Tight level banding works in a Dragon Quest-like setup, where the player is strictly led along and each new area is a microcosm of the leveling curve, presenting as very difficult when first entered and then, with a level-up or two, moving to fair and then trivial.
My favorite way to balance this is s-curve shaped; enemies get significantly easier or harder just a level below or above the player, but this slows down and caps so that no enemy is truly trivialized and or impossible – it’s really obvious in Destiny when running through low-end content that they still take a few body shots.
Most of the party members band together to exact revenge upon the Mechon for killing loved ones. But I love how Heropon Riki—the cutesy/comedy-relief animal friend—joins up because he’s being extorted and possibly cuckolded by his village elder.
Just a friendly reminder that XenobladeX is coming soon to your nintendo switch
I’ve always wanted to play this since I never owned a Wii U and I enjoyed the first game for what it was (an ok game with occasionally nice music)
I had it in my head this whole time that X was an interesting game (at least in an expensive trainwreck kind of way) so I had been planning on buying this remaster for months, but today browsing some gameplay footage of the wii u version I’ve decided it actually seems pretty bad lol. I don’t like the music
I had the same feeling too - I think it just looks more interesting than the other Xenoblades because of the environments, mech, scale, seemingly lack of real characters or interesting in showing them
I can’t see myself playing another game with that braindead « please enjoy pushing the big buttons » battle system though
I still bought it!! I was too attracted by the powerful images of « a normal coffee shop » and « a cat having a little nap under a table » in Neo Los Angeles on another planet. That and the super floaty Super Mario jump.
The setup is impressive honestly. Opposite, incomparably strong alien forces decide to fight each other near Earth, and the planet gets obliterated as collateral. It’s dizzying. Parts of humanity boards spaceships to flee before the planet explodes, but most spaceships get destroyed in the process.
Bad news: only a minuscule portion of the population survived. Worse news: they’re all North Americans. Their ship crashes on a planet and society rebuilds on its remains. The surface area is small. The urbanist in you thinks humanity could use this opportunity to build efficient, mixed-use housing, with heavy reliance on public transportation and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. Instead, there is a suburbs area, a shopping area, and two work areas, and they use cars to go in-between everything.
The dream of going from your suburbs to a clothing store in your car is kept alive. At what cost?
Fuel is a scarce resource. Humanity explores the planet, while exterminating the indigenous wildlife, to get more.
While you think this might be « a grim reflection on how humanity will never escape its appetite for consumption and colonization » the game disagrees and thinks this is « cool as shit »
Battle system still feels like the game dangling keys in front of me though, and this is probably what will make me ultimately check out, but I love exploration in the game. It feels like a super expanded PS2 game instead of a modern title, which I very much appreciate.
Everytime the game spectacularly fumbles something, I’m like « hell yeah, this stuff why it’s the black sheep of the franchise and I can just not care » New Los Angeles has the worst background music I’ve ever heard? I disable music in the menus. Cutscene direction is at PS2 Tales Of level? I check my phone. Etc.
