The Xenoblade thread (aka the Thread of the Monado)

To be fair, dates as far out as a year and a half after the game's release did have a pretty good chance of just being placeholders, especially since even the less content-heavy previous parts had very late projected dates.

I'll admit I wasn't expecting it this soon though, I'd pegged it for sometime in the summer

Is it out today or tomorrow?

Was out (very) late last night actually.

Playing through it now, I'm really enjoying it (big shock, I know ) but haven't played through much yet. I won't go into too much detail about the new stuff (the one combat change I've seen so far is mildly spoilery for the context anyway) but the two main points are:

1) Everything you do helps make your characters stronger, whether that is fighting enemies, collecting stuff, just exploring and so on

2) They've made a lot of QoL adjustments to help make the above "grind" painless. Everything you need on monster drops, NPCs, general item locations etc is presented in-game, so external guide checking shouldn't be overly necessary unless you really need exact locations (again, from what little I've seen).

I'm 15 hours into FR and Its confirmed my pprevious thought that the Xeno Chronicles games are the best JRPG's I've ever played (FF7 was my favourite game of all time until a few years ago) 3 in particular is masterfully constructed. Every system feeds into another and It takes all of the usually monotonous parts of a JRPG and makes them purposeful. Everything is designed to create a constant feeling of progress which makes even the most repetitive tasks compulsive. Throw in excellent side quests that add flavour to the world by spotlighting secondary characters and their motivations and you have a believable, relatable, setting that feels lived in. It's all there for you to meander around in and tinker with as you see fit while discovering new things and obsessively hoovering up objectives. Add in the excellent musical score and signature art direction and you have in my opinion the pinnacle of the genre. Certainly from a mechanical view point when judged purely as a game (excluding writing etc.)

FR is an extension of all of that and I can't get enough once again just like last year when I took a punt on 3 having abandoned most JRPG'S since my teens

Holy shit

There's a item

Finished already?! I'm 15 hours in and hopelessly distracted by all sort of things 😋. So much exploring to do and stuff to find! Also, this time I'm not going overboard with levelling up on bonus XP.

Ran me about 25 hours. I didn't use any bonus XP either, but exploration and killing stuff for the Enemypedia managed to keep me a bit overlevelled all throughout, both in actual levels and character progression

Still haven't done And there's a couple marks in the final region that are still showing up as unavailable for some reason... I'll have to look into that, I assumed they'd trigger in postgame but no dice yet

Edit: nvm on the marks, turns out a couple only spawn in thunderstorms and one was just a container that was a bit too far off the beaten path.

And Future Redeemed done! Around 23 hours, but I'm still mopping up side quests. Excellent 👌.
My recollection of the first two Xenoblades isn't that good (getting old, plus haven't played them for yonks), so I might need to play those again to fully appreciate all the hints and references.
If it weren't for TOTK I would be doing just that.

Got XC3 for Christmas and started playing it a few days ago. Just approaching the 10 hour mark (have just had the battle where Lanz and Eunie's Interlinks appear) and really getting into the groove with it. Plenty of batshit JRPG plotting and characters to love, as well as the continual dripfeed of intriguing mechanics that the series does so, so we'll.

I do have a question around the best approach with classes though. After dabbling a bit with mixing classes, I decided to focus on the class that each character gets access to when switching becomes available. Now that I'm getting most of these up to the current limit of 10 and can select any of the currently available class on all characters, should I be switching over to other classes and getting those up to 10 as well, with the aim of getting every class to 10 on all characters? Is there much benefit in doing that or do some characters benefit more from just focusing on specific classes? The prompt to switch class when I hit 10 seems to suggest it is best to level up all classes, but I'm not certain what the benefit of doing that is at the moment.

Currently made my team up with just 2 of each types of class, although wondering if maybe only 1 defending class might make more sense, seeing as they are all about drawing aggro.

Also, with chain attacks, I'm not really sure what decides the TP gain for each move. My fusion move always seems to generate the most, so other than break combos and maybe a heal, I'm not sure if there is much point in using other arts. Also, the flashy point limit notification indicates it is a positive thing, but it just seems to make me have to use another character. I'm mostly managing only 2 chains each time, once I managed a 3. Not sure how you are supposed to keep it going any longer than that.

I did a quick look into the TP stuff. Not sure what actually decides the number, but the point break thing occurs with healers and allows you to use more characters. That seemed like a bad thing, but if you generate a higher ranking for the string of attacks it reactivates more characters. I only was ever getting a "cool" rank, so didn't realise you could get more than one character. Makes sense now why you would want to delay finishing the chain.

Seems you are meant to use the attacker first, then a healer or 2 and finish up with the defender to get the biggest boost.

Good to know about the extra XP thing. I have been just dumping into characters at each rest point, but will hold off on that unless I need it. Honestly though, I think I levelled up at ever opportunity in 2 and it turned out to be needed for me, so may have to again.

Some more things:

Each Hero (if you have Chain Attacks I'm fairly certain you've already seen Heroes) has their own Chain Order, much like your main party, and they're usually a lot more varied than what your main party can do. Having the right Hero for your Chain Attack strategy can be a big boost. It's been a minute since I played but I'm pretty sure each Hero's Chain Order is on their info page somewhere for you to check (not the equipment screen, there's another menu just for that)

Each of your main party's Chain Orders take 1/3 of the Chain Gauge to do, but a Hero's doesn't use any, meaning under normal conditions you can have up to four Chain Attack rounds (3 main party Orders + 1 Hero Order)

During Chain Attacks, Positional Arts will always trigger their bonus effects no matter where your character is in relation to the enemy, and Arts with a set AoE affect all party members/enemies (not attacks that set up fields, those remain the same). This isn't too important in the early game, but as you go on and unlock more options, being able to affect everyone or always trigger bonus effects becomes stronger and stronger.

The Break-Topple-Launch-Smash combo is particularly powerful during Chain Attacks. Smashing an enemy deals bonus damage based on the remaining duration on Launch, and during Chain Attacks that stays at maximum... So Launch an enemy (either normally or within the Chain Attack), build up your damage bonus, and hit them with a Smash near the end of your Chain Attack for some serious pain!

Oh, really? I thought you didn't get Chain Attacks until later... My bad 😅