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[Thad]

1) How the characters in-cutscene suddenly have magical mechon destroying attacks, when normally they need the enchantment buff active.

Same way RPG characters have been able to cast spells without using MP in cutscenes since at least the SNES era.

(There was a good bit in the Sims/Uzumeri review of Blade 2 where they discussed how it's instructive to pretend the entire movie is a video game.  And the reason Blade blows up the sidekick instead of just blowing up Ron Perlman is because it's a cutscene and he doesn't have control of what happens.)

[Syl]

I dunno what he could've said that would have helped to avert that though.
"Oh, hey, there's probably a giant one that will probably murder you without even trying and you shouldn't let yourself get separated from me in the event of a horrible ambush?"

Now, I'm a little baffled, mechanically, about
1) How the characters in-cutscene suddenly have magical mechon destroying attacks, when normally they need the enchantment buff active.
2) Why can the Monado, an item that's been established not to hurt living things, is suddenly tearing up animals.

Also, yeah, the magic sword is totally taking over the main character's brain. Maybe this is why he's getting retarded.

Yeah, i don't get the in-cutscene mechon destroying stuff, i think it tries to play it off by them hitting weakpoints?  I don't know.
However #2 is established that it cannot hurt homs.  Animals are excluded and up to where I am in the game (23 hours i think?  I'm currently in the [spoiler]lung of bionis[/spoiler] i have yet to fight any homs.  MAJOR SPOILERS [spoiler] except the ones inside the metal-faced mechons, i'm assuming they're part human, which is why the monado doesn't work on them.[/spoiler]

I'm still really digging the game anow that i'm figuring out more of its intricacies.  Fucking make sure you look at the collectopedia.  You get awesome items from it. 

[Classic]

We kind of need to pick and choose our spoiler battles, because I'm about as many hours into the game and only just slew the capstone foe to the Colony 6 encounters. i.e., I kind of wish I hadn't read the MAJOR SPOILERS. But [spoiler]the glowing lights, the faces, the eating people, makes it pretty clear that the elite mechon are doing stuff to confuse the monado / bionis' ability to recognize them as alien. It's a creepy inversion of the way humans homs just tear off pieces of mechon remains and use them for their own technology.[/spoiler]

EDIT:
Fuck, preview button.

[Thad]

Yeah, I suspect this is a situation where number of hours is not really an adequate metric for how far anyone is in the game, given that the delta between "explore everywhere you possibly can" and "go to the next flag" is fucking enormous.  A vague, non-spoilery description of your current location is probably the best thing to put in front of a spoiler tag.

[Syl]

Just hit 36 hours, currently swimming in the Eryth sea.  The absolute SIZE of the locations of this game continues to impress me.  I have never played a jRPG with environments this bloody huge.  Likewise the majority of them are constantly interesting and filled with little details.  Sure, the sea may be a huge chunk of water, [spoiler] but it has islands, and floating islands, and coastlines, and damn is it gorgeous.[/spoiler]

I finally got the two final jRPG trope characters, the female "special" mage using a staff.  [spoiler]Who happens to be a princess.  Sigh[/spoiler] and the annoying as fuck little fluffy comic relief character who i wish i could just get rid of entirely instead of having to deal with him during cutscenes.  However i rather like melia the mage so far. 

Honestly for the last 10 hours or so of the game not a goddamn thing storywise has really happened for me, i spent the majority of it messing around and trying to fulfill quests in the jungle and the swamp.  I FINALLY got my goddamn fossil monkey needed to upgrade [spoiler]colony 6 residential[/spoiler].  I spent a good hour or two trying to find one of those damn things 

I'm actually really, really loving the game.  It's where all of my current free time is going.  I have a feeling it still has a few twists up its sleave before the end.  I don't even think i'm halfway to the end yet. 

[Thad]

This game sure is big on continually stating and restating the things that you are looking at.

SHULK: Hey, look up ahead.
REYN: It looks like a tree.
SHULK: It sure does look like a tree.
REYN: Yeah.  Hey Shulk, didn't that guy back in town tell us we were supposed to be looking for a tree?
SHULK: Yeah, he did.
REYN: Do you think this could be the tree we were supposed to be looking for?
SHULK: Could be.
REYN: I think we should walk towards it.

Part of me feels like maybe it's written by people from the 8- and 16-bit era who just aren't used to a world where graphics can accurately show you the thing you're looking at without the characters pausing to explain it to you.

On the other hand, in the old days they sure as fuck didn't spend this much time belaboring the point.

Also, while part of me loves the sheer scope of this thing, part of me thinks that building worlds to scale is highly overrated.  You can navigate for hours and it feels like you've made a lot less progress than if you spent the same amount of time poking around in an old SNES game.

And while the "instantly go to landmark" option is pretty much essential for a game like this, it isn't always implemented well.  You can spend an hour navigating the giant field on the way to Sector 6, but there's only one landmark right in the middle of it.  And then you move along a little and they start putting the things every hundred feet.  A more even distribution of waypoints would be a pretty good idea.

Still, minor gripes; I'm really enjoying the hell out of this thing.

[Classic]

SHULK: Hey, look up ahead.
REYN: It looks like a tree.
SHULK: It sure does look like a tree.
REYN: Yeah.  Hey Shulk, didn't that guy back in town tell us we were supposed to be looking for a tree?
SHULK: Yeah, he did.
REYN: Do you think this could be the tree we were supposed to be looking for?
SHULK: Could be.
REYN: I think we should walk towards it.

Maybe this is how "bros" talk in Japan. Maybe it was a natural feeling, human moment for the game.
I just...

[Thad]

Well yeah, it does kinda remind me of the stilted, over-explaining dialogue in Speed Racer.

But at least back then they had the decency to talk fast.

[Classic]

I have this unsettling feeling that all of these gem synthesis stuff I'm doing is entirely pointless, and I should be focusing almost exclusively on getting quests and the collection book done.
If you collect one of every collectible in an area, you get a really nice gem. 1 or 2 ranks above what you're able to synthesize. Usually with some oddball property you rarely see.

[Thad]

Yeah, that's what I'm noticing.

I made one gem, did not care for the process, and discovered it was not very good.  Since then I've just focused on quests and such and have not made any of my own.

(Didn't even notice the Collectopedia until Syl mentioned it, but yeah, that thing gives you crazy rewards.  And, unlike some of the quests, I've yet to hit a point where I feel I'm just running around looking for a needle in a haystack; I always eventually find everything in the book through casual exploration.)

[Disposable Ninja]

This game sure is big on continually stating and restating the things that you are looking at.

I think that's actually a straight up Japanese thing, and also why puns are a prevalent form of humor over there. If you don't constantly reiterate what you said in Japanese, for example, people will think you said "Crossdresser" (Okama) instead of "Wolf" (Ookami).

[Syl]

Yeah, that's what I'm noticing.

I made one gem, did not care for the process, and discovered it was not very good.  Since then I've just focused on quests and such and have not made any of my own.

(Didn't even notice the Collectopedia until Syl mentioned it, but yeah, that thing gives you crazy rewards.  And, unlike some of the quests, I've yet to hit a point where I feel I'm just running around looking for a needle in a haystack; I always eventually find everything in the book through casual exploration.)

You'd think that, but i spent a good hour or two looking for that damn Fossil Monkey in the Jungle.  [spoiler]It's needed to help rebuild Colony 6, so I didn't even get a chance to put it in the collectopedia[/spoiler].

I'm running around the Eryth sea still, this area is huge.  I think I have over 100 quests to accomplish in this area alone. 

Also i don't know where i got it, but somewhere along the way I got a weapon for Dunban that has about 3x the minimum damage of my second best weapon's maximum damage.  I slotted it with a Haste +20% gem and a Double Attack gem and he's been absolutely tearing through enemies.  I also find gem synthesis surprisingly helpful, if unbelievably convoluted.  Getting the portable gem oven helps a ton.  [spoiler] build up Colony 6![/spoiler]

I'm actually overleveled, between trying find that fossil monkey and an attempt to get my affinity in frontier village up beyond 1 star, i did a surprising amount of grinding.  Luckily the game has a ton of moneysinks.

Is there an easier way to get bonds to grow between teammates?  It seems like it takes forever to get people to like eachother.  Shulk does a good job of liking most people, but they don't seem to care for anyone other than him.

update:
The shit that happens on prison island is absolutely fucking awesome.  Goddamn. 

[Thad]

I have this unsettling feeling that all of these gem synthesis stuff I'm doing is entirely pointless, and I should be focusing almost exclusively on getting quests and the collection book done.

Yeah, that's what I'm noticing.

I made one gem, did not care for the process, and discovered it was not very good.  Since then I've just focused on quests and such and have not made any of my own.

Actually I'm finding that later on you can make some decent gems.  Still probably not worth the trouble, but I hit the inventory cap and figured it'd be more satisfying to use all that crap for something than just to drop or sell it.

Anyhow, I've made some decent Lv3 gems, which is roughly on par with the stuff I'm finding/getting from the Collectopaedia at this point in the game.  Better, in some cases (got a Muscle Lv3, which is good for Reyn, who I'm trying to play as Pure Tank).

[Catloaf]

I beat it last night.  As I was doing some of the crazy missions at the end of the game, I was level 90-something when I finally got bored and decided to just go ahead and try the final boss and he went down like a chump*.  Seriously, not one character in my party taken enough damage to merit healing by the end of it all.  Shulk didn't take any damage at all!

Riki is by far the best character in the game.  Period.  By level 70 something he has 9999 health with nothing equipped, he can steal rare items, increases the drop rate, seemed to build affinity with other party members faster than any other, and he has a good mix of magic and attack power.  His only noticeable flaw is that he takes damage like a baby and needs all that health.  Also, while he has the personality/mindset/speech pattern of a child, he's a middle-aged man (well, fuzzy little puffball cat-rabbit-man-thing) with 14 kids, crippling debt, and is possibly the most well adjusted character in the whole game.  Basically all of his heart-to-hearts revolve around him blindsiding the other party members with sage-like wisdom that something as cute as him shouldn't have.

It's a really repetitive game, and a great deal of the missions have almost no payoff given their difficulty, but I still liked it overall.  It is a JRPG; long, vast, grindy, full of useless items, and you can literally win fights against weak enemies without even touching the controller once, but somehow I still had a lot of fun.

*He's like level 80 at best.  His official in-game level is '????'

[Thad]

Yeah, I'm still enjoying it.  I haven't cared much for the last couple new environments (I'm approaching 40 hours and just got Riki), and while I'm still enjoying exploring with some incidental fetch-quests in-between, it is starting to feel a little rote.

Oddly, the thing that feels most grindy is building character affinity.

Perhaps not coincidentally, it's also really the only impetus for swapping out characters, because exploration and questing are more than sufficient to level your characters up to the point where you can breeze through most battles trivially with any party.

[Rico]

I bought this today after reading you all gush about it and I have to say I'm pretty enthralled at the beginning but for the love of God why doesn't it have Gamecube controller support?

[Thad]

Yeah, that's pretty fucking dumb.

Works great with a Classic Controller, but yes it's pretty fucking stupid to force you to buy one of those if you already have a GameCube controller.

[Brentai]

What's that you say?

[Rico]

Checking monster levels like it were Final Fantasy XI up in here.

[Thad]

I sure wish inventory systems like this had gone out with the 1980's.  I mean, I've seen worse this century (the original Mass Effect), but not many.  The "each single widget fits in an interchangeable box, which you have X number of" thing CAN still work (Dragon Quest continues, against all odds, to do a pretty solid job with it), but I don't think it works very well with the sheer size and scope of items you pick up in a game like this.

It's -- at least hypothetically -- cool that there's such a wide variety of weapons for most characters, lending themselves to different play styles.  In practice, though, I've done enough exploring and questing that I'm way out ahead of the difficulty curve and it doesn't really matter what I've got on my guys anymore.  Weapons pile up, and while the equip screen has an easy way of comparing a new weapon's stats to the weapon you've already got, the Sell screen does not, so unless you just shrug and go "Okay, I'm going to sell every weapon that isn't currently equipped" it can take a long time to compare all the different shit you've picked up and what's worth keeping.

Crystals and drops are really the things that start to pile up and inhibit your actual progress; it doesn't take too long before you find yourself wanting to regularly sell or refine a few pages of them at a time.

And on refinement: I've done a bit more of it, I guess I've gotten some good gems out of it, but by and large it still feels like a pointless time sink.  I've learned a few strategies (try and get to where your mix only has one or two attributes), but the actual minigame still feels like a mostly random mess.  When am I supposed to hammer A?  When am I supposed to tap it?  Why does it sometimes go from red to green, and what do I do to get it back to red?  Granted, it's been awhile since I read the tutorials, but I don't remember them being very clear on all this stuff.  (And again, gems are a little on the inconsequential side when you're 5 levels above all the random monsters you're seeing.)

But mainly, the game just has a problem in how much crap you accrue, how much more difficult it can make it to find the crap you're looking for, and how much time it can take to sort through it and whittle it back down to manageable levels.