Nintendo Power is back in the form of a podcast now. Sweet, I recently got into podcasts and its nice to know that this is a thing.
Nintendo Switch
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12-23-2017, 07:41 AM
And after 170 hours in i couldn't wait anymore doing sidequests and finished Xenoblade 2. Well let's just say it left me with a smile on my face after the ending credits. I dare say that it is the title i enjoyed the most this year for the switch leaving behind Botw and Mario Odyssey. What can i say i am a sucker for a good story and jrpgs, the legend of heroes series with their deep storytelling for example is also among my favorite. For Botw while i loved the gameplay i disliked the story telling and Odyssey while i also enjoyed the gameplay it was short especially compared to the other 2. Today also a patch that improves the map and mini-map was released, seems more practical now but nothing regarding performance seems fixed.
Ok, I know I've talked about Xenoblade 2 a lot here but, I need to rant. No spoilers or anything.
Xenoblade 2 is not a good game. Emphasis on game. The narrative is great, the music is SOOO good, the characters and worlds are very good (poor character design aside), and I want to play it to see how the narrative plays out. But this is a video game, and the majority of ones time in the game is spent *playing* said game. And playing the later parts of this game is awful. Sure gameplay was okish earlier in the game, but it gets worse, and worse, and worse. And not simply an increase in challenge, oh no, that would be fine, I mean less refined, more punishing, and more broken. The balancing and difficulty curve have fallen apart! I'm in a stretch of the game nearish to the end (chapter 7) where it's been one disaster after another. Despite tons of grinding and being obscenely over-leveled, the game is punishing and brutal; dripping narrative as slowly as it can between awful, unfair, punishing, unfun padding. Today I finally cleared a really difficult boss (12 levels above and I still required luck to win), then after a few hours of play (including lots of side quests and even more leveling!) I was hit with yet another difficulty spike, and its even beyond all of the leveling I did so I have to do yet more grinding. UGH! That's like the 7th one in the bloody game, and the second one I've hit in the past day! There is only so far a great narrative can carry bad gameplay, especially in the era of streaming and letsplays. For the past week or so, I haven't enjoyed most of Xenoblade 2. Sure there were some good moments here and there with the characters and narrative, but the majority of it has been spent grinding. If our PS4 didn't break, I'd just be playing Horizon Zero Dawn and probably wouldn't touch Xenoblade 2 again. Honestly, I still might just get another game anyway to tide me over until the PS4 is repaired... If only Xenoblade 2 had a Story difficulty like Horizon Zero Dawn. Every game should have that! Intel Xeon w7-3465X OC | Asus Pro WS W790-E Sage SE | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 FE | 8x16GiB G-Skill Zeta R5 DDR5-6000 | Windows 11 22H2 | (details)
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(12-30-2017, 07:20 PM)MayImilae Wrote: Xenoblade 2 is not a good game. I KNEW IT! You finally regret buying it, do you? Ugh, having a console breaking down is the worst there is. Hopefully you manage to get your PS4 repaired. If not, know that there is always room for one more PC gamer. Luckely, quite a few PS-exclusive developers are turning towards Steam these days. Intel Xeon w7-3465X OC | Asus Pro WS W790-E Sage SE | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 FE | 8x16GiB G-Skill Zeta R5 DDR5-6000 | Windows 11 22H2 | (details)
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First it is denial, but this must already be the anger phase. Eventually you seek to make a compromise with the game, until you understand there is no point in playing it anymore. It all ends with you accepting the game sucked and was not worth your money and time.
In the end, everyone does. Just wait. The quests that begs to be answered, how worth is it to play through the poor gameplay just for the story only. 12-31-2017, 05:33 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-31-2017, 05:48 AM by Link_to_the_past.)
(12-30-2017, 07:20 PM)MayImilae Wrote: Ok, I know I've talked about Xenoblade 2 a lot here but, I need to rant. No spoilers or anything. Wait, you found it difficult? Especially the main story to progress? Only unique monsters (which can be brutal even at low levels) and higher level enemies are difficult for me, from the main story only the final boss took me a second try because i ignored the spawned enemies. Perhaps you miss something in combat or don't have a balanced team? Best results are when you use a healer, a tank and an attack member, if you go all attack you will lose. You should also seek to do elemental seals to be able to attain higher levels of chain combos and leave the chain combo for the end of a battle to finish off an enemy. The game isn't THAT hard, my gut feeling is that you are probably missing something. Edit: Ah plus the break, topple, launch mechanism, if your party members have attacks that can cause the break status, then topple them and then launch the enemies you can gain many precious seconds that the enemies can't respond and take increased damage. 12-31-2017, 12:17 PM
I also didn't run into any of the difficulty issues you mentioned--I only needed to outright grind a few times, and not for that long, either. I also didn't go out of my way to do tons of quests, so I wasn't overleveled or anything. I hear people talk about a difficulty spike in general in the game, but I never really ran into that. Sure, a few bosses took me a couple of tries, but that's par for the course in Xenoblade games for me--the first game was the exact same way. Would you mind sharing (in spoiler tags, of course) what you're finding difficult? I could obviously be wrong, but I honestly think you might just be missing something or don't have a good setup. I'd like to help, since I thought the game was almost just as fun as the first one, and I'm still having fun questing after I've beaten the game.
12-31-2017, 02:06 PM
I'm only 5.5 hours in (got it for Christmas) so I can't say much. I like it so far, but already there are like 6 different systems/sub-systems/mechanics to get familiar with, whereas with Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii it was like 4 (and all for battle-related stuff). It's nothing I can't handle (I'm not that old yet) but it's all a bit much compared to the XBC1.
I can't bear myself to play it on my HDTV though, not with family around. Pyra keeps bouncing around the screen and so do her, um, assets... @Maylmilae - Off-topic, but what are your thoughts on Horizon Zero Dawn (if you've played it so far)? Personally, it's my GOTY 12-31-2017, 03:12 PM
@Shonumi - It's *fantastic*! Like, Breath of the Wild good! When I first started it, once I got into the main open area before the proving, I just spent hours and hours playing around and learning the mechanics and doing side quests, and not even caring about the story! It's that good~! And it certainly put Xenoblade 2 in a different lens, that's for sure.
Combat is really great too. It's punishing if you are careless, but really satisfying if you take your time and are careful! And the fact that I can adjust the difficulty whenever I want is soooo nice, from story all the way up to utter insanity. I mean it when I say that should just be in every game! Speaking of Xenoblade 2... I'm just going to put it off to the side for a while and wait for a patch. At this point the game is so utterly brokenly unfair that I don't think a rebalancing patch is even practical. So hopefully they add an easy mode, or even better a story difficulty mode. If they don't... well, I guess I'm done with it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Intel Xeon w7-3465X OC | Asus Pro WS W790-E Sage SE | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 FE | 8x16GiB G-Skill Zeta R5 DDR5-6000 | Windows 11 22H2 | (details)
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