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Chronojam
Feb 20, 2006

This is me on vacation in Amsterdam :)
Never be afraid of being yourself!


Calaveron posted:

Except in this case it sticks because Ozykiars or whatever can back it up

He totally can although he's also made out to be a complete tool the first several times. It was the shattering glass battle intro that made me squint closer at those belts though.

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Centzon Totochtin
Jan 2, 2009
I think I'm halfway through chapter 8 and I still didn't get Poppi's third form so I looked it up and it sort of seems like a lot of work to unlock, is it worth it? I like 4th as a tank and I can easily swap elements for her blades and don't need to grind a bunch of tiger tiger

U-DO Burger
Nov 12, 2007




RazzleDazzleHour posted:

I beat the final boss with a game file time of just under 100 hours. I skipped the final series of cutscenes. For the last hours of gameplay, the plot was dragging on for so long that my Switch was going to sleep mid-cutscene and honestly, I never really enjoyed any components of the story. I just want to keep exploring and battling monsters.

If you have a WiiU I'd consider getting Xenoblade Chronicles X. Far less story, even more skippable cutscenes, and the exploration is way more fun.

Tae
Oct 24, 2010

Hello? Can you hear me? ...Perhaps if I shout? AAAAAAAAAH!

Centzon Totochtin posted:

I think I'm halfway through chapter 8 and I still didn't get Poppi's third form so I looked it up and it sort of seems like a lot of work to unlock, is it worth it? I like 4th as a tank and I can easily swap elements for her blades and don't need to grind a bunch of tiger tiger

Yeah it's a lot of work, including a dreaded Unique boss fight near a cliff and a few merc missions.

The only reason why I bothered is because I switched to Tora late game for his 1 HP survival skill and I might as well give him a 3rd blade for elemental purposes.

Reiterpallasch
Nov 3, 2010



Fun Shoe

Amppelix posted:

Where's the 4th option

which is "occasionally play the game to get some parts for Poppi whenever new stuff unlocks"

of course, this option is not viable if you hate it

Get poppi mk3 what she needs to do 10m damage on a full burst regardless of whatever other garbage you have in the party. Basic package is Muscle Mod V, Challenger V, Swift Strike V, Vendetta V, and AB Vital Charge V in the THIRD Special RAM slot. You can do this for pretty cheap.

For infinite sustain on top of that add Critical Up V and Critical Restore V, but the extra skill RAM slots are pretty pricey.

Electric Phantasm
Apr 7, 2011

YOSPOS

Tae posted:

Nomura designed all the Torna characters. Jin, Malos, Akhos, etc. Take one good look at their eyes and the way they speak. Then remember all those kingdom hearts cutscenes.

I'm surprised, they seem restrained for characters he designed for a fantasy RPG, alot more simple.

They work too, Akhos perfectly fits the massive nerd image I have of him everytime he opens his mouth.

U-DO Burger
Nov 12, 2007




The Nomura designs were really obvious, but aside from Mik it wasn't anything obnoxious.

RazzleDazzleHour
Mar 31, 2016

U-DO Burger posted:

If you have a WiiU I'd consider getting Xenoblade Chronicles X. Far less story, even more skippable cutscenes, and the exploration is way more fun.

I loving love XBCX, one of my favorite games. I didn't like the original XBC at all but X was so good that it made me willing to give this one a shot.

For what it's worth, I did enjoy my time with this game. When reading the reviews for it, a consistent theme was that the game had a ton of problems and a shitload of terrible decisions but somehow the game managed to be better than the sum of its parts. I thought to myself "how can you have liked the game when basically you have a long list of all these problems," but that pretty much mirrors my experience. If I were to list of my list of complaints about the game I'm sure it would sound like I hated the game too.

emoji
Jun 4, 2004
I have a huge excess of overdrives bc I was pretty lucky with my pulls. My first pulls were like, Boreas and Kora on Nia, Godfrey and Electra on 4 one after the other when I first started cracking eggs. Agate, Gorg, Perun, KOSMOS on 5. Only have a handful of blades mismatched from their natural drivers and could move all of them with overdrives to spare for moving orb masters, of which I have two 4* and at least one lvl 5 3*, all of different elements on different characters.

Amppelix
Aug 6, 2010

Reiterpallasch posted:

Get poppi mk3 what she needs to do 10m damage on a full burst regardless of whatever other garbage you have in the party. Basic package is Muscle Mod V, Challenger V, Swift Strike V, Vendetta V, and AB Vital Charge V in the THIRD Special RAM slot. You can do this for pretty cheap.

Why would I deliberately make the game easy for myself? I might do that when I hit 99 and run into encounters I can't immediately devise a plan to beat.

Reiterpallasch
Nov 3, 2010



Fun Shoe
orb master is deliberately making the game easy, if you have an 8 orb full burst the fight's already over on its own merits anyway

RazzleDazzleHour
Mar 31, 2016

Reiterpallasch posted:

orb master is deliberately making the game easy, if you have an 8 orb full burst the fight's already over on its own merits anyway

Fun fact about full burst that the game doesn't actually tell you: if you use Pneuma when initiating a burst, shes the only blade you'll be able to select for the party attack on the party member that has her equipped. In exchange, she damages every single orb.

DLC Inc
Jun 1, 2011

RazzleDazzleHour posted:

For what it's worth, I did enjoy my time with this game. When reading the reviews for it, a consistent theme was that the game had a ton of problems and a shitload of terrible decisions but somehow the game managed to be better than the sum of its parts. I thought to myself "how can you have liked the game when basically you have a long list of all these problems," but that pretty much mirrors my experience. If I were to list of my list of complaints about the game I'm sure it would sound like I hated the game too.

same, there are some godawful decisions mainly with navigation, potentially gating you out of certain things with field skills, some insane requirements for a few affinity trees or sidequests--but I think in the long run it's a good game. It's just crazy how many things come at you and the game is just "welp, good luck" with very little explanations for how things work or what's optimal. I was getting my rear end kicked before paying attention to things like blocking or absorbing aux cores.

tap my mountain
Jan 1, 2009

I'm the quick and the deadly
I'm still curious what the skill check roadblock was for all the reviewers. Was it the gate you have to break on the Mor Ardain rooftops?

DLC Inc
Jun 1, 2011

tap my mountain posted:

I'm still curious what the skill check roadblock was for all the reviewers. Was it the gate you have to break on the Mor Ardain rooftops?

personally I haven't had any of the "required" skillchecks be insurmountable to me, I always had the minimum number of blades to eek by. But I can certainly see, especially in chapters 7 and 8, how you might get roadblocked and thus forced to grind for some kind of fuckin blade to open the path for you. In those 2 chapters I was actually stunned how many skill checks there were to simply make progress in the main quest, those definitely could gently caress you over. It's def one reason why getting unlucky with Rare blades can potentially ruin a lot of your fun as the game goes on.

RazzleDazzleHour
Mar 31, 2016

Yeah I saw a lot of reviews complaining they got blocked from plot progression on skill checks and I'm guessssssing it was in the Crucible. Maybe me knowing that those were important caused me to pay more attention than I normally would have, but my goal was basically to accomplish every skill check as soon as I found it so I absolutely never had any problems with progression

ajkalan
Aug 17, 2011

These bad end-game sidequests were bringing me down, but then I did Vale's mission and secret Nopon death cult summoning an ancient snake demon brought me back up.

Also, there's a series of three field skill checks in the Tantal city that lead to an empty terrace. Does anything ever show up there?

Tae
Oct 24, 2010

Hello? Can you hear me? ...Perhaps if I shout? AAAAAAAAAH!
I remember chapter 7 had a climb that requires earth 3 or something right before the boss fight.

Calaveron
Aug 7, 2006
:negative:

Tae posted:

I remember chapter 7 had a climb that requires earth 3 or something right before the boss fight.

Those are easy since you just need to stack earth blades, common or otherwise, to progress.
I'm fairly sure there's at least one plot gate that needs more Nopon Wisdom than Poppi can provide without some grinding though

EDIT: Also I forgot where I saw it but there was a Climb thing that needed a lot of leaping skillchecks, more than I care to remember and tried to pass, at the very end of a super long ladder

U-DO Burger
Nov 12, 2007




ajkalan posted:

These bad end-game sidequests were bringing me down, but then I did Vale's mission and secret Nopon death cult summoning an ancient snake demon brought me back up.

Also, there's a series of three field skill checks in the Tantal city that lead to an empty terrace. Does anything ever show up there?

It's not empty. A nopon mural is on a wall up there

nessin
Feb 7, 2010
Are regular fights against even a single common enemy equal level to the party supposed to take a minute or more? Seems insane, but at level 18 with everything maxed out (I can only use two blades at the moment, but they're fulled equipped with the best cores I can get for them) and I'm not sure what I can do to make it faster. I can make it slightly faster by being on the ball with timing the arts and working down a arts combo, but they usually die just before I finish it and the time benefit from doing that is barely noticeable. Honestly the last few fights I've just dropped the controller and surfed the forums because it seems like a better use of my time in the fight since they can't kill me and I only shave a few seconds off by paying attention to it.

Tae
Oct 24, 2010

Hello? Can you hear me? ...Perhaps if I shout? AAAAAAAAAH!
I'm confused by a minute. The only faster battles you'll get is like action rpgs. Even Persona 5 which people deem turbo-fast for the series takes as long or longer than a xenoblade battle.

RazzleDazzleHour
Mar 31, 2016

nessin posted:

Are regular fights against even a single common enemy equal level to the party supposed to take a minute or more? Seems insane, but at level 18 with everything maxed out (I can only use two blades at the moment, but they're fulled equipped with the best cores I can get for them) and I'm not sure what I can do to make it faster. I can make it slightly faster by being on the ball with timing the arts and working down a arts combo, but they usually die just before I finish it and the time benefit from doing that is barely noticeable. Honestly the last few fights I've just dropped the controller and surfed the forums because it seems like a better use of my time in the fight since they can't kill me and I only shave a few seconds off by paying attention to it.

This is probably my biggest complaint with the game, random enemies don't feel like they take any less time to kill than bosses so I end up never fighting any random enemies unless I absolutely have to. That was also a nice side-effect of doing almost all the side quests and fighting all the unique enemies, I was outleveling the random enemies so much that they wouldnt aggro onto me unless I initiated the fight

e: SMT/Persona battles take a reasonable length of time, sure, but that's usually because you have to think a little bit and the enemies might actually kill you. A random enemy in XBC2 will never kill you even if you do absolutely nothing but will still take up your time

RazzleDazzleHour fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Jan 8, 2018

nessin
Feb 7, 2010

Tae posted:

I'm confused by a minute. The only faster battles you'll get is like action rpgs. Even Persona 5 which people deem turbo-fast for the series takes as long or longer than a xenoblade battle.

If your time in a Persona 5 fight takes more than 10-15 seconds, it's either because you haven't found the weakness, the enemy doesn't have a weakness, or a boss. And a minute or more is fine for bosses or actual challenging content, not a random bug you run past and aggros on you in the open world.

Edit:
Persona 5 is such a weird comparison to pull anyways, not only do they have a fast mode for enemies like I'm describing but you also have a button to shortcut straight to your ability that triggers the weakness. It's literally the polar opposite of Xenoblade in terms of fight accessibility and time management (at least in the fights themselves).

nessin fucked around with this message at 06:53 on Jan 8, 2018

Zopotantor
Feb 24, 2013

...und ist er drin dann lassen wir ihn niemals wieder raus...

Fritzler posted:

On the fast travel map you can turn on and off the landmarks. I accidentally turned mine off and thought i had a glitch.

Is pyra currently in your party? If not you can’t do almost all sidequests because she’s in the cutscene.

I think you can’t go past level 1 then because you’re supposed to be in a dungeon that restricts ether. Finish chapter 7 and most of this stuff should be fixed. You can turn on the landmarks yourself.

Landmarks were off. :shepicide:

Pyra is in my party, but... Perun wasn't. :eng99:

What's this about restricted dungeons? I don’t remember that, but I just took up the game again after a two week pause, so it might be the reason. Fingers crossed!

CharlestheHammer
Jun 26, 2011

YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

RazzleDazzleHour posted:

This is probably my biggest complaint with the game, random enemies don't feel like they take any less time to kill than bosses so I end up never fighting any random enemies unless I absolutely have to. That was also a nice side-effect of doing almost all the side quests and fighting all the unique enemies, I was outleveling the random enemies so much that they wouldnt aggro onto me unless I initiated the fight

e: SMT/Persona battles take a reasonable length of time, sure, but that's usually because you have to think a little bit and the enemies might actually kill you. A random enemy in XBC2 will never kill you even if you do absolutely nothing but will still take up your time

Any non unique battle should not be taking you very long.

You are playing very badly.

Aithon
Jan 3, 2014

Every puzzle has an answer.

nessin posted:

Are regular fights against even a single common enemy equal level to the party supposed to take a minute or more? Seems insane, but at level 18 with everything maxed out (I can only use two blades at the moment, but they're fulled equipped with the best cores I can get for them) and I'm not sure what I can do to make it faster. I can make it slightly faster by being on the ball with timing the arts and working down a arts combo, but they usually die just before I finish it and the time benefit from doing that is barely noticeable. Honestly the last few fights I've just dropped the controller and surfed the forums because it seems like a better use of my time in the fight since they can't kill me and I only shave a few seconds off by paying attention to it.

Use arts/special restore pouch items. Just cram sweets into your face all the time. That's the big one, having arts regenerate with time instead of just with attacks speeds your actions up a LOT. If you picked up any pouch expansions, just use them, there's enough for all party members to use one.
Also unlock the "art equipped under button is charged at the start of the battle" skills.
You can also do the cancelling trick by walking a tiny bit right after the first hit of your combo to attack much faster and recharge arts quicker, but if you use pouch items you probably won't need to.
For me, it balanced out when I started gaining more levels and retreading areas, because non-unique enemies stop aggroing pretty quickly when you're stronger than they are. An old school jRPG will throw you into ten thousand battles with enemies that can't do anything to you, in Xenoblade you'll just be able to run past anything that isn't at least a marginally interesting fight.

Aithon fucked around with this message at 07:16 on Jan 8, 2018

Runa
Feb 13, 2011

Guess I'll start doing that too.

THE AWESOME GHOST
Oct 21, 2005

nessin posted:

I see the tradition of implementing lovely half-assed mini-games into RPGs is being kept alive in Xenoblades. How necessary is it to play Tiger Tiger and keep Poppi built up, or can Tora safely be taken out of the party early and not have to deal with the mini-game at all?

I dumped him instantly as soon as I got the other tank party member (Opens cores normally and starts with a pretty cool tank blade).

At first I was having fun playing Tiger Tiger and then I realized how long it actually takes to grind the poo poo to make him good and no thanks I'd rather tie the progression to like, playing the actual game Xenoblade 2

Tae posted:

Ike is absolutely returning in Smash. He's quite literally the most popular character in Fire Emblem, and he's like the only slow sword bruiser on the roster.

What how

The one thing I am excited about with Smash though is all the new interesting stuff they can put in from Switch games. I know that's not really Smash's style but between Xeno 2, Odyssey and BOTW the old entries should be getting a lot of new stuff, and Splatoon was not represented at all.

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."

nessin posted:

Are regular fights against even a single common enemy equal level to the party supposed to take a minute or more? Seems insane, but at level 18 with everything maxed out (I can only use two blades at the moment, but they're fulled equipped with the best cores I can get for them) and I'm not sure what I can do to make it faster. I can make it slightly faster by being on the ball with timing the arts and working down a arts combo, but they usually die just before I finish it and the time benefit from doing that is barely noticeable. Honestly the last few fights I've just dropped the controller and surfed the forums because it seems like a better use of my time in the fight since they can't kill me and I only shave a few seconds off by paying attention to it.

In the initial stages, fights just suck. You don't have access to driver combos, and specials are the most damaging thing you have. For the most part, common enemies will be wiped out if you can get a level 3 special combo off (use Pyra level 1, Nia/Dromarch level 2, then Pyra level 3). Later on, once you have access to driver combos, Break/Topple/Launch/Smash will kill most common enemies in a fraction of the time.

As much as sweets are super strong, I liked putting instruments in AI partners' pouches so that they would get their specials built up quickly, and sweets in my own pouch since I could optimize attacks more efficiently.

The game is unfortunately balanced for a mid-game party with all the tools and 3 characters with 3 blades each, which makes the early parts of it a complete slog. They really should have lowered early enemy HP to compensate for the party shenanigans, lack of driver combos, and the fact that you only have a handful of blades.

RazzleDazzleHour
Mar 31, 2016

Okay, I've gotten enough of the lategame accessories to use the rough early stage of a critheal build, and it's fuckin wild. There's two party compositions this build revolves around, the first being Critheal attacker who can be any party member with any blade with the exception of Mythra, second attacker, and then a tank. The tank's goal is to have high enough dodge/block/both to avoid most damage, and you just sustain them on residual healing skills you have like HP potion drops or KOSMOS specials, and you shrug off any aoe/residual damage you take through your critheals.

The second party build is attacker attacker attacker, with your player character being Rex and Mythra, and the reason you don't bring a tank with you is because no tank could possible keep up the aggro you accumulate. At Mythra affinity 5, if your skill crits, it will instantly come off cooldown and you can cancel the attack into itself indefinitely so long as you keep critting. Double spinning edge hits twice, and if either hit crits, you get the refill, so I've gotten to a point where I'm rolling thirty of them in a row and since usage is 50k or so damage, 25% of that fills you up to full health, so the only danger to you is an enemy that can oneshot you. If that happens, though, a teammate just picks you up, you use your level 3/4 special to refill the party gauge, and you resume slaying.

I still need to hit level 99, get the endgame chips, and grind out some Aux cores to get a party ready for the superbosses, but the time is getting close

nessin
Feb 7, 2010

Dirk the Average posted:

In the initial stages, fights just suck. You don't have access to driver combos, and specials are the most damaging thing you have. For the most part, common enemies will be wiped out if you can get a level 3 special combo off (use Pyra level 1, Nia/Dromarch level 2, then Pyra level 3). Later on, once you have access to driver combos, Break/Topple/Launch/Smash will kill most common enemies in a fraction of the time.

As much as sweets are super strong, I liked putting instruments in AI partners' pouches so that they would get their specials built up quickly, and sweets in my own pouch since I could optimize attacks more efficiently.

The game is unfortunately balanced for a mid-game party with all the tools and 3 characters with 3 blades each, which makes the early parts of it a complete slog. They really should have lowered early enemy HP to compensate for the party shenanigans, lack of driver combos, and the fact that you only have a handful of blades.

I've got access to most, at least I assume, of the combat features in the game and it's still taking forever. I just came back here to complain I just had the longest fight I've had so far in this game. Started as a fight against two small raptor creatures that pulled in something called a Cunning Saggie. The name isn't noteworthy, but it's now seared in my brain for how long it took to fight. It was two levels above me and I went through three full art combos and not one, but two chain attacks. Two. I can't say how long the fight actually took since I didn't mark it, but at some point I realized this was taking forever and started a timer on my phone real quick and it took 2 minutes and 13 seconds from when I started the timer.

Edit:
And this was after I grabbed some instruments per a recommendation earlier, although all I have available at this stage is 0.8 regen per second.

Edit #2:
I also took a look at some random recorded streams of others playing the game, and hilariously the two streamers I checked out both apparently had the same idea, where they'll let the AI fight out the pointless forever battles and use the time to engage with their chat or call out subscribers.

nessin fucked around with this message at 09:33 on Jan 8, 2018

chumbler
Mar 28, 2010

Pretty sure Cunning Saggie is a unique monster, which require significantly more to take out. You can tell if you're fighting one because the music is different.

THE AWESOME GHOST
Oct 21, 2005

I fell asleep playing this game the other day (lol) but I did wake up to find out the unique monster I was fighting had died instead of me getting a game over, so that was nice at least.

The game gets a lot more fun if you get the ability that lets you chain specials into each other, and you switch to a new Blade right after. You can do like, Skill 1, 2, 3 > 4, 5, 6 > 7,8,9 extremely quickly for a lot of damage and in many cases driver combos.

Like I can with my tank do Break > Topple > Skills that get buffed by Topple > Aggro skills and damage skills while I wait for Launch > Smash which is cool.

I get the feeling every character should have 3 of the 4 break topple launch smash skills

nessin
Feb 7, 2010

chumbler posted:

Pretty sure Cunning Saggie is a unique monster, which require significantly more to take out. You can tell if you're fighting one because the music is different.

I didn't have the music turned on, but it didn't have the unique monster icon nor did it spawn a monument.

Spite
Jul 27, 2001

Small chance of that...

RazzleDazzleHour posted:

Okay, I've gotten enough of the lategame accessories to use the rough early stage of a critheal build, and it's fuckin wild. There's two party compositions this build revolves around, the first being Critheal attacker who can be any party member with any blade with the exception of Mythra, second attacker, and then a tank. The tank's goal is to have high enough dodge/block/both to avoid most damage, and you just sustain them on residual healing skills you have like HP potion drops or KOSMOS specials, and you shrug off any aoe/residual damage you take through your critheals.

The second party build is attacker attacker attacker, with your player character being Rex and Mythra, and the reason you don't bring a tank with you is because no tank could possible keep up the aggro you accumulate. At Mythra affinity 5, if your skill crits, it will instantly come off cooldown and you can cancel the attack into itself indefinitely so long as you keep critting. Double spinning edge hits twice, and if either hit crits, you get the refill, so I've gotten to a point where I'm rolling thirty of them in a row and since usage is 50k or so damage, 25% of that fills you up to full health, so the only danger to you is an enemy that can oneshot you. If that happens, though, a teammate just picks you up, you use your level 3/4 special to refill the party gauge, and you resume slaying.

I still need to hit level 99, get the endgame chips, and grind out some Aux cores to get a party ready for the superbosses, but the time is getting close

Anchor shot hits twice too. The Moon Matter chip (think that's the name - has very high crit) is basically as good as anything you can get later for Mythra.

Reiterpallasch
Nov 3, 2010



Fun Shoe
blendtec mythra is really, really good, but as far as "ready for the superbosses" you can beat them all in the mid-80s with aux cores you picked out of a dumpster with a more sedate tank-and-spank approach

Dirk the Average
Feb 7, 2012

"This may have been a mistake."

nessin posted:

I've got access to most, at least I assume, of the combat features in the game and it's still taking forever. I just came back here to complain I just had the longest fight I've had so far in this game. Started as a fight against two small raptor creatures that pulled in something called a Cunning Saggie. The name isn't noteworthy, but it's now seared in my brain for how long it took to fight. It was two levels above me and I went through three full art combos and not one, but two chain attacks. Two. I can't say how long the fight actually took since I didn't mark it, but at some point I realized this was taking forever and started a timer on my phone real quick and it took 2 minutes and 13 seconds from when I started the timer.

Edit:
And this was after I grabbed some instruments per a recommendation earlier, although all I have available at this stage is 0.8 regen per second.

Edit #2:
I also took a look at some random recorded streams of others playing the game, and hilariously the two streamers I checked out both apparently had the same idea, where they'll let the AI fight out the pointless forever battles and use the time to engage with their chat or call out subscribers.

Yeah, you don't have all the mechanics yet. As the game progresses, fights will get more and more tolerable as you're either making them super short, or you're getting multiple loot drops per fight. At the point I'm at in the game, an even level enemy goes down in less than 30 seconds and gives me 2 fights worth of loot. The game is, unfortunately, balanced around the mid-lategame, and where you're at now, you just don't have the firepower to make fights tolerable.

That being said, I avoided as many fights as possible when I was at where you are at now, and finished sidequests and rested in the inn for levels. Made things much easier and saved on the tedium of fighting.

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

RazzleDazzleHour posted:

This is probably my biggest complaint with the game, random enemies don't feel like they take any less time to kill than bosses so I end up never fighting any random enemies unless I absolutely have to. That was also a nice side-effect of doing almost all the side quests and fighting all the unique enemies, I was outleveling the random enemies so much that they wouldnt aggro onto me unless I initiated the fight

While I won't agree that it's the same sort of time for a normal monster as a boss it's definitely too long. I hated the bit in Chapter 8 where you're going through the ruins with Jin and he's lower level so things are aggroing on him. God drat, gently caress off!

Taear fucked around with this message at 10:53 on Jan 8, 2018

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Zoran
Aug 19, 2008

I lost to you once, monster. I shall not lose again! Die now, that our future can live!

nessin posted:

I've got access to most, at least I assume, of the combat features in the game and it's still taking forever. I just came back here to complain I just had the longest fight I've had so far in this game. Started as a fight against two small raptor creatures that pulled in something called a Cunning Saggie. The name isn't noteworthy, but it's now seared in my brain for how long it took to fight. It was two levels above me and I went through three full art combos and not one, but two chain attacks. Two. I can't say how long the fight actually took since I didn't mark it, but at some point I realized this was taking forever and started a timer on my phone real quick and it took 2 minutes and 13 seconds from when I started the timer.

Edit:
And this was after I grabbed some instruments per a recommendation earlier, although all I have available at this stage is 0.8 regen per second.

Edit #2:
I also took a look at some random recorded streams of others playing the game, and hilariously the two streamers I checked out both apparently had the same idea, where they'll let the AI fight out the pointless forever battles and use the time to engage with their chat or call out subscribers.

Yeah, you haven’t actually reached the point where all the essential mechanics are open to you. It's actually impossible for any of your drivers to acquire anything with Smash (and therefore impossible to complete a full Break → Topple → Launch → Smash “driver combo” for tons of damage and extra loot) until partway into the next chapter.

That said, Cunning Saggie is indeed a unique monster, and you do have enough of the game's tools now so that your strategy for dealing with unique enemies and bosses should be different than it was before. In particular, you're looking to set up a chain attack with multiple rounds—one where you break one element orb each round and keep earning higher and higher damage bonuses with stronger and stronger specials.

Breaking one single solitary orb in a chain attack is trivial. Each of your drivers will do at least one damage to the orb, and you have three drivers, so you’ll do at least three damage and will break it. But breaking just one orb isn’t really good enough for all these boss enemies, and at this point you should shoot to break two orbs and get three full rounds in.

Right now, reliable three-round chain attacks require exactly two orbs (not more). You need to carry not only two blades of the right elements to finish the blade combos but also two blades of the corresponding opposite element. Then in round one you hit the first orb with its opposite, you hit the second orb with its opposite, and then it doesn’t matter what the third driver hits because they’ll break either one. The reason you don’t necessarily want more than two orbs is this last part—the third driver's attack chooses an orb at random unless targeting the opposite element, and you might hit the undamaged one and fail to break anything.

Right now, the blades you’re guaranteed to have are:

Rex: Pyra (fire) + Rex's generic wind knuckles
Nia: Dromarch (water)
Tora: Poppi (earth)
Vandham: Roc (wind)

The obvious choice for one elemental orb to set up is Fire, because it's easy to do with Fire-Water-Fire and because Dromarch can target the Fire orb with Water. The trouble is the second orb. The only opposing pair here is Fire and Water, and it's really difficult with this setup to build a Water orb because the only combo you have that ends in Water is Water-Water-Water. So you should look at whatever other blades you have right now, even your common ones. Maybe Rex has a decent Water blade himself (a water axe is particularly nice here for eventual driver combos). Or if Nia has an Ice blade, you might do Water-Earth-Wind and break the Wind orb with Ice. In my case, Rex had Agate (an earth axe) and Nia had Kora (electric knuckles), so I was able to do either Earth-Earth-Electric or Earth-Fire-Earth fairly comfortably.

I would not recommend watching any streamers for combat advice except maybe for the speedrunners. The people who are streaming their casual playthroughs are almost universally terrible at this game. There's even a series of YouTube videos showcasing each rare blade where almost every build shown off by that guy is really bad.

Zoran fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Jan 8, 2018

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