JRPGs

Anyone know roughly (and w/o spoilers) how long before you get to go back to the starting colony? I don't know how but I somehow have a very early quest that didn't get completed. I swear I did it and don't remember reloading a save or anything else that would have undone it, but it's still in my quest log and seeing a L5 quest in there is giving me fits of OCD.
Well fuck... just read elsewhere that any Colony 9 quests you don't complete before heading to Alfeto Valley can't be completed at all.

My early impressions of the game are that people who really like XC1 are going to love it, but people (like me) who vastly prefer XCX and XC2 should probably temper their expectations a bit.

Vorph said:

Anyone know roughly (and w/o spoilers) how long before you get to go back to the starting colony? I don't know how but I somehow have a very early quest that didn't get completed. I swear I did it and don't remember reloading a save or anything else that would have undone it, but it's still in my quest log and seeing a L5 quest in there is giving me fits of OCD.
Well fuck... just read elsewhere that any Colony 9 quests you don't complete before heading to Alfeto Valley can't be completed at all.

My early impressions of the game are that people who really like XC1 are going to love it, but people (like me) who vastly prefer XCX and XC2 should probably temper their expectations a bit.

Click to expand...

Just curious, what makes you say this?

I'm still pretty early in the game so take it with a grain of salt, but the characters, story, and overall design just remind me a lot of XC1. In XC1 I didn't like some of the main characters, and I really hated nopons. That changed in XCX and XC2 where I like the whole cast and really enjoyed the nopon stuff (yes, even Tatsu). So far in XC3 I find Noah irritating, Riki has a (English) VA who should never be doing the role of a nopon, and there really isn't any of the weird humor of XCX and especially XC2.

Combat has way more depth than any of the other games though. It starts off super simplistic even compared to XC1, but then for the next 8 hours or so it's just one more system after another getting added into the mix.

The music is the best of the series so far too imo. About a million times better than XCX in particular.

Unrelated sound question for anyone else playing docked and with a home theater setup -- do you get anything out of your subwoofer? Even in major battle cutscenes like the start of the game or the end of Ch.1 I get basically no bass. I use the Direct mode for LPCM 5.1 like I do with XSX and PS5 and the receiver thinks it's getting a SW channel, but it's just about silent.

Later XC2 combat was strict with defined element chains while Torna smoothed it out and let you go with whatever. XC3 they iterate the battle mechanics over the first couple chapters so you don't have all of the tools at your disposal until after.

XC3 story is front loaded with flashbacks to introduce the characters which is part of its slowness, you're getting all 6 main characters early and character developing them all at the same time. Thus gear and combat tutorials apply to all.

Rajaah said:

I didn't spend much time trying to figure it out, but I found XC2's battle system overly confusing. Maybe I'm just special needs, IDK.

Click to expand...

Anything you need to know about Xenoblade, especially stuff like combat mechanics, can be found on Enel's channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/EnelXC He covers all the games and goes extremely in depth for XC2 in particular. Some XC3 videos up already too.

Vorph said:

I'm still pretty early in the game so take it with a grain of salt, but the characters, story, and overall design just remind me a lot of XC1. In XC1 I didn't like some of the main characters, and I really hated nopons. That changed in XCX and XC2 where I like the whole cast and really enjoyed the nopon stuff (yes, even Tatsu). So far in XC3 I find Noah irritating, Riki has a (English) VA who should never be doing the role of a nopon, and there really isn't any of the weird humor of XCX and especially XC2.

Click to expand...

Agree with that. While I can't say much about XC1 or XCX since I haven't finished those, I did finish XC2 before 3 released and started Torna (bout 5 hours in).

It's the "serious" tone that, while I am sure it will grow, it just feels.... not as good? The lighthearted moments and banter in 2 grew on me. I liked Tora at the end too. I don't think XC3s version of the two nopons will. He is more serious than the main cast. Voice just sounds off compared to what I got of the nopons from XC2. Not far though. Just unlocked hero 2.

Noticed that it was kind of odd how they act. At the start of the game they all have a bath together. Male and female get in an argument while in the bath and stand up, I assume nude, with no notion or effect on either of them that they are naked in front of each other. When that happened I figured that it might be just that being naked it isn't a thing for them, since they are clones and just live for max 10 years. So maybe they never learn of sex, love, whatever? That might be a story reason why there is no modesty and the lack of (so to speak) sexualization. Several reviews I saw mentioned that they felt it was a welcome change from 2 to 3, what some called the "creepy" banter or sexualization of characters was gone. If they can tie that in to a story, then that might make it even darker. No notion of anything of living at all except fighting.

Then an hour later, they get new gear and change clothes, and suddenly the boys freak out and run away to change. Not really consistent. Not a big thing, but scene 2 just seemed weird after scene 1, and not "funny" which was probably what it intended to be.

Things I like
- Graphics do look better and smoother (ordered the 4k gizmo which is on its way in the mail, no idea if it really works or not)
- Combat certainly has room for growth. Like the classes. I enjoy the combat, can see that it will grow a lot, but currently just throwing classes around to level them up, so I never really can do much of the combo things. Get a tutorial for launch / smash and nobody can do it.
- Do like the voices / acting of most characters.
- World looks massive, though I am level 30 and main story boss I just did was level 19. So I think I need to stop exploring everything and fighting every monster I see.

Things I don't like as much
- Main character
- Items on ground. I liked how they did it in Tora, marking the spots and what they were, but having just one and one item spread all over looks messy.
- Inventory management is still bad, though I do like how they mark items to fit classes
- Items / skills not swapping correctly when changing classes.
- Holding A as healer to rez someone is the same button you hold to sheathe the weapon and exit combat.

PS: would recommend doing some of the tutorial missions you get 10 or so hours in. They give some tips on how to do things that aren't readily apparent. I've just started doing them all in case some things are explained there and not in game.

PPS: You can dodge in combat for easy repositioning pushing down R3. This is available from the start of the game. Read it in a review that mentioned it. A tutorial that explains that you can do it doesn't come until much later in the game. I still haven't seen it.

There's some complaining about XC3 class unlocks being extremely strict. If enemies are gray you won't get movement on unlocks at all while still earning CP. So overleveling hurts your ability to keep rotating classes.

In the first region in the watery cave there's a 21 unique which drops a +Class mastery accessory to help at speeding up the process, I would advise skip traveling back up to kill it when you have a guest member around that level.

Malakriss said:

There's some complaining about XC3 class unlocks being extremely strict. If enemies are gray you won't get movement on unlocks at all while still earning CP. So overleveling hurts your ability to keep rotating classes.

In the first region in the watery cave there's a 21 unique which drops a +Class mastery accessory to help at speeding up the process, I would advise skip traveling back up to kill it when you have a guest member around that level.

Click to expand...

Nowhere near far enough along to need to worry about it, so I haven't watched this yet, but Enel just dropped a video about classes and CP gain.

Rajaah - Skip Ys9 if you haven't played it yet IMO, it sucks.

I'm lagging behind , per normal. Only have about 8 hours played in Xenoblade 3. Good game so far, not sure if I would say it's better than the other 3 outside of the combat. Probably a question that has been beaten to death, but is XCX ever going to be released on Switch?

Rajaah said:

View attachment 426213
Buddy sent me this Japanese copy of Chrono Cross...pretty sick.

Not gonna actually play it, but outta curiosity, anyone know if a Japanese PS1 game will work on a US PS1? What about PS3? Mine are mothballed in storage somewhere.

I haven't gotten the CC remaster yet because I heard it's a pretty low-effort port, but I definitely have the game on the brain.

Click to expand...

Japanese PS1 games are region locked. Will not play on a US PS1 PS2 or PS3 unless you mod it.

Rajaah said:

That's what I remembered it being, was hoping it was different now or something. Still a pretty cool collector's item though.

Click to expand...

Region locks are gone for newer games. Japanese PS3 games will play on a US PS3. But they still exist for all the older stuff.

PS3 was Blu-ray which at release only had 3 regions and NA SA Japan were all in region A. Anyone sane does region-free these days.

Still enjoying XC3 but will also echo that the copy paste colony theme does not make any towns endearing. I can't even tell you the names of any regions cause it's irrelevant to the plot what any of it is called. The atmosphere and environments definitely felt better in XC2.

I may be in the minority but I hated Chrono Cross. It didn't feel like a true sequel to CT at all, and the decision go with parallel universes instead of time travel made it more convoluted and less interesting. Characters were way less memorable than CT's, tropical theme was meh, and the story was just a series of 'shocking' revelations that made it more complex simply for the sake of it. To me that's lazy writing.