Xenoblade Chronicles

Base Game Playtime: 87.3 Hours

Actually finished the game this time! It probably helps that playing on the Switch looks and feels infinitely better than on the 3DS; the QoL additions help too. Completed almost all quests (except 2 from the old man on the Bionis's Leg), 100% collectopaedia including the Other page, all skill trees unlocked (but not all maxed), best weapons for each character equipped (very sloppy with armor because that was irrelevant at my level), completed Colony 6 reconstruction 100%, with 150 residents. A few things that I didn't bother going through with were reaching max level, maxing out the skill trees (as previously mentioned), maxing party affinity and thus HtHs, and most of the art manuals - as each of those would represent a huge grind for no real reason. Also, out of the superbosses, I only killed Final Marcus once, and save scummed his golden chest for a Veritas Glyph to trade for the Love Source. Now that I've finished FC, I suppose I could go back and grind the challenges for the Master Art Manuals but I can't be bothered at this point.

I used a combination of Shulk/Reyn/Dunban/Sharla for roughly the first half of the game, pretty much until a bit before Sword Valley when Melia finally got Summon Earth/Ice and ascended to godhood. The second half of the game was almost exclusively Melia as the PC, with a combination within Riki/Sharla/Seven filling out the squad for a more entertaining and more aggressive playstyle. At this point, Shulk was only used in the party for a couple of story fights where I figured it would fit better. The endgame party (except for the final bosses) was Melia/Riki/Sharla, the ether squad. I ended up defeating Zanza as Melia. Don't try to deny Melia her glory, Shulk.

Future Connected Playtime: 10.7 Hours

This was nearly a 100% run of the expansion. All 43 sidequests completed which also requires the superboss kill, Collectopaedia completed for both areas, all landmarks and locations scouted, all Nopon Prospectors found, all Quiet Moments experienced, and the main party fully geared. The only things that could be considered missing would be a number of advanced art manuals and some of the unique monster kills, though I had at least one kill for all Lv70+ UMs. I used Melia / Nene / Kino for 99% of the game - Shulk was permanently fat kidded unless I accidentally left him in after a QM. The last time this happened was right before the Fog King so I wiped to the final boss, thanks for nothing Shulk. Beat the expansion at Lv78. As a side note, love the Nerthis Crown.

When I first tried playing through the 3DS version of this game in 2019, I got really burned out just a bit over halfway into the game at the end of Sword Valley because of the finicky controls and the Mechon. Throughout that entire run, I'd been avoiding using Shulk because I thought his character was a little annoying; all the story fights where he was a forced member of the party were also quite difficult because of that, since I would have to make do with him running around in tights. The moment Melia joined the party, Shulk was permanently sidelined for a more interesting to play character - obviously, that didn't help the combat very much since it gimped my team for pretty much every boss fight and made the Mechon very unfun to deal with. I'm kind of surprised I managed to still make it that far, but it's not surprising to see that with the entire Mechonis lying ahead, I didn't want to continue the game any further at that point. Even when I eventually got the definitive edition for the Switch, I still didn't touch it for a while because of a general lack of interest, but I figured more recently that it might be worth giving another go with the close ties to XC3 and an expectation that it'll be very relevant for the expansion.

I'll have to say my experience this time around was a very pleasant surprise. Between the extensive QoL improvements of the new UI and cleaner menus, relative improvements in control from the 3DS with an actual stick for aiming, and the improved graphics, this playthrough went much more smoothly than before. Since I had already gone through the entire portion of the game on the Bionis before in my first playthrough, I generally knew what to expect from the areas, enemies, and so forth; but I was able to better tailor the characters' art builds to make them more effective later in the game. Probably the most significant example was a much heavier investment in Melia's DoT skills instead of Bolt/Wind, which made it much easier for her to maintain extremely high DPS without as much aggro draw. The quests and collectopaedia were just as big a pain this time around, though. I'm quite glad that they were drawn back somewhat in the later games since the constant save scumming required to grab a few of the most ridiculously rare collectibles and the annoying grinds to clean out the groups of kill ten rats quests throughout the Bionis areas felt like completely unnecessary MMO-like grinds. I think the developers also realized this during development, as the meaningless quests in particular drastically decreased in amount on the Mechonis and in the later parts of the game; I just wish they had decided to also pull the ones from the early game too. Some of the other mechanics were a little too grindy for my tastes - I can't understand why party affinity grows so slowly that people have endgame strats for quickly grinding it up between the party. My Melia/Riki/Sharla party was together for 30 hours, and Melia still never maxed with Riki... I don't know what they expect, honestly. Skill trees are also slow, seeming to encourage multiple playthroughs for fast exploration/questing SP, and the art manuals are an awful grind too. Thankfully, most of this doesn't matter far too much, since these grindy mechanics do not gate anything in the game from my experience.

My opinion towards the combat of this game also improved greatly with this playthrough, too; on the 3DS, my impression was that combat felt clunky and boring in equal parts. I still heavily prefer the more active gameplay of XC2 and XC3, since there's less waiting and more precise control of fights in general in those games. Playing as Melia for about 2/3 of my time in this game was very fun overall though, particularly in finding a good flow for casting & unleashing elements to balance buff upkeep, aggro draw and damage potential while also being able to efficiently force topples on most enemies. I'm not very surprised that many people find her the most fun character to control; in my case, she was the only character I really enjoyed playing as. There's still a lot of little quirks I'm not a fan of in this game - for example, positioned arts like many of Shulk's attacks are calculated at the time Shulk finishes the swing animation - unlike XC2/3 which calculate at time of input. Because of the animation delay & the tendency for enemies to move around erratically in this game, those arts are impossible to consistently use. Lures & aggro are also very clunky, where some enemies will randomly just run away for free halfway through a fight since they happen to move one pixel too far from their original position - this really shouldn't happen if combat is actively happening. Aquatic fights are also terrible in this game; fish enemies have a very high chance of automatically triggering the position reset if they decide to move too close to the shore - and there is also a significant risk of some party members (especially Riki) just floating in the water doing fuck all for the entire fight. Lastly, the chain attack mechanic is awful in this game compared to the others; it requires a very closely matched party, and the actual mechanics just don't make much sense to me - it's just not quite powerful enough for me to sacrifice the party gauge for. I imagine most of the problem stems from my refusal to learn, since I only used it about 3 times in the entire game - but I found that the party gauge also didn't build fast enough for me to choose to use it over saving it for revives instead.

As I alluded to before, my reason for attempting this game again was because of the story, which is probably the aspect of the game I liked the most compared to XC2 and XC3. I generally like the characters, with each of them having a unique place in the party, purposeful arcs and significant growth throughout the game. I didn't get to fully experience this last time, since I quit halfway through and then only watched the main cutscenes to grep the rest of the context. While I still like the overall cohesion of the XC3 party a little bit more, I can't deny how close this party feels towards the end, especially how it nails the classic feeling of a mismatched group coming together for a greater cause. There are still a few times where some characters feel sort of quiet though; I think Riki in particular doesn't contribute anything to the dynamic outside of his introductory scenes, as everyone else seems to have a reason for being there. Shulk's characterization also slips throughout the game - in the beginning, I thought he might be able to overturn some of the traditional and tired JRPG tropes, but he ends up landing every basket even by the middle, and is just another boring character by the end, completely overshadowed by the cast surrounding him. That being said, the cohesiveness and consistency of this story might be the best of the Xenoblade series; the game doesn't have a bunch of random gag moments like XC2's weak opening chapters, and doesn't suffer as much from the tonal shifts of XC3 (even with Shulk slowly assimilating into the generic JRPG blob). Egil might be the most understandable, yet unforgivable villain in the series - compare him against Malos, Moebius Z, or even Zanza, who all act like clowns in comparison. I suppose I understand that JRPGs always need to end with a generic god-fight, and Zanza at least is shown to be as egomaniacal as his predecessor, Klaus, but that aspect of this game's ending is quite weak when thinking back on it.

Overall, I don't really expect to play this game again - I think this one thorough playthrough I did was probably enough. But I think I really did have to fully play through the game and do all that I can to experience and complete every aspect of it as I did to appreciate the world this game portrays, and the series (or sub-series?) it started. I do have to wonder, though - after the Bionis mostly sunk underneath the sea following the game's events, how much land actually remains in that world?

Future Connected

I started the expansion pretty much immediately after finishing the base game, going into it completely blind on the story. My opinion as a whole is very mixed, but I especially feel like the combat in the new areas are quite lacking and a step down from XC1, manifesting as a group of minor gripes and issues that make for an altogether irritating experience. Firstly, since I was exclusively playing Melia (again), the extremely high proportion of enemies that were immune to topple made the pacing of fights really difficult to control, and also makes Starlight Kick only useful for maybe about half of fights. Also, regarding enemies in the field - placement of enemy groups is extremely poorly done in this expansion. In the base game, you could usually pull individual enemies with some patience and maybe a little bit of craftiness to isolate each enemy in a group. In FC, it's almost the antithesis of that - tons of enemy groups contain 6+ enemies that will always be aggroed as a single group, which is pretty much guaranteed to be lethal when levels are roughly even between the party and the enemies. On top of that, aggro seems to be glitched for some enemies in this game - I had a group of bodes & ignas follow me across a huge section of the Shoulder for about 5 minutes before I just fought them, and while that's one of the most extreme examples, the mechanics just don't seem to work properly. This is on top of a higher frequency of "ambush" spawns compared to the base game, where some bosses may just suddenly fly in or rise from the water as you get in range, forcing fights. Enemies like gogols and ferises getting to spawn an extra 2 enemies for free compounds with these issues too. These issues showcase how essential the visions were in the base game, as they allowed you to instantly pop some free heals to weather the storm a little bit better. This is especially true for the high level UMs and superboss, both of which have some really terrible abilities - the igna UM gets to instant-spam 2 instakill abilities for free, and does so immediately after a blowback & topple/daze wave. The dragon superboss also has a couple of completely dogshit moves too - particularly Ignis Breath, which is essentially an instakill that also leaves you with blaze afterwards. I killed both in Casual mode and didn't look back, since there's no way I'd ever care enough to beat them legitimately (note that I did Prosecutor Davrum @Lv74 so damage scaling was definitely in effect here). Just overall disappointed with combat design - it felt like there was some kind of B-team working on this without testing it very much.

In stark contrast to the core gameplay, most of the other aspects of Future Connected were pretty great! I love the Bionis's Shoulder, which is definitely one of my favorite areas now - probably in the same league as Valak Mountain. Ruined Alcamoth is also pretty cool, but there's not much to do there - note that there was some laziness with the collection points, so there are only about 8 accessible ones in the entire area - making the Collectopaedia horrible to complete. Gran Dell & the Companions storyline was simple, but handled well - and it was nice to see Tyrea return as a changed person. I also loved the Ponspectors - their requests, goofy outfits, the (very useful) chain attack replacement, and the final reward of the Nerthis Crown are probably the best part of the expansion other than the main story itself. Regarding the main story, the Fog King and the fogbeasts are pretty cool visually but weren't fleshed out much, but the themes of the story were focused such that the true nature of the enemy didn't really matter, so I can leave it be for now (maybe to be answered in Future Redeemed?). I found it a fitting conclusion to Melia's and Tyrea's arcs in XC1 - and seeing as I've played XC3 already, an explanation for how she cemented her position, which was somewhat in question in the end of the base game. I question why Reyn and Sharla weren't just in the game as themselves though, since their nopon replacements are just as insufferable as I expected they would be - they really have no place in the game. I suspect it's for cuteness or whatever but I really wish I could just selectively mute those characters, since they're just strictly worse, constantly irritating versions of the characters they're based off of. I imagine it's probably because of VA unavailability which is a huge disappointment - another adventure with Reyn and Sharla again would have been a pure improvement over what we got.