xenoblade, when the real crux of the problem for us is not the content so much as systems surrounding the quests. I don't mind killing monsters and a little bit of grind, that part is easy. It's the picking up and completing of quests and all the stuff involved in that which is infuriating.
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RentI'm always rightFuckin' deal with itRegistered Userregular
yeah fighting stuff is awesome. i like fighting stuff. every time i have to stop fighting stuff to play guess who with a small town is fucking dumb, and completely ruins the flow of the game
The main problem for me is that, in order to do virtually anything outside the main quest, you're all but required to have some form of walkthrough. Because otherwise... how the holy hell would I have ever figured this crap out by myself? I love the quests that tell me to specifically kill X in order to collect 3 Y's. It's the other quests that force you to magically divine where everything is that start to chip away at me.
-Find 2 bitter kiwi's. I've been up and down Makna Forest for hours on other quests. I haven't picked up a single kiwi. Is it a blue collectible? A drop? Whereabouts do I even begin looking for one?
-Talk to X. Where is X? Who knows, hope you like walking around the entire city. And you better pray it's during the right time as well.
-I said I love the kill quests, but only if I actually know where the monsters are. If I don't... see above. Example: I needed some drop from a creature in Eryth Sea, tried to do it on my own. Went out hiking all over, targeting everything, but not finding anything. Finally had to look it up, and found where it spawned. It was in an area I had been and searched... in the day. Said monster spawns at night...
-Unlocking Shulk's 4th tree. Talk to a specific person, who only shows up at night. Oh except she's not offering the quest. So I have to talk to her friend, who's on the other side of town, during the day, and get the little affinity blip. Oh except it's not working, I have to talk to her at a very specific time at the end of the day, when she's not otherwise ogling some painter. Oh but it's still not working, I simply don't have enough affinity to begin with, so back to hunting for quests.
This is not grinding. This is forcing me to buy the strategy guide. People raked S-E over the coals over the "Zodiac spear" situation in XII. And the same thing is going on here, so why is it ok now? Is it just because it's not as transparent as 4 random chests? I don't need my hand held, but most of the time I need more information other than a name. Especially when the game world is this expansive.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
The real reckoning happens later on when people ask for shit you absolutely cannot trade for and is still rare as hell. Then you gotta do some soul searching to see if its really worth your time to do it or not.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
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RentI'm always rightFuckin' deal with itRegistered Userregular
edited April 2012
I just spent four hours pumping my affinity with colony 9 to four stars, just for desiree to not give me shulk's quest because apparently I haven't hit that magical "between four and five stars" bar yet. fuck you desiree
that was possibly the least fun i've ever had in a video game
about 15 minutes of that was me exclusively setting the time in the financial district to different times in order to be able to meet jackson and finish his awakening quest
holy shit this video game's subquest system is fucking terrible
Posts
Well, except for CHARACTER REDACTED.
I like the game a lot but there is no argument to justify how much this game makes you to run around massive places like Alcamoth, multiple times at varying times of day, in order to revisit every named NPC you can think of or spot to expand your affinity tree or randomly pick up a bonus, find and turn in quests. That's not even touching on how a lot of the more lazily conceived quests necessitate copious amounts of backtracking.
So after putting in a lot of quality hours into this... it's not. Don't get me wrong, it's still pretty dang good, but RPG perfection? Not by a long shot. There's quite a list of really stupid nits that can be picked. I would likely put the game in the top 10 list, but I couldn't in good conscience rank it as #1.
No game is perfect, I don't care what anyone says...but this way more than "pretty dang good". This game is great, and deserves any reasonable praise it gets.
In terms of the quest system being "bad design", to you it might be, but for Japanese audiences raised on Monster Hunter, this is a "thing", a "thing" they like, and it's 100% optional if it's a thing you don't like. I don't like it much either, it's the reason I stopped playing MMO's....I don't like busy work in my games anymore...but I also don't feel like I am missing something fundamental by not doing it, and I also understand why the design is the way it is.
Do a side quest? Experience!
Discover a new area? Experience!
Earn an achievement? Experience!
Hell, most of the quests gave me no trouble at all because by simply exploring as much as I could of a new area and making sure to kill a few new beasties as I encountered them, most of the time I already whatever thingy a quest giver was looking for.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
I don't think anybody said it was perfect in every way.
Which JRPGs are better, in your opinion?
Reminds me of GTA4 and it's "Oscar worthy" script in that it's a great but flawed game hyped up to be near perfect.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
But I have, and I will.
Well that's nice but I don't think there is anyone on this forum more hyperbolic about this game then good old Xenoblade of Awesome.
Ehh...I find VC and Vesperia at least to be just as good.
Personas 3 and 4 as well, though they aren't on the current gen systems they came out during this gen.
But they all have flaws, really.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
NieR
NieR
Ed: Gameplay wise, xeno blows NieR out of the water. Music is at least a slight NieR advantage, story blows xeno out of the water, voice acting is NieR advantage, graphics, npc interaction, sidequests are a push
don't get me wrong, this is the second-greatest JRPG of this gen and gameplay wise the greatest. but it's no NieR
Oh man, really? Alcamoth at night is pretty decent. It's total Kingdom Hearts Hollow Bastion :P
But really, this is pretty typical. Whenever a game gets "big" on these forums, it's inevitable that people pop in the thread and tell everyone else how it's not as good as we say it is, it's being overhyped, blah blah. Nothing new at all. Go find any thread on these forums for a game that's getting universal praise, and it's there.
I really don't know why you're comparing this game's subquest design to MH, which has goddamn excellent quest design (and quest system) that is almost the complete opposite of Xeno's system. It's either an apples and oranges scenario or a counterindictment of your central thesis, but either way it doesn't help your case and is quite frankly kind of a confusing thing to post
Man you sure are amazing at posing your opinion as fact. Good stuff.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
The real problems are with the 24-hour clock, individual NPCs having their own schedules making them difficult to find, having to regularly canvas entire towns to check in with every NPC you can find to pick up affinity boosts and see if new quests have been unlocked. All of these conspire together to make a system where the footwork surrounding the quests is often as annoying or more annoying than the actual task of the quest itself. Having to bring up the affinity chart and sort through every single character in a given town to find the one name you're looking for and often get a fairly obtuse description of their location and a time when they're active is not an elegant system.
It would be one thing if the game were like, say, Skyrim where the sidequests are mostly disconnected and there's no great loss for missing a few of them because you don't want to hunt down every single opportunity, but the biggest carrots for the sidequests are bonus skill trees, which are pretty substantial character boosts and to get enough affinity to unlock them it seems like you can't hardly miss anything for a given area.
I'm not talking about content, I'm talking about the system.
Monster hunter has a centralized hub with only a couple of quest givers all in the same location, always at the same spot at all times. Taking a quest updates your map info and makes it graphically clear what you're doing and where you're going, with no confusion. the npc you turn quests in to is extremely easy to relocate, always in the same location, and quests have clear and definite goals
compare to xeno. half of the subquests become enraging pixel hunts where you have to talk to every goddamn npc in a HUGE AREA not once, but twice, at specific times of the day, and not even at a set "area"- npcs can and do move from their location. does it help build a real, living world? yeah, it's still incredibly fucking frustrating trying to find one asshole in a huge bunch, and could've been easily fixed with the addition of a "set this quest as the active one" button. literally, woulda fixed half the problems with the subquest system
and the entire game of MH is one endless grind and grab quest...so uh....what? you're pointing out mindless grinding in MH? is this seriously a thing you are doing? because...that's all the game is. nobody plays MH for its deep and engrossing story, and it doesn't sell itself as anything more than a "picking herbs and killing dinosaurs" simulator. hence my point that it's a bad comparison from the start to use to Xenoblade, but again, you made the bad analogy that doesn't make any sense, I'm just pointing out the fact that you made a bad analogy that doesn't make any sense.
I think most people would agree a "Set Active" button would be great, and should have been included, but wouldn't have fixed anything about the grindyness of the system or the rarity of some items. You either like stupid ass fetch quests and grindy things, or you don't. If you don't, you can just not do them! How great is that?
To be clear, I am, and always have been, talking about content, not the systems surrounding the content.
this is basically it. i didn't give a shit about missing sidequests until i tried unlocking skill trees, when OH WHOOPS SUDDENLY NOW I HAVE TO DO ALL THE SIDEQUESTS FOREVER
and that is when it highlights how poorly implemented the sidequest system in xeno is. also, the character affinity chart is fucking useless, since there's no search function or even a way to select named characters, and it doesn't even list the area the named character is going to be in! it's literally a pixel hunt to find the character you're going to pixel hunt for! that's how bad finding NPCs is in Xeno
I can only speak for myself and probably Rent if I'm reading him right, but it seems like you interpreted the criticisms as slights against the grindy and simplistic nature of the quests in Xenoblade, when the real crux of the problem for us is not the content so much as systems surrounding the quests. I don't mind killing monsters and a little bit of grind, that part is easy. It's the picking up and completing of quests and all the stuff involved in that which is infuriating.
-Find 2 bitter kiwi's. I've been up and down Makna Forest for hours on other quests. I haven't picked up a single kiwi. Is it a blue collectible? A drop? Whereabouts do I even begin looking for one?
-Talk to X. Where is X? Who knows, hope you like walking around the entire city. And you better pray it's during the right time as well.
-I said I love the kill quests, but only if I actually know where the monsters are. If I don't... see above. Example: I needed some drop from a creature in Eryth Sea, tried to do it on my own. Went out hiking all over, targeting everything, but not finding anything. Finally had to look it up, and found where it spawned. It was in an area I had been and searched... in the day. Said monster spawns at night...
-Unlocking Shulk's 4th tree. Talk to a specific person, who only shows up at night. Oh except she's not offering the quest. So I have to talk to her friend, who's on the other side of town, during the day, and get the little affinity blip. Oh except it's not working, I have to talk to her at a very specific time at the end of the day, when she's not otherwise ogling some painter. Oh but it's still not working, I simply don't have enough affinity to begin with, so back to hunting for quests.
This is not grinding. This is forcing me to buy the strategy guide. People raked S-E over the coals over the "Zodiac spear" situation in XII. And the same thing is going on here, so why is it ok now? Is it just because it's not as transparent as 4 random chests? I don't need my hand held, but most of the time I need more information other than a name. Especially when the game world is this expansive.
No, I didn't look up the doc. I have most of this inane shit memorized.
I'll be fair, I had long figured that out before posting that. By looking it up like you mentioned. It does make for a good example though.
I do believe you forgot one part. I think you also need 3* in affinity before he offers the trade.
The real reckoning happens later on when people ask for shit you absolutely cannot trade for and is still rare as hell. Then you gotta do some soul searching to see if its really worth your time to do it or not.
that was possibly the least fun i've ever had in a video game
about 15 minutes of that was me exclusively setting the time in the financial district to different times in order to be able to meet jackson and finish his awakening quest
holy shit this video game's subquest system is fucking terrible