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Xenoblade |OT| The Adventure Begins

birdchili

Member
expansive worlds with rewarding exploration: one of my favorite things in rpgs

lunkheaded ai teammates: the worst thing ever in jrpgs.

hrm...
 

Alex

Member
This sounds neat. I've never played Radiata Stories, but one of the things I loved about Majora's Mask was that everyone schedules and real lives, and there are very few other games that have done something like that.

There are tons of games that do that. I swear some of you folks just stick to a comfort zone and pretend nothing else exists. That is so exceedingly common it's probably a trope now for open space RPGs.
 

DarkPanda

Member
Alex said:
There are *lots* of games that do that. I swear some of you folks just stick to a comfort zone and pretend nothing else exists.

I'd love some recommendations then. Any system but the XBOXes.
 

Diablos54

Member
I'm watching one of the live streams I found in this thread, and the game's looking really good. Dude's died like 4 times to this boss, so it's good to see the main game won't be a walk in the park like some RPG's. :D
 

Alex

Member
DarkPanda said:
I'd love some recommendations then. Any system but the XBOXes.

Everything from Harvest Moon to Oblivion, it's especially prevalent in PC RPGs. Like I said, it's not an uncommon thing for RPGs and open world games and has been around forever in varying complexities.

Red Dead Redemption is a notable recent title that does it as well.
 

Bebpo

Banned
I don't think people really have "schedules" like Shenmue or Radiata, as much as at night NPC group A is located in their spots and during the day NPC group B is located at their spots. Just like how at night you get enemy set A and during the day at the same spot you get enemy set B.

Diablos54 said:
I'm watching one of the live streams I found in this thread, and the game's looking really good. Dude's died like 4 times to this boss, so it's good to see the main game won't be a walk in the park like some RPG's. :D

You die a lot in the game, whenever you try to take on something above your level/equip. Luckily you tend to spawn fairly close.
 

Bebpo

Banned
I'm mainly glad the vision system is a plus and not a cheat/annoyance. It only shows you attacks that will kill you or a party member and then you can often only change it if you have enough tension meter. It's also worked into the story well.

I'm still not 100% sure how much skill/strategy there is to the battles, which is kind of my problem with all of these MMO-lite offline rpgs. So far it seems like the difference between being able to kill a big rare monster and not just comes down to your stats and not battle strategy so much. I really do like how some attacks change their effectiveness depending on where you strike from.

About 5-6 hours in now.
 

Shouta

Member
kiryogi said:
You have a drive that can read Wii DVDs?

Friend has the stuff to rip Wii games from the disk using a Wii so I ripped mine before returning his system. Was a bit of a pain in the ass though. Bunch of failures here and there.
 

Bebpo

Banned
Also it's cool that this is a loot game. Very Soma Bringer influenced in that respect. Especially cool because it's all visible equip.

All they need to do is take the final step and start having conversation based questing for exp and the wrpg/jrpg hybrid will be complete.
 

sfried

Member
Twilight Princess said:
i've started learning japanese for this game, anyone got any advice? lol
Learning Japanese through videogames is a bad way to start.

Get a proper language course. It will save you time and aggravation.
 
cosmicblizzard said:
Mitsuda is the best composer in the industry.

Heck yeah, he has been ever since his very first soundtrack, Chrono Trigger, which is still my favorite soundtrack ever.

I love the story behind that, where he was just a sound engineer at Squaresoft before that, but he wanted to compose, so he told Sakaguchi "Either let me compose a whole soundtrack or I quit," and they gave him Chrono Trigger.

And the rest is history!
 

speedpop

Has problems recognising girls
Well looks like people are enjoying the game initially, that's good enough for me. Time to make myself absent and not spoil anything more about the game.
 

May16

Member
Twilight Princess said:
i've started learning japanese for this game, anyone got any advice? lol
Start with katakana. It will give you the most immediately useful reward in the shortes amount of time, so it's a good first step.

It's a set of sylllables used mostly for writing words taken from other languages (English seemingly 90% of the time), so instantly being able to read things like "Aitemu" (item) and "Sukiru" (skill) will be useful right away.

Those are examples from other games, so I'm not sure if they're in this one, but similar things are bound to show up in Xenoblade.
 

Spoo

Member
So to people who are fairly fall along in the game, is the story even comparable to Takahashi's past efforts (particularly Xenogears/XS Ep1)?
 

Bebpo

Banned
The game's been out for about 24 hours. I don't think anyone is "that" far to tell. Especially because unlike XS ep1 or Soma Bringer, this isn't a 30 hour game.

Right from the start though, you can tell the writing is clearly on a higher level than 90% of games. Takahashi & Matsuno write scripts for adults, not 13 year old kids, and it shows. Very good prose, a varied and complex vocabulary, characters making intelligent decisions, and unpredictable events occuring. Basically from the start, the characters are on par with Takahashi's other characters and the story intro is intriguing.
 

Spoo

Member
Bebpo said:
Right from the start though, you can tell the writing is clearly on a higher level than 90% of games. Takahashi & Matsuno write scripts for adults, not 13 year old kids, and it shows. Very good prose, a varied and complex vocabulary, characters making intelligent decisions, and unpredictable events occuring. Basically from the start, the characters are on par with Takahashi's other characters and the story intro is intriguing.

That sounds pretty solid. Originally I was a super skeptic about this game (just simply due to past drama concerning XS transition from Takahashi's baby to, ultimately, I don't-even-know-what-the...).

But if you could keep us up-to-date on your opinion concerning the story, especially in relation to the quality of the aformentioned, I'd really appreciate that. It's the primary reason I'm at all excited :)
 

JaMarco

Member
Bebpo said:
Right from the start though, you can tell the writing is clearly on a higher level than 90% of games. Takahashi & Matsuno write scripts for adults, not 13 year old kids, and it shows. Very good prose, a varied and complex vocabulary, characters making intelligent decisions, and unpredictable events occuring. Basically from the start, the characters are on par with Takahashi's other characters and the story intro is intriguing.
Great to hear. Good writing is huge for me.
 

Cep

Banned
Bebpo said:
The game's been out for about 24 hours. I don't think anyone is "that" far to tell. Especially because unlike XS ep1 or Soma Bringer, this isn't a 30 hour game.

Right from the start though, you can tell the writing is clearly on a higher level than 90% of games. Takahashi & Matsuno write scripts for adults, not 13 year old kids, and it shows. Very good prose, a varied and complex vocabulary, characters making intelligent decisions, and unpredictable events occuring. Basically from the start, the characters are on par with Takahashi's other characters and the story intro is intriguing.

Really?

Aesthetically, the game does not give that impression, nor has the trailers.

Good to hear though.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
So, based on what we know, and what has now come out thanks to Japan, what kind of gameplay features and content are we looking at? What is this game delivering?
 

Bebpo

Banned
Unfortunately I have to say once the initial wow factor ran out, I'm starting to have FFXIII flashbacks. Mainly that it has lots of cool stuff going for it, but it's starting to get boring like XIII. Like XIII, after a while it gets to be holding UP and run for ages while fighting enemies until you get to the next cutscene.

If this game had a speeder bike or something it'd be perfect. Maybe it does. I hope it does. As you get further in the respawn monuments start getting further from each other and it makes you less risky to take on enemy groups above your level because running for 4 mins to a point, dying in 30 seconds and then having to start mins away and run back is not so appealing. I really feel like the game is great, but the large scale environments are making the game slooooow. Doesn't help that story-wise after the intro areas there's been little story so it's just been adventuring forward, which consists of running for hours across big fields. I'm hoping this is just a lull and the story will pick up along with the pacing. Because of the size of the environments, it's a game where you play a few hours and you feel like you hardly accomplished anything. So it gets kind of tiring if you try to play all day.

I'd compare the size of the environments to something like Oblivion or Fallout 3 with fewer locations, barely any people, and lots of animals everywhere.

Hopefully day 2 will end on a more positive note. There's a lot to like about the game, but it just feels draining and not fun like running through endless tunnels 7-10 hours into FFXIII did. :\
 

Spoo

Member
Bebpo said:
Like XIII, after a while it gets to be holding UP and run for ages while fighting enemies until you get to the next cutscene.

Isn't that, essentially, like XS Ep I?
 

Bebpo

Banned
Sure, but I think the difference was that in XS ep1 you only had to run about 3 screens worth instead of across giant fields.

If you've played FFXIII, it's pretty easy to relate. Remember how it was running across the main Gran Pulse area back and forth to do quests before you had chocobo. That's how Xenoblade is right now. Like Gran Pulse it was exciting at first for the sheer size of it, but now I just want to unlock the XB version of a chocobo to get through faster :p I'm reaaaally hoping there is a XB chocobo. Maybe he can be a robo-chocobo here.
 

Spoo

Member
Bebpo said:
Sure, but I think the difference was that in XS ep1 you only had to run about 3 screens worth instead of across giant fields.

Maybe at the beginning of Ep I, but after about a few hours into the game, you'd definitely have to play for an hour or so before hitting the next big cutscene. Think of the Gnosis Cathedral monster -- it wasn't three screens, for sure.
 
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