Xenoblade Chronicles 2

[Armagon]

23 minutes ago, Talandar said:

Jap >>> Eng voice acting. No contest here

Ehhhhh, i kinda disagree. I mean, in terms of lip sync, yeah, the Japanese voice acting definitely wins. But the English voice acting has much more variety with all of it's accents so everyone feels unique. And the voice acting is pretty good overall, except for when Rex can't scream. Like, his screams aren't Asta-bad (if you know what Black Clover is, you'll understand this) but he just sounds like he's holding back when he screams.

Spoiler

27 minutes ago, Talandar said:

But I think Wulfric is available to everyone.

Yeah, he is. Wulfric is a guaranteed Rare Blade, due to coming out a Beastly Core Crystal, of which there's only one in the entire game. You just can't use him until after you get Roc.

 

[Etrurian emperor]

22 hours ago, blah the Prussian said:

So I'm near the end of chapter 2 and I have to say(do not give me spoilers on this) the Empire doesn't seem that bad. Like, they

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Arrest Nia as a terrorist but if she's with Jin she is 100% a terrorist. We see no evidence that their rule over wherever they rule is bad aside from Fatass McEvilman being kind of a dick. I'm kind of wary of suprise villains with a point because they did this exact thing with the Mechon. Overall, on Team Empire until further notice.

 

 

They remind me a lot of the Tales empires like Malkuth/Kimlasca or the empire from Vesperia. They got a few bad apples and oppose you but aren't evil. I got a feeling Mor Ardain is going to become your ally sooner or later too.

It was rather telling that the soldier seemed more concerned with keeping the town safe than pursuing your party when he was discussing things with his obviously corrupt boss. 

[kingddd]

7 hours ago, Armagon said:

Ehhhhh, i kinda disagree. I mean, in terms of lip sync, yeah, the Japanese voice acting definitely wins. But the English voice acting has much more variety with all of it's accents so everyone feels unique. And the voice acting is pretty good overall, except for when Rex can't scream. Like, his screams aren't Asta-bad (if you know what Black Clover is, you'll understand this) but he just sounds like he's holding back when he screams.

  Reveal hidden contents

Yeah, he is. Wulfric is a guaranteed Rare Blade, due to coming out a Beastly Core Crystal, of which there's only one in the entire game. You just can't use him until after you get Roc.

 

Actually the lip sync is also an issue in the Japanese version.  It's a systematic engine design to try and replicate the lips by the sound file.  Not by manual animation.  This has also been the case in Xenoblade X since it uses the same engine.

Edited December 5, 2017 by kingddd

[Shiki]

Reached now Chapter 5.

Spoiler

What the eff was Chapter 4 as a whole? It was so anime, that it became absolutely ridicilous towards the end.

I was quite surprised that Morag joins the party sooner than Zeke. On the other hand the game seems to have fun making him the resident Team Rocket member, so ... that's fine, I guess?
But how does Morag even count as a Tnk with that low of an HP stat? Is she supposed to be the Dunban of the game?

Yay for Mithra/Pyra switch. I was really annoyed by the Mithra lock since I didn't have the right elements for Light Blade chains.

I read that Overdrive Protocols are really rare. Welp, I shouldn't have let Rex use most of the Rare Cores. I had to use 3 Protocols to distribute some Rare Blades between the 3 members. Nia has Nim, Boreas, Adenine and Vess, Morag has only Perceval for now.
Rex is content with Roc, Kasandra, Electra and Wulfric. He has Azami as well but as if I would use her with that personality and design. She can lead the Mercenaries for all eternity.

Here's a list of the rare non-exclusive blades I've seen so far that you can get without rolling the gacha:

Spoiler

Wulfric: Becomes available for bonding during Chapter 4. Core is obtained during Chapter 3.
Vess: Complete the "Trainquilty" Sidequest in Torigoth. Becomes available ??? (I bonded with her at the start of Chapter 5)
Sheba: Buy the inherited Core from the Torigoth for 500,000G.
Kasandra: Buy the rumor "Greedy Monster" in Alba Cavanich. Go salvaging behind the gate at Anangham 2# dock and defeat the large monster that spawns. You need to get the key for the gate first from the Fief of Forgetfulness (which you visit for Vess' quest anyway). Also be careful of high-level monsters, the place is teeming with them.

 

[blah the Prussian]

They're good adventurers, Brent,

Seriously, fuck that motherfucking unique monster. This is like the fifth time I've died to that son of a bitch doing the same motherfucking star crossed lovers quest. Fuck that vulture bastard.

[Armagon]

7 hours ago, Talandar said:

Vess: Complete the "Trainquilty" Sidequest in Torigoth. Becomes available ??? (I bonded with her at the start of Chapter 5)

Right, so i was doing this sidequest but i need to develop Argentum before i can continue it. What development level does Argentum need to be for this?

5 hours ago, blah the Prussian said:

Seriously, fuck that motherfucking unique monster. This is like the fifth time I've died to that son of a bitch doing the same motherfucking star crossed lovers quest. Fuck that vulture bastard.

I feel your pain. By some miracle, i was able to lead the Tirkins into a blind spot where Brent couldn't see me. Of course, i came back after Ch.3 to kick it's ass.

There's another sidequest in Gormott that takes you to the top of a flower field where you have to defeat a monster that only appears in the morning. The problem? That same location is one of the landing spots for that Lv.75 bird that flies around Gormott. I died a few times to it.

[Shiki]

3 hours ago, Armagon said:

Right, so i was doing this sidequest but i need to develop Argentum before i can continue it. What development level does Argentum need to be for this?

I think I was at lvl. 2.
You need to do the merc mission "Long-Awaited Work" that unlocks the key item from the sweets shop. Then you can buy the item.

Btw. fair bit of warning; The game can crash. I lost ~2 hours of playing time including the money grind for Sheba. That was really painful so be sure to save often.

[Armagon]

1 hour ago, Talandar said:

Btw. fair bit of warning; The game can crash. I lost ~2 hours of playing time including the money grind for Sheba. That was really painful so be sure to save often.

Yeah, i heard about it from the GameXplain review. Derrick had it crash twice on him, albeit, over the course of 80 hours of playtime. Chuggaconroy said the game crashed on him three times and all three times were in a specific area. He said to save often in an area with a lot of tents but that was outside of a cave (so not Garfront Village).

I haven't had the game crash on me but i'm saving regularly.

Really wish this series in general had an auto-save feature. 

[Sasori]

Think you can take me! Think you can take me! Think you can take me! Remember me!

I'm glad some things in Xenoblade never change.

I got a solid 20 hours in, in just a few days so I think I am liking the game. The characters are likeable, the story is interesting so far and the worlds so far look nice. Wish you could look back on tutorials though since there are a lot of them.

[Armagon]

1 hour ago, Sasori said:

Wish you could look back on tutorials though since there are a lot of them.

This is one of my few gripes with the game. I mean, i've done a good job of remembering them, but the game can easily extend into 100+ hours so it'll be easy for people to forget. It's still really weird that you can't review tutorials like in the first game (and maybe X but i hear X had almost no tutorials) but, in the grand scheme of things, i'd argue Xenoblade 2 has the best tutorials.

Anyway, that place where Chuggaconroy had the game crash on him three times; i know where it is now: Indol. Once you get there, be sure to save often. Haven't had the game crash yet but i don't want it to.

 

Edited December 6, 2017 by Armagon

[Water Mage]

A question about the part members:

 

Are Zeke and Morag permanent party members?

Edited December 6, 2017 by Water Mage

[Armagon]

2 minutes ago, Water Mage said:

A question about the part members:

  Hide contents

Are Zeke and Morag permanent party members?

Anwser

Spoiler

Yes. They are able to bond with Core Crystals so they are permanent party members. Compared to Vandham who dies at the end of Ch.3 and as such, he can only have Roc .

 

[Water Mage]

2 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Anwser

  Reveal hidden contents

Yes. They are able to bond with Core Crystals so they are permanent party members. Compared to Vandham who dies at the end of Ch.3 and as such, he can only have Roc .

 

Gotcha. Thanks!

[Armagon]

We have some Xenoblade Chronicles 2 sales figures. These were video game sales in Japan from Nov. 27th to Dec 3rd

https://www.resetera.com/threads/media-create-sales-week-48-2017-nov-27-dec-03.9808/

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is in second place (losing only to Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon) with 97.732 units sold within that time frame, making it the the fastest selling game in the series. What's insane about this though is that this was covering the week of Nov 27th to Dec 3rd. Xenoblade 2 was released on Dec 1. Which means in just three days, it was able to reach the #2 spot during that week. It's just the Japan sales and it isn't the week 1 sales either but let's hope this gives Nintendo and Monolith Soft the confidence to keep making Xenoblade games.

Also, this
https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/detail/xenoblade-chronicles-2-message-from-director-takahashi

If you don't want to click on the link, i'll just quote what Takahashi said

Quote

Hi, this is Tetsuya Takahashi, executive director of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 which finally made it safely to launch!

Young-Adult Fiction & Boy Meets Girl
The basic story of this game revolves around a feeling similar to a novel told in first-person. While many countries and factions appear in the game, information such as scheming between countries or political sagas have been omitted from the narrative as much as possible because this information is not directly available to the protagonist, Rex. We wanted to create a story that follows his perspective.

Once this axis has been determined, we next worked on what direction the story would take. While we considered a story with many actors that involves a lot of interpersonal conflict, in which you can't even trust your allies, we thought that now and then it would also be nice to have a story where you can trust your allies to watch your back without any reservations. This is the direction we took for this story.

Even so, an old guy like me born in the Showa era can't possibly write a modern story, and it'd come across as awkward if I tried. So I gave up and decided to just accept the challenge with my outdated Showa sensibilities. I felt that, even if the tone is Showa and the plot points that players feel are sympathetic or moving may differ between cultures, the core of human emotion should not differ that much between regions and time periods. Because we're all Homo sapiens. And in that sense, I can say that the story direction is the same as that for Xenoblade Chronicles.

For those who are already playing the game, you might have noticed that Rex's catchphrase is "Let's go!" As these words suggest, he will always keep moving forward. And he won't turn back to the past. His characterization is probably due to the fact that I was born and raised in the Showa era. This is just the reminiscence of an old man, but I felt that it was a good thing that we always looked forward in the past. Even if there were individual differences in how well your life turned out, we had the hope of achieving a bright future so long as we worked hard for it. Of course the world around us was still gloomy, but society flourished because we could avoid looking at it. That is why we all worked hard and kept looking forward. The world feels more constrained now, even with all this information flying about. We're forced to observe the dismal world around us regardless of whether we want to or not. Corny old words like "hope" aren't popular in the current times. But I thought, wouldn't it be better to have a character like Rex precisely because we live in such an era?

Rex is a salvager. While he has some physical prowess due to his occupation, he's not a hero's son or the prince of a major country. He's just a normal kid that you might find anywhere. Of course, he's not in the military either, so he won't be leading armies or fighting courageously against legions. His reasons for fighting are very personal, and it’s because he’s fighting for a single girl (and their friends). There are limits to what one boy can do even if he acquires supernatural abilities. But if a boy were to race to his limits for the sake of a single girl, what kind of future would await them? And even if I can fight for myself (to some degree), can I fight for someone else? These thoughts are collected within Rex, and this is what I mean by the themes of young-adult fiction and boy-meets-girl. This is the basic concept behind the game, and the root theme throughout the story. While most people probably expect many buried hints and hidden information from the Xeno series, the story for this installment is a lot simpler and straightforward, and covers more well-worn territory. And that’s because this is Rex's story.

The Climbing Down Game
The Titans offer a wide variety of scenery. While map design and the level design for those maps is something that Monolith Soft excels at, we have changed some of the designs for this installment compared to our previous games. While players found enjoyment in climbing up mountains in Xenoblade Chronicles X, the gameplay for this installment can be summarized as climbing down them. There are sort-of pathways that lead downward at many locations. Even if it first appears that you can't climb down a certain location, there may be routes where you can walk across girders or fences, or hop across boulders to get to a new location.

However, in this installment, it’s dangerous if you fall from a high place, so make sure to think carefully about whether you can make it before you resolve yourself to make jumps. In the locations you descend to, you might find some adventure waiting for you, such as landmarks or Secret Areas, super strong unique monsters, unexpected rare items or quest objectives.

Rare Blades
While there are a fair number of Rare Blades, encountering them is completely random. Although it's interesting to wonder who you will encounter, some players may also become anxious about whether they will actually meet one. I will make a firm statement. You will definitely (probably...if you're lucky?) always encounter every single Rare Blade. (I found the last Rare Blade at 220 hours of playtime. There are still many things to do in the game at this point.)

 

While there are initially few opportunities to get Core Crystals, you'll get more of them than you'd ever want later on (laugh). Although there are three types of Core Crystals: Common, Rare, and Legendary. Common and Rare Core Crystals can be maxed out by just playing the game normally. Even the valuable Legendary Core Crystals will be dropped in abundance if you Launch a unique monster of level 100 or greater and then Smash them down.

In addition, while most of the common Blades that you can get with epics are 4-star, the combination of stats and skills is completely random, so you might find a Blade that is even stronger than a Rare Blade. Therefore, we encourage you to use resonance as much as possible.

The Driver stats are also low in the beginning, so it's enough to just resonate with Common Core Crystals instead of forcing your characters to use Rare or Legendary Core Crystals. In addition, the "Unnamed Core Crystal" that Gramps gives you at the start will always contain a Wind-element Blade with Knuckle Claws, so note that there's no point in trying to reroll this item.

Enjoy playing!

 

[Armagon]

 

Spoiler

 

Putting this here for anyone who's doing the Tranquility sidequest because the Fief of Forgetfulness is a bitch to get to.

Edited December 7, 2017 by Armagon

[Shiki]

The game crashed again and I lost another hour of progress. I really hope they bring out some kind of stability patch soon because this is getting annoying.

On 4.12.2017 at 6:20 PM, Armagon said:

Ehhhhh, i kinda disagree. I mean, in terms of lip sync, yeah, the Japanese voice acting definitely wins. But the English voice acting has much more variety with all of it's accents so everyone feels unique. And the voice acting is pretty good overall, except for when Rex can't scream. Like, his screams aren't Asta-bad (if you know what Black Clover is, you'll understand this) but he just sounds like he's holding back when he screams.

While I agree on the fact that the english voice-over isn't terrible by any means, there are some moments where it falls flat on the nose. Rex is not the only offender; some of Zeke's earlier moments are really bad compared to the Japanese ver. They really messed up with the shouts and screams.

I'm probably at the end of the Chapter 5 now.

Spoiler

Zeke is the Crown Prince of an entire Titan nation. This idiot, who gets called Shellhead, Zekenator and freaking one-eyed monster. Let that sink in for a moment.

Now that I got Zeke (and with it probably the entire roster), I'm putting off stopping an all-out war between 2 nations and start backtracking because that's far more important (*sarcasm*). There are a lot of chests, I couldn't open before and I need to unlock some skills for my Blades, so time to start buying all these pouch items.

Btw. do you know which Rare Blade graced Zeke's line-up? KOS-MOS. Finch, too. Took me my 10 Rares and 40 Commons, that I accumulated around Chapter 4 & 5) but he has now a line-up of Rare Blades.

I kinda realize now that Rex has way too many Rare Blades on himself (Wulfric, Electra, Kasandra, Sheba and Azami) and I already used up my 3 Overdrive Protocols for Nia (Nim, Boreas, Adenine, Vess) and Morag (Perceval, Floren). I heard that you have to release Rare Blades if you want to distribute them to other party members. That's pretty unfair from the game. Why are Overdrive Protocols this limited?

There are a lot of Sidequests that require you to do Merc quests. If you aren't managing it right you may have to wait half a hour to progress on a certain questline. That's not too terrible but it would have been to nice to know that beforehand.

 

[Armagon]

1 hour ago, Talandar said:

I'm probably at the end of the Chapter 5 now.

Ok, without going into spoiler-territory, i need to give you some tips for boss at the end of Ch.5 because it is a bitch to deal with. Apparently, someone over at Monolith Soft thought it would be a good idea to bring back Spike Damage. This boss has two phases but they are both separated by another boss fight. This part is a bit specific so i do have to dive into spoilers here, even if minor

Spoiler

The boss of Ch.5 is a giant turret powered by cables. The first phase, you need to take out the power cables. HOWEVER! Once it reaches half-health, Spike Damage kicks in and also the turret will electric nuke your team. If that doesn't kill you, the Spike Damage will. So focus on the turret first, max out the Party Gauge, then focus all attacks on the cables. You pretty much have to take it out with a Chain Attack and you'll have the best chances of succeeding if you burst two or more orbs. After that, you fight

Spoiler

Jin, but he's pretty straightforward

and after that, it's round two with the turret, except the cables are gone. So the strategy here used to take out the cables will need to be applied to the turret. Otherwise, you lose.

If you don't want to read the spoilers, basically, you pretty much need a good Chain Attack to beat the boss and you have to initiate it when it reaches half-health, otherwise, you lose.

Edited December 7, 2017 by Armagon

[Sasori]

6 hours ago, Armagon said:

Ok, without going into spoiler-territory, i need to give you some tips for boss at the end of Ch.5 because it is a bitch to deal with. Apparently, someone over at Monolith Soft thought it would be a good idea to bring back Spike Damage. This boss has two phases but they are both separated by another boss fight. This part is a bit specific so i do have to dive into spoilers here, even if minor

  Reveal hidden contents

The boss of Ch.5 is a giant turret powered by cables. The first phase, you need to take out the power cables. HOWEVER! Once it reaches half-health, Spike Damage kicks in and also the turret will electric nuke your team. If that doesn't kill you, the Spike Damage will. So focus on the turret first, max out the Party Gauge, then focus all attacks on the cables. You pretty much have to take it out with a Chain Attack and you'll have the best chances of succeeding if you burst two or more orbs. After that, you fight

  Reveal hidden contents

Jin, but he's pretty straightforward

and after that, it's round two with the turret, except the cables are gone. So the strategy here used to take out the cables will need to be applied to the turret. Otherwise, you lose.

If you don't want to read the spoilers, basically, you pretty much need a good Chain Attack to beat the boss and you have to initiate it when it reaches half-health, otherwise, you lose.

You know I had just told someone I was very glad that they removed spike damage for this game just a day ago or so. Guess I said that just a bit too soon.

But on another note does anyone have any ways to raise affinity fast? I need a certain blond jerk up to level 3 so I can unlock lvl 1 focus and get through some stupid mandatory blade power usage. I tried shoving every pouch item into her smug face and have been grinding for a while, but I still need like 400 affinity points.

[Armagon]

32 minutes ago, Sasori said:

But on another note does anyone have any ways to raise affinity fast?

I believe Portrait Items can boost the rate at which affinity is gained.

33 minutes ago, Sasori said:

I need a certain blond jerk up to level 3 so I can unlock lvl 1 focus

Ok, this is pretty simple because Pyra, Mythra and Wuflric all have these at Lv.1 and as you know, Field Skills stack. By default, you can have Focus at Lv.3 so long as Wulfric is equipped. Unless, of course, you need higher than Lv.3 Focus.

Though speaking of Affinity, you may have seen those "give x his/he favorite x items" requirements. I learned yesterday that, there's actually two types. If it says "items", it can be anything from that category. If it says "item", then it's a specific item from that category.

[Sasori]

9 hours ago, Armagon said:

I believe Portrait Items can boost the rate at which affinity is gained.

Ok, this is pretty simple because Pyra, Mythra and Wuflric all have these at Lv.1 and as you know, Field Skills stack. By default, you can have Focus at Lv.3 so long as Wulfric is equipped. Unless, of course, you need higher than Lv.3 Focus.

Though speaking of Affinity, you may have seen those "give x his/he favorite x items" requirements. I learned yesterday that, there's actually two types. If it says "items", it can be anything from that category. If it says "item", then it's a specific item from that category.

Portraits it is then :) 

I don't have a Wulfric and Pyra seems to be unavailable at the moment. So the only blade I have with Focus is Mythra. I'm in chapter 4 and need to break some stupid fan to get into the factory.

Right I have. WIll be needing to give some desserts after the affinity has been upgraded.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Sasori

[Armagon]

6 hours ago, Sasori said:

I'm in chapter 4 and need to break some stupid fan to get into the factory.

I think there may be way around it, it just takes longer.

 

But speaking of Field Skills, make sure you have enough of them for Ch.7. Because oh boy, Ch.7 might just be the worst chapter in this game. You are required to have certain Field Skills to progress. Thankfully, some can just be avoided via careful platforming with Tora and most just require the elemental mastery skills, which even Common Blades have and it stacks. Just do make sure to have Dromarch's Ancient Wisdom at Lv.3 and 

Spoiler

Brighid's Keen Eye at Lv.3

And then later on in that chapter, you need Leaping Lv.3, which Poppi and 

Spoiler

Aegeon should have. You get Aegeon through the story so just stack his Leaping with Poppi's.

 

[Armagon]

PSA for completionists or people who simply hate missables

Spoiler

Indol becomes inaccessible after a certain point in Ch.8. While Dev points, shops, and Merc missions transfer to Lefthiria, quests do not. So do every quest in Indol first before continuing on with Ch.8

 

[Shiki]

It's been a while but I finally reached Chapter 8 and need to give some of my thoughts. Obviously major spoilers.

Spoiler

- I'm finally feeling again that I play an RPG for its story. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has a really good story up to this point.

- Chapter 6 felt really short compared to the slog that is Chapter 7. Going through 2 new areas at once was a lot of work and I'm not even done with both. I just ran from fights against unique monsters because without Pyra it would have dragged along way too much.

- Tora is officially the best Nopon in the entire series. This guy and Poppi keep being relevant in the entire story, it's not even funny compared to Riki and Tatsu.

- Screw that Phantasmal boss fight. If you didn't have AoE based Arts or Blade combos this fight was nearly impossible to do. Good thing Zeke has KOS-MOS.

- Nia being a Blade is cool and all but boy it is poorly implemented. If you use her like that you lose Dromach and 2 other slots for Field Skills and you have to keep switching back and forth between her forms, to access them.

- Pyra's 3rd Form looks pretty. The activation condition is not bad and being able to choose your Blade combo tree makes it far easier to gather Orbs. Though it is limited to 1 use which makes it more useful at the end of a fight.

- I now regret giving Rex and Nia that many rare Blades. If I had known I would have saved most of my rare and legendary cores for Morag and Zeke. Especially Morag would have loved these Bitball blades because she is the only character besides Rex and Nia that has a healing spell on her weapon.

- My party now is Rex, Morag and Zeke. It works pretty well though I have to manually handle the healing with Nia since both Rex and Morag don't seem to understand when to heal if you have only 1 Blade with a healing spell. Both also default Pyra and Brighid in battle which makes it worse.

- I know what I would criticize on the game besides the navigation; the Blade system is overall pretty bad.
For one you need certain Blades with unique skills like Fortitude, Superstrength or Nopon Wisdom to access some areas and most chests. Once you reach Chapter 8 the party provides you most of the skills but some areas still require further stacking. With the nature of gacha it makes progress really frustating for certain portions in the game.
On top of that there is no infinite way to reallocate your Blades. You only have ~8 Overdrive Protocols (3 from chests, 5 from maxing out Drivers). That itself can block you from setting up Field Skills because one character has 2 of the 3 you need to use (that's pre-chapter 7 though even with Rex it can be an issue). Not to mention some weapon types aren't good for characters, namely Zeke and Nia are suffering from this. Nia wants to get all healer blades she can get while Zeke wants to avoid them as much possible. While Rex, Tora and Morag aren't affected by this too much, it's still really annoying.
Also, Legendary Cores should guarantee a random Rare Blade. They are so rare and getting just a regular Blade is not satisfying at all. I can get why Rare Cores can give your regular ones (since you can farm them very early on) but not Legendaries.

- Speaking of Rare Blades, I think I got all of the ones you can get guaranteed. In order: Wulfric, Vess, Kasandra, Praxis, Herald and Theory. Out of these, Vess, Wulfric and Theory are the most important ones because they give you the most useful field skills (Fortitude, Superstrength, Focus and Nopon Wisdom).

- For now I'm probably trying to catch-up on affinity trees and Sidequests because I have heard that Chapter 8 has a point of no return for one region.

Btw. Monolith Soft has announched that they will patch the game and add some QoL improvements.
- If you access Fast travel with X, you will now default at the current location.
- Zoomable mini-map with L button.
- Tiger Tiger gets an easy mode.
- Some side quests are going to be altered (namely the ones in Temperantia).
- Expansion pass gets more items like Rare/Legendary Core Crystals, Overdrive Protocols and most importantly parts and Ether for Poopi.
- Bug Fixes.

This patch will roll out on the 22th December.

Next year there are going to work on:
- Mini Map for better visibility with quests
- New Game+
- Expansions for Blade Trees

This is great news. These QoL changes could fix the navigation complaint that me and many people share. Being able to level-up Poppi easier is also a welcome change. I hope the patch includes better stability because the game still crashes on me sometimes and I once got a really bugged screen for Zeke's Driver tree.

Edited December 13, 2017 by Talandar

[Armagon]

7 hours ago, Talandar said:

I know what I would criticize on the game besides the navigation; the Blade system is overall pretty bad.
For one you need certain Blades with unique skills like Fortitude, Superstrength or Nopon Wisdom to access some areas and most chests. Once you reach Chapter 8 the party provides you most of the skills but some areas still require further stacking. With the nature of gacha it makes progress really frustating for certain portions in the game.

I agree but disagree at the same time. What i like about the Blade system is that it allows you to build your Drivers however way you want and it allows varying future playthroughs. Field Skills definitly should've been handled though. Ch.7 suffered a lot because of it (even if most of it was just Elemental Mastery stacking that could be done with Common Blades). Honestly though, Field Skills required for story progression just shouldn't be a thing.

Spoiler

7 hours ago, Talandar said:

Nia being a Blade is cool and all but boy it is poorly implemented. If you use her like that you lose Dromach and 2 other slots for Field Skills and you have to keep switching back and forth between her forms, to access them.

The worst part about this actually is that Nia doesn't get EXP as a Blade. So if you use her for a chapter and then switch her back to a Driver, she'll be severly underleveled. Inns can fix this, though.

7 hours ago, Talandar said:

Both also default Pyra and Brighid in battle which makes it worse

It's actually possible to have Morag start a battle without defaulting to Brighid. Go to the Blade menu and, while you can't disengage Brighid, you can change her slot in the Blade slots.

 

7 hours ago, Talandar said:

New Game+

What interests me the most about New Game+ is that you can send plot-important Blades like Pyra on Merc Missions. How would that affect the plot though? 

I'm looking forward to those QoL improvments. I never thought the map was an issue (as in the actual map, Skip Travel defaulting to your current location is a much needed improvment) but if it's made better, i'm not complaining.

Edited December 14, 2017 by Armagon

[Sasori]

So I am in the dreaded chapter 7 now. The cave was a bit annoying with that giant spider that just would't die, but other then that it was smooth sailing.......untill the later bosses of that chapter.

Spoiler

Malos on his own is extremely annoying with his stupid Monado cyclone. He would not be that bad if Cyclone did't knock you out of your healing arts and still trigger your recharge.

After that I lost very fast against the double boss battle of Jin and Malos. You get Malos who is the same as before while also having Jin annoying you throughout the fight. Going to wait for a little bit before I try again.