@Zero That's Tension. The game doesn't really explain what Tension does or how it works, so I don't know the exact details. But it appears to raise or lower in ways similar to the party gauge, and you'll see red "up" arrows or blue "down" arrows on a character's portrait. If you see the fire around their portrait then Tension is maxed, and if you see the character portrait looking downward, they have low/no Tension and are depressed. When depressed, you can use your controlled character to walk up to a depressed character and press the B button (Classic) to encourage them, which will return them to the neutral state of Tension.

Tension is important for fighting the red enemies (ones much higher in level than you) as red greatly decreases your hit rate, and max Tension increases your hit rate so it is essentially needed to actually hit red enemies. Similarly, hit rate decreases if characters have low/no Tension and are therefore depressed. Since attacks missing decreases Tension, it's a tough thing to keep up.

I never understood what Tension was. Maybe I could have beaten some of the even higher level Unique Monsters if I tried that because as it was I just whiffed on all my attacks.

@Jargon Yeah, I'm now remembering why I didn't bother trying to beat them back when I played. Getting the right setup takes a while and I didn't feel like grinding.

I also recall now that another thing that affects hit rate is agility, so I believe tackling those bosses requires maximizing the agility stat.

@Mop it up

It wouldn't take much for me to be able to beat Ancient Daedala, I'm sure, but I can't really think of any reason to do it. Beating Final Marcus allowed me to finish the Collectopedia and I could say I'd done it so it was worth doing.

@Jargon

I'm guessing that you had the help of the Xenoblade Wiki to complete all the quests?

I'm at the point where I'm almost tired of looking at the guide to complete these things - it shouldn't be needed to this extent.

How do you guys feel about using the Wiki Guide? Do you honestly think you can find everyone/item etc by yourself? It's nearly impossible..

@Jargon Oh I didn't know it ever went up outside of the QTE things! That's what I meant when I said I have no idea how to get them, they just seem to come randomly. Not totally randomly, like I can get a "feel" for when I'm doing something right and they come more, but I have no idea what specifically.

@Smerd

Yea I googled a good amount of stuff. The first time through an area, it wasn't really necessary. I'd get all the quests I could from the town, then go out and explore and get them done. But later in the game I'd have to get materials from random enemies all over the place so I rarely remembered where they were.

I really hope the sequel takes a page from WoW and has sidequests show up on the map. Doesn't need to show exactly where everything is but at least a general area.

@Zero

@Smerd

I hit up the wiki often at this stage. I don't find the hunt to be fun, I find the rewards, and the actions taken to achieve them, to be fun.

@Smerd I used the wiki to find people since the game doesn't do an adequate job of listing where they are located, but that's about it.

@Mop it up

Yeah I have been using it a lot in finding some people but I have been using it to find certain monsters and glowing orb pickups as well. Some quests are just too vague and other items only seem to pop up in certain areas and are totally random. This game's overall quality eclipses these issues but we all know they are there... Zero did a great job on his top 10 improvement list...

I'm in Agniratha now and the sidequests there are more engaging cause they are mostly monster quests but it's a tough area..

I just started to experiment more with other characters - I was playing as Riki in this area (mentioned in spoiler). He's a BEAST! I played as him with Sharla and Fiora and we were pretty much unstopable. It was a good thing too because it's been an area where more monsters join in on the attack so you can't just be fighting one or two at a time...sometimes I'd have 5 or 6. I then tried to take this monster down that was one level above us and was a 'boss' type connected to a sidequeset. I used Shulk as the lead with Riki and Sharla and got my ass kicked..especially when other monsters started to join in.. I may just go back to using Riki for a little while longer..

@Smerd

For a good amount of the later portion of the game, I used Sharla as the lead, because the AI Sharla couldn't keep track of who to heal and when, or when to attack. By controlling her myself, I had better command of healing and shooting things in their face.

@TheOldManFromZelda

Cool..I'll try that..

@Smerd I loved playing as Riki. I'm not sure who was the most effective lead, but I played Riki whenever I could. Tantrum just felt so satisfying to me, and I couldn't use lurgy without smiling.

Ok, so I have been playing about five hours, enjoying the game so far however I have a few major gripes.

1) The entire questing system might as well have been designed by monkeys. It's pre-2000 crpg levels of bad. Actually it's worse than that because those games at least let you store notes. The little bullshit piece of text they give that doesn't tell you anything other than a vague location, no time on when what you need will spawn or when the person you return to will be there, the location of either... it's piss poor. I spent like thirty minutes doing some watch quest because I didn't know where Desiree was after rebuilding the watch, and it said absolutely nothing about where to find her. Looking online it says:

"She can be found on the bridge overlooking the Gem Man's Stall at around 20:00 hours, near the crate filled alcove that Paola hides in and on the opposite end of the bridge to Cheryl."

Oh. Silly me. I should have known. Compound that with like fifty quests going on simultaneously and I will not be doing any side quests without an ipad next to me and the Wiki for this game open. Honestly it's probably the worst quest management system I've seen in years and easily the worst in the past two generations for an open world game like this.

2) I'm not entirely sold on the combat. It's fun and this is probably due more to me being used to a PC set up where you can hotkey, easily change the camera angles, pause combat to make sure your guys are doing what they want... none of that here. Further when you are in a confined area you can't tell what the hell is going on and can only give very basic commands. I LOVE group based rpgs where each member has a function and special abilities to use, which if done right adds a ton of depth however I'm finding this entire system janky compared to what I would consider a "good" system (NWN2/BG2/DA, etc). Just hoping your party members do what they are supposed to be doing is bad design, imo. Let me pause and take direct control if I want to.

3) The voice acting is great. Let the Brits do every localization for rpg's released in the US from now on. Seriously some of the best voice acting I've ever heard in a jrpg.

4) Graphics aren't bad however they do look incredibly dated. I got over it quick.

5) Story so far seems a definite notch above the typical jrpg fare, I'm enjoying it. Further I like most all of the characters so far. Definitely well done, at least at this point.

6) Seems to be tons of depth in how you gear you character, skill trees, items and socketing, creating gems, building relationships, trading, etc, etc. I'm still early on however the level of depth even at this point is a very nice change of pace from the extreme hand holding and linearity on how characters progress you find with most games like this. Another big plus.

7) I know it's probably the Wii's fault and not Monolith, however the 3 or 4 second delay every time I want to go into a new screen is really fucking annoying. Just doing basic stuff like opening up the quest list, figuring out what I want to do, exiting out of it, opening up the map, finding where to fast travel to... these are things that in a normal rpg that I'm used to would take a matter of seconds. Here it's a production that is repeated over and over and over again. Some of you will see this as nitpicking however it really detracts from the enjoyment of the game. The menus are flat out slow and clunky.


So in short I am definitely enjoying the game. The combat is passable however imo it really would have benefited from a more isometric view (if you wanted it), the ability to pause or at least change characters on the fly, etc. The only thing that is unbelievably shitty is the way quests are layed out and the menu system which should have been streamlined. The story, VA, characters are all well done at this point, as is the depth and apparent scope of the game. I'm looking forward to continuing to play, I'll post more impressions in another 5-10 hours of gameplay.

@Oldmanwinter So I'm guessing you agree with a lot of my points. Still an awesome game though and a lot of things get better and better. Especially the story.

Zero said:

@Oldmanwinter So I'm guessing you agree with a lot of my points. Still an awesome game though and a lot of things get better and better. Especially the story.

Yeah, actually I do. That's a very good list, though I think #10 is kind of silly. The side quests are optional for people who want to get better gear and grind without grinding.

Honestly I do really like this game however it would have been so, so much better if someone who knew what they were doing did the menus and streamlined the questing system. It's just so, so bad by today's standards it's borderline shocking. It's almost like a place holder they had that they never had time to fix. Especially coming from pretty much any modern rpg that allows you to track what quests you want to track, setting primary goals that show you which way to go (like the main quest arrow)... or if nothing else just give me an overlay on the map and let me overlay multiple quests so I can do them in groups.

Really it's just abysmal how bad the questing system is.

And while the combat works it would have benefited enormously from allowing the player to pause and swap characters, or position them from an isometric view and issue commands (beyond the "hey all, lets attack this guy!") or something. Especially when the game expects you to have typical tank/CC/dps/heal roles for your characters, it takes a lot of the fun out of it for someone like me who really likes doing this with his characters. It's one of the things I absolutely loved about every crpg from Baldur's Gate to Dragon Age... you created a party and really could tweak how you wanted to perform in combat to a finite degree. Sure you could put the whole thing on autopilot however when you have a tricky boss fight or a tough mob or you accidentally pull too many mobs at once, it's nice to be able to have everyone in your party doing exactly what you want and be in exactly the position you want for the duration. You have zero adaptability in this game outside of very basic and rudimentary commands and it detracts from what could have been a much, much deeper game in the combat department.

I realize all that sounds negative however outside of those two things the rest of the game is a blast and I'm really enjoying it. They combined a lot of the things I didn't mind or enjoyed from jrpgs and combined them with a lot of western rpg game design (though they completely dropped the ball on the two items listed above). Hopefully they learned from making the game, if they can make a game like this with modern graphics and a more streamlined UI, quest system and deeper combat it could very well be one of the best rpgs ever made. East or west.

#10 is just a personal pet peeve of mine, I don't think gamers who like difficulty and gamers who like to get a bunch out of their games through side stuff (for the gameplay, not the rewards) are two completely separate groups. I wish more developers would think about gamers who like both.

I don't think that I will be in this position, but Jargon basically warned me that if you do too many sidequests and level up too much, the end boss sequences are literally like... you don't even have to do anything but show up and let your characters destroy these supposedly uber powerful enemies. That's kind of an issue to me.

But yeah, it's definitely an awesome game with some obvious flaws so if they fix some stuff up for the sequel (if indeed "X" is a sequel, we still don't know for sure) it can be an even more awesome game.

@Oldmanwinter

I agree with pretty much everything you said. Once you start to get to the more open areas, don't bother with the specific "go here and do this quests." Just collect all of the "kill monster" quests and go out and explore and kill stuff and have fun.

@Secret_Tunnel I sort of feel the reverse, if you want to see the secret areas / bosses, which to me is the fun of doing the side stuff, you have to focus more on the "unique" sounding quests and less on the kill a bunch of animals quests, in general. Although it is hard to predict exactly which quests will lead to more.

Secret_Tunnel said:

@Oldmanwinter

I agree with pretty much everything you said. Once you start to get to the more open areas, don't bother with the specific "go here and do this quests." Just collect all of the "kill monster" quests and go out and explore and kill stuff and have fun.

Yeah I played another three hours or so after making that post and I agree. I don't know how much I'm going to focus on the side quests at this point, it's executed so poorly that in my 8 or 9 hours, the time I spent doing them (I did every single one I could find in Colony 9) just detracted from my enjoyment. At least when I was specifically trying to do one and I had no idea where to find what I was looking for, or if I did find it sometimes I couldn't find the person again to turn in because it was the wrong time of day, etc.

Zero said:

@Secret_Tunnel I sort of feel the reverse, if you want to see the secret areas / bosses, which to me is the fun of doing the side stuff, you have to focus more on the "unique" sounding quests and less on the kill a bunch of animals quests, in general. Although it is hard to predict exactly which quests will lead to more.

I'm still early on however I should have put how fun exploring is as a plus when I was describing my impressions. You are right, finding random bosses tucked away in weird corners of the map makes exploring a hell of a lot more fun than a regular jrpg. The overworld design is definitely MMO-ish in it's execution... and I mean that in a good way. It was one of my favorite things about WoW the first time I played that game.

Speaking of which while it isn't the same game it once was, a lot of the things you seem to be so enamored with in Xenoblade are things that WoW does as well... many of which to a much greater degree. I know you are on like a 2600kbps modem on an AOL dial up account that you pay per minute to use, however it may be worth checking out...at least the free trial or something to level 20. You will get a feel for it by then.