Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition (2020)

I'm at close to 30 hours now, and in the Makna Forest. I was still working on quests in this area when I stopped playing on the Wii years back, so I'm just about caught up to my first (unfinished) playthrough.

I'm having a great time with this game. I'm completing every single quest as I go along, so I'm spending big chunks of time in each area. I never get tired of the music, especially with the different day/night versions, and DAMN, the locations are so beautiful. I've taken a ton of screenshots of waterfalls and cutscenes, because I somehow always hit the cutscenes at night, when the sky looks amazing.

I don't remember enough about the mechanics or UI to speak much on the upgrades made to this version, but it all feels pretty seamless. There are a lot of helpful menu shortcuts: left stick to expand the map, Y to open the map areas, down on the D-pad to open quests, X to close all menus without hitting B multiple times.

I still really love the Collectopaedia, and the armor appearance options.

One thing I'm not sure would appeal to everyone is a certain aspect of the battles, which is the auto-attack. I was asking my boyfriend if he thought he'd want to play XC, based on the bits and pieces he's seen. He said the plot sounds interesting and the game looks really nice, but he was wondering about how active your role is in battles.

Simple explanation: yes, you auto-attack, but you're also actively moving, selecting arts, and strategizing.
Longer explanation: You have the Monado abilities to consider, like using a Shield if the enemy is gonna use a powerful attack, or Enchant if you're fighting mechon, because your party can't hit them otherwise. You're also moving around to use Arts that do more damage from the back or side, and paying attention to HP. You also want to focus on whether you've used Break on an enemy, to open it up to a Topple from someone in your party with an appropriate move, and then a Daze attack once they're toppled. You're also keeping an eye on the Party Gauge, so that you can use a chain attack when it's full. Shulk is simply auto-attacking at a set interval in between you doing all of this.

This might make it sound way more complex than it needs to be, but once you've got a handful of battles under your belt, it goes quite smoothly and it's really not difficult to manage. Point is, if you were also having to press A to do a normal attack, it WOULD get frustrating. I'm glad it's set up the way that it is.

Alright, so I've got about 7 hours** on this so far, and I just wanted to share some thoughts since so many people were questioning whether it's worth it on my last post. (Keep in mind that I first played 1/3 to 1/4 of this years back on Wii, so I remember a few things, but honestly forgot most of the mechanics and story. This is basically a new game to me for all that I remember.)

Things that I love:

+The music.

+The fact that you can change your characters' appearance regardless of the armor they have on. (Basically, equip whatever you want, but you can select each part of your armor under an "appearance" section to wear whichever pieces are most appealing to you, and this doesn't change what you actually have equipped.)

+The Collectopaedia!! I love this. As you pick up collectibles from around whichever given area you're in, it's not technically auto-logged in your collection. You manually go into the collectopaedia and add each one into the slots provided for the area, as long as you still have it in your inventory. When you fill all of the slots in each row, you get goodies.

+Quest indicators. Whether it's the monsters that you need to target for a quest, or an item that you need, you can set active quests or simply look for the markers when you expand the map. Some people might not want all of this readily available, but this game is enormous, the first main area alone is expansive, and I personally like that feature when there are like 50 quests available in the first few hours. I think they can be turned off in the settings, but I'm not positive.

+I'm using the Japanese v.o., because I'm not a big fan of the English one. This is up to preference, obviously. The only thing I don't like about using the Japanese ones in games is when there are parts without subtitles, like in battles.

Also, please note that this isn't the kind of battle system that I would typically enjoy, but I find it pretty user-friendly, and it's easy to get used to. The prologue eases you into it, but it still looks and feels a little chaotic at first. From my experience, the AI is pretty good at doing what they need to.

**I finished the first section (Colony 9) at around 6 hours last night, but I had missed a handful of quests and one heart-to-heart that I'm pretty sure is missable considering the events that happen at the wrap of the section. So I loaded up my save from the 4 hour mark this morning, and snagged those quests, tried the heart-to-heart and still couldn't do it, so I dunno.