Xenoblade discussions

Originally Posted by Guacamole

Hint: If you want have an easier, less intense (but still satisfying) combat experience, play as Sharla. It's pretty fun being the medic/long range fighter.

Play as Dunban.

Trust me.

Just remember to draw aggro and kick ass.

Yep. Gale Slash and the accompanying break/topple combo is just so satisfying.

Originally Posted by Double gAy

I'm at the Satorl Marsh and I've just recieved Dunban as a team member. After fiddling around with equipment, I've gotten him to 90 agility. I hear that he is superior to Reyn as a tank because of his high agility. Should I completely ditch Reyn at this point?

Yeah, Reyn pretty much becomes useless at that point.

Have a party of only Shulk, Dunban and Reyn.

It's good to experiment.

Wait, is it out in the US already? Am I missing something here?

I need the game now, I am confused

It came out on Good Friday, Gamestop exclusive (although you can still buy it directly from Nintendo) so they're more like "exclusive retail"

Originally Posted by insaney

Have a party of only Shulk, Dunban and Reyn.

It's good to experiment.

I've been using Reyn a lot more in my second playthrough, true, but I want to max out the affinity between all my characters. :3 I didn't get to see all the heart-to-hearts last time.


A word of warning to new players - there are some quests that are timed in the sense that once you pass a certain point in the story, you can't complete them anymore. They're the ones with the clocks next to them.

Also, holy ♥♥♥♥ - I take back what I said about Reyn being completely useless. I just saw a Youtube video of a level 56 team consisting of Shulk, Reyn and Dunban (without armour!) taking down a level 98 dinosaur. That's just insane.

Didn't they just keep Toppling it? If so, it's a little less impressive for it.

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In other news, I just got Melia and Riki in my party. The team I used last was Dunban, Shulk and Sharla. I'm dead-set on keeping Dunban as my lead because he's simply that satisfying to use (for multiple reasons). I'm also quite reluctant to lose Sharla, since she's an effective healer that can de-aggro herself.

So at this point, I'm really tossing up the last space in my party between Shulk, Reyn and the two aforementioned spoilertagg'd characters, for when I'm not taking out bosses. I'm aware of the strengths and weaknesses of Reyn and Shulk, but I'm not certain about the strengths and weaknesses of the other two.

Naked Dunban with a ton of Agility gems is the best tank in the game.

Originally Posted by Double gAy

Didn't they just keep Toppling it? If so, it's a little less impressive for it.

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In other news, I just got Melia and Riki in my party. The team I used last was Dunban, Shulk and Sharla. I'm dead-set on keeping Dunban as my lead because he's simply that satisfying to use (for multiple reasons). I'm also quite reluctant to lose Sharla, since she's an effective healer that can de-aggro herself.

So at this point, I'm really tossing up the last space in my party between Shulk, Reyn and the two aforementioned spoilertagg'd characters, for when I'm not taking out bosses. I'm aware of the strengths and weaknesses of Reyn and Shulk, but I'm not certain about the strengths and weaknesses of the other two.

I personally always found the Shulk/Dunban/Sharla team to be the best in the game, but both of those characters are very worthy additions to any team. If you're going to have Melia in your team though, it'd be wisest to have her as the lead character, since her AI is ridiculously horrible.

Originally Posted by Double gAy

Didn't they just keep Toppling it? If so, it's a little less impressive for it.

Topple Locking is the only way to defeat higher level enemies. You literally have to abuse it for Avalanche Abaasy, who is level 120 (level 99 is the cap)

Originally Posted by cloneofshadow

Naked Dunban with a ton of Agility gems is the best tank in the game.

Naked Dunban while useful and amusing for a small while is a terrible idea late game. An ether attack (which he can't dodge) can do so much damage it's not even funny. It's only worth it if you have THE dedicated healer, Sharla, who, IMO, takes up a useful spot on the team and doesn't do much but heal.

Dunban in light armor with agi gems is your best bet.

Shulk/Dunban/Sharla is a team that hardly ever goes down.
Shulk/7th/Dunban is a team where your party gauge flies up so fast, you won't even notice it. 7th and Dunban draw most of the fire and both their agility stats are high enough to dodge most attacks. 7th can also auto-regen a bit of health and can minimize the damage of physical attacks that can't be dodged. 7th also double attacks like crazy--give her double attack gems and then link the Each Double Hit = Critical skill.

I've heard tales of Melia/Riki/Dunban being perfect for guys like Avalanche Abaasy. Melia can topple lock like a boss. Also Melia/7th/Riki as well, since 7th has Final Cross which can immediately topple once her tension his high. Melia's buffs really help.

Oh, and you can also get Melia to fire her summons rather than standing around using the Focus Attack command.

Jeez, Xenoblade is taking a long time to come here. I, hopefully, will get this game before my vacation ends.

I got the game Friday and have about 10 hours clocked in. I'm level 20 so far, I mainly play as Shulk, with Reyn and Sharla as teammates, and just arrived at Colony 6. It's pretty good, though I did have a hard time locating Colony 6. I really wish you could set custom destinations on the map and make secondary quests the primary one (so you can have the compass to locate objectives). Also, do your characters ever stop talking in battle? Man, what a bunch of jokers! Let's talk on and on and on!

No, your characters never stop talking. A nice thing is that the conversations differ and start changing depending on the affinities between characters.

Set the VA to Japanese. The battlecries begin to sound a little badass when you do that (partially because I don't know what they're saying), as opposed to completely awkward.

The last JRPG I really got into (story wise) was Final Fantasy X. I haven't attempted at another JRPG since.

This game looks really interesting, and the reviews I've been reading make it sound phenomenal.

Is the game worth the full retail price?

Definitely, it's a fantastic game and friggin' huge, so you're definitely getting your money's worth. It's actually my second most played Wii game ever, only beaten out by Smash Bros. Brawl.

So, here are my thoughts on the game so far:

+ I have been playing for just shy of 30 hours and just got to Achamoth; I've been generally charting out areas completely as I go (I got a bit lazy at Eryth Sea)
- I am going to be very, very pissed if Achamoth is as boring as it seems from my first impression of it, especially since Frontier Village was by comparison really, really awesome
+ Opening areas were awesome, loved how the open areas were full of nooks and crannies to explore and running into high-level monsters at intervals was fun
+ Contrast of open areas with maze-like caverns was good
- Although the lower floors of the Colony 6 Mines annoyed the ♥♥♥♥ out of me
+ Favorite moment so far was seeing the falls in the distance in Makna Forest, then actually being able to swim up to them
+ Battle system is nice, I like how it's more involving than FFXII (the number of options in that game was good, but the automation was not) and the differentiation between characters is spot-on
- My main problem is that managing aggro is a pain in the ass unless you use specific combinations of characters
+ Melia and Riki are both hella fun to play as
+ Quests aren't too bad, since generally you can complete them as you explore naturally
- It's a pain in the ass to track down and keep track of all of the Quest NPCs
- Because quests give you Experience, Weapons, AND Gems I'm a bit overpowered which has taken most of the strategy out of everything that isn't a boss battle/unique monster (when I play as Shulk, most of the time it's more effective/faster to just string Arts for fast attacks than try to manage aggro/break/topple and actually use his skills properly)
- Related point: I haven't found Gem Crafting to be especially useful so far, since I get better Gems just by completing quests... I'm assuming that once I build up my affinity more this will change, however

Gem crafting should come into play pretty early if you want to take advantage of the game's system. Once you rack up enough crystals you can go back and try your hand at crafting. It's always good to have some really good gems for Dunban (Agility and Aggro), Melia (ether), and just generally good to have some fine defense and such.

In other words, rack up a good bit of crystals, craft like crazy.

And yeah, since Affinity plays a huge part in crafting, you might want to choose characters who have a higher affinity between them.

Another problem I've had-
This game is so unkind to SD televisions that my eyes scream at me any time text appears on screen.