I may or may not have played it for 30 minutes last night. By played I mean I watched cut scenes for pretty much the entire 30 minutes. I’m not complaining, but be warned it’s a while before you get going. I liked both previous games, but didn’t finish either of them. We’ll see how far I get with this one. Hard to give impressions yet as I pretty much just watched a movie. :)
I skipped through most of the cut scenes…of course now I dont know what the story is about!
Well aside from setting up the entire plot you didn’t miss much. ;) You might want to go back lol.
I think I see why you bounced off the other games.
LOL…I figured today I would go onto YT and watch a beginning playthrough with the cut scenes to catch up on the story!
That’s certainly [[A]] way to enjoy your $60 investment.
I mean, one of the reasons people have really enjoyed the prior games in this series is because of the story and the character development. It’s definitely worth the time to watch. That’s kind of the whole genre of the JRPG and the way games in the style work best when it all comes together. It’s about all the combat and gear and crafting melded with strong story and characters that look cool doing cool things.
I just read a story synopsis and it sounds interesting…need to get home to dive into it…should have brought my switch to work!
My kid is the worst in skipping cut scenes and dialogue. We just finished Stray on separate saves and he would pound the key to run through the dialogue to get to the action. I told him the story was interesting and most of the game is really about the story…but he is young and impatient.
You plant corn, you get corn. :)
I’m two hours in and gameplay-wise this is definitely Xenoblade Chronicles! Very familiar base combat(although I’m sure there will be some unique stuff added into it later) and so many shiny baubles for me to pick up in the world rather than focus on where I should be going. Interesting world/story setup so far and I have some suspicions about where some of this is headed in the short term, but XC always takes some big wild turns later on that I won’t begin to speculate about.
Agreed! Feeling great so far. Even the flute is cool and a little creepy, which I expected to be cringe-y from the trailers. Very ominous setup.
How hard is this game to play? I never played any of the previous games/ I am not that great on a controller so how is the combat? I have been trying to watch some videos on combat but they talk about everything but what I need to know. Is this a pause, set up your attacks (I would think so with all the characters in a party). If so I think I could play the game
You only control one character at a time and the rest are AI controlled. The combat doesn’t require great controller skills. Regular attacks are automatic as long as you are in range and then you have an assortment of special skills you can do, each one assigned to a button. These have fairly lengthy cool downs, and at least early in the game you have three of these plus another one that charges up via the other skills so is used even less frequently. Often positioning is important, so being behind an enemy does more damage with certain skills or whatever. They also have status effects that the group can build into combos. But again, the other party members are automatic, so you just have to get your part right. It’s awareness more than any real button pressing skills.
I haven’t gotten to where I can switch which party member I control yet, but at some point you get to choose who you control and therefore get to choose what playstyle you’re after/comfortable with. I usually pick one character and just stick with controlling them.
The game very much slow drips these mechanics too with a tutorial section for each.
It’s very easy to play, at least at first. :)
As mentioned, it’s basically an MMO-style ‘holy trinity’ combat game at heart, simplified and made flashy and accessible, and layered with a bunch of extra mechanical complexity over the course of many hours. It gives you heaps of time to get something down before introducing more.
Not that far yet, but usually they eventually add in some kind of rhythm component as well, where timing a button press makes an action more effective. If you played Paper Mario it’s kinda like that system - requires timing but nothing too difficult, and has a nice payoff.
I’ve been following the Era thread and enjoying everyone’s almost universal praise for this one. Seems like a no-brainer to pick it up, but I’m going to wait a beat as I’m half way through my second Dragon Quest XI play through, but I’m really excited to get into it here at some point.
Spoiler for what happened in the Alfredo Valley
I knew Mwamba was toast as soon as I noticed the game wouldn’t let me change out his accessory. Then it went ahead and made sure I knew he was a goner when it revealed he was only one month away from retirement. Also love how many characters are basically characters from a previous XC, namely Vandham being just like Vandham, and Mio being just like Nia.
I think he is pretty smart. He is here, to PLAY a game not to watch some dumb anime story. If he want that, there are many tv shows for that. Video game companies, when will they ever learn?
End of chapter 1 now and I agree I could have used a little more playing in between all the story. I get invested in these stories because I’m enjoying playing the game and exploring a setting in a way that TV wouldn’t allow. But I can’t do that if I’m barely playing. I know this is just how JRPGs are and how this series has always been for the first few hours. Still kind of annoying even if I’m already pretty sold on his story setup.
Interestingly, my kiddo was watching me play all weekend and wanted to watch the cut scenes…while I got annoyed at times with them. Just hoping later on after a lot of this setup, the action is predominant.
One thing that’s concerning me is I feel like my in-combat play matters a lot less in this game. With 6 combatants, if I mess up it’s only 1/6th of the team falling behind (whereas I was 1/4th of the team in the first game). Hoping that feeling will change. It does feel like character builds are more open-ended so maybe there’s more skill in maxing out characters here but less on utilizing them well.