I was 10 hours along in June, now I’m almost at the 50-hour mark. In another lifetime I would have finished Xenoblade Chronicles X three times over by now, but for who I am right now, this is excellent progress.
…Or is it, hehehe. Just because I’ve put in a lot of hours doesn’t mean I’ve achieved anything. All I’ve been doing for the past 37 hours is sidequests and affinity missions. And those green mission things, I forget what they’re called. Quests, quests, quests. Also some exploration, but not too much because of the problem of overpowered mobs wondering around, as I explained last time. Still, as I suspected, with better gear and more powerful arts it’s possible to take on enemies slightly stronger than yourself, so even though my team is around levels 32-34, we can comfortably take on mobs all the way to 39 as long as they don’t gang up on us. I even took down a level 40 tyrant that popped out of nowhere. That was dicey! And fun!
But you know how it is, all good things and all that. Eventually I had done all the affinity missions I qualified for at my level and almost all the sidequests as well. Plus it was just time to move on and see what else the game had to offer. Storywise all the Xenoblade games have been meh. The first one was okay, at least I could follow along pretty well. The second and third were super tedious, and I’ve heard nothing good about Xenoblade X’s story. Especially the original ending, and the tacked on epilogue.
I lost all hope as soon as this blue ass sashayed onto my screen.
But still, I gotta do it to unlock more sidequests, so away we go. Currently finished up chapter (?) 6, and now the commander and Elma are murmuring about giving me my own Skell, which I am honestly not crazy about. I like mecha anime as much as the next person, but I really enjoy the process of running around on foot. The exact moment XCX hooked me was when I picked up a quest set in Cauldros and I ran, swam and snuck about 13,000 miles from Primordia, through Noctilum, to Sylvanum and allll the way to my quest objective in Cauldros. I knew it had to be possible because the quest level was low, but it was such an exciting time! 😀 For freedom of exploration alone, I give Xenoblade Chronicles X a solid 9/10 (minus 1 for the stress of high level mobs).
Where was I… Oh yeah, so they want to give me a Skell but I don’t want a Skell, but I have to go through with it to unlock more sidequests and other fun stuff. So yeah, I’m gonna get a Skell and see what happens, and then I’ll be back with another update as and when. Absolutely nothing has happened in the story despite us supposedly being on a time limit, but that’s fine with me.
As if the writers would answer that easily.
Two comments before I let things go for today: first the characters. Through affinity quests I got a bunch of characters hanging around New LA to join my team, and I don’t know how to feel about that. I like a lean cast of playables, personally, but what bothers me even more is that most of the recruits don’t show up in the main story/can’t even be used on my team because the writers can’t be sure who I’ll have at which point. In this most recent story development, I was forced to use Lina, Elma and Lao even though I haven’t touched them in ages. It’s like the story characters in a gacha game who show up in all the cutscenes even though you haven’t used them since the tutorial. I’d rather have a forced cast with story relevance like in the other Xenoblade games than this gacha game approach.
The armor is still ugly.
Aaand I forget what the second comment was going to be. I’m getting old. Something else about the characters… Aha, it was about the enemy designs. The random enemies in the field strike a good balance between familiar and alien, but the main antagonists are too humanoid! Blue ass girl is just a girl with a blue ass, then there’s a tiger dude, and another dude, and okay one weird looking blob who nevertheless stands upright and wears clothes like a human. Maybe this will be explained eventually, after all the characters have already questioned why all these alien races can understand each other perfectly. For now, I don’t see the point of traveling across the galaxy to encounter the same old familiar aesthetics. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Right-ho, time to get me a Skell, explore 25% of Oblivia to unlock the next story mission, and do a lot more sidequests!
