Xenoblade Chronicles has a complex battle system, so let’s get to the basics for anyone struggling to understand it! These Xenoblade Chronicles battle tips will help you understand early game tactics, spacial positions, enemy statuses, and more. I hope you can feel the Monado’s power after reading this!
Spacing Positioning
This is key if you want to excel in Xenoblade’s pseudo turn-based system. It is very similar to MMOs. You have to move your character around the field, while deciding your next special move/skill to help vanquish your foes. What is key in Xenoblade Chronicles’ battle system is to move to specific areas of the battle. Air Slash and Slit Edge can inflict stat debuffs to enemies by being piercing the attack through the side. Air Slash causes a slow effect, and Slit Edge reduces their physical defense. Back Slash, if used from behind deals extra damage. And when you pull it off, man, it’s satisfying.
Make sure, however, that you do not have aggro from the enemy you are targeting. If they are focused on another party member, you can get the chance to get a good skill attack in. Moves like Shadow Eye can actually reduce this aggro effect. You can tell how much the enemy is focused on you by a red bar below each foe. You can toggle which to focus on by pressing the L and R buttons: L for left, R for right.
Grind and get the best equipment
I know. Battling weaker enemies for hours doesn’t sound like fun, but completing quests are necessary for getting the upper hand on that pesky insect or robot! Go around the map, finding white exclamation marks for quests. Most will have mundane tasks like defeating a certain amount of creatures or getting the necessary items to pass the mission. Xenoblade Chronicles, typically, makes it super easy to figure out where to go and which enemies to take out with a red or blue exclamation mark on the map (or mini-map on the top right corner) or above the enemies’ heads. And with XC’s incredibly quick fast travel system, you can get these done super fast.
As you finish these missions, you can get significantly stronger gear, and as you decimate these waves of enemies, they might drop really awesome loot! For example, I was able to find a weapon called Flame Gear, which has 105 more attack power than what I had equipped for Reyn! That really helps during the battle!
Make sure to avoid higher level nasties around the map though! At the start of the game, you can explore and find Lv. 70 and above creatures that can wipe you out in an instant!
Break and Topple + Chain Attacks
These two are core in defeating a tough foe. Break (the pink attacks) are the set-up for a stun and are the first step to a one-two punch. Topple attacks (the green attacks) follow it up and can cause the enemy to be static and not be able to attack your allies. This can affect normal creatures, but bosses can only been impacted by this strategy by using Chain Attacks.
Chain attacks are set up when the team has three bars of affinity between each other (the blue bar on the top left). This feature gets added at an early point in the story line, but it won’t be available immediately. If you chain a break and a topple within a chain attack, it will succeed in stunning a boss. You could also use a chain attack with the skills of the same colour to cause lots of damage. It’s your choice!
I hope this Xenoblade Chronicles battle guide has been useful for you! Keep an eye out on SwitchWatch for more guides on Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition! We’ll also have a review up in the coming weeks. We just got the game, so it will take us a lot of time to fully check it out and give you our opinion on this remaster.
I quickly referred to the Xenoblade Fandom Wiki to make sure I was correct about the use of Break attacks. Check it here.
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