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[El Odio]

Officers, promote this man.

We also have to find a nice ass cave to find for cover before we take off

All good ideas. I'm also packing some dolls for the ride.

 

[brainchild]

Ginger helps settle an upset stomach. Another option are ginger hard candies, you can just pop one when you start feeling nauseous, and hopefully it'll help.

Make sure it's real ginger though, not just ginger flavoring.

Yep, it's one of those home remedies that actually work. Another (unrelated) legit home remedy is swallowing a spoon full of sugar to get rid of hiccups. It works instantly! Couldn't believe it when I first tried it.

 

[Jolkien]

Yep, it's one of those home remedies that actually work. Another (unrelated) legit home remedy is swallowing a spoon full of sugar to get rid of hiccups. It works instantly! Couldn't believe it when I first tried it.

Now I've l;earned something today. Will give it a shot next time I have the hiccups.

 

[Gorilla Shark]

So I've been hyped for this game ever since the reveal during that infamous Nintendo Direct in January of 2014...

Here's the thing though...

I never played the original Xenoblade and typically don't care much for most Jrpg's. I'm not usually a fan of turn based combat (Although I loved Chrono Trigger way back when)

I love exploring huge worlds like in the Fallout games and am a die hard Nintendo/Zelda fan.

So on one hand I'm not sure I'll like the combat, but the rest of the game looks amazing.

Am I going to like this or be disappointed? Curious what everyone here would think.

 

[Hasemo]

Impressions? I'll share mine from after I beat the Japanese version:

Yay, I beat the game! Took me ~73+ hours (hard to tell exactly, I left it idle to get minerals/money/fuel almost every day).

So far this is my favorite game this year, mostly because of the exploration/views aspect. The battle system is okay, but I'm not loving it (same with the first Xenoblade).
I liked the low gravity, huge jumps and being able to run from stuff - it made traveling through the world a pure joy. And when I got Dolls it got even better! On the other hand, the flight pack, as much as I loved it, made discovering stuff a bit... Too easy. Like in WoW, when flying mounts were introduced.

Art direction was phenomenal. The technical side, when it came to pop-in, resolution, jaggies etc. not so much, but given the hardware the game is running on, it's a miracle that it looks so great and moves so smoothly anyway. No complaints here.

I might be one of the few people who actually don't mind the music. Sure, I loved original Xeno tracks, but that's basically any good JRPG ever. After years and years of listening to this kind of stuff, I felt that those vocal tracks were an... interesting experiment. Also I got used to them really quickly.

As for the story... It felt a bit too disjointed to me. For the first 2/3 of the game, I spent so much time between the actual story missions that I didn't even remember what happened before. It really picked up during the last 1/3 of the game, but if I had to choose, the original Xenoblade story was much better imo.

What I didn't like about the game:
TARGETING. Switching between target's is supposed very easy, R+Y/A, but for some reason it's sometimes incredibly difficult to do, especially with bosses who summon adds. Targeting parts is as annoying.
Other thing, which is probably the biggest gripe is the lack of information when it comes to item collection quests. Yes, I understand that it was probably a design choice to make the community more active (reports), but I don't think it was such a great idea.
Oh yeah, having to run around the city to find team members was a pain, but at least they're not far from warp points, so it didn't take that long.

I expected Xenoblade X to be a great game and I wasn't disappointed.
Now to clear everything (including the DLC).

Sorry if this post is a bit messy, but it's 3 am and I'm dead tired, ha ha.

Bonus:
Flying to the last fight (not really a spoiler, just a glimps of the last continent).

Edit:
Oh, I just noticed - all the DLC NPCs appear in the game during cutscenes.

I had a minus album full of screenshots, but something happened to that service and most of them don't work anymore.

 

[Karl_Dilkington7]

I think it depends on how late you pre order games. I ordered Tomb Raider on the release week and it would have cost me money to get it on release day. I opted for the free shipping which came a few days later.

I think 2 weeks or earlier you should get free shipping on release day.

That does make sense. If memory serves me correct, I think I did see a free option a couple of days ago for release date shipping (I received GCU a couple of days ago and I was about to preorder, but then I got distracted).

Thanks for helping me out!

 

[foxuzamaki]

Impressions? I'll share mine from after I beat the Japanese version:

I had a minus album full of screenshots, but something happened to that service and most of them don't work anymore.

I like these things called impressions.

 

[MrPanic]

I was refering to the Wii U Console + Game special pack. This one. It says preinstalled in the title (what would suggest a digital copy), but it show the game is included physicaly. Now, what is true? Or is the physical game with the data packs preinstalled?

I'm pretty sure this particular pack has always been promoted to have a physical version of the game, so I'd assume it's just a fault on amazon's site.

 

[dark10x]

Art direction was phenomenal. The technical side, when it came to pop-in, resolution, jaggies etc. not so much, but given the hardware the game is running on, it's a miracle that it looks so great and moves so smoothly anyway. No complaints here.

What I'm finding is that Monolith sacrificed a lot in order to hit a fairly steady 30fps. There aren't many open world games that run this well on PS3 or 360 (using those as an example due to comparable hardware). There is an insane amount of pop-in in this game and players clip through a lot of objects that should be solid removing the need for collision detection in many instances. Lots of other details I'll look at too.

However, I do not feel that these subtract too much from what is an otherwise beautiful game. The sense of scale is incredible and the art direction is lovely. The world looks great despite these issues. It doesn't feel like it is hamstrung by this stuff. You look back at something like Far Cry 3 on PS360 and the lousy performance coupled with visual cuts just makes the game look overly compromised. Here, the sacrifices remain obvious, but it doesn't disrupt the presentation in the same way.

Since the world is so much larger than Xenoblade, I appreciate more how the player is free to go anywhere. I was capturing footage from New LA and decided I wanted to warp back to the top. I thought I'd just test jumping off of NLA into the water below which I believed would kill me and send me back. This is Xenoblade X, though, so I shouldn't have been surprised to find that you can swim around down there and climb your way back up. You really can go anywhere.

 

[Malus]

On the podquisition, Jim says that so far he has a feeling his review will be "incredibly positive unless the game suddenly gets racist or something". One week!!

http://www.thejimquisition.com/2015/11/podquisition-54-kate-bushs-secret-island/
They start talking about it around 33 minutes in.

Funny how they bring up Dragon Age Inquisition as a comparison to Xenoblade's combat. I love Xeno but I dropped DA pretty quick and combat was a part of the reason. Maybe I didn't give it a fair shot. The other reason was the setting. Probably shouldn't have bought an open world game in which I didn't like the setting eheh...

GX continues to drive the excitement: https://twitter.com/BitnerdGX/status/670138482950610944

 

[Chance Hale]

Is the pop in still noticeably poor with the texture packs installed to the hard drive?

 

[dark10x]

Is the pop in still noticeably poor with the texture packs installed to the hard drive?

I'm running the digital version. Yes, it's extremely noticeable. It's clearly something that was done to keep performance up.

Objects either pop-in from nothing (big objects too) or you have things like building which are basic cubes with low-res textures until you're very close. It's the most significant visual issue.

As I said, though, it is surprisingly NOT that distracting. It seems like it would be, but the game still manages to look great in motion.

 

[JimPanzer]

I'm pretty sure this particular pack has always been promoted to have a physical version of the game, so I'd assume it's just a fault on amazon's site.

ok, so most likely no data-packs pre-installed on the console?

 

[brainchild]

I'm running the digital version. Yes, it's extremely noticeable. It's clearly something that was done to keep performance up.

Objects either pop-in from nothing (big objects too) or you have things like building which are basic cubes with low-res textures until you're very close. It's the most significant visual issue.

As I said, though, it is surprisingly NOT that distracting. It seems like it would be, but the game still manages to look great in motion.

I think it's probably not as distracting because of the size of the gameworld and the sheer amount of things going on in a given scene. In a smaller environment with less points of interest, the aggressive LOD would probably be a lot more noticeable.

 

[Kaze2212]

I was playing that game a few minutes at gamescom this year and sadly all I can remember is that blurry mess I was playing... I don't know why but the screens were incredibly low quality. Also the first thing me and a friend of mine did was switching gear (which we weren't allowed to, but screw the rules) and we were just super weak - lol.

Still looking forward to it! I really liked the first game on Wii.

 

[KingSnake]

One week to go. The last stretch.

 

[Deleted member 465307]

ok, so most likely no data-packs pre-installed on the console?

I'd say your guess is correct.

 

[chadboban]

I think one of the reasons the pop in doesn't really bother me that much is because, from what I've seen, most of the textures and objects tend to visually fade in rather then just suddenly appear in a split second like most of the pop in I've experienced in other games. To me it's less distracting, but it's still pretty hard not to notice when it comes to the larger creatures appearing.

 

[Zenaku]

I'm running the digital version. Yes, it's extremely noticeable. It's clearly something that was done to keep performance up.

Objects either pop-in from nothing (big objects too) or you have things like building which are basic cubes with low-res textures until you're very close. It's the most significant visual issue.

As I said, though, it is surprisingly NOT that distracting. It seems like it would be, but the game still manages to look great in motion.

Are you running on the internal or an external HDD?

I ran the game on the internal for my first playthrough, but reinstalled onto an external to start a new game (didn't want my save file gone), and found that while grass and other objects would load after the start of a cutscene when running on the Wii U's internal, all of those things would be preloaded before the screen shows anything when running the game from an external HDD.


I've been rooting around the games files for fun, and found a few gems, like off-vocal versions of 'So nah, So fern', 'Wir fliegen' and 'Unstoppable'.

 

[Sammy Samusu]

One week to go. The last stretch.

It's been a long journey...

 

[dark10x]

Are you running on the internal or an external HDD?

I ran the game on the internal for my first playthrough, but reinstalled onto an external to start a new game (didn't want my save file gone), and found that while grass and other objects would load after the start of a cutscene when running on the Wii U's internal, all of those things would be preloaded before the screen shows anything when running the game from an external HDD.


I've been rooting around the games files for fun, and found a few gems, like off-vocal versions of 'So nah, So fern', 'Wir fliegen' and 'Unstoppable'.

Running from an external drive here!

 

[ninjablade]

What I'm finding is that Monolith sacrificed a lot in order to hit a fairly steady 30fps. There aren't many open world games that run this well on PS3 or 360 (using those as an example due to comparable hardware). There is an insane amount of pop-in in this game and players clip through a lot of objects that should be solid removing the need for collision detection in many instances. Lots of other details I'll look at too.

However, I do not feel that these subtract too much from what is an otherwise beautiful game. The sense of scale is incredible and the art direction is lovely. The world looks great despite these issues. It doesn't feel like it is hamstrung by this stuff. You look back at something like Far Cry 3 on PS360 and the lousy performance coupled with visual cuts just makes the game look overly compromised. Here, the sacrifices remain obvious, but it doesn't disrupt the presentation in the same way.

Since the world is so much larger than Xenoblade, I appreciate more how the player is free to go anywhere. I was capturing footage from New LA and decided I wanted to warp back to the top. I thought I'd just test jumping off of NLA into the water below which I believed would kill me and send me back. This is Xenoblade X, though, so I shouldn't have been surprised to find that you can swim around down there and climb your way back up. You really can go anywhere.

li noticed right away in the trailer. the pop in, the lack of shadows, weak AA, the character models, the 2d grass, the game had a beautiful are style and huge scale, nice vistas, but overall it's not really technically impressive for the hardware, with so many sacrifices. but it's expected it's the developer's first game on wiiu, with a budget thats probably small compared to western open world games. i feel zelda will be the only proper show case of a technically impressive open world on wiiu.

 

[Fishlake]

li noticed right away in the trailer. the pop in, the lack of shadows, weak AA, the character models, the 2d grass, the game had a beautiful are style and huge scale, nice vistas, but overall it's not really technically impressive for the hardware, with so many sacrifices. but it's expected it's the developer's first game on wiiu, with a budget thats probably small compared to western open world games. i feel zelda will be the only proper show case of a technically impressive open world on wiiu.

Hmm I disagree. I think it is very impressive for the hardware and that what they did to get it to run so steady paid off. If it was a slide show it would be much less impressive in my mind as seeing this game in action is miles better then the screen shots. Either way I look forward to seeing what they do next.

 

[jorgejjvr]

li noticed right away in the trailer. the pop in, the lack of shadows, weak AA, the character models, the 2d grass, the game had a beautiful are style and huge scale, nice vistas, but overall it's not really technically impressive for the hardware, with so many sacrifices. but it's expected it's the developer's first game on wiiu, with a budget thats probably small compared to western open world games. i feel zelda will be the only proper show case of a technically impressive open world on wiiu.

I don't get this, the game looks great, plus it is massive

There's not too many games on more powerful hardware with this big and impressive of a world, plus they likely have lots of loading times, when xeno does not

 

[TheGreatMightyPoo]

but overall it's not really technically impressive for the hardware,

 

[Palculator]

Looks fucking incredible.

 

[Peru]

li noticed right away in the trailer. the pop in, the lack of shadows, weak AA, the character models, the 2d grass, the game had a beautiful are style and huge scale, nice vistas, but overall it's not really technically impressive for the hardware, with so many sacrifices. but it's expected it's the developer's first game on wiiu, with a budget thats probably small compared to western open world games. i feel zelda will be the only proper show case of a technically impressive open world on wiiu.

It's a completely different open world from what Zelda game will be like. It's technically impressive.

 

[UltraJay]

This seems like the go-to OT until closer to release so I'll ask this here.

What classes are you going to play and what BLADE departments (forgot the name) are you going to join?

It seems classes can be changed really easily but you won't be able to change where you work in BLADE until much later in the game. I wanted exploration focused careers but the Mediators focus on quests and allow you to gain TP from Arts as well as auto attacks. I don't know much about TP to know if that is a good advantage to have or not.

 

[jorgejjvr]

This gif is so creepy and accurate at the same time

LOL

 

[ninjablade]

instead of posting a silly gif, can you tell me why it's technically impressive? other then the same reason everybody else is saying it's massive, and scale, sure, but the sacrifices are huge, which i already pointed out in my last post.

 

[TheGreatMightyPoo]

instead of posting a silly gif, can you tell me why it's technically impressive? other then the same reason everybody else is saying it's massive, and scale, sure, but the sacrifices are huge, which i already pointed out in my last post.

All open world games have sacrifices.

This game looks like they got everything they could out of the system considering the massive scope.

I doubt even Zelda will top this from a technical achievement perspective.

No preview or review pointed out the things you chose to pick apart.

 

[Zarovitch]

I'm torn between getting the collector's edition guide or not. This book must be full of spoilers. What people think about that?

 

[Maxrunner]

instead of posting a silly gif, can you tell me why it's technically impressive? other then the same reason everybody else is saying it's massive, and scale, sure, but the sacrifices are huge, which i already pointed out in my last post.

Really? You do realize nobody takes you seriously on any Nintendo based thread right? please say yes...please???

 

[Gotdatmoney]

li noticed right away in the trailer. the pop in, the lack of shadows, weak AA, the character models, the 2d grass, the game had a beautiful are style and huge scale, nice vistas, but overall it's not really technically impressive for the hardware, with so many sacrifices. but it's expected it's the developer's first game on wiiu, with a budget thats probably small compared to western open world games. i feel zelda will be the only proper show case of a technically impressive open worlid on wiiu.

I dont really get how you didnt mention that it runs better than the majority of open world games last gen. They made compromises to present the best experience possible. If a game has a shit ton of effects and runs like shit its not technically impressive, its incompetence. You end up with garbage like Assassins creed unity which is barely playable.

 

[Palculator]

What did I even put ninjablade on my ignore list for when he's just gonna get quoted to no end orz

 

[dark10x]

I dont really get how you didnt mention that it runs better than the majority of open world games last gen. They made compromises to present the best experience possible. If a game has a shit ton of effects and runs like shit its not technically impressive, its incompetence. You end up with garbage like Assassins creed unity which is barely playable.

To be fair, Assassin's Creed Unity runs better than most of the LAST gen Assassin's Creed games. Performance is not a strong point for that series.

I think hitting a very stable level of performance is exactly the thing that makes X very impressive especially given the hardware.

 

[TheGreatMightyPoo]

I dont really get how you didnt mention that it runs better than the majority of open world games last gen. They made compromises to present the best experience possible. If a game has a shit ton of effects and runs like shit its not technically impressive, its incompetence. You end up with garbage like Assassins creed unity which is barely playable.

I genuinely believe shadowblade would prefer more bells and whistles aesthetically and it running at 15 fps.

 

[KingSnake]

The art in this game is unbelievable. The sense of grandeur that it provides for all the landscapes is amazing. The scale is technically impressive, but the art suits perfectly the scale they went for.

 

[ninjablade]

All open world games have sacrifices.

This game looks like they got everything they could out of the system considering the massive scope.

I doubt even Zelda will top this from a technical achievement perspective.

No preview or review pointed out the things you chose to pick apart.

darkx10 already pointed out, the lack of shadows in the world, materials do not react to lighting properly this is fact, character models look like shit, anybody with eyes an see that, AA is low quality FXAA, pop in is massive, and most of the grass in the game is 2d, you're kidding yourself if you think monolith is gonna get everything out of the wiiu, in there first game on HD hardware, with probably a low budget for a open world game.

 

[Jolkien]

This seems like the go-to OT until closer to release so I'll ask this here.

What classes are you going to play and what BLADE departments (forgot the name) are you going to join?

It seems classes can be changed really easily but you won't be able to change where you work in BLADE until much later in the game. I wanted exploration focused careers but the Mediators focus on quests and allow you to gain TP from Arts as well as auto attacks. I don't know much about TP to know if that is a good advantage to have or not.

My go to class will be Galactic Knight, not sure which BLADE ''factions'' I'll end up joining. But if the game ends up as great as I think it'll will I'll probably end up with every single classes maxed out.

 

[TheGreatMightyPoo]

darkx10 already pointed out

Dude is picky as fuck and doesn't have an agenda and he even said it didn't bother him much because the game is beautiful and runs smoothly.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

To be fair, Assassin's Creed Unity runs better than most of the LAST gen Assassin's Creed games. Performance is not a strong point for that series.

I think hitting a very stable level of performance is exactly the thing that makes X very impressive especially given the hardware.

I think Unity's post patch performance was better but damn it was still really bad. Last gen assassins creed was worse though, I def agree there.

I know we all have our preference (1080p vs 720 with more affects, aliasing vs not, v sync vs not etc) but for me above all else is performance. A game that runs badly is a poorly built game.

 

[Mupod]

I will try and finish (the previous) Xenoblade this weekend. I made little progress this week due to extreme overtime at work, but I like money so it's okay.

I did succeed at one thing that I thought would be impossible - I figured everything out again after over a year away from it. This is the wall that stops me from finishing so many RPGs, and Xenoblade was so damn complicated I knew I'd hit said wall if I ever stopped playing. And of course I stopped anyways. But I won't do the same with X...probably.

Anyways I'm not sure I can finish on time but I will try. I have all weekend cleared up and I'm at (mid-late? game location)

Spoiler

Agniratha

. The last thing I was doing before I stopped last year was I got bored trying to finish Colony 9 quests to unlock Shulk's skill tree and I did that last night. Running Melia/Dunban/Shulk, I know Shulk's AI is dumb but I can't figure out how I'm supposed to counter 'visions' without the monado. Plus he hits hard and the AI seems to at least try to position behind things. I did a little research last night and realized I could stack the team attack-boosting skills and heal up using that if I had to, plus naked dunban with multiple agility orbs summoned is cheating.

I'm torn between getting the collector's edition guide or not. This book must be full of spoilers. What people think about that?

guides are god tier bathroom reading. But yeah I never even crack one open until the story stuff is finished.

Outside of value to collectors I could see it being useful if you just want to go for 100% while lying back on the couch/bed. Hell maybe I'll get it.

 

[Sammy Samusu]

pre-loading now

2h:30m left

7 days until launch

we wait...

 

[Orakio Rob]

This seems like the go-to OT until closer to release so I'll ask this here.

What classes are you going to play and what BLADE departments (forgot the name) are you going to join?

I'll be a Reclaimer. Regarding classes, I'm considering a Mastermind, but first I would like to know how the arts for controlling enemies work. Can anybody tell me?

 

[The Elite]

The icon is sitting there on my Wii U.

I keep clicking it.

It keeps telling me to GTFO and come back in a week.

 

[TheGreatMightyPoo]

The icon is sitting there on my Wii U.

I keep clicking it.

It keeps telling me to GTFO and come back in a week.

Would be awesome if it literally told you that.

 

[Gotdatmoney]

I genuinely believe shadowblade would prefer more bells and whistles aesthetically and it running at 15 fps.

He is free to prefer w/e he pleases. Its not like anyone in this thread gives a shit about his opinion so much they are going to be swayed. Its just annoying that he picks and chooses parts of Dark's postsas if its definitive proof while ignoring the huge pluses and explanations. Its boring and dishonest.

 

[Gizuko]

I'm torn between getting the collector's edition guide or not. This book must be full of spoilers. What people think about that?

I was torn, too. XCX is such a massive game that you are bound to miss a lot without a guide, but! Using a guide to find it isn't as fun.

Then, I remembered how much I liked my OoT guide back in the day and went with the CE.

 

[Locamotable]

darkx10 already pointed out, the lack of shadows in the world, materials do not react to lighting properly this is fact, character models look like shit, anybody with eyes an see that, AA is low quality FXAA, pop in is massive, and most of the grass in the game is 2d, you're kidding yourself if you think monolith is gonna get everything out of the wiiu, in there first game on HD hardware, with probably a low budget for a open world game.