These reviews and your impressions make me want this game so much.

Now I know what to do with the items - the collectable non-equipable items. You can present them to another party member to increase your affinity with them which lets you add special moves types between characters. You can also add the items to an encyclopedia which gives you experience points to level up your character.

And they added yet another component to the combat. You can see the future.

You get visions of the future which show major moves by the enemy targeting a specific character which may even kill them in one blow.

You can then run up to said character and warn them of the future - which at the cost of one bar of you special power, will allow them to perform an art to counter the attack.

And you can also do something to change the future, like inflict a daze or topple move on the enemy, or put up a shield to protect everyone. Very cool, yet I'm still learning about how to fight against it as there are 3 different attack types, physical, arts and something else. I need to read more to get it down pat.

Also some of the battles are quite tactical, there is this spider boss which at first I got crushed at and now I am much better, yet not quite good enough to beat him yet.

Agnates said:

It's a lot like MMORPG combat but I guess it's all new to you since you haven't played such games? Though it's definitely done in its own way many of the basics are the same, from aggro levels to how you do specials (except on PC you press their hotkey or click on your action bar rather than highlight it with the arrow keys and then confirm the action with a button). The Last Story also has similar ideas in its own way. I got the game too but I only played a bit, I'm just about to leave Colony 9 (well, story wise, I think I'll stick around and do some side quests). If you're playing on a 4:3 SDTV and have a hard time reading some of the text, set your Wii to widescreen 16:9 mode when playing Xenoblade, and set your TV to widescreen also (so that it doesn't stretch the image) the picture and text is clearer that way, which is especially evident in the equipment screen with the stat comparisons. There are no downsides for Xenoblade since in 4:3 mode it adds huge black bars that give it the same picture estate as widescreen on a 4:3 TV, you'll just have to switch it back for other games.

Yeah I never played a MMORPG.

I do, do that 16:9 trick for some wii games on a 4:3 TV, all the ones that stick giant black bars at the top and bottom like Madworld and NSMB too. Are you leaving colony 9 through the cave to get the cylinders or after the thingie?

Iga_Bobovic said:

And GG for all the items. Each named character you see, you can trade stuff with them. Don't bother buying stuff in shopes.

Ah I forgot about that.

What do you mean by a "tech?"

Iga_Bobovic said:

Well the exploration in this game is awesome. I already saw some level 70 monsters casually swimming by. I also beat one named monster. The giant worm you find at the beach. But here's the thing, I beat him with Shulk alone. It is hard fighting on you own, but I did it. Done tons and tons of sidequests, explored a lot. Picked fights with monster dozens of levels above me and died.

I like it a lot more then TWEWY. This game has so much more freedom and armour actually make sense here. Also the gem slots are like the badges in Paper Mario, awesome.

Wow, you must have explored more than me around Colony 9, I'm in the cave on the way to Bionis' leg.

How do spoiler tags work?