@Zero

Bosses of main missions will have an invisible barrier, preventing you from running away.

Oh yeah that is right. Would only work on the sidequest stuff then.

I beat the game, but wtf at that post credits ending; does this mean that there will be a Xenoblade Chronicles X 2?

So I just started playing this after getting it as a Christmas gift two years ago. My wife was out of town this weekend, so it was just me and the dog. I started Friday afternoon, and by the time I went to bed last night, I was...sixteen hours in. Yep. Something about me and open world games of the right calibur (this, Zelda, and FFXV (to a degree)) sucks me in hard.

Anyway, I'm in the fourth chapter, enjoying traversing Mira with my crew and the nuances of combat make it feel familiar with Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii, but deeper. I'm guessing things change even more once I get a Skell. I'm also guessing that won't happen for quite some time, seeling as my BLADE rank is only 4 at the moment...

The game is gorgeous, and the music is growing on me. I wasn't a huge fan of some of the tunes at first, but over time, I'm coming to appreciate the direction the game went in.

It feels like Xenoblade Chronicles, but it's definitely its own thing. I would buy this again on the Switch.

@ludist210

I haven't played it in quite awhile - I do enjoy it but it's just been so hard to find time to play these types of games.

With my Xenoblade 2 business not yet started, I am playing this again. About to enter Chapter 9, which I know is more than halfway there but I still feel underpowered. Kinda having a hard time getting my bearings again but alas, I'll figure it out.

@DrFinkelstein

I felt underpowered through the entire game. The last boss fight was a nightmare. Took 11 million tries.

@J.K. Riki

Do you remember your level at that point?

The last few chapters are where the difficulty really ramps up, so you may want to consider doing some more of the side stuff to level up skills / classes and find good equipment for your characters and Skells, which will include investing in the companies or whatever they were called.

@Mop it up

Yeah.... the final battle was such a nightmare, that none of that stuff really made a difference, no matter how many extra quests and leveling up I did.

I found the ending a bit easy except for the one super cheap part which still was a bit easy even though I died on it once. But I did a LOT of side stuff / leveling up before going to the end. I found a place to level up pretty quickly near the end if anyone gets there and needs it.

Zero said:

Welp, finished it. I had 4 level 50 skells and 4 level 60 characters and... the end was almost a letdown in how easy it was. For most of the whole end sequence I barely lost any health at all. I did die once at the super cheap very end part where your skells lose their fuel but even then everyone else in my party had a lot of health and the boss was almost dead so I was sitting there watching the seconds count down thinking hey, maybe they will finish it without me. But alas, they did not.

@Zero

It's the super cheap part that totally ruined the endgame for me. Introducing a new fighting mechanic in the 2nd half of the final boss battle? Ridiculous.

And don't come back with "you could fight on foot all the time!" garbage. Face it, once you got your skell, you rarely every left it.

It was definitely cheap. As an aspiring game designer I try to think about design issues and I have a huge pet peeve about introducing new mechanics and making them hard enough that someone might get stuck on something totally unrelated to everything up to that point. I recall someone saying once that they gave up on Resident Evil 4 because they couldn't get past the boulder part. If someone is giving up on your otherwise awesome game because of a button mashing part, you probably screwed something up.

I never lost during the final chapter, the one that gave me trouble was the tenth chapter since my Skells weren't quite prepared for it.

Definitive Edition announced!

I figured that would be happening eventually.

I liked the game but I'm fine with it the way it is. The only way I'd consider buying it again would be if they added full-on multiplayer for the entire game, but they're not gonna do that.

I will not play this game again unless it's confirmed the final boss has been changed. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

I never finished the Wii U version, so... I will be picking this up.

@ludist210

Same. I found it VERY hard to get back into and understand what I needed to do after taking a break shortly after getting my mech.

It's been a blemish on my gaming history since. I'll buy it on Switch.