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voltcatfish posted:Perhaps foolishly, I like xenoblade chronicles 2 Yeah, in terms of main story the villains are the biggest failing. You have guys like Ahkos who are really comitted to a gimmick that doesn't feel natural at all, Patroka and Mihkail who are not particularly memorable, and they're lead by Malos who has the lamest objective cliche in a video game. Jin is the only one who has anything really going for him, and even he is kind of flat. Edit: Oh, and Amalthus, who by the end I was completely confused about and wasn't quite sure what he was fighting for. He just wanted to kill everyone too, right? Because he saw a bunch of humans being lovely? Something about his plot feels like it didn't quite connect with me, but it might just be because he was underwhelming.
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Jan 12, 2018 23:42
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Dumb stuff is good sometimes. I liked Pacific Rim
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Jan 12, 2018 23:44
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voltcatfish posted:Perhaps foolishly, I like xenoblade chronicles 2
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Jan 12, 2018 23:47
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The Sean posted:I don't know how this is even a discussion. I didnt expect good writing going into this, but still the writing is clearly not great. "Saturday Morning Cartoon" is a poor defense. You can have a show with little depth that has writing with internal consistency and basic logic. The example above is stupid as poo poo. Becoming besties immediately after an attempted hit? Really? Honestly at this stage Xenoblade as a series to me is a whole lot of interesting and enjoyable ideas, experiences and systems wrapped up in a whole lot of stupid, questionable design decisions, and i'm okay with that. I can't bring myself to really dislike Xenoblade 2 even though it wastes a whole lot of my time and feels underbaked in a few areas.
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Jan 13, 2018 00:03
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The Sean posted:The example above is stupid as poo poo. Becoming besties immediately after an attempted hit? Really? Who says that's just stupid fiction. Haven't you seen the president's latest comments on NK?
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Jan 13, 2018 00:05
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emoji posted:Who says that's just stupid fiction. Haven't you seen the president's latest comments on NK? That's true. He did just state that he thinks he has a pretty good relationship with NK.
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Jan 13, 2018 00:14
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https://twitter.com/hi_mekuriguri/status/949795660185837568
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Jan 13, 2018 00:19
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Night Blade posted:Occasionally in Xenogears, people speak to one another like actual people. You're not wrong about the bad writing and kind of dumb plot in XC2*, but lol if you think the writing in previous Xeno games was much better. There are a few things worse about XC2 like the character designs and a few of the characters' general characterization, but there really isn't a big difference overall. That being said, I think that another factor might be that the English voice direction is a lot worse than in XC1. A lot of things sound awkward/weird that don't in the original JP dubbing, and XC1 didn't have this issue because its English dub was really good. As a result, a lot of scenes that are basically just "normal" in Japanese end up sounding kind of "off" in English. People have mentioned Akhos, for example - this "stage actor" thing people keep mentioning doesn't exist in the Japanese. He sounds pretty normal in the JP, and I actually thought his voice actor did a really good job of selling him as someone who was just really nihilistic and tired of everything. The Torna people in general were portrayed pretty effectively as this tight-knit group of people who were unified in their nihilistic view of the world. * I actually think the setting is quite good, though. I would even go as far as to say the setting of XC2 is more interesting than the one in XC1. It's just the specific plot events that are kind of dumb and cliche. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 00:28 on Jan 13, 2018 |
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Jan 13, 2018 00:26
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I also kind of rolled my eyes about them at first but by the end I really liked Torna and think they could have thrown out everything to do with Amalthus et al to focus more on them.
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Jan 13, 2018 00:43
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Louisgod posted:ah yes the good old "there are worse things out there" defense. Ironically XB1 is one of the worst out there. It's story is definitely worse. Still not bad but doesn't hit what it's trying to do as well.
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Jan 13, 2018 00:56
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I'm finding the plot pretty unengaging tbh, I spend most of my time wandering around as Four, smacking rando monsters while sidequesting. That cooking-a-fish H2H was dope tho
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Jan 13, 2018 01:23
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I'm still in ch5 since I'm not too motivated to rush ahead, but there better be more Bana hijinx down the line because that's basically what I'm here for right now.
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Jan 13, 2018 01:27
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Ytlaya posted:
Definitely. For me, it's a milieu experience. Not on the same level, of course, but like how Lord of the Rings is about the setting/world rather than the story and dialog.
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Jan 13, 2018 01:51
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I decided to try fighting my first super boss, the Cloud Sea King Ken people mentioned being useful to farm Moon Matter chips. I managed to beat him, despite only being level 80. It took a while, and I think I benefited pretty heavily from having a partially kitted out Poppi (Tora was almost unkillable, and Rex was fine as a healer for the rare occasions where I was hit by his strong move). For my efforts I received the aforementioned Moon Matter chip, which I immediately stuck on Poppi QTpi. In the long run I'd prefer not to use Tora much, but I don't mind abusing him until I can get some more gear/levels. I won't do Cloud Sea King Ken again until I get stronger, though; even though I beat him it took too long to be worth it yet. Also, while typing this and having the game sitting on idle, I just noticed that Poppi QTpi starts disco dancing as her idle animation.
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Jan 13, 2018 02:53
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So many party members dance either in battle or as part of their idle animation and it's so great 
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Jan 13, 2018 02:59
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Ytlaya posted:You're not wrong about the bad writing and kind of dumb plot in XC2*, but lol if you think the writing in previous Xeno games was much better. There are a few things worse about XC2 like the character designs and a few of the characters' general characterization, but there really isn't a big difference overall. I have the most experience with XB1 so I'll speak on that. Yes, I would call Xenoblade 1's plot and characters a cut above XB2's. The game had a strong, actioney introduction that established the setting followed by a formulaic but decently executed shift into colony life to show the aftermath, explain the Monado and introduce the main character. The mechanical enemies that were raiding your town were a terrifying threat. In cutscene, they were EATING people and burning the town, in game you couldn't even hurt them without toppling them. After some desperate struggling, you encounter a new type of Mechon, silent; but intelligent enough to taunt you. The fact that he doesn't speak, and that the protagonist uses his new future sight to helplessly watch his childhood friend be murdered really grabbed me........... Then the faced Mechon started talking in this dumb cockney accent, various other stupid events happen including the Star Ocean 3 ending, and the game shoves filler in where it doesn't need to. Some good scenes/interactions are there mixed in the muck and the writing was just good enough to keep me interested. It was bad overall, but I still enjoyed Riki actually being more than he lets on, Dunban, the final fight against the traitor and its aftermath, how Melia got the short end of the stick, and so on. Then we get to XB2, which shits itself right when you have a 15 cutscene fight with Mallos, followed by a slog of a boss battle followed by cutscene loss. You're saved by your grandpa after he scolded you not to do this suspicious job; he gets killed in the process except NOPE MASCOT TIME, which basically sets the tone for the rest of the game. All of the scenes (so far!)are clumsy and forced, and the game really hasn't done its job of making me feel invested in this world or it's cast. Even worse, since the blades are all their own characters - you get the jRPG problem of way too many people shoved into a scene at once early; and the writers feel the need to have everyone say something, no matter how useless in a scene just to remind you that they're there. quote:That being said, I think that another factor might be that the English voice direction is a lot worse than in XC1. A lot of things sound awkward/weird that don't in the original JP dubbing, and XC1 didn't have this issue because its English dub was really good. As a result, a lot of scenes that are basically just "normal" in Japanese end up sounding kind of "off" in English. People have mentioned Akhos, for example - this "stage actor" thing people keep mentioning doesn't exist in the Japanese. He sounds pretty normal in the JP, and I actually thought his voice actor did a really good job of selling him as someone who was just really nihilistic and tired of everything. The Torna people in general were portrayed pretty effectively as this tight-knit group of people who were unified in their nihilistic view of the world. Is that how it's like in Japanese? Interesting, I wonder the bad dialog can be attributed to the localizers not doing a good job. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me given... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHH3s_wRvOw&t=28s quote:* I actually think the setting is quite good, though. I would even go as far as to say the setting of XC2 is more interesting than the one in XC1. It's just the specific plot events that are kind of dumb and cliche. The idea is interesting, it's why the intro got my hopes up. Night Blade fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Jan 13, 2018 |
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Jan 13, 2018 03:01
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the cockney mechon owned what is wrong with you
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Jan 13, 2018 03:05
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Night Blade posted:I have the most experience with XB1 so I'll speak on that. Yes, I would call Xenoblade 1's plot and characters a cut above XB2's. The game had a strong, actioney introduction that established the setting followed by a formulaic but decently executed shift into colony life to show the aftermath, explain the Monado and introduce the main character. I completely agree about characters, which is probably the biggest gap between XC1 and XC2. The only decent party members in 2 are Nia, Four and Five (and their respective blades), and the latter two aren't particularly deeply involved with the plot and mostly just hang around to comment on things (I would say that Four is sorta comparable with a less directly involved Dunban or something). Regarding the plot, honestly XC2 has a lot better pacing in terms of stuff continually happening then XC1 did. XC1 had a lot of long segments of traveling between areas (and their respective plot events), and what plot did exist wasn't really less "anime" than XC2's on paper. Of course, characters can be considered part of the plot, and in that regard XC1 was definitely better. XC2 being super cutscene heavy can be a good or bad thing depending upon the taste of the person playing (for me it's a good thing, though I can understand why someone wouldn't like it).
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Jan 13, 2018 03:11
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"Meh meh MEH!" is like 90% of dialogue whenever a nopon is on screen and i hate it. can i please punt them? can i please play as sheba whenever a nopon is on screen, game.
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Jan 13, 2018 03:16
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In general, how versatile are the party members using different blades under AI control? Can I make 5 use tank or healing blades? Or should I just use three of the same type of blade on 5? Same for the other party members.
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Jan 13, 2018 03:52
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Chapter 9 intro cutscenes, none of the torna turds' armors are loading fully and it looks so silly
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Jan 13, 2018 03:53
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U-DO Burger posted:the cockney mechon owned what is wrong with you Xord and his drunken garbled screaming was a true highlight plus one of the first big twist parts plus a tough fight to boot.
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Jan 13, 2018 03:54
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poe meater posted:In general, how versatile are the party members using different blades under AI control? Can I make 5 use tank or healing blades? Or should I just use three of the same type of blade on 5? Same for the other party members. Generally, party members are pretty dopey unless you wrangle them in a very specific way. Generally the best thing to do, for most of the game until you hit postgame where your roles don't matter, is to have three of the same role of blade on a single person. One designated healer, one designated tank, one attacker. Say you have two healers on Nia and one attacker - if the attacker blade has a Break attack, and neither of the healers do, it'll not heal to keep trying to break the enemy unless you get really really low and by then you might be dead. If you have no break attacks and three healers, it'll just swap between healers all the time and heal nonstop. Similarly, a tank blade is good for constantly drawing aggro and having a higher block/dodge rate. If your tank switches over to an attacker, it's not going to be able to generate aggro as fast as your attacker, and if it does you'll take just as much damage as your attacker party member would have since only the active blade does you any good. I know it sounds kind of lame that every party member is sort of locked into their roles based on what their starting blade is, but eventually you'll unlock the ability to unequip every main blade (except Pyra) so you can make any character into any role. Alternatively, if you've been doing a lot of side content, you might be leveled enough where you can run something like two attackers who each have a healer blade on them to take turns topping the team off and then running a tank, but needing a tank is going to last you up until the very end of postgame where you end up being strong enough to run anything with the right accessory and aux core setup.
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Jan 13, 2018 04:28
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U-DO Burger posted:the cockney mechon owned what is wrong with you No. What's cool is a giant robot that transforms into a gun that shoots out the pilot.
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Jan 13, 2018 05:01
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Night Blade posted:No. That’s dumb, cockney robot rules.
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Jan 13, 2018 05:04
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Yeah no I'm on team Cockney Robot
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Jan 13, 2018 05:04
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The setting is really interesting and had a ton of potential to make interesting points. The story itself is every anime cliche of the past 25 years combined, repeating in rapid succession. It's still amazingly fun and I've played a billion hours of it. I still have a perverse desire to completely optimize how fast I can get 8 orbs up on a large monster. I wish there was a new area to explore full of super powerful things. There's no secret region full of level 100 enemies is there?
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Jan 13, 2018 05:04
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RazzleDazzleHour posted:Similarly, a tank blade is good for constantly drawing aggro and having a higher block/dodge rate. If your tank switches over to an attacker, it's not going to be able to generate aggro as fast as your attacker, and if it does you'll take just as much damage as your attacker party member would have since only the active blade does you any good. One point of order. It should still take less damage due to the class you get from having TNK/TNK/ATK equipped, as opposed to your main attacker which will be ATK/ATK/ATK. At least, I think that's how the character classes work. You are right that the block% and so forth is entirely based on the currently active blade.
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Jan 13, 2018 05:04
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So I tried fighting the Relentless Arduan after completing his feeding quest, and he one shot me. I was able to defeat the level 110 Cloud Sea King Ken (though it took a while), but apparently this guy has a strong single shot attack. Even if I successfully blocked against it with Tora, I have no idea how to keep my party from getting hit. Maybe you just have to be level 99 and have the higher hp/defense? I feel like I could handle the fight if I could survive that one attack, since one heal from Rex would get me back to full.
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Jan 13, 2018 05:10
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Ytlaya posted:So I tried fighting the Relentless Arduan after completing his feeding quest, and he one shot me. I was able to defeat the level 110 Cloud Sea King Ken (though it took a while), but apparently this guy has a strong single shot attack. Even if I successfully blocked against it with Tora, I have no idea how to keep my party from getting hit. Maybe you just have to be level 99 and have the higher hp/defense? I feel like I could handle the fight if I could survive that one attack, since one heal from Rex would get me back to full. The poison breath is a water cone attack. Do you have fire Poppi?
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Jan 13, 2018 05:27
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Now that I'm in the final strech of the story, there are two critical things none of the "things to know before you play" people ever mentioned. 1) If you get attached to Agate, be prepared for a world of pain. Her final two tiers of the Affinity Chart require killing basically every unique monster in the Spirit area, where you're stuck only using level 1 special arts. I did it because I apparently like to torture myself, but holy gently caress that is nuts. 2) Actual real tip, it's worth taking the time early to filter your blades. Open up a bunch of common cores and save only those that have multiple ranks in their mastery and at least one other skill (level of other skill doesn't matter so much, but it always helps to be 2 or 3). It gets real lovely in the late game if you're stuck with a bunch of level 1 mastery blades because most of the rares dont' come with the mastery skill for their element and you'll often need to hold two or three to make up the rare only skills and trying to fit in another 5 or 6 blades of the right element can get dicey.
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Jan 13, 2018 05:31
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Ytlaya posted:You're not wrong about the bad writing and kind of dumb plot in XC2*, but lol if you think the writing in previous Xeno games was much better. There are a few things worse about XC2 like the character designs and a few of the characters' general characterization, but there really isn't a big difference overall. Not to hang the entire plot on a single cutscene but the end of the chapter where you visit Tantal cements this game as having some of the worst writing ever. Jin goes on an rant about his reasoning for trying to destroy the world is the greatest "how could someone have actually written this" moment in a game with a meaningful focus on a story that I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of corny, pathetic, and just plain poorly written expositions by a bad guy, but that one officially takes the top prize.
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Jan 13, 2018 05:47
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Serious spoiler talk I can understand a blade wanting to end the cycle of endless rebirth as a tool. They're sentient beings that are used as tools of war. It's a slave rebellion in a very real way. His actual speech is insane and I feel was translated poorly.
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Jan 13, 2018 07:30
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I just cleared the final chapter, I thought the ending was a satisfying wrap up, I mean yeah it's super cliche but it made me smile sooo Aion was disappointingly easy. I almost beat him on my first try, but I was caught off guard by Prometheus. The second time through I had a chain attack charged so I blew that as soon as I saw the word 'Prometheus'. I did over  ONE MILLION DAMAGE and dropped him no problem. It got a little dicey while he was bringing in allies and I had to revive some guys, but for a final boss it wasn't so much. The games difficulty is definitely a lot better tuned than it was in Xenoblade Chronicles X. They might have gone a little too far in the other direction, but I guess I don't really know since I haven't gotten into the endgame content.Also I drew Azami, she came in just late enough for me to wish I had her for at least the last 10 hours or so. 
THE FUCKING MOON fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Jan 13, 2018 |
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Jan 13, 2018 07:34
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nessin posted:Not to hang the entire plot on a single cutscene but the end of the chapter where you visit Tantal cements this game as having some of the worst writing ever. Jin goes on an rant about his reasoning for trying to destroy the world is the greatest "how could someone have actually written this" moment in a game with a meaningful focus on a story that I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of corny, pathetic, and just plain poorly written expositions by a bad guy, but that one officially takes the top prize. Jin's motivation in general is kind of dumb. The funny thing is that other characters, including Jin himself point this out. Jin specifically says that he knows his ex-driver wouldn't want him to do all this poo poo, but he still does it anyways for god knows what reason. I can actually understand the other Torna members better, because it seems like they were more or less coerced into joining Jin/Malos because there's no other place for man-eaters in the world (as we saw from Nia being hunted down). Mikhail in particular had a pretty good excuse for joining up (though he was a blade-eater rather than a man-eater). But Jin's motive wasn't "desperate to find a place to belong"; he very directly wanted to kill the architect and destroy man-kind. Actually, after typing this out I can think of a way that his motive makes sense. Jin believes (possibly accurately) that as long as man-kind exist they'll continue to re-enslave the blades, and the blades will basically be helpless to stop it. By killing man-kind, this means that only non-man animals can awaken blades, and those animals will never be capable of organizing and enslaving them in the same way humans did. I'm not sure what kind of autonomy blades have when awakened by animals, but this could be a semi-reasonable explanation for why Jin would want to eliminate humans. To use an analogy, it's like blades are the working class and humans are capitalists. Jin believes that as long as humans exist, they will continue to re-exert authority over blades, so the only option is to eliminate all humans for good. The main hole in the logic of the above is that the person Jin cares about more than anyone else is a human. With this in mind, why would he be so preoccupied with freeing blades? It seems like Jin would be more likely than anyone to go against a "purge all humans" strategy. I'm not sure how he can demonize humans given his only close relationship was with a human (who I think it's implied he had some kind of possibly romantic love for). edit: Honestly, I guess I have to give the plot credit for even giving me the context to write all the above. Like I mentioned before, the general setting with blades/titans is actually pretty cool and unique. I would like to see a different plot with a little less cliche goofiness in the same setting. edit2: You know, I feel like this game would have been better if the protagonist's main goal was related to freeing the blades, and maybe as part of the plot they had to contend with the more militant "kill all humans" Torna-esque people. It would certainly have been more interesting than just "travel to Elysium and get held up along the way for various reasons," and it could have still ended up leading to Elysium for other reasons. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Jan 13, 2018 |
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Jan 13, 2018 07:53
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Jin really just needed a friggin hug. He was depressed and crazy, but when it came right down to it he wanted to be convinced. Honestly the fact that it doesn't make sense makes it a bit more believable to me, people don't always have rational motivations. Basically ISIS would have totally tried to recruit him.
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Jan 13, 2018 08:06
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sell the soundtrack already
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Jan 13, 2018 08:10
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I just wish Jin didn't look, speak, and act like a Sonic the Hedgehog villain.
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Jan 13, 2018 08:22
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How much slaves are blades it doesn't appear that they actually have to listen to you and we see blades betray their masters. I mean the "lose your memory and your life is tied to mine unless you eat me" thing sucks but they have more free will then I assumed going into the game.
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Jan 13, 2018 08:22
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ajkalan posted:I just wish Jin didn't look, speak, and act like a Sonic the Hedgehog villain. I mean I guess Sephiroth is like a Sonic villain (not named Eggman, who is the best).
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