How in the world do you even play this game without Sharla? Everything in this dumps damage onto me, and without her hilariously sporadic and paltry attempts at healing, I would probably die instantly and frequently.
I just don't have the time to go back and build up affinity to unlock quests to do. Especially since my affinity is like, none in everywhere. I need to beat this basically asap.
The problem with Sharla is that her damage output is terrible. As a result battles last longer than they should, so you take more damage than you should, so all she really does is balance out her place in the party without really adding anything.
Riki has a great healing ability, and Shulk's isn't bad. A properly setup Dunban should be an excellent physical tank and practically never have to worry about physical attacks, talent arts are obviously blocked completely with Shield, and Monado Armor is really the best way to deal with ether attacks - but you don't have it.
It's a super easy side quest to get that, you just have to do two quests from Eleqa at
Fallen Arm
, I don't think there's any affinity requirement. I think she's standing right outside the village in the morning?
The final boss is resistant to topple and immune to daze, so you're better using red arts in chain attacks to take advantage of the damage multiplier. Sharla makes that hard though since she's so gimpy with just one red art, 7th or Reyn would work a lot better for that, especially 7th since that character deals some of the quickest damage in the game when setup correctly.
How in the world do you even play this game without Sharla? Everything in this dumps damage onto me, and without her hilariously sporadic and paltry attempts at healing, I would probably die instantly and frequently.
I just don't have the time to go back and build up affinity to unlock quests to do. Especially since my affinity is like, none in everywhere. I need to beat this basically asap.
I dropped Sharla out of my party a while after I got Dunban, and never looked back. Her support arts barely add anything to the party, and her AI is stupid enough to actually let her rifle overheat every single time, rather than manually cooling it off for a reduced delay.
I started maining Dunban for a while afterhe joined the party because hey, he's the most badass guy in the whole team, and later on I used Melia for a while (I barely touched Riki myself, but I had him on the team every now and then). Once 7th joined the team, though, I switched to 7th+Dunban/Reyn/Shulk and never looked back... unless I was fighting one of those sick spiking uniques, that is (seriously, screw those guys).
I dropped Sharla out of my party a while after I got Dunban, and never looked back. Her support arts barely add anything to the party, and her AI is stupid enough to actually let her rifle overheat every single time, rather than manually cooling it off for a reduced delay.
Man, I wish this game had gambit-like conditional battle commands. I liked them pretty well in FF XII, but they'd have been indispensable in Xenoblade.
Man, I wish this game had gambit-like conditional battle commands. I liked them pretty well in FF XII, but they'd have been indispensable in Xenoblade.
Wondering if X will have something like that. There are several things Takahashi wanted to do with Xenoblade that they didn't have time for, and I could see something like that being one of them. I know he mentioned a bestiary, and he knows the game's menus could have been better.
Man, I wish this game had gambit-like conditional battle commands. I liked them pretty well in FF XII, but they'd have been indispensable in Xenoblade.
The entire game I kept thinking "If only I could control one more character this would be so much easier."
Anyway, I BEAT THE GAME!
What the fuck at that reveal, though. I mean I figured Alvis was God, but WHAT.
Anyway, really happy I did. I grinded Gogols in the Satorl Marsh until level 82, then trounced
Dickson and Zanza round 1
. The second round of the final boss was where I was again getting frustrated. For whatever reason the whole party would just suddenly die with no warning and no chance for a vision. Then I switched Shulk and Dunban, drew all aggro to myself, and used Armor and Shield whenever the occasion arose (honestly Shield was still more useful, since it was mostly
Titan Cannon or whatever
that kept murdering me. Switched back to Shulk for the final row and made short work of 'im.
Final party was Shulk/Dunban/Sharla at level 82, with Riki and Seven at 82 as well, and Reyn and Melia at 81. Never did get Monado Eater. Ending left me feeling 1)WTF at that reveal, 2)Pleased as punch to have finished the game (definitely worth the money I spent to get it and Last Story last year) and 3)bitter-sweet, because I didn't want to bid farewell to the cast.
The combat system in the game wasn't that bad, but it suffered greatly from a lack of FFXII's gambits or some other, comparable method of controlling my party a little more directly than the ones implemented in the game. Exploration and scenery were top notch (though things don't look as good up close as they do from afar.) The cast was certainly the most loveable cast I think I've seen in an RPG in a few years and certainly a console one. The cast of Last Story had some good stars like anyone not named Zael or Callista, but Zael and Callista were a bit too generic and bland for me. I dunno, they just lacked that extra verve that the rest of the pcs had. In Xenoblade, by contrast, while Shulk and
Fiora
could be rightly called too generic or by the books at times, I feel like sufficient work was done to make the two of them really stand out and have personalities of their own as well. But I digress, the cast was loveable, through and through, and almost all the villains were enjoyable as well.
Music I need not say, but in case someone somehow doesn't know, I thought all of it except the music that plays when you change the future was awesome. Especially the named enemy song.
I clocked out at about 73 hours total, and that's without doing more sidequests than it took to get the Armor and to raise Colony 6 to level 2.
It's difficult to physically use the dpad + left analog stick at the same time. Claw method works, but it's not necessary in the slightest. In terms of the actual impact on gameplay it's totally negligible since it takes approximately one second or less to select the art you want and then you can get into position.
I found the camera controls on the remote + nunchuck more annoying than not being able to move and scroll through arts at the same time, but that wasn't really a big deal either. Both control methods are fine.
It's difficult to physically use the dpad + left analog stick at the same time. Claw method works, but it's not necessary in the slightest. In terms of the actual impact on gameplay it's totally negligible since it takes approximately one second or less to select the art you want and then you can get into position.
I found the camera controls on the remote + nunchuck more annoying than not being able to move and scroll through arts at the same time, but that wasn't really a big deal either. Both control methods are fine.
Glad to see you finally beat the game Corvo. Now it's time for some New Game plus!
Well, maybe not if you have a backlog. I beat the game another 3 times. After you've grinded all of the best gems and items you can speedrun the game really fast. Now I have so many affinity coins it's ridiculous it pretty much breaks the game, especially once you've unlocked all the 4th and 5th skill trees.
Glad to see you finally beat the game Corvo. Now it's time for some New Game plus!
Well, maybe not if you have a backlog. I beat the game another 3 times. After you've grinded all of the best gems and items you can speedrun the game really fast. Now I have so many affinity coins it's ridiculous it pretty much breaks the game, especially once you've unlocked all the 4th and 5th skill trees.
Dont know if you have yet, but you gotta play the last story and pandora's tower afterwards, but play each game without having expectations from each game, just go in as they're fresh games with unique experiences.
Dont know if you have yet, but you gotta play the last story and pandora's tower afterwards, but play each game without having expectations from each game, just go in as they're fresh games with unique experiences.
I played The Last Story last year. I actually bought both of these games last year for my 24th birthday. I chose to play through TLS first, and this summer was Xenoblade's turn. Pandora's Tower is the only one left I don't own.
I played The Last Story last year. I actually bought both of these games last year for my 24th birthday. I chose to play through TLS first, and this summer was Xenoblade's turn. Pandora's Tower is the only one left I don't own.
I've heard a lot of mention of The Last Story in this thread. Since Xenoblade is the only RPG on the Wii that I own, I suppose I should pick up TLS at some point. Is it available in NA or do you have to import it?
Try ~$110 in Argentina with so few copies remaining that you actually have to call each game store to have them check whether they even have it in stock...
If I get lucky, I might get my dad to pick him up and bring it to me whenever he comes here during his next vacation, but I haven't had such luck so far.
So I just moved into a new apartment and while I was hooking up my Wii I noticed that Xenoblade was still in there. I couldn't help myself and I played an hour of a NG+. I think this is my 4th or 5th playthrough now; I wish it would keep track. I have basically everything that can be grinded for, so just to shake things up I decided to (late-ish game spoiler):
powerlevel Fiora. I have her at level 34 right now, and I'm gonna see how far I can level her before I get bored. The fact that you can equip the Lancelot armor set on her is really helpful.
Other than that, I'm gonna speedrun through the game again and then kill all the uniques when I get to the cutoff points. I have so many affinity coins it's awesome. I'm pretty sure after this playthrough I won't even be able to make use of any more coins, so the next playthrough will probably be my "final" run where I try to 100% all the sidequests, achievements, etc.
So I just moved into a new apartment and while I was hooking up my Wii I noticed that Xenoblade was still in there. I couldn't help myself and I played an hour of a NG+. I think this is my 4th or 5th playthrough now; I wish it would keep track. I have basically everything that can be grinded for, so just to shake things up I decided to (late-ish game spoiler):
powerlevel Fiora. I have her at level 34 right now, and I'm gonna see how far I can level her before I get bored. The fact that you can equip the Lancelot armor set on her is really helpful.
get her to about level 80ish before getting bored. The best way to do it is to play until you have Shulk and Reyn again, then beat up the Flamii/Sardi at the far end of the Colony.
get her to about level 80ish before getting bored. The best way to do it is to play until you have Shulk and Reyn again, then beat up the Flamii/Sardi at the far end of the Colony.
it got pretty tedious around the 50s as you start getting virtually no EXP as it counts you as being 21+ levels over for the level 80 enemies. I did not try myself, this is just what I heard...
So I'm at that point I get to fairly early in all RPGs, where the plot suggests I need to keep moving forward but there are also a bunch of side things to do. I just picked up two party members, and we're supposed to be gearing up for a fight, but there's all this stuff back down there.
So I'm at that point I get to fairly early in all RPGs, where the plot suggests I need to keep moving forward but there are also a bunch of side things to do. I just picked up two party members, and we're supposed to be gearing up for a fight, but there's all this stuff back down there.
push through, add a bunch of sidequests, explore the areas and kill monsters, you will eventually complete like almost a 3rd of them, and then move on.
push through, add a bunch of sidequests, explore the areas and kill monsters, you will eventually complete like almost a 3rd of them, and then move on.
Not reading any posts in this thread for fear of spoilers. But I'm planning on starting back on Xenoblade for the first time since early June (aka when ACNL came out). I'm around 55 hours into the game and can't wait to get back into it.
You can kind of do Colony 6 as you go. The items required become available in chunks and can be obtained fairly easily. The handful of annoying ones are very annoying though.
Art Core Coils are easily available at one very specific point during the game. At a location that shares a name with one of the knights of the round table, you should see a button that requires a key to use. It's optional and the key is kind of out of the way (you can see it as a red item spawn at one point on the main path but can't reach it), but using it will give you access to two spots with lots of Art Core Coils. If you miss it there, it becomes quite possibly the hardest item in the game to get with only a single late-game spawn location and a very low chance to appear at that. Prepare for a ton of hard resets.
Black Liver Beans and Rainbow Slugs have better availability if you know where to look for them but are still annoying to try to farm due to such low appearance rates.
colony 6 is the biggest sidequest in the game and the only one I dedicated to doing, but you can do its sidquest as you go along in the game, I spent like 2 hours in a area looking for monkey rock or whatever its called.
You can kind of do Colony 6 as you go. The items required become available in chunks and can be obtained fairly easily. The handful of annoying ones are very annoying though.
Art Core Coils are easily available at one very specific point during the game. At a location that shares a name with one of the knights of the round table, you should see a button that requires a key to use. It's optional and the key is kind of out of the way (you can see it as a red item spawn at one point on the main path but can't reach it), but using it will give you access to two spots with lots of Art Core Coils. If you miss it there, it becomes quite possibly the hardest item in the game to get with only a single late-game spawn location and a very low chance to appear at that. Prepare for a ton of hard resets.
God damn it. I think I missed it then, I don't remember doing very much collecting at that point in the game.
Though it seems like you can trade every (?) collectible from some NPC anyway, though if I remember correctly, some of the trades are just as annoying to get since I think you have to have a certain affinity before it shows up. I think that's what I did when I tried to get further in Colony 6, seemed like the less annoying option.
I haven't played in ages but still not done with this game yet, so apologies if I'm wrong!
I'm about 22 hours in, enjoying it more or less, and am working my way through the
High Entia Tomb where Melia is undergoing her trial
. About what percentage of the way through am I? I understand this game is long as shit even when ignoring side quests and bee-lining through the story.
I'm about 22 hours in, enjoying it more or less, and am working my way through the
High Entia Tomb where Melia is undergoing her trial
. About what percentage of the way through am I? I understand this game is long as shit even when ignoring side quests and bee-lining through the story.
I just got into the game myself and I'm having a blast, just got through Colony 6.
I was wondering though, the one thing stumping me is what aggro and tension are for. The tutorials are confusing (my one gripe with the game, all the little intricate systems can be overwhelming). Going through Colony 6 was a toughie because I couldn't seen to activate the monado fast enough.
Aggro determines who is getting attacked. Characters build up aggro by dealing damage and various skill, art, and gem effects. You generally want to build up aggro quickly on tanks like Reyn and Dunban while trying to keep it low on characters that can't take or dodge hits as well. Good aggro management can make battles a lot easier.
Reyn is the easiest to manage aggro with since his talent art draws it, and his berserk aura gives it an area effect.
Tension does a lot of things. It directly impacts your characters' accuracy rate. If they get into low tension they'll start missing attacks and at very low tension they will never hit. Likewise, high tension increases accuracy, and also increases the critical hit rate. This means you not only deal a little more damage, but also build the party gauge more quickly.
Tension is also important for Melia's talent gauge, her burst mode lasts longer with higher tension. And there is at least one art that requires max tension to use. Pretty sure there are some other things it impacts but it's slipping my mind at the moment.
Thanks for that. The more I learn about these intricacies, the more I'm liking this game. I just need to know about those two gauges underneath each character in battle. The long thin one and the thick one that seems broken up into multiple parts.
Also, after getting my fourth party member (
Dunban
), I find myself completely ignoring them. I just love the trio I have right now too much to let go. Anyone else feel the same way or is he a good character?
Thanks for that. The more I learn about these intricacies, the more I'm liking this game. I just need to know about those two gauges underneath each character in battle. The long thin one and the thick one that seems broken up into multiple parts.
Also, after getting my fourth party member (
Dunban
), I find myself completely ignoring them. I just love the trio I have right now too much to let go. Anyone else feel the same way or is he a good character?
Thanks for that. The more I learn about these intricacies, the more I'm liking this game. I just need to know about those two gauges underneath each character in battle. The long thin one and the thick one that seems broken up into multiple parts.
Also, after getting my fourth party member (
Dunban
), I find myself completely ignoring them. I just love the trio I have right now too much to let go. Anyone else feel the same way or is he a good character?
Neither is relevant in battle, I think the thick one is exp (I don't know why it's broken into parts) and the other is SP until your next skill.
All the characters bring something to the table. Personally I think Sharla and Reyn are actually two of the weaker characters to have in the party. It really just depends on what you're doing though, and how well you know the game. You can make any of them insanely good.
You definitely want to mix things up though, a lot of people tend to get tired of the combat when sticking with the same characters through the entire game.
Neither is relevant in battle, I think the thick one is exp (I don't know why it's broken into parts) and the other is SP until your next skill.
All the characters bring something to the table. Personally I think Sharla and Reyn are actually two of the weaker characters to have in the party. It really just depends on what you're doing though, and how well you know the game. You can make any of them insanely good.
You definitely want to mix things up though, a lot of people tend to get tired of the combat when sticking with the same characters through the entire game.
I'm actually messing around with a Riki, Sharla, Meila team at the moment and I'm liking it. It's nice to hear some new banter. Tried having Sharla as the lead and she's awful but she's fine as a support and healer (especially with having a Strength Down and Weapon Power gem attached.
As far as the story goes, I wish it didn't have as many cutaway scenes that gave so much away. I mean as you can imagine, I just got Riki and I'm sitting here thinking
Okay it's pretty obvious the Mechon are actually stealing the homs and converting them into Mechon soldiers ala the Cybermen (yes I know who voices Meila) and that Metal Face is the cowardly guy at the beginning of the game and that mysterious "new Mechon" is probably Fiora in some way.
I have the feeling I'm probably not 100 Percent right, but I know I've gotta be in the right ballpark. I'm still looking forward to getting there but I can't help but imagine how amazed I'd be if they didn't telegraph so much away.
I thought the story was only okay, but I thought the way they used foreshadowing and tipped you off about things (or sometimes straight up tell you things, if you talk to the right NPCs) was pretty neat. You'll probably notice what I mean.
I thought the story was only okay, but I thought the way they used foreshadowing and tipped you off about things (or sometimes straight up tell you things, if you talk to the right NPCs) was pretty neat. You'll probably notice what I mean.
Xord previously being the dad of an important NPC in Colony 9
, for one. The plot twists for some things are indeed telegraphed in a very obvious way (ie: supporting characters having cryptic conversations and/or monologues when the players aren't there? They're evulz!... for the most part).
The one twist that did catch me off guard was the whole
Zanza being the god of the Bionis. I thought he was the giant and had some kind of plan about using his essence to do something, and not a guy who had inhabited Shulk's body, was responsible for the Bionis and Mechonis going to war, and that the giant was a husk for Zanza to possess though the Monado
. Other plot points such as
Geradlt being alive, Fiora being the white mechon once it was revealed, metal face being Mumkhar and Lorithia working for some bigger bad we weren't seeing at the time
I did realize were coming from a mile away, but the story still felt okay. It's definitely not going to win any awards for its script, but it still managed to keep me engaged thorough, and the final parts of the game where the plot blew up in unexpected ways was also nice.
Xord previously being the dad of an important NPC in Colony 9
, for one. The plot twists for some things are indeed telegraphed in a very obvious way (ie: supporting characters having cryptic conversations and/or monologues when the players aren't there? They're evulz!... for the most part).
The one twist that did catch me off guard was the whole
Zanza being the god of the Bionis. I thought he was the giant and had some kind of plan about using his essence to do something, and not a guy who had inhabited Shulk's body, was responsible for the Bionis and Mechonis going to war, and that the giant was a husk for Zanza to possess though the Monado
. Other plot points such as
Geradlt being alive, Fiora being the white mechon once it was revealed, metal face being Mumkhar and Lorithia working for some bigger bad we weren't seeing at the time
I did realize were coming from a mile away, but the story still felt okay. It's definitely not going to win any awards for its script, but it still managed to keep me engaged thorough, and the final parts of the game where the plot blew up in unexpected ways was also nice.
the parts it does make fairly obvious cover up the foreshadowing for the later events in the game. There are a bunch of little things hint at the later plot events and twists but the game has you so busy thinking about "Face Mechon are actually Homs, I'm so clever!" that you overlook them entirely.
so I'm about level 74ish and I'm at what I think its going to start the last dungeon/area of the game. Is it worth going back and finishing colony 6 and doing other sidequests, or should I just go on?
