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Fun Club Help me understand/like Xenoblade's battle system

iag

iag

Piranha Plant
Baten Kaitos being one of my favorites games from GameCube made me want to try Xenoblade again. First one I tried on Wii, got only to a point where you had to fight a boss twice on a hill after the girl died. Wasn't having fun and dropped it.

Got Xenoblade 2 on a sale a while back. I like the setting, game feels a little too complicated with tutorials popping out everywhere, but ok. I just arrived on a city where someone died trying to become a driver but I'm not having fun on the battles?

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, or maybe it isn't for me. I'm basically watching Rex doing auto attacks/getting attacked while the 4 specials on the right load. Then I position him, use back special or side special, and wait while they are ready again. Is this it? Or am I doing it wrong?

I had the same feeling with The Last Story on Wii. Then I changed to manual attack and it got better for me. So maybe there's something I can change to have fun with this.

Thank you.
 
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The battle system is somewhat restricted until the end of chapter 3

You can make rex attack faster and charge his arts by canceling the auto animation right after the first auto attack.

Canceling an auto animation with an art also helps charge your arts
 
It's funny because the message explaining this cancelling technique was the last one game showed me. Will try doing it. Thank you.
 
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^ very helpful video.

Also, continue the plot where you are for a bit; Xenoblade 2's combat system doesn't really work with just one party member, and once you get a full party of three (which is mostly plot and not a lot of combat iirc), you'll be set.

But from what I remember, the XC2 combat loop very much becomes use auto-attacks to charge arts; use arts to charge specials (and fulfill next step in the driver combo, but that's the next continent's problem); use specials to unleash blade combos; and finally, after doing enough blade combos, use a chain attack to do a ton of damage.
 
I checked my tutorial screenshots and I believe at the point where you are at the game hasn't even taught you about Driver Combos yet? Until now the focus has been on letting you get familiar with Blade Combos and mastering the timing of your Arts to hit at the same moment as an auto-attack.

There's more coming, don't worry.
 
I can help you to understand, help you to like it thats on You, For Xenoblade 2 dont worry till after you finish chapter 3 (is where you learn the 2 advanced mechanics of the combat).
Somethinf the game doesnt tell you is Auto Attack cancel. Instead of being stand still and let the character do his 3 attacks animations full cycle (attack animation> damage display> recovery animation > next attack), out which every AA besides the 1st has a longer animation.
Using sound cue for the damage, after it hit, tap the left stick to move left or right. Doing so will cancel the attack animation and reset and start to attack again.
So instead of
attack Animation > recovery Animation > longer attack animation > Recovery animation > Longest Attack Animation > recovery animation.
Click to expand...

It will
attach animation > side step > attack animation > side step > attack animation > side step >attack animation.
Click to expand...


The point of AA cancel is not do damage with AA, but increase the number of AA that land so you will fill up your Blades skills faster
 
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  1. Auto Attacks build up Driver Arts (B/Y/X skills)
    • when your character does an auto attack, when they land a hit, you can use a driver art for extra damage. It's almost like a rhythm game
  2. Driver Arts build up Special Attacks (A skill)
  3. Special Attack can strung together to get Elemental Combos (the top right chart on the screen)
    • you can start it with any element and then follow along. First part of the chart can be a lvl 1 special attack, 2nd needs at least lvl 2, last needs to be at least lvl 3.
  4. The last element on the Elemental Combo is placed on the enemy, when you do a Chain attack, you extend the combo by attacking the orb with the opposite element
    • Fire/Water, Wind/Ice, Earth/Lightning, Light/Dark. You need all three bars in the top left to perform the Chain Attack
 
The combat is slow in the beginning so the player can get used to and learn what they need to keep their eyes on before it becomes fast paced and chaotic. But they really exaggerated on that, at least for non-casual players.

Just proceed with story so you get a full party and more Blade slots. Desserts (Narcipear Jelly in Argentum in special) cut down A LOT the down time auto-attacking. Once you can use 2 pouch items and get the skill to cancel arts you will barely do auto-attacks.

Ah, and once you get chain attack on chapter 3, I suggest to check some 5~10 minute video explaining the combat, to be sure you learned all mechanics correctly, cause the in game tutorial are unnecessarily convoluted.
 
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Just watch a YouTube video that explains it. I took 6 month off because I thought I hated the battle systems but I decided to watch a video and now it’s one of my favorite rpg ever.
 
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Doing your special attacks right on a basic attack animation to reset it, boost the special and start the next one quicker helps. And certain builds are more fun than others, like there’s this thingy you can equip that confers cooldown resets on critical attacks.

But there is also a chance the combat won’t click with you. I never got to a point where I enjoyed the constant meter management. Everything took too long.
 
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I often think about XC2's battle system like a rhythm mini-game, especially with cancelling auto/special attacks and stacking up special effects (elemental orbs/debuffs). Furthermore each weapon will have a separate auto attack pattern, so you can try memorizing them to getting in with the rhythm as smoothly as possible. Also take time to prepare your party so that you have full coverage on both elemental orbs and debuffs, this will help you maintaining the rhythm much more easily. When my playtime reached 30 hours, the rhythm was basically ingrained into my muscle memory lol.
 
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The downside of watching video guides is missing out on those moments when you think you finally got it all and 10 hours later the game throws another wrinkle at you.
 
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I'd say Xenoblade 2's combat system doesn't really open up until the middle of Ch. 3, so for now, I'd focus on progressing the plot a bit to get your party up and running (3 Party Members is the standard for XC2 combat). A few other ways to improve the general experience are to use pouch items to increase the rate your arts charge up (desserts, like those you can find in Argentum's dessert shop, help with this) and to utilize side-stepping (flick the control stick to the left/right) to spam the first hit of your auto-attack combo (thus rapidly charging your arts). Both of those will make things go much faster.

Another, perhaps less significant, thing you should know is that you aren't limited to playing as Rex. You can easily go into the menu and move one of your other party members into the first slot. Each party member has their own animations for each weapon and thus, plays a little differently even if they have similar loadouts (Which they definitely won't since you are early in the game). It might be a way for you to spice up the moment to moment gameplay.
 
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Thanks everyone for all the replies. I'm doing the cancel method and it's already faster than just waiting for the attacks. Now i feel i'm doing something instead of just waiting. Will try the deserts and all the other suggestions you all gave. Thank you.
 
Yeah early on it can feel bad or boring but by the end it felt to me almost like a rhythm game in a way that felt extremely rewarding.
 
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The battle system isn’t anything special imo. My biggest wish for Xenoblade 3 is a good strategic battle system. It opens up more in the later chapters but ultimately you’ll mostly be using the same tactics for most of the enemies.
 
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