@r_hjort I just came here to say this! Wow, that was a lot. Everything Everywhere All at Once!

Ended up beating the game today. Fantastic game, but the end game was definitely the weakest part of the whole package, I think.

The final dungeon was very drawn out, with nothing much happening, and with very little variety to anything. The final boss fight didn't really have a gameplay gimmick to set it apart from other battles, and I feel like I've had much more epic fights against named monsters before. At least in terms of the actual fighting. The cutscenes with all the mech (mecha?) fighting were neat.

Coming off that impressive chapter transition we talked about earlier, most of the plot development and dialogue just felt cheesy and melodramatic, and they kept hammering home the same message over and over, which felt borderline insulting considering how the game has been promoting the same goddamn idea for two thirds of the game already.

The actual ending and the connections to the previous games were great, though. Extremely bittersweet. Got me a bit choked up, I'll admit.

Can't wait to see what kind of adventures we'll get in the DLC, come Christmas... *checks calendar* ...of fucking next year.

I’m a real fan of this one. I can’t recall how many hours I’m in but my party is at level 63 or so.

Like the 2nd game there are areas I’m still not grasping in terms of battle. Although I find this one way easier to grasp overall.
The “tree” or whatever is lost on me - I keep unlocking stuff but I don’t know if I’m taking full advantage of the new skills.

Also -I’m at the point where some of my characters can level up past 10 on certain classes - is there a visual indicator telling me what ones they are or do I have to try and use coins as a test to see if I can go higher then the first limit

Some heroes have some unique abilities that I’m trying to understand as well - I think some of you may know
Who I’m talking about.

I’m not sure when the Best time is to get the DLC. I’m not overly excited for the recent hero but I don’t know if I will enjoy the majority of the dlc as I’m playing it for the first time or after I beat it.

Still - this game is wonderful. Great trilogy to have on switch.

Well, I'm at 87 hours somehow and I guess the end must be coming soon-ish. I did an... ok... job of not getting too overleveled for a lot of the game but once I hit the Wind Waker aka water area it seems the sidequests just didn't end. And then all of the ascension quests start unlocking too and I wasn't even seeking them out but I stumbled on like 5 or 6 of them, I feel like if I did actually seek them out I would have never gotten back to the main quest.

So yeah, I'm like 8 levels ahead of the main quest again despite having like 6 or 7 open quests and a bunch more I could go seek out if I wanted to. Ah well.

Also I've been marking anything on the map I'm not quite ready for yet and I just FINALLY realized that there is only 1 marker and every time you mark something it unmarks the last thing. OOF. How the heck are you supposed to keep track of everything in this game? Not only does it need multi marking but it should let you mark things with a level so you can just look at the map and see what stuff you're ready for now.

Anyway there are probably like 20 or so named beasts + assorted other stuff I wasn't ready for yet and "marked" and now I will probably never see it again. It is what it is.

I beat the game yesterday. 132 total hours. I didn't even get to do all the Hero Quests. Unsure if I want to go back and even find them all, TBH.

The final dungeon/boss was a draaaaag. My characters were level 88, and the enemies were still so aggressive despite being 20 levels below me. It just became annoying getting sucked into battles that I had zero chance of losing. But I did enjoy the end and the whole worlds splitting apart thing. Definitely the most comprehensive, well put together Xenoblade yet.

Anyone else getting into the new DLC? The new hero and the challenges?

I told myself I wouldn't go back to the game anytime soon, but the DLC pull was just too strong. Holy crap this game's good, you guys.

That new hero Ino is pretty cool, if (purposely, I assume) annoying. It's cool to see another artificial blade running around. Especially since Poppi made her surprise appearance late in the main game.

I guess my main question with the dlc would be does it manage the over leveling thing better than the main game? That's really the main thing that has held this back from being one of my all time favorite RPGs in my eyes. It still comes close at times but then other times I'm way overleveled and just going through the motions.

@Zero
The new hero quest is a lower level type quest, presumably to make the hero character available to as many players as possible, but certain aspects of the game connected to the hero and their development seem to be all over the place, level wise.

If you want a challenge, though, I guess you can play the...well, challenges.

Well damn, finished the game. I did basically every sidequest I found, explored every area. I'd been holding off on using bonus xp so I was level 80 when I finished, but then I kept going and used my bonus xp to get to 95 and went to this area with a bunch of level 95-100 enemies and it was a pretty meaty area, a nice cap to the experience. Couldn't quite do everything there though, a few higher leveled super bosses that instantly destroyed me.

133 hours was my total. There is a lot more that I could do (apparently there are 4 super bosses then 4 more super duper bosses?) but I think I'm done... for now.

So I've been saying it might top the original, and at times and well... it came close! But not quite for me. The main thing holding it back was, as I've said many times at this point, it's too easy to get way too overleveled. I wish it were balanced better so that you could do a bunch of side stuff but still feel tension in the difficulty.

Other than that though, what a game. Great story, liked the characters, awesome music, huge and excellent map with so much to do. The exploration and sidequests were the real stars of course. The Xenoblade series had felt a bit like diminishing returns to me with X and 2, both of which I liked well enough but didn't absolutely love, but now it feels back on the right track. I never bothered playing Torna but if 3 gets DLC that substantial I might check it out.

With that said, if I could design the next game, here is what I'd do:
-Make it harder, maybe not by a ton, but enough so that there is tension and you need to push yourself more
-Make it so that you could mark up the map more, or have it auto-mark stuff you find but haven't finished yet (especially the unique named super enemies)
-Fix up the equip system. It was a bit confusing and I still don't understand why certain accessories appear and disappear
-Work on the battle system a bit... it's somehow simultaneously super complex but also feels very button mashy. I'd add more depth / make the enemy encounters feel more unique

I have yet to play this, and it's still sitting shrink wrapped in my living room. Do you ever just have a game or movie that you're dying to play, but need the exact right moment? I just haven't wanted to sink my teeth into this, even though XB1 and 2 (and to a lesser extent, X) are some of my favorite games of the last 15 years.

@PogueSquadron
I'm in that situation all the time. I love the Etrian Odyssey series more than most other non-Nintendo series out there (it might actually be my absolute favourite outside Ninty, now that I think about it), but I've barely started playing Etrian Odyssey V, and I've got a copy of Etrian Odyssey Nexus that I haven't even touched. I feel like I want to give them the time and attention that they truly deserve, which means that I simply don't play them at all.

@r_hjort

ARG!

Im agreeing with you on all points about the end game here but I’m pissed. Poor game design here at this moment - I honesty can’t believe it plays out this way.

So it’s midnight and I’ve been playing awhile ..
and I get to the Theatre. I’m level 77 and at the point of no return. I decide to go for it and 1.5hrs later on the last phase (there are 5?!?!)and my party dies. I just stare at the screen in disbelief and can’t believe I have to try and do it all over again. I read on the web that you can’t even skip the cutscenes the second time around ….
Now I feel that I have to really cheat this game and spend another 4 hrs leveling up to like - 86 or something stupid just to survive the bosses final form. I’m really disappointed in how this is designed. 1.5hr boss fight with cut scenes is just excessive without having some kind of option to go to a check point or something.

@Smerd
Yeah, that part of the game is just kind of bad. It's as if the game was too good overall and they just had to take things down a notch.

@r_hjort

Soo where do you suggest I level up? Stay in the last area or go somewhere else? What level where you at? Who was your hero at the time ? More healers or attackers?

I may not attempt this for awhile still a bit bummed about it

@Smerd
I honestly don't remember what level I was at, but I remember not having to level up as much as I thought. Come to think of it, I don't remember much of my general strategy, but I do think my hero was a healer, for safety. I think I had more tanks and healers than attackers in the end there, 'cause my problem was my healers getting wiped and not having anyone to resurrect them. I think that what you need might not necessarily be what I needed, 'cause there are a lot of different variables to parties and characters after all. But I do think you should focus on keeping your interlink levels high and performing chain attacks whenever you feel like things aren't going your way.

You can stay in the last area, 'cause that's probably where you want to be if you're just looking for a consistent stream of high level enemies, but since that place is kind of boring I decided to go traveling instead. It might have been slightly less efficient in terms of time spent, but finding new places, finishing up sidequests and killing everything along the way (including some named monsters) was way more fun.

Don't forget to eat experience gain boosting food, and remember that you can resurrect unique monsters for repeated experience farming. I think that's especially good if you can perform chain attack overkill sequences.

r_hjort said:

@Smerd
…. I think I had more tanks and healers than attackers in the end there, 'cause my problem was my healers getting wiped and not having anyone to resurrect them..

That was my problem at the end. I had my main medic and another healer plus a hero healer. Two attackers and two shields but nobody could help my healers up and then I was sunk.

My chain attacks are decent and never had too much trouble with the other bosses but i obviously need to level up more so if massive strike attack wipes out the majority of my party I can still help them up

@Smerd
I just remembered another thing that helped me, but that you might be doing already. I started jumping between my characters a lot more during that fight than before, so that I could micromanage things a bit more and keep my healers from doing stupid shit, like dying. Before the final boss I would basically always just stick with one character and play as them through the whole fight, but that didn't seem ideal.

@r_hjort

Excellent tip. I tend to stick with one person as well but by the time I was trying to switch to someone who heals they’d be dead which was my fault for not doing micromanaging sooner. I will need to do this for sure. Thanks 😊

@Smerd Have you been doing the side stuff? And using your bonus xp? I would have been like level 90 at the end if I used my bonus xp...

I’ve done a lot of the side stuff. And using bonus EXP - I haven’t done everything but I ended up at level 77 and was just frustrated that I need to start the whole boss fight over as it’s very long.

I had it on the ropes but a wipe out attack left all my healers at the time wiped out and I was stranded. I’ll do a few more quests or level up a bit more before I attempt again