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Xenoblade |OT| The Adventure Begins
- Thread starter Bebpo
- Start date
RPGCrazied
Member
desu said:Was questing all day and took some screens from various locations, here some older shots! Once I have sorted the new ones I will upload them as well.
Thanks!! We just need a release date!!
Whoo, new battle music! Too bad all the battle starting sounds drown out my favourite part of the track 
Some of the unique enemies on the sword were just horrible, but I got through alive, just. Especially the L55 unique I took on at 52 for a quest. Snuck past
, tried to take one on but kept getting killed. I'll come back in a few levels time I guess :lol
Some of the unique enemies on the sword were just horrible, but I got through alive, just. Especially the L55 unique I took on at 52 for a quest. Snuck past
those giant spiderbot enemies
thetrin
Hail, peons, for I have come as ambassador from the great and bountiful Blueberry Butt Explosion
I'm pretty behind everyone else (I started a week later than everyone), but I'm still loving the game. I've only clocked 20 hours so far, but I'm trying to do every subquest I get. I've only missed a few so far. I'm cleaning up pretty well.
Time to do the last couple sub quests in this section and then move on to the next story objective...
Time to do the last couple sub quests in this section and then move on to the next story objective...
Varion said:
Yes! I'm glad it wasn't just me.
I did the Lvl.55 guy today when I was lvl.54 and the first two times I got owned
Then I won! The biggest problem is the guy does 480 spike damage every time you hit him. THAT IS A LOT >_< And either he is immune to having his spike damage aura sealed or when you seal it, it only stays sealed for a very brief time. Because I tried doing the sealer monado attack and then a little bit later I noticed I was taking 480 spike damage again wtff. So using that attack is a waste of monado bar.
So what I did was use Shulk/Rein/Karna. I pumped up Rein with the best armor I had and none had slots. So I linked him with meria's monk skill where if you don't have any gems slotted your HP/Atk/Spd/Def gets like a 20% boost. So he was pretty tough. About 8500HP and good DEF. For Shulk and Rein I focused on good armor and slotted SPIKE DEFENSE & HP UP gems on both. Got spike defense to 50% on both so at least they'd only take 240 damage per hit and higher HP always helps.
Then in battle I did focused on the two weak guys next to him first. This is because doing damage on them builds up the monado meter fast. So I let off a kikai enchant so my party can do damage against robots and then even before turning to the lvl.55 guy I was able to do SHIELD monado to buff def for a bit.
THEN what became really important was just building up the party meter and letting off chain attacks everytime it hit three. This is because he can be knocked down and dizzied and taken out of commission. So I had shulk do the pink attack, rein do the green one, and karna usually use party heal and then if I got another shulk would do the yellow one. Then you can bang on him while he's down and hopefully build the party meter up to almost 2 bars before he gets up. So the goal becomes surviving until the final bar hits 3. I did this mainly with monado shield and hoping my healer healed and my tank distracted enough. When he gets down to about half HP he starts doing this ether pound attack which hurts and does like 2000 damage but hopefully you should still survive.
Felt good to win that fight!
But yeah, the big ones are awful. I took out 2 along the way, but I've died a half dozen times trying to fight them while mapping out the area. The TANK POUND is the WORST MOVE EVER. 2k+ damage to all party + everyone flies back + EVERYONE IS DIZZY is like omggggg so cheap. Had way too many fights where I get him down to like 20% hp and then he does a ground pound and everyone dies. I'm soooo not taking on the unique one in the corner that's lvl.57 until I'm like lvl.60+ and feel up to it.
I have a question Bebpo, you say are around 60-70% through the game (story wise) and you are on the mechanical god sword. Does that mean that you won't be able to explore the entire mechanical god body? The mechanical god is much bigger than the organic god, so if you are around 60-70% through the game, I can't see how you can explore the entire mechanical god.
Ok, my copy arrived, I played 15 mins, reached level 4, loved the battle system and finally messed with the menu where I totally got discouraged about the amount of things I can't understand not knowing japanese ç_ç. Will it ever exist some kind of spoiler-free guide-translation for the quests and the dialogues? Hint: no ._.
Crossing fingers for localization
Crossing fingers for localization
Got my soundtrack in the mail today. Comes in a super cheap plastic case that feels like it'll fall apart any second. Kind of a shame the cover art is the exact same, even the special cd got something different! The booklet is like 4 pages with a 1 paragraph blurb from each composer. There's only 1 new piece of art I think, the one under the first cd. The art below the last cd is in the game manual. But then for ~3400yen for 4 discs I can't complain too much and the music is good.
Tracks are split up by disc 1/2 story tracks from beginning to end, disc 3/4 location bgm from beginning to end.
Unless they bring out a perfect works type document book like Xenogears/Xenosaga ep1 I think that'll be the end of my Xenoblade related itemry
Tracks are split up by disc 1/2 story tracks from beginning to end, disc 3/4 location bgm from beginning to end.
Unless they bring out a perfect works type document book like Xenogears/Xenosaga ep1 I think that'll be the end of my Xenoblade related itemry
Can you run down who did most of the composing? I still have no idea who deserves most of the credit for this game's fantastic soundtrack.
Not as far as most of you games (about 10 hours in), but to add another voice to the chorus, Xenoblade is the real deal. I am enjoying this way more than I thought I would, and I've never really been a big Monolith fan. Great game.
Not as far as most of you games (about 10 hours in), but to add another voice to the chorus, Xenoblade is the real deal. I am enjoying this way more than I thought I would, and I've never really been a big Monolith fan. Great game.
Actually, just found the tracklist on VGMDB and... for the main composer Shimomura didn't do very much :lol
http://vgmdb.net/album/18946 derp. spoilers in the track names, obviously. Shimomura did a handful of tracks and the rest seem to be a pretty even split between Kiyota and ACE+.
http://vgmdb.net/album/18946 derp. spoilers in the track names, obviously. Shimomura did a handful of tracks and the rest seem to be a pretty even split between Kiyota and ACE+.
Varion said:
Yeah, I got a strong feeling that either:
A) she originally was the lead composer, started doing the beginning tracks and then had to back out due to commitments to all these other bigger budget games coming out this year and next (last ranker, KH, FF)
B) ~10 tracks is all they could afford from her with the budget Nintendo gave for music.
Luckily Kiyota & ACE+ turned out to be great composers. Could have had another XS ep2 with horrible Hosoe songs ^^;
Varion said:
Wow, good find!
Shimomura did a lot of the key ones, but great work from a bunch of unknowns (to me, at least). So looking at this, ACE+ has done nothing, ACE (with a slightly different line-up) has done nothing I've ever heard of, and Kiyota has composed tracks for PokéPark and otherwise just did vocals on a bunch of different albums. Pretty obscure.
Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Can't help but wonder what the music would've been like if she'd been the lead composer all the way through, but I'm really satisfied with the soundtrack we got. The area music on the whole was a little weaker than I'd hoped though, the Colony 9 area theme is definitely still my favourite.Bebpo said:
For a bunch of unknowns though, this is a pretty amazing soundtrack. Hopefully they won't be so unknown after this, they deserve a lot more attention than they've been getting.
Bebpo did you fight the secret spot on top of the hill in the ice world? You only get there by doing a special mega jump. Also there are lvl99 enemies + lv100 unique up there.
Also decided I just wont do all quests on my first playthrough so I am just going to finish the game in the next days. Otherwise I will spend easily 20-30h+ only on quests.
Also decided I just wont do all quests on my first playthrough so I am just going to finish the game in the next days. Otherwise I will spend easily 20-30h+ only on quests.
I used a character with +25% movement speed and then the long way with the icy jump, I also jumped right before the edge. Then you fly towards the wall (which you can actually stick to).
Also there is a special monster up there later (I think post game)
Also there is a special monster up there later (I think post game)
Apparently on top is also a lv120 enemy if you have a blizzard or something like that.
Bebpo said:Ah, for some reason I thought the tanaka art had been posted already
Yeah it does.
Actually the only reason I got it this fast was because I used Play-asia since I was getting another non-game cd as well that came out on the same date and ncsx doesn't carry those.
I've been meaning to post it. You should post the cyborg girl too
Considering how fast sales on these kinds of games fall in Japan 21,000 more copies is actually pretty good.anaron said:
Yeah, it's about normal for a single player rpg. Will probably end up between 130-150k. Not bad for a new IP rpg on Wii, but not great either.
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Takahashi's next big game ends up on 3DS. The budget would be smaller than XB and larger than Soma Bringer and graphics wouldn't be a huge step down from Xenosaga/Xenoblade. But that's just future speculation of a game 3+ years away still most likely. I think the good news is those sales should be enough that Takahashi at least gets to make more games!
I really hope they do a Soma Bringer 2 next or at least after BK3 if BK3 is what's next. The first Soma Bringer ended on basically a lead in to the sequel and the game was pretty successful for a moderate budget DS title.
Anyhow, in Xenoblade news, I got my new Wii today and got it region free and am now playing pixel error free Xenoblade. Woohooo. Nice not to be distracted by flashing pixels all the time in cool areas and cutscenes. Gonna finish off the few quests in my backlog still and then try to clear the rest of the game this weekend
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if Takahashi's next big game ends up on 3DS. The budget would be smaller than XB and larger than Soma Bringer and graphics wouldn't be a huge step down from Xenosaga/Xenoblade. But that's just future speculation of a game 3+ years away still most likely. I think the good news is those sales should be enough that Takahashi at least gets to make more games!
I really hope they do a Soma Bringer 2 next or at least after BK3 if BK3 is what's next. The first Soma Bringer ended on basically a lead in to the sequel and the game was pretty successful for a moderate budget DS title.
Anyhow, in Xenoblade news, I got my new Wii today and got it region free and am now playing pixel error free Xenoblade. Woohooo. Nice not to be distracted by flashing pixels all the time in cool areas and cutscenes. Gonna finish off the few quests in my backlog still and then try to clear the rest of the game this weekend
CryingWolf
Member
Bebpo said:
Sounds good to me. I'm already sold on the 3DS, and that would only sweeten the deal.
RPGCrazied
Member
I want a wallpaper for this game!
Sadly there isn't any. =/
Sadly there isn't any. =/
There really are too many quests in this game. I think doing them all kind of burned me out. I feel like the pacing of the story takes a major hit if you try to do all the sidequests, and it's probably a more enjoyable story experience if you mainly stick to the main game and then some quests here and there while exploring. I really think they should have not had any "point of no return" for quests and you should've been able to do all of them even post-game. That way you could enjoy the story and then after it's done spend 60 hours exploring and questing for whatever you haven't done already.
I just hit the last town at ~73 hours now and I dunno if I'm gonna do all the quests like I did the other towns. I'm pretty tempted to just ignore most of the quests at this point and finish the story, then reload my save from before the point of no return for quests and if I still feel like it, do the rest of the quests for another 20 hours. Also the worst freaking part of doing mass questing is in the stupid nopon village town. Running all over looking for named npcs to either report to or because a quest needs you to talk to people gets reaaaaaally tiring after 30-40-50 quests. If I had a printed out MAP with each named NPC's location dotted at what time they are there, it'd have saved me much headache.
There's also just the factor that after 70 hours with a game, it stops feeling as exciting and addicting as it did during the first 20 hours I've definitely gone from 5-8 hours in a day to 2-3 hours a day maybe. It's still fun and a great game but I kind of want to get it over with at this point! :lol The longest game clock I've put into an rpg was FFXII with 92 hours and I get the feeling this is gonna top that ^^;
New composers for the most part who are under Uematsu's Dog Ear Records label.
I just hit the last town at ~73 hours now and I dunno if I'm gonna do all the quests like I did the other towns. I'm pretty tempted to just ignore most of the quests at this point and finish the story, then reload my save from before the point of no return for quests and if I still feel like it, do the rest of the quests for another 20 hours. Also the worst freaking part of doing mass questing is in the stupid nopon village town. Running all over looking for named npcs to either report to or because a quest needs you to talk to people gets reaaaaaally tiring after 30-40-50 quests. If I had a printed out MAP with each named NPC's location dotted at what time they are there, it'd have saved me much headache.
There's also just the factor that after 70 hours with a game, it stops feeling as exciting and addicting as it did during the first 20 hours
I've definitely gone from 5-8 hours in a day to 2-3 hours a day maybe. It's still fun and a great game but I kind of want to get it over with at this point! :lol The longest game clock I've put into an rpg was FFXII with 92 hours and I get the feeling this is gonna top that ^^; faridmon said:
New composers for the most part who are under Uematsu's Dog Ear Records label.
Himuro said:
You can play imports on a black wii. Check out the homebrew thread and the gaf homebrew guide. As long as you haven't upgraded to 4.3 firmware you are good. If you follow the guide very carefully, it's not hard and doesn't take more than 30 mins to get a region-free app going.
Bebpo said:There really are too many quests in this game. I think doing them all kind of burned me out. I feel like the pacing of the story takes a major hit if you try to do all the sidequests, and it's probably a more enjoyable story experience if you mainly stick to the main game and then some quests here and there while exploring. I really think they should have not had any "point of no return" for quests and you should've been able to do all of them even post-game. That way you could enjoy the story and then after it's done spend 60 hours exploring and questing for whatever you haven't done already.
I just hit the last town at ~73 hours now and I dunno if I'm gonna do all the quests like I did the other towns. I'm pretty tempted to just ignore most of the quests at this point and finish the story, then reload my save from before the point of no return for quests and if I still feel like it, do the rest of the quests for another 20 hours. Also the worst freaking part of doing mass questing is in the stupid nopon village town. Running all over looking for named npcs to either report to or because a quest needs you to talk to people gets reaaaaaally tiring after 30-40-50 quests. If I had a printed out MAP with each named NPC's location dotted at what time they are there, it'd have saved me much headache.
There's also just the factor that after 70 hours with a game, it stops feeling as exciting and addicting as it did during the first 20 hours
Was already wondering where you are. And to be honest, this is exactly how I am feeling. Last week I started doing all the quests I hadn't done for like 2-3 days, the only reason for this was that I wanted the 2 "secret" skill trees. However at the end I decided its just not worth it (sadly). I was sure if I would continue I would burn out completely on this game and for sure never finish it. So right now I am just trying to get to the end. Wouldn't be wondering if lots of people complete the game without any of the additional skill trees... ( I guess having a usuable guide would prolly increase the chances a lot, but if you have to search on your own its just a pain in the a**).
Bebpo said:There really are too many quests in this game. I think doing them all kind of burned me out. I feel like the pacing of the story takes a major hit if you try to do all the sidequests, and it's probably a more enjoyable story experience if you mainly stick to the main game and then some quests here and there while exploring. I really think they should have not had any "point of no return" for quests and you should've been able to do all of them even post-game. That way you could enjoy the story and then after it's done spend 60 hours exploring and questing for whatever you haven't done already.
I just hit the last town at ~73 hours now and I dunno if I'm gonna do all the quests like I did the other towns. I'm pretty tempted to just ignore most of the quests at this point and finish the story, then reload my save from before the point of no return for quests and if I still feel like it, do the rest of the quests for another 20 hours. Also the worst freaking part of doing mass questing is in the stupid nopon village town. Running all over looking for named npcs to either report to or because a quest needs you to talk to people gets reaaaaaally tiring after 30-40-50 quests. If I had a printed out MAP with each named NPC's location dotted at what time they are there, it'd have saved me much headache.
There's also just the factor that after 70 hours with a game, it stops feeling as exciting and addicting as it did during the first 20 hours
New composers for the most part who are under Uematsu's Dog Ear Records label.
And this is why I'm not doing all the quests. Oh man. I made that mistake in ff12 + all that exploration and I waved the white flag 40 hours in. Talk about burnt out. I'm also rotating Xenoblade alongside with Super, Peace Walker, and Project Diva.
With the latest dungeon I have grown kinda frustrated with the game. The main reason for dying is either very stupid party AI or cheap enemy attacks. LIke I was fighting that one unique (I still couldn't beat) and with like 1/4 HP left that crab thing started to do rotating attacks (that easily deal 5-7k damage). No problem I saw it via vision mode and I tried to get away from it (by running a mile away). The attack starts and even I am miles away, I am getting hit. At least from normal enemies I remember I could actually escape attacks... It doesnt help really help that this unique does the rotation attack all 30-45 seconds which I can't really heal up again (Mondo shield and all kinds of buffs didnt really help either).
The current dungeon endboss isn't hard, but its inside a "lake" surrounded by poisonlike water, guess what my party AI does, it freakin goes into the water, or if it gets pushed into the water the AI doesnt care to step out of it............... freakin frustrating if you partly looses 500-700 hp all 5-10 seconds and you can't do anything about it (it shouldnt be my job to freakin navigate my AI controlled party out of the water).
The current dungeon endboss isn't hard, but its inside a "lake" surrounded by poisonlike water, guess what my party AI does, it freakin goes into the water, or if it gets pushed into the water the AI doesnt care to step out of it............... freakin frustrating if you partly looses 500-700 hp all 5-10 seconds and you can't do anything about it (it shouldnt be my job to freakin navigate my AI controlled party out of the water).
I think the only things that make battles on your level "hard" are status effects: attacks that poison, high spike damage auras, and attacks that knock everyone down and dizzy them (these are the worst). Against any of these battles I'd guess the best way to deal with them would be gems (poison defense, spike defense, dunban's skill on his hidden tree "can't be knocked down')
Also I dunno if you saw in the wiki desu, there's also hidden Monado arts (I just found on yesterday, the Monado "eater", debuffs the enemy + damage). Stuff like that makes the sidequesting cool, but yeah there's just too much and it burns you out. I wish they cut like 1/2 the quests. Colony 6 quests are pretty annoying too because you have to move all the people involved over before you can start them.
Also I dunno if you saw in the wiki desu, there's also hidden Monado arts (I just found on yesterday, the Monado "eater", debuffs the enemy + damage). Stuff like that makes the sidequesting cool, but yeah there's just too much and it burns you out. I wish they cut like 1/2 the quests. Colony 6 quests are pretty annoying too because you have to move all the people involved over before you can start them.
Bebpo said:
Yes I know, I was wondering why you got space for additional Mondo attacks ... but you don't get any. So I checked out the wiki to find that there quite a bit more to unlock. Kinda annoying that you dont get them by story quests, its almost as annoying as getting final art books.
@Bepop
Once you get access to the high level dungeon (Tephra Cave, you can pretty much gain a free level there by just gettin all the areas/obelisks, should be around 250k exp for running around). I also uploaded one of my screens where I got almost 190k for one area
.Anyway, I finished the game with 75h playtime, played a bit New Game+ (which is kinda funny...).
Here are some more screenshots of the last areas I have played before the final boss area (including some fighting pics with uniques):
The following screens are from the way that leads to the final boss battle, they look pretty cool so I took some shots, if you dont want to spoil yourself that location, please dont click the links. However, don't worry, no screens of the final boss or anything.
Buggy Loop
Member
WOW! I need this game badly
desu said:@Bepop
Once you get access to the high level dungeon (Tephra Cave, you can pretty much gain a free level there by just gettin all the areas/obelisks, should be around 250k exp for running around). I also uploaded one of my screens where I got almost 190k for one area
I've been annoyed by that elusive Tephra higher floor for ages. Do I only get there during the story events or am I missing some sort of higher jump to access those higher places? I'm currently at
Aguni Rath, right before fighting Gado in the upper level.
The Judge said:
A little further and you will trigger events that cause some changes in the world. From that point you will be able to access areas in Tephra you couldnt access before. Just teleport to the obeleisk with the water/waterfalls and there will be a huuuge whole in one of the walls you can step through. Beware monsters there are lvl 85-100 and they will rape you. Dungeon can be accessed as much as you want to.
Pinko Marx
Banned
So does anyone get crucified in this game? Its not a Xeno-game w/o crucifixion.
Since I finished the game, I wrote down some stuff, not really a review but just some stuff I liked/disliked.
Good/liked
- scenario (playing and fighting on two gigantic gods is just too awesome)
- locations (a huge variety of different locations, I think everyone should find something interesting)
- scale (the fields are just gigantic, if you come to a new region, its easily possible spending 1-3h just exploring and finding hidden stuff)
- graphics (for me personally the graphics are pretty decent for a wii game with this kind of scale!)
- rewards (you get rewards for exploring, play time rewards like doing a certain number of crafts, talking to a certain number of people, or just dying the first time, there is always something to look forward to)
- fair level system ( if you fight most of the mobs you encounter in dungeons / on the way to the next story point, you most likely have the right level to fight all bosses, no excessive grinding needed)
- visible equipment (not only while playing but also while cutscenes, this can lead to some pretty weird looking cutscenes)
- soundtrack (even Yoko Shimomura just did a small part of the soundtrack, I really liked it as a whole)
- user interface (overall very responsive, very well thought out, everything is easily accessible, everything has a symbol, just like attacks in the battle so even for importers it should be easy to grasp what a menu does)
- save/load (the longest loading is the first loading of the game, after that everything is extremely fast, especially considering how huge most of the locations are, also you can save and load where ever you want)
- landmarks (warps) (Along your way you can discovery landmarks that you can warp to whenever you wish. Most of them are set on your main route in a fair frequency.)
- playtime (average player should need 50-70h for the story and a few quests, doing everything and maybe starting new game+ you can easily spend 100-150h on the game)
- extras (new game mode+, high level dungeon, city building, completing collections, crafting and so on )
- equip/stats (tons of equip for different body parts all with a individual look, gems that change stats and give you nice extras, tons of arts and skills)
- intelligent quest mechanics (if you already have the items needed for a quest, the quest will be instantly solved once you take it. Also if the quest doesnt require you to report back, the quest is finished once you complete it, no walking back to the quest giver)
Somewhere in the middle (probably a huge taste thing, some of these things are actually good but eventually they started to annoy me)
- party AI (overall I didn't have a problem with the AI, however close to the end I had a few annoying times with the party AI where I didnt do what I wanted it to do, however overall it does a pretty good job)
- quests (When I was 30h into the game, I would have listed this as a good thing, at the end of the game the quests had me burned out quite a lot. I have no exact numbers but I wouldnt wonder if there are 200-300+ quests. Some of these are time based, so you can only take them in a certain time frame and if you don't do them, they are lost for your whole playthrough. I think a little less quests would have been okay as well. Having a perfect guide probably make the questing certainly easier, but if you spend 30min searching for a monster and then 20min for getting its rare drop, then it feels almost like playing a mmorpg).
- Additional skill trees / Monado attacks (I love additional content, however I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the people finish the game without getting even one of the two extra skill trees for each character or new Monado attacks simply because those require lots of questing. Wish you would have gotten them by story quests or at least by less overall questing).
- final art books (each art has 10 levels, the first 4 are unlocked by default, 3 more can be gained by buyable books for most of the arts, however the books that unlock the very last 3 levels are drop only. These books are very rare drops from uniques or normal monsters. Some uniques even drop up to 3 at a single time. The problem, it's all about luck. Considering there are 70+? arts it can be a total pain in the a** to get every art to the last level.
- huge enemy hit boxes (sometimes you fight a group of very big enemies, visually there is enough space between them but you still can't get through them. For instance you need to run to the back of a enemy to place your attack, but you can't get through because of the hit boxes)
- cheap enemy (boss?) attacks (I try to avoid real time system like they were a plague so my knowledge is very limited here. However some attacks (I think only some boss attacks) hit you no matter of your position, even you're a mile away from where the attack hits. At this point I wonder what's the reason to give me the freedom of movement, if I can't escape the attacks anyway, just cheap )
- fighting system (normal attacks and arts are fun, its possbile to combine arts like an art that doubles the damage together with an actual attack art, you can also do chain attacks where the time stops and you can just pull of a long chain attack. Additional there is the vision mechanic that lets you see an enemy attack that might kill you and you get a short time frame to react on this, personally I didnt really liked it because it distruptes the flow of a battle and if it happens 5-10 times it just gets annoying watching it).
Bad/disliked
- kizuna building (for me it feels way too slow to make bonds between the characters, however you need those bonds for skill links, so it is kinda annoying that it takes ages building it)
- money/shops are useless (the only thing to spend money on are art books, other than that you find better equipment very fast so its pointless buying equipment from shops)
- shop/eventory interface (it's not horrible, but it's also not really awesome either, this one could have been better)
Good/liked
- scenario (playing and fighting on two gigantic gods is just too awesome)
- locations (a huge variety of different locations, I think everyone should find something interesting)
- scale (the fields are just gigantic, if you come to a new region, its easily possible spending 1-3h just exploring and finding hidden stuff)
- graphics (for me personally the graphics are pretty decent for a wii game with this kind of scale!)
- rewards (you get rewards for exploring, play time rewards like doing a certain number of crafts, talking to a certain number of people, or just dying the first time, there is always something to look forward to)
- fair level system ( if you fight most of the mobs you encounter in dungeons / on the way to the next story point, you most likely have the right level to fight all bosses, no excessive grinding needed)
- visible equipment (not only while playing but also while cutscenes, this can lead to some pretty weird looking cutscenes)
- soundtrack (even Yoko Shimomura just did a small part of the soundtrack, I really liked it as a whole)
- user interface (overall very responsive, very well thought out, everything is easily accessible, everything has a symbol, just like attacks in the battle so even for importers it should be easy to grasp what a menu does)
- save/load (the longest loading is the first loading of the game, after that everything is extremely fast, especially considering how huge most of the locations are, also you can save and load where ever you want)
- landmarks (warps) (Along your way you can discovery landmarks that you can warp to whenever you wish. Most of them are set on your main route in a fair frequency.)
- playtime (average player should need 50-70h for the story and a few quests, doing everything and maybe starting new game+ you can easily spend 100-150h on the game)
- extras (new game mode+, high level dungeon, city building, completing collections, crafting and so on )
- equip/stats (tons of equip for different body parts all with a individual look, gems that change stats and give you nice extras, tons of arts and skills)
- intelligent quest mechanics (if you already have the items needed for a quest, the quest will be instantly solved once you take it. Also if the quest doesnt require you to report back, the quest is finished once you complete it, no walking back to the quest giver)
Somewhere in the middle (probably a huge taste thing, some of these things are actually good but eventually they started to annoy me)
- party AI (overall I didn't have a problem with the AI, however close to the end I had a few annoying times with the party AI where I didnt do what I wanted it to do, however overall it does a pretty good job)
- quests (When I was 30h into the game, I would have listed this as a good thing, at the end of the game the quests had me burned out quite a lot. I have no exact numbers but I wouldnt wonder if there are 200-300+ quests. Some of these are time based, so you can only take them in a certain time frame and if you don't do them, they are lost for your whole playthrough. I think a little less quests would have been okay as well. Having a perfect guide probably make the questing certainly easier, but if you spend 30min searching for a monster and then 20min for getting its rare drop, then it feels almost like playing a mmorpg).
- Additional skill trees / Monado attacks (I love additional content, however I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the people finish the game without getting even one of the two extra skill trees for each character or new Monado attacks simply because those require lots of questing. Wish you would have gotten them by story quests or at least by less overall questing).
- final art books (each art has 10 levels, the first 4 are unlocked by default, 3 more can be gained by buyable books for most of the arts, however the books that unlock the very last 3 levels are drop only. These books are very rare drops from uniques or normal monsters. Some uniques even drop up to 3 at a single time. The problem, it's all about luck. Considering there are 70+? arts it can be a total pain in the a** to get every art to the last level.
- huge enemy hit boxes (sometimes you fight a group of very big enemies, visually there is enough space between them but you still can't get through them. For instance you need to run to the back of a enemy to place your attack, but you can't get through because of the hit boxes)
- cheap enemy (boss?) attacks (I try to avoid real time system like they were a plague so my knowledge is very limited here. However some attacks (I think only some boss attacks) hit you no matter of your position, even you're a mile away from where the attack hits. At this point I wonder what's the reason to give me the freedom of movement, if I can't escape the attacks anyway, just cheap )
- fighting system (normal attacks and arts are fun, its possbile to combine arts like an art that doubles the damage together with an actual attack art, you can also do chain attacks where the time stops and you can just pull of a long chain attack. Additional there is the vision mechanic that lets you see an enemy attack that might kill you and you get a short time frame to react on this, personally I didnt really liked it because it distruptes the flow of a battle and if it happens 5-10 times it just gets annoying watching it).
Bad/disliked
- kizuna building (for me it feels way too slow to make bonds between the characters, however you need those bonds for skill links, so it is kinda annoying that it takes ages building it)
- money/shops are useless (the only thing to spend money on are art books, other than that you find better equipment very fast so its pointless buying equipment from shops)
- shop/eventory interface (it's not horrible, but it's also not really awesome either, this one could have been better)