My progress continues.
I’ve now beaten all the super bosses. I found them all quite easy to be honest. I beat four of them, back-to-back, over the span of about 25 minutes, first try. That’s not to say I’m disappointed or didn’t enjoy it.
I had Noah with FMJ, Mio as Zephyr, Eunie and Taion as Signifers, Lanz as Lone Exile, Sena as Ogre and of course, Ashera.
All classes level 20, Mio and Sena with nopon-upgraded weapons, and the latter with a break brooch.
Building a team that can crush everything is part of the fun. My gems are pretty average, so I might, if I can be bothered, try and upgrade them ahead of the incoming challenge battles. I wanted to build a team strong enough to beat everything in the game, but also to ensure that I can get the challenge battle unlocks. I think I’ve achieved that (provided some unlocks aren’t tied to some insane challenges).
Everyone’s got a smattering of level 20 classes that they can pick from, so while there’s still some classes to level cap, I don’t feel too inclined to do it to be honest.
The other big progress I’ve made is finally wrapping up all the party side stories.
A few posts back I said I was baffled that Sena’s quest wasn’t integrated into the main story in some way, as it feels really meaningful.
Well, having done them now, I’m even more baffled. Eunie’s quest reveals another outpost, lifts the lid on the colony rank system and pits you up against X.
These aren’t small things. She even references the bloody ‘dog tag’ she picked up in the main story, finally revealing her past to the party. Eunie picking that up and keeping it to herself builds up some good tension that the plot never uses outside of their fight with D - and even then it’s not explicit.
Finding out that the colony ranks were imposed by moebius as a way of motivating everyone to kill, so they could eventually reap the rewards is great. Yeah you can kind of piece that together yourself, but to have that gleefully spelled out by X is a really good moment.
And the fact that - yes
@YoboD - she doesn’t appear in Origin if you don’t do this quest is just another, why? After the quest, I went and beat her in Origin and Eunie says something to her in the pre-battle cutscene, it’s not much, but it just connects it back in a nice way. Though I’m not sure if this is the reason she doesn’t get a cutscene after her death, as Y doesn’t either and he’s mandatory.
And then there’s Taion’s quest… where do I begin with this one. It not only develops his character, it broadens out the world, introduces a new colony, a series of caves, unique monsters and so on.
Taion interacting with Nimue and eventually convincing her to stay behind and protect the colony is great. This quest shows that Nimue will always be inquisitive, with dreams of seeing the outside world. And seeing Taion successfully leverage his knowledge of the ‘old Nimue’ to protect her in a way Isurd never managed is such a good piece of storytelling.
Did you ever wonder what the Ouroboros before our party did in the world? Yeah, me too. And here, tucked away in an optional side quest, is a hint of that. A lost colony, heavily implied to have been freed from the flame clock system by heroes past, has lived in peace for generations. The City is a monument to what they were trying to achieve, but this is an example of them actually having an impact in the world of Aionios. There’s next to no evidence of this throughout the main game.
And of course, I can’t forget about the colony itself. I must confess, I didn’t expect much from it as the quest started to ramp up. I’d found myself in so many boring, cookie cutter caves in XC3, I didn’t anticipate I’d get anything truly memorable, but I was glad to be totally wrong. There’s a visual wonder to The Lost Colony - partially because it’s riffing on Uraya, but also because in a world where everything feels a bit dull, it actually looks fantastical. It was nice to reach a colony that didn’t have a commander you could recruit, but just a regular person instead. I was a little bit scared I wouldn’t be able to access it after the side story, but thankfully it’s available to wander through.
The quest even saw two giant mechs fighting each other in real time and you can watch them from a cliff…
… again, it’s crazy that none of this stuff made it into the main story. I take
@BradenAndEggs point about game length and I suspect that may have been the fear.
My problem is, if you look at what is in the main story - or what isn’t when you look at the final two chapters - this stuff is either a lot better or could have helped fill a void. I don’t see why some of these couldn’t have been weaved into the Origin Shard hunt at the end in some capacity,
Lanz probably had the weakest quest of the bunch, but not because it’s bad, but because it does feel more like a personal story than the others. The others are personal stories yes, but they also have really big world revelations in them.
In terms of side stories -
Taion/Sena > Mio/Eunie > Lanz > Noah
I will also say one thing. I miss heart to hearts. I’m not sure they could have worked in this game where all the party shares a similar age, life experience and so on, but I do miss them. While you couldn’t have had Pyra and Nia giggling over Rex wetting his pants when he was a young boy, or Morag and Zeke debating the importance of duty or Mythra telling Morag to ignore her station and treat Niall as her brother, I still miss them.
I do miss that mixture of ages, upbringings, outlooks on life, etc. that the other games had. XC3 kind of needs to take everyone on the same journey for the story to work though.
One major mark against a prequel DLC IMO is if the key art is hinting at playable shulk and rex i would much rather play as the shulk and rex we already know and not some aionios copies
I don’t see how the devs could offer up a satisfying answer as to why Rex and Shulk aren’t part of XC3, while also saying they’re part of the flame clock system.
If they are in the world of XC3 but we just don’t see them, that’s lame.