Board 8 > Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Discussion Topic 2: Show me your Big Dorrick

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'll still give 1 the narrow edge, but it's close because the gameplay of 3 is so good

3 > 2 > 1 overall. Sidequests make a big difference. Main story is something like 1 > 3 >= 2. 3's main advantage storywise is the chemistry of the main cast

Since we're ranking the games

1 > 3 > 2 > X

And I love X a lot. It had the weakest story and characters of course but the scope of its open-world still hasn't been matched by anything and I doubt any game will for a while. Flying around in a Skell is just amazing. That said, I think the other games are just better. Xenoblade 2 is an awesome game but with some major flaws. The highs far far outweigh the lows. I wouldn't say 3 is close to 1 because Xenoblade 1 is literally a Top 10 game for me but it is without a doubt the 2nd best game in this excellent series. Chapter 5 of Xenoblade 3 is possibly the highest point of the series. Nothing has evoked that much emotion from me while playing the game from a JRPG in quite a while.

Oh and Xenoblade 3 has the best side quests I have played in a video game. I can safely say it has dethroned The Witcher 3 in that regard for me.

3 >= X = Torna >> 2 > 1

I feel like I'm in bizarro world where I'm the one of all people the most dissatisfied with a Xenoblade game, but it's really been a big miss for me in so many categories that I really don't have to think twice about putting it last.

Side-quest praise kinda baffles me - I agree that's where the real meat of the game is, but to me that's more because the main story is so very lacking rather than the side-quests truly being exceptional or anything. Yeah there's some good ones but there's still very much a number that are either annoying (story-wise) or just really boring, and there is a lot. It's weird for me because I didn't really have this issue before.

If I were to try to pin down a reason I think my issue with the sidequests is with the populations of the world being so segmented into their tiny little Colonies, and each one then needs such a heavy bloat of characters that are largely forgettable - with I think exception to Colony 0 that does a good job of really making you get to know everybody.

I know people complain about the abundance of XB1 quests but I truthfully got such a strong impact from the overall relationships of its worlds residents and even getting to decide the fates among them. Also weirdly it probably helps that they don't have cutscenes since I can just read through the story instead of slowing down for so much frankly uninteresting cutscenes to play out.

But XB1's Affinity Chart always felt like such a special accomplishment to get all mapped out and ultimately having everyone connected, whereas in XB3 it's just such a massive mess and I don't feel anything for it. Colony 6 then being the ultimate culmination of your journey in the world, gradually growing the town from rubble and inviting residents from each of the major regions to inhabit it, then offering their own quests and further relationships because of those choices you made. You just don't get any connection like that with all these tiny colonies.

I can fondly remember back to so many rather small-time questlines in XB1 because of the bonds I have attached to those involved, whether it's just showing the power of friendship to Paolo & Narine, or of course taking down the nopon drug smuggling ring. Honestly when I remember XB3 sidequests what sticks out is how much I hate Kite, and recently Koji of Lambda. Okay being fair you can't remember Kite without remembering the highlight of Zeon & Juniper but still oof the annoying ones really stick out when they have a cutscene to 'em.

Honestly though even for like Heroes I would end up incredibly disappointed in how little they actually got to shine. Like I looooved getting Ashera... but then she doesn't really get anything until her ascension which has to wait until Chap 7 and you can spend like a hundred hours getting to that point with her forgotten. Sure her Ascension brings back the nice relationship of Ashera & Eunie but ugh I wish there was more.

Man I can write so much more about this but scrolling up and realizing how much I typed already is telling me to stop.... but fuck I hate how all the colonies have to culminate into some big cliched happy family bit. So many times there's just some asshole and it goes down the route of oh he has a reason to be an asshole and in the end we all get along and work together :) ugh, XB1 doesn't have to treat its NPCs like that, some arcs are people getting ostracized out of town hell yeah you better run Debaba.

Really a just felt the music wasn't as good

after all that big post tho i do wanna highlight a good moment I had with a sidequest for Triton, in the city. Fetching a Bright Fig for his dear old friend. During the mission I was thinking to myself "man it'd be so good if we got him this fig but then when we return the old man's dead"... and then it happened lmao. Props, you did good here xb3. I was skeptical because of Gray's Ascension quest not having the balls to stick with Traitor Rozana, but yay we got the bright fig ending right

I just found out that Unlimited Sword being active at the end of a battle will disable Soul Hack on Noah. I guess I'll just have to kill those UMs again. >_>

TeamRocketElite posted...

I just found out that Unlimited Sword being active at the end of a battle will disable Soul Hack on Noah. I guess I'll just have to kill those UMs again. >_>

I caught this thankfully early since I noticed the "Skill Acquired" bit didn't pop and suspected that was the issue so yeah now I just don't trust Noah to be the one with Soul Hack.

Lanz was just my full time Soul Hacker at the end

Noah - Swordfighter
Mio - Troubadour
Eunie - Incursor
Taion - Ogre
Lanz - Soulhacker
Sena - Signifer

I was going through all the UMs that I killed already. Some of them I already Soul Hacked so I didn't think much of not getting a "Skill Acquired" ending. But, after a while I checked my Soul Hack list and noticed I was missing skills that I was supposed to have and realized the problem.

It wouldn't surprise me if Unlimited Sword just ignores all of Noah's equipped abilities and just replaces them with a predetermined set.

Yeah people saying the side quests in XB3 were the best ever are very confusing to me. The blade quests in XB2 were better because they actually had some variety. It feels like every characters journey in this game was realizing that war is bad which got old immediately. I'm simplifying obviously but yeah I didn't feel great about XB3 overall.

The cast was the best out of any of the games and the plot was the worst, even including side quests. The combat was just doing chain attacks that take 80% of the bosses health so I'm a little lost on how people were drawn in by that either but the combat in every XB game is pretty weak.

2 >>> 3 >>>>> 1

None of these games really blew me away or would rank in my top 10 JRPGs but I did enjoy playing them. They're better than Tales games at least.

I finished Soul Hacking all the UMs. I don't really want to grind up all the skills so I guess I'm done with the game until DLC comes out. It took me 200 hours to beat the game and my final game time is 262 hours. Grinding for X Gems is a bad idea. Don't do it.

thankfully Splatoon came out to take me away from gem grinding

that plus Soul Hacker upgrades is what I left off... I might come back eventually and progress them but I dunno

Done with level X Gem grinding. That was fucking terrible. Guess I'm finally done with the game.

Edit: Not touching upgrading the Soul Hacker skills with a ten-foot pole.

Amazing game. Solid recommend for JRPG fans but yeah don't do the grindy stuff unless you actively enjoy them. That is coming from someone who plays his game with a completionist mindset.

Expansion Pack Phase 2 on October 13th.

New Hero is named Ino. Looks like a robot/android girl of some kind. Class Name was "Noponic Champion."

Challenge battles too and at least some of the rewards are swimsuits for the main party.

October 13th is so far away :(

damn i need swimsuit eunie for story purposes but waiting a month...

Now that the Direct is over, I'll see if I can make out a few more details here. I'll tag them in case anyone doesn't want to know. They're all about the new hero, something that got a "what" reaction from me live I see is marked as a Challenge Battle by the Direct so false alarm there probably and no need to speculate on it.

Noponic Champion is a Defender, but where "Class" would be on the menu is "Inoswap" which makes the heavy Poppi vibes I got from her seem to bear out. Definitely looks like you have some control over her arts/skills loadout based on the brief screens we get. Her Chain Order (or at least one of them?) shows as "Increase Damage Ratio by 265 percentage points."

KommunistKoala posted...

damn i need swimsuit eunie for story purposes but waiting a month...

If you have to beat the challenge bosses to get swimsuits, doing it before completing the main story may be tough.

Hmm, been hearing speculation that (XB2/XB3 spoilers) Ino might be Rex's daughter with Poppi based on the details revealed about her on the Xenoblade Twitter? Would be interesting...

yes please god please make it happen

i would die laughing

That would be the worst and best thing ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3If_wQDf0E

Mio is the greatest to do it since Queen Elly

Just started this week and I have to say the plot/setting is already very getting me hooked.
Music is excellent of course as well.

Is the Agnus battle system closer to XB2? I skipped that game, but I noticed the Keves team fights a lot like the starting group of XB1

That's correct yes, they split it up like that for convenience

Okay but the best thing on an affinity chart ever is bitchqueen

Just got done with the start of Chapter 6. Yowza

Been on radio silence and finally beating it tonight!

Chapter 5

hey i know that statue

Chapter 6 early spoilers
I saw the dark mist for the Cloudkeep up in the snowy area, so I wanted to see if it was visible back at the very beginning of the game. Go back and look up and sure enough, there are some white clouds that are a solid object, especially when viewed through the body of a party member!

One of the things I liked going back to do was go to different parts of the world and look for the Agnus Castle. I'm sure I saw it at some point but I don't remember seeing it from across the world so early. So much easier to be distracted by the big sword.

And then getting to the place and hearing the arrangement of Drifting Soul ahh that brought me joy

Edit: dromarchs head above the door D:

Good lord the sea is so big

Just a few more days until the next DLC wave comes out.

I wonder what the new hero outfit will look like on the playable characters.

Man people werent kidding about chapter 5

finished right under 125 hours (124:59) great stuff

So I have not read the thread at all. Just popping in to say that I'm finally playing this. I guess I'm at the end of Chapter 2 right now.

As someone who really disliked XBC2 and quit playing because I couldn't handle the Loli robot... this is much better. The battles still feel kind of slow and boring though. Really needs to open up more than four/five moves at a time. Battles feel less overly complicated but almost to a fault.

Story wise this feels like an above average Tales of game with better production values... which is again an improvement over XBC2 but a step back from 1. The characters are good, but I can't help but think they would work better if they were introduced over the span of a larger time period than all at once. Weirdly enough I think this game would've been better with a "childhood arc" and a timeskip instead of flashbacks.

The initial premise of the game is pretty good, but how it's developing is already giving me cause for concern. What is up with these villains? Too much cheese. Also not sure why they had to incorporate re-classing as part of the narrative and not just a game mechanic, but whatever.

Anyway... I probably won't finish this but I'm enjoying it well enough.

Thought this bump was gonna be about the DLC, which I believe should be live in just a minute.

"The Xenoblade 3 topic is getting a lot of discussion the update must be up now"

Update is live.

I'll have to check it out this weekend

yeah probably not gonna get the dlc on this! had no idea it was coming out soon so sorry for jumping the gun

also I appreciate the nods to Xenogears (the Aveh/Kislev parallel, the mech designs...I guess that's it so far)

Ino is going to be divisive among the fanbase.

Is it me or is Sena's voice very different in the DLC?