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[Papercuts]

People keep saying that but being able to select arts easily while moving makes me prefer the Wiimote controls

Yeah, I'm just the kind of RPG player that loves to spin the camera around, constantly looking at stuff. So I'd basically always holding C + dpad which isn't ideal. I also keep hitting Z to move the camera thinking it's like Z targeting to reset in Zelda, haha.

 

[Cloudy]

People keep saying that but being able to select arts easily while moving makes me prefer the Wiimote controls

I haven't used nunchuk but I have no problems selecting arts. I cannot imagine trying to control this camera w/o sticks though lol

 

[Rebel Leader]

EDIT: NVM

 

[Poyunch]

Eri Nakao.

Thanks!

 

[Bisnic]

Cos it looks like hot shit on HDTVs. Why is this so hard for people to admit?

I know the game looks terrible with all the aliasing and low res textures, i've been playing a lot of PC games recently.

Doesn't mean the Wii is not a real console though.

 

[SecretMoblin]

Played about 8 hours....absolutely loving it now. The battle is a bit challenging, but extremely fun. I feel bad skipping over a lot of quests in colony 9 to move to next part, so I might go back later to do some unfinished quests.

Should I buy all the equipment/arts book when they sell them? or do I get same/better ones during the battle?

And a question about boss battle visions. When there is a vision of my ally getting attacked, I can go to the ally and press b to warn them, and perhaps do defensive moves. But I was wondering what I should do when the vision says its attacking me(shulk) He doesn't have any defensive move other than the monado shield thing, so am I suppose to use that? what if its in charging, is there anything else I can actually do?

You should buy Arts manuals; equipment from the local mobs is ALWAYS at least on par with what the shops sell, and almost always better.

Regarding

Spoiler

the visions: Monado Shield is the only way to ensure that the enemy's attack fails, but you can use whatever you want. You have plenty of options: you can try and shift aggro to your tank so they can take the damage instead, you can use a move to increase agility and try and dodge the attack, you can try and kill the enemy before the attack hits, etc.

 

[Shadowlink]

Anyways every time I see an epic scene all I do is think " wow this would have looked so great on a real console." =\

 

[PezDispenser]

With the stats, I wasn't talking about this game, I was making a point that forcing you to read a game manual was extremely common and old school RPG's, and we've moved on since then. You're right, Xenoblade would need to stretch the tutorial out a bit if the text tutorials weren't available. That would be better.

No, it wouldn't be flat-out "better". Maybe you would like it better, but let's face it - when you're playing through a tutorial section, you're not really playing the game at all. The training wheels are on, making it impossible to die as you get some condescending instructions to complete A, B and C. To me, that's never been fun. And I certainly wouldn't be interested in playing a separate tutorial for each gameplay mechanic in the game.

Moreover, it would just take up too much time. The plot would have to be shoehorned around making up excuses to play a new tutorial every 20 minutes or so, and on top of all that, if they wanted to maintain a decent pace, they'd have to lock out some gameplay mechanics (or else allow them to go unexplained) for a decent part of the game, until you got around to playing those corresponding tutorials. And what if you forgot how something worked from an earlier tutorial? Would you have to go back and replay the tutorial again? Or would you have to -GASP- read the text of an in-game manual for a refresher!?

Some games are just too complex for the "playable tutorial" method to really work, and Xenoblade is a good example of this. There is no magic "best" way to do a tutorial that holds true across all genres. Things aren't that simple.

The first several hours consisted of me marveling at the beauty of the environments... and then reading a bunch of tutorials over and over again to try and make sense of it all. That wasn't fun. It was necessary to come to terms with the combat, but it wasn't fun.

No, it wasn't necessary, because I somehow managed to get through the game without having to read any of them more than once or twice.

Text dumps

Just stop. We both know they're not text dumps, or walls of text. Sure they could've been improved on, maybe a quick video to illustrate directly a la Zelda:SS, but I found them pretty easy to digest, and most importantly, like I said before, they communicated the necessary information faster than a playable tutorial would have. To me, that's "better" than having to slog through a condescending tutorial battle every 15 or 20 minutes.

 

[Jswanko]

Can we add a "Dont whine about this not being on 360/PS3" warning to the OP? Getting pretty tired of watching the discussion get sidetracked by detractors and defenders alike. Y'all are making me long for a second coming of the Epic Mickey banfest

 

[transience]

If you spaced out the tutorial sections of Xenoblade, you'd basically have FF13. You wouldn't be able to use Shield until like 15 hours had passed. I thought everyone already bitched that game out for rolling things out too slowly? Both games are fairly similar as far as having some pretty unique mechanics that take a while to truly pick up.

I'd rather have a sink-or-swim style of game than one treating me with kid gloves.

 

[Seik]

Yeah I know, he should've said 'Dolphin' instead of 'a real console'.

Dem fighting words, lol.

 

[frequency]

Set the language to Japanese because the dub felt kind of shoddy. Am I missing out? Should I go back to English.

Yes. I finished the game in Japanese and found the voice acting to be pretty generic. With the NA release, I switched to playing with the English Dub. Just a few hours in and I already find Shulk and Reyn to have infinitely more personality.
Especially Shulk. Japanese Shulk is about as generic shounen as you can get. I found him incredibly dull. But English Shulk is wonderful. I really didn't know that a voice can make such a big difference.

EDIT: Oops. I see I'm late. I didn't see a page 19. I'm slow.

 

[Rebel Leader]

So I'm about 12 hours in, not really doing side quests as theyre poorly designed. Anyways every time I see an epic scene all I do is think " wow this would have looked so great on a real console." =

How long have you been playing games?

 

[chaosblade]

I agree with PezDispenser, having every game mechanic require it's own playable tutorial would have been a disaster. The tutorials alone would have been longer than most games because there would be so much to go over.

The text-and-image tutorials are really easy to follow. I'm pretty amazed that people actually have trouble with them. If they're missing the tutorial section and not reading the extra/expanded tutorials that don't pop up automatically it's a little understandable, but the majority of them do a fine job covering the material. There are some that don't, I can think of two off the top of my head that are pretty awful (gem crafting and one of the character tutorials).

 

[thefro]

And a question about boss battle visions. When there is a vision of my ally getting attacked, I can go to the ally and press b to warn them, and perhaps do defensive moves. But I was wondering what I should do when the vision says its attacking me(shulk) He doesn't have any defensive move other than the monado shield thing, so am I suppose to use that? what if its in charging, is there anything else I can actually do?

You can warn another party member and that party member can either heal you enough so that you survive the attack, or draw aggro (i.e., Reyn's Mad Taunt) so that they takes the hit instead of you. Depending on how hard the attack hits, those may not be the best options.

 

[Papercuts]

There are still ways to do optional tutorials that actually have you perform the game mechanics(always the most effective imo). Just have some sort of combat arena and have a trainer teach you stuff. Get a notification when he has a new set of classes which are more advanced tactics and whatnot. You can still have the normal popups ontop of this for people who don't want to go to the trainer, and this also means on replays you don't have to be bogged down by mandatory tutorials.

A lot of people don't like learning stuff in live combat, even though in here it seems like the death penalty is basically non existent. I don't mind the way it's presented here, but I also prefer actually pulling the stuff off ingame.

 

[SecretMoblin]

Can we add a "Dont whine about this not being on 360/PS3" warning to the OP? Getting pretty tired of watching the discussion get sidetracked by detractors and defenders alike. Y'all are making me long for a second coming of the Epic Mickey banfest

It's dangerously close to port-begging, which is very clearly against the rules, so I don't see how it's necessary.

The game is on the Wii. The Wii is not an HD console. If you want to play it in HD, you need to play it on Dolphin.

 

[Rebel Leader]

And a question about boss battle visions. When there is a vision of my ally getting attacked, I can go to the ally and press b to warn them, and perhaps do defensive moves. But I was wondering what I should do when the vision says its attacking me(shulk) He doesn't have any defensive move other than the monado shield thing, so am I suppose to use that? what if its in charging, is there anything else I can actually do?

Yes use the monado arts on the character that was attacked in the vision. If by what you mean by charging that the enemy is about to use the attack (such as the bar getting smaller under the enemy's attack name)... use the correct art and that will stop it

 

[Bisnic]

Is the only way to get some "heart to heart" event to show up to quest with the 2 characters in question? Like that camp on the Bionis Leg that say i need a better relationship between Sharla and Reyn...does that mean i got to put Shulk has the AI until i meet the required relationships by doing quests as Reyn or Sharla?

Bah, why making this so complicated.

 

[Trancetronic]

I didn't mind the tutorials. It's like they ease the player into learning things step by step, instead of throwing them all at your face at once or baby handholding like FFXIII does. And you can view the tutorials at anytime. The battle system is fun so you can just mess around with the new knowledge on weaker enemies before you feel confident enough to do them on regular ones. The only bit of the game I don't understand is the gem/cylinder crafting system(something about your gems have to be over 100%) but everything else is great. The affinity system, the links, artes and skills, etc. It's also a a teeny bit of trial and error before you can say "oh now I get it".

 

[Rebel Leader]

I see no way to turn up or even alter the audio ... =(

 

[SecretMoblin]

Is the only way to get some "heart to heart" event to show up to quest with the 2 characters in question? Like that camp on the Bionis Leg that say i need a better relationship between Sharla and Reyn...does that mean i got to put Shulk has the AI until i meet the required relationships by doing quests as Reyn or Sharla?

Bah, why making this so complicated.

Their affinity has to be at a certain level, yes. There are a ton of ways you can raise the affinity between two characters; putting them in the same battle team is a good way to raise affinity over a certain period. Starwolf_UK wrote up a nice, short, technical analysis of affinity here.

And don't stress about doing the heart-to-hearts right away. You can't do many of them when you first find them and they never go away, so the game expects you to come back to them, if you want to. I only did ~5 total in my first playthrough.

 

[Hazanko]

Just booted the game up to check the graphics complaints and it looks nice on my TV. It's only 32 inch though and LCD but it's still a beautiful game. I guess it depends on the TV.

 

[Rebel Leader]

Just booted the game up to check the graphics complaints and it looks nice on my TV. It's only 32 inch though and LCD but it's still a beautiful game. I guess it depends on the TV.

I agree. They may be used to nearly clear games on ps360.....

Kids these days

 

[Zornica]

And a question about boss battle visions. When there is a vision of my ally getting attacked, I can go to the ally and press b to warn them, and perhaps do defensive moves. But I was wondering what I should do when the vision says its attacking me(shulk) He doesn't have any defensive move other than the monado shield thing, so am I suppose to use that? what if its in charging, is there anything else I can actually do?

depends on the vision. I am not sure if you had that tutorial yet, so I try to keep it brief and simple:

If you get a vision warning, you see the name of the enemy attack, the target an the damage on the top screen. the color in which the attack name is written will change depanding on the "class" of that attack. If it's white, it is a special attack, which means it can ONLY be blocked with monado shield. If it is red, it will be a physical attack, that can be avoided or blocked with more physical defense. blue stands for ether (this will happen very rarely).

So if you encounter a "white vision" wait a few seconds and use the shild, if it is red, tell reyn to counter it (or use the second monado art you get, its single target only, so use it only a few seconds befor the timer hits zero). and if it is blue... brace for impact and prey

 

[Hazanko]

I agree. They may be used to nearly clear games on ps360.....

Kids these days

Dunno, I mainly play my ps3. I don't find it ugly on wii. So I'm guessing my TV handles SD picture well.

 

[EvilMario]

Played about 8 hours....absolutely loving it now. The battle is a bit challenging, but extremely fun. I feel bad skipping over a lot of quests in colony 9 to move to next part, so I might go back later to do some unfinished quests.

Should I buy all the equipment/arts book when they sell them? or do I get same/better ones during the battle?

And a question about boss battle visions. When there is a vision of my ally getting attacked, I can go to the ally and press b to warn them, and perhaps do defensive moves. But I was wondering what I should do when the vision says its attacking me(shulk) He doesn't have any defensive move other than the monado shield thing, so am I suppose to use that? what if its in charging, is there anything else I can actually do?

Art books drop, but they're pretty rare. Given their prices though, you should only buy the ones you are going to be using and upgrading right away (ie; maybe you use Light Heal on Shulk a lot early on, and you want to upgrade it a bunch).

Equipment; you'll find a lot of really great equipment in the field, and often times they'll have more item slots. If there's something for sale that's a big upgrade, buy it, but don't feel like you have to buy up everything in a shop.

 

[thetrin]

I agree. They may be used to nearly clear games on ps360.....

Kids these days

EDIT: they are probably playing it in 480i

I find it hard to believe that that is the case. It's just an intolerance for older graphics. I mean, shit, I play BF3 on PC, and that game is gorgeous, but I still had no issues with Xenoblade when I played the JP version.

 

[Bisnic]

So now i got the choice of taking

Spoiler

Dunban

with me in combat, but since its only 3 characters, i might have to switch...but i love my team of Shulk(DPS), Reyn(tank) and Sharla(healer). Might as well stick with them until the end, but i fear like this could hurt my affinity with other characters i wont use.

I find it hard to believe that that is the case. It's just an intolerance for older graphics. I mean, shit, I play BF3 on PC, and that game is gorgeous, but I still had no issues with Xenoblade when I played the JP version.

Honestly, if the Wii was able to do 4x or 8x AA like my PC games i'd be fine, i dont really give a shit about the low res textures. Been playing WoW for years lol.

 

[EvilMario]

So now i got the choice of taking

Spoiler

Dunban

with me in combat, but since its only 3 characters, i might have to switch...but i love my team of Shulk(DPS), Reyn(tank) and Sharla(healer). Might as well stick with them until the end, but i fear like this could hurt my affinity with other characters i wont use.

It's the terrible decision so many people make. Don't be afraid to switch up your team and try different combinations. You'll have plenty of people to choose from later. And stop controlling only Shulk! The game is much more interesting when you're controlling others sometimes.

 

[Rebel Leader]

I find it hard to believe that that is the case. It's just an intolerance for older graphics. I mean, shit, I play BF3 on PC, and that game is gorgeous, but I still had no issues with Xenoblade when I played the JP version.

I guess that's what I was trying to say

(It's midnight.. going to bed)

 

[Bisnic]

It's the terrible decision so many people make. Don't be afraid to switch up your team and try different combinations. You'll have plenty of people to choose from later. And stop controlling only Shulk! The game is much more interesting when you're controlling others sometimes.

Yeah, but im not sure if i should trust the AI into using the Monado powers at the right moments.

 

[SecretMoblin]

It's the terrible decision so many people make. Don't be afraid to switch up your team and try different combinations. You'll have plenty of people to choose from later. And stop controlling only Shulk! The game is much more interesting when you're controlling others sometimes.

Quoted for emphasis. Listen to this man!

And Bisnic:

Spoiler

Dunban is a tank, albeit one that emphasizes agility and dodging rather than high HP and defense. If you put some agility gems on him, he dodges the vast majority of attacks that come his way while soaking up aggro. He's great!

 

[Bisnic]

Quoted for emphasis. Listen to this man!

And Bisnic:

Spoiler

Dunban is a tank, albeit one that emphasizes agility and dodging rather than high HP and defense. If you put some agility gems on him, he dodges the vast majority of attacks that come his way while soaking up aggro. He's great!

Yeah i figured he was some sort of tank by looking at some of his Arts. But when i saw that he had almost as much HP as Shulk, i was a bit confused. Maybe i could switch Reyn with him.

 

[SpaceBridge]

3 hours in. In the cave heading to the other Colony. But Im stuck in a boss fight.

Spoiler

That giant spider fight. How do I beat it, and how do I use that future vision mechanic? I manage to get the boss down to 10% life but it keeps shooting webbing that keeps me from moving. Any tips?

 

[DrForester]

3 hours in. In the cave heading to the other Colony. But Im stuck in a boss fight.

Spoiler

That giant spider fight. How do I beat it, and how do I use that future vision mechanic? I manage to get the boss down to 10% life but it keeps shooting webbing that keeps me from moving. Any tips?

Spoiler

Spam the monado shield every chance you get

 

[Jswanko]

It's the terrible decision so many people make. Don't be afraid to switch up your team and try different combinations. You'll have plenty of people to choose from later. And stop controlling only Shulk! The game is much more interesting when you're controlling others sometimes.

Totally forgot I could make other characters the leader, thanks for the heads up.

 

[EvilMario]

Yeah, but im not sure if i should trust the AI into using the Monado powers at the right moments.

That's why I said sometimes. There are battles where you may want to switch to Shulk to be certain you'll be able to use Shield at the right time, etc, but really, it will be rare and the AI is pretty smart about it.

Totally forgot I could make other characters the leader, thanks for the heads up.

On my first playthrough, I didn't even know I could switch leads until I had my 5th party member. Haha.

 

[Effect]

Managed to get a good half hour into the game. Just been running around Colony 9 and getting used to the controls mainly and admiring it. Need to head to the weapons lab now. I was using the Nunchuck and Wii Remote but switched to my Classic Controller (not the Pro but the original) and that felt a LOT better. Camera control is a lot better.

 

[Cloudy]

I tried with sharpness all the way down on my 32inch tv. Seemed to improve things quite a bit. Tension is heating up right now about 3.5 hours in

The battle system is more complicated and strategic than it looks and you are screwed if you go up against enemies even just a level above. Pretty fun and challenging so far though

ps: How do I use affinity coins?

 

[Cloudy]

Just booted the game up to check the graphics complaints and it looks nice on my TV. It's only 32 inch though and LCD but it's still a beautiful game. I guess it depends on the TV.

Is it an HDTV? If not, you won't understand

 

[SecretMoblin]

I tried with sharpness all the way down on my 32inch tv. Seemed to improve things quite a bit. Tension is heating up right now about 3.5 hours in

The battle system is more complicated and strategic than it looks and you are screwed if you go up against enemies even just a level above. Pretty fun and challenging so far though

ps: How do I use affinity coins?

Affinity coins are used for linking skills. You may not have unlocked that element of the game yet, but it should be explained pretty well in the in-game tutorials.

 

[Hazanko]

Is it an HDTV? If not, you won't understand

Yup

 

[DownWithTheShip]

What an excellent. It's so much fun.

Finally starting to understand how to properly battle.

 

[TDLink]

Yeah i figured he was some sort of tank by looking at some of his Arts. But when i saw that he had almost as much HP as Shulk, i was a bit confused. Maybe i could switch Reyn with him.

Yeah, switch him with Reyn and try playing as him. You won't regret it. BORN IN A WORLD OF STRIFE

 

[HylianScribe]

ps: How do I use affinity coins?

You spend Affinity Coins to link skills. If you bring up your skill tree and then hit the minus button I believe, you can see that you can link skills learned by one character to another. You will see on the left the cost in affinity coins to link a certain skill.

 

[Zekes!]

Lmao at Sharla

Spoiler

trying to ship Shulk and Melia

 

[frequency]

So Carna was changed to Sharla? That's really weird. I can sort of understand Fiorun(g) to Fiora, but this feels like changing just for changing sake.

Not complaining about it. It's just weird.

 

[MetatronM]

3 hours in. In the cave heading to the other Colony. But Im stuck in a boss fight.

Spoiler

That giant spider fight. How do I beat it, and how do I use that future vision mechanic? I manage to get the boss down to 10% life but it keeps shooting webbing that keeps me from moving. Any tips?

Spoiler

Spam the monado shield every chance you get

That's pretty much the short answer for that fight.

Spoiler

Don't be afraid to use Shulk's Monado abilities as often as possible in harder than normal fights, i.e. bosses and uniques.

Another note about future visions in general, with regards to the Monado.

Spoiler

In most cases, unless you're constantly missing with your attacks, you usually have enough time after you see a vision to refill the Talent Gauge in order to use the Monado, even if you've just used it. If you need the Talent Gauge to refill as quickly as possible, DO NOT USE ARTS. The Talent Gauge refills on successful auto-attacks, and it actually doesn't take all that many hits to refill. It is possible to refill the gauge from 0 and be able to fire off a Monado Shield just before the prophesied attack occurs, if you're quick enough. Also, it's important to note that Shield ONLY works on enemy Talent Arts, i.e. attacks that appear in WHITE font, and it only works if Shield's level is higher than that of the enemy's talent art.

 

[Skel1ingt0n]

I'm now about 4.5 hours in. I'm really liking this game. The battle system is incredibly deep, and it seriously just keeps on layering more and more. I'm kind of struggling to grasp it all; but luckily I've only died about three or four times, so it's not terribly frustrating. I'm trying not to overlevel, but I also am afraid I'll end up underleveled if I don't grind mobs occasionally. Luckily, battles are enough fun to not make it seem like a chore.

Story has actually gotten pretty good. Yeah, it's typical JRPG fare, but it's cheesy without overdoing it. It's a really thin, but great, line that this game walks, and I'm really appreciating it. It has a good sense of scale and "epic-ness" without overdoing it, but while also not coming off as unimportant. Hard to describe, but it feels like a JRPG story done right. While incredibly different, it's "voice" feels very much like Final Fantasy IX, which is the only JRPG in my Top 25 games of all time, and happens to be one of my favorite games ever. So, that's promising. At least so far.

And, yeah, the game looks amazing on Dolphin: