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Xenoblade (Wii, Monolithsoft x Nintendo) Information Thread

Battle system looks ok. I like the big numbers and effects. I don't mind auto-battle with you select attacks for your character.

I really don't like that the video says your allies are completely AI and you have no control over them >_<
 
Bebpo said:
I really don't like that the video says your allies are completely AI and you have no control over them >_<
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Err, the player controlled another party member near the end. The entire last 37 seconds is pretty much nothing but control of the other party members...

I'm really interested in the real time features, but I need a translation of what, exactly is going on. I understand you assign eight "Arts" to the battle bar for each character, however.
 
Of course the enemies aren't doing much, this is a trailer showing the mechanics of the battle system. What do you expect? :lol

Also it looks cool but I still don't really get it. Is this game supposed to be semi-realtime and while you can move around you pick which attacks you use from a menu kind of thing like Valkyrie Profile or something or what? Or is it like RuneScape (don't say "like Wow" since I haven't played that)...
 
Bel Marduk said:
Of course the enemies aren't doing much, this is a trailer showing the mechanics of the battle system. What do you expect? :lol
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Anyone suggesting that the enemies aren't doing much didn't pay much attention to the last part of the video. That Rhino and Giant enemy is tearing the party apart. :lol
 
Marrshu said:
Err, the player controlled another party member near the end. The entire last 37 seconds is pretty much nothing but control of the other party members...

I'm really interested in the real time features, but I need a translation of what, exactly is going on. I understand you assign eight "Arts" to the battle bar for each character, however.
Click to expand...

I'm just going by what the video says. While you are fighting your allies are completely AI driven.

I guess the question is if you can switch during battle or only outside of battle. If it's during battle that's good, if it's outside of battle that's bad.
 
Bel Marduk said:
Of course the enemies aren't doing much, this is a trailer showing the mechanics of the battle system. What do you expect? :lol
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So in order for them to present the battle system they have to dumb down the enemies?

Marrshu said:
Anyone suggesting that the enemies aren't doing much didn't pay much attention to the last part of the video. That Rhino and Giant enemy is tearing the party apart. :lol
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Oh I saw that, but most of the enemies in the beginning weren't doing that much in the battle.

I'm pretty sure it will probably be different, but as of now I'm not that happy with it.
 
Bebpo said:
I'm just going by what the video says. While you are fighting your allies are completely AI driven.

Maybe you can switch which one you control in real-time?
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I'm fairly certain you can. Not only do you assign Arts for each teammate, but at one point I recall them switching directly. And we do see other party members then Shulk in control near the end.

I really doubt they ignored the criticisms leveled at FF13, Persona 3, and even their own Soma Bringer. It's unlike Monolith Soft.

Linkhero1 said:
Oh I saw that, but most of the enemies in the beginning weren't doing that much in the battle.

I'm pretty sure it will probably be different, but as of now I'm not that happy with it.
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Yeah, the beginning is more then likely a controlled test just to demonstrate the mechanics. The end is probably closer to the final game, and watching the party's HP drop quickly during the fight with that Rhino pleased me.
 
Battle system isn't what I was expecting. I was really hoping for something similar to FFXII. Still, it looks fine for what it is though I'm not quite sure what was happening. The real draw for me is the awesome looking world anyways, so I'm sure I'll still end up getting this.
 
Linkhero1 said:
So in order for them to present the battle system they have to dumb down the enemies?
Click to expand...

If the enemies are beating them up then they can't "properly" lay down the mechanics. It's not like this hasn't happened with other RPGs before, just look at Tales of Vesperia or Tales of Graces trailers...

Also is the battle system real time or semi real time?
 
Aaaand pre-ordered. Sucks that I won't be able to play it until August. : (


Battles look pretty good. The free movement thing is welcome, but I really want to know what the level of control is over your team members(I'm aware they act independently of whoever you're controlling), and whether or not you automatically attack once you initiate combat, or if there are any button inputs for any of the techniques. The most intriguing thing is the "future vision" feature. I'd imagine that this will make for some interesting battles if the boss battles are especially difficult.

Nothing super amazing, but I don't really play Takahashi games for the game play anyway, so no big deal to me. Hopefully we get a better look at things when the site updates the battle section.
 
This game is starting to look cool. I'm debating whether or not to get the Japanese version to help brush up on my Japanese, but we'll see. I have to convince my wife to let me buy and that may be difficult considering the current financial climate. Either way, I really like what they're doing with the game.
 
Looks pretty underwhelming honestly. It seems like the battles are something they put the least amount of effort into designing. Not a dealbreaker, but it's pretty obvious now why they haven't been showing off the battles much. Bebpo is right, there is no way to change character control within battles. Party members are completely AI drive, and that is why certain Artes are chain attacks with specific party members. And honestly, the Vision thing looks dumb.
 
duckroll said:
Looks pretty underwhelming honestly. It seems like the battles are something they put the least amount of effort into designing. Not a dealbreaker, but it's pretty obvious now why they haven't been showing off the battles much. Bebpo is right, there is no way to change character control within battles. Party members are completely AI drive, and that is why certain Artes are chain attacks with specific party members. And honestly, the Vision thing looks dumb.
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The last part of the video seems to imply that we can control the characters. I mean, they're at the center of the screen as if the person playing is controlling. Unless we only get control of them when we want them to do special moves?
 
EDarkness said:
The last part of the video seems to imply that we can control the characters. I mean, they're at the center of the screen as if the person playing is controlling. Unless we only get control of them when we want them to do special moves?
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No, you don't understand what I'm saying. The video clearly shows you can have different leaders in the party. It doesn't indicate that you can switch on the fly during the battle. That's what I meant.
 
duckroll said:
No, you don't understand what I'm saying. The video clearly shows you can have different leaders in the party. It doesn't indicate that you can switch on the fly during the battle. That's what I meant.
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Okay. I follow you now. But I really don't think we have enough information about it to say whether it's good or not. I'm trying to be optimistic especially since they seem to be toning down the crappy drama crap from Xenosaga. Being able to change characters or not doesn't bother me, but I would like the option.
 
Game looks fucking awesome.

AWESOME!

Oh my god, can't wait for Shimomura goodness plus an interesting looking battle system. Visuals look pretty good too.

all over my face.
 
Huh, the battle video actually reminded me of a fight in one of XIII's Pulse areas (even though the mechanics may be completely different). I thought XIII was pretty terrible all around, but at least it looked appealing. Xenoblade's battles on the other hand don't even look like they might be fun to play. I can see why they would shut proper videos of Xeno's battle system away for so long. :lol
 
iamaustrian said:
what so bad about the battlesystem?
it looks perfectly fine to me.

thank god it's no FFXII bullshitteria
Click to expand...

I don't think it's bad, it's just a really boring video, especially compared to the field one. It's obvious where the focus of development has gone into for the project. Oh and FFXII rocks. :P
 
Ick. Looks wayyyy too slow. I was going to import right away, but now I'll wait to hear what people think once it's out. If the regular attacks are automatic like I've heard, it might be okay, but making the lead character wield a gigantic sword that swings once every 3 seconds is really unappealingly slow.
 
Well, I didn't exactly expect something like this and I'm actually not sure what to think. Not the biggest fan of slow battle systems here, I like the enemies and the music though.
 
I think most of the dissapointed here where hopping a FFXII-2 game.

Combat shown = it's different > dissapointed.

IMO, combats looks fine, and, I dare say, dynamic and interresting.

I would prefer being able to switch leader in a fight, but I trust Monolith.

Yeah, this looks good.
 
Anoop updated his blog a while ago.

The "vision" thing makes more sense now that I know it fits into the story. I hope it is well implemented. Having watched the video a few more times now, I can't see any reason why they would take out the option to switch characters mid-battle, since you can obviously play as different characters. Surely Monolithsoft knows better.

BTW, I know it's been said a ton before, but the music is phenomenal. Probably the best thing about this game.
 
There are clean scans from this week's Famitsu out now showing details on the battle system. Here's a summary of what it covers:

- The blue 3-bar gauge at the top left is the Party Gauge. This is used up to execute Chain Artes, when the conditions are met. Chain Artes are special combo attacks involving 2 or 3 party members at the same time.

- When the leader character is killed when there isn't a single bar of the Party Gauge filled up, the game ends. If there is a single bar filled up, then a nearby AI party member can revive the leader character.

- Enemies have helpful data displayed on them when targeted. The color shows their strength in relation to the party: black = weakass, blue = weak, white = equal, yellow = strong, red = willkickyourass. There are also icons showing what sort of aggro AI the enemy has: some are alerted by vision, some by nearby sounds (footsteps), some by the use of spells (it says Ether Arts specifically). There are also enemies who will automatically join in the battle if a comrade is fighting, and some enemies who will join the battle if nearby enemies of the same race are fighting.

- The status window (far left, with character faces) also acts as a tension gauge aside from providing information. The faces show how EXCITED the characters are in battle, and as the face gets more hyped up during the battle they go super saiya they will do more critical attacks while attack and so on.
 
duckroll said:
- When the leader character is killed when there isn't a single bar of the Party Gauge filled up, the game ends. If there is a single bar filled up, then a nearby AI party member can revive the leader character.
Click to expand...

I guess this pretty much confirms no character change mid-battle. That's a shame. It's nice that the exaggerated expressions of the character portraits actually have a use, because they look quite silly from the video.
 
so basically you control one of your party members, and build up the party gauge using artes. BY filling the gauge you can execute attacks that use multiple party members. The wielder of monado's precognition ability is not just a story device but has gameplay consequences, where you can see the enemy's future attacks and plan accordingly


It also seemed to me that you had a lot of different artes but only a certain number of them were available at any one time.



Is that right?
 
dsister44 said:
It also seemed to me that you had a lot of different artes but only a certain number of them were available at any one time.
Click to expand...

You set artes on the quickcast bar at the bottom of the screen like in MMOs. There are 8 slots.
 
duckroll said:
You set artes on the quickcast bar at the bottom of the screen like in MMOs. There are 8 slots.
Click to expand...



so at any one time you can only use 8 artes right? and you cna only change those 8 outside of battle?
 
dsister44 said:
so at any one time you can only use 8 artes right? and you cna only change those 8 outside of battle?
Click to expand...

Well, I dunno if you can go into the menu during battles, maybe you can. But you can only use those which are on the slots during a battle, yeah.
 
Since no one has posted about it yet, I guess I'll talk about the details of the music they discussed in the Iwata Asks, column.

- There are six composers for the game: Yoko Shimomura, Yasunori Mitsuda, Manami Kiyota, and the sound unit ACE+ (CHiCO, Tomori Kudo, and Kenji Hiramatsu).

- The soundtrack is produced by Dog Ear Records, Uematsu's studio. That's how ACE+ and Manami Kiyota got involved in composing the soundtrack. They were asked to participate by Dog Ear Records.

- Manami Kiyota is a singer songwriter, she sang the opening theme for Heracles DS, and composed music for PokePark on the Wii recently. She was put in charge of tracks pertaining to field exploration and event scenes.

- ACE+ is a sound unit comprised of CHiCO, Tomori Kudo, and Kenji Hiramatsu. Originally ACE was a sound unit with just CHiCO and Tomori Kudo. With the inclusion of Kenji Hiramatsu, they became ACE+.

- As far as CHiCO's involvement with game composition, it seems she worked on the N64 Tamagotchi game, and more decently she performed the vocal song for Luminous Arc 3. ACE+ was tasked with composing tracks for field exploration, event scenes, and battles.

- Shimomura seems to be the "main" composer, since Takahashi asked her to compose the main theme and the opening theme for the game. It's not mentioned specifically in the article, but I definitely hope she's doing a lot more than that. It does sound like the bulk of the work is going to be by the other composers though.

- Mitsuda's only involvement in the entire project is composing the game's vocal song, used during the epilogue scene in the game. The song is called "Beyond the Sky", and the lyrics were written by Takahashi.


Edit: Also, the track linked in the post before mine is not by Shimomura. It's composed by Manami Kiyota.
 
Am I the only one who liked the "vision" thing? Looked interesting.

Just hope it's well balanced so the game doesn't become too easy.

Battles looks good except for the animations. Don't think it's slow at all. You guys need to play White Knight Chronicles, now that's slow. :lol
 
radiantdreamer said:
The battle system and look seems like a spiffed up Tales Meets FFXII, or a not as epic intense Monster Hunter Tri.
Click to expand...

Yes. Monster fighting is less intense when they don't fight back very well.
 
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