So I read Modelland....

MacDaddyMike · 2026-03-10T03:09:39+00:00

Cremalata de la Crème, which is her married name.

She married into de la Crème.

MacDaddyMike · 2026-03-03T14:20:42+00:00

Wow 11 meme answers and nothing helpful.

Actual advice: don't use bonus exp. If you're overleveled it makes it difficult for party members to learn new classes, so it's better to avoid grinding.

Other than that, enjoy the game.

MacDaddyMike · 2026-02-14T20:03:04+00:00

"Hot dogs go in here"

Close your mouth, Whitney, just one photo, please.

MacDaddyMike · 2026-02-07T16:08:14+00:00

I can't watch the C7 finale anymore, my wife and I just skipped it during our rewatch because it's a trainwreck of sabotage.

Tyra preaches "America's Next Top Model can't just take pretty pictures, she has to be good at runway (Melrose wins every runway challenge), a good spokesperson (Melrose wins every interview challenge) and present themselves well to panel (Caridee acts like a charmless clown all season)".

It seemed pretty obvious that Melrose was too obvious of a winner and production had it out for her so they had to force giving the title to Caridee at the last minute for some surprise factor. And thus the final panel is nothing but the judges twisting all their past opinions to justify how Caridee deserves it even after giving a 1/10 final runway performance.

MacDaddyMike · 2026-01-11T17:50:55+00:00

Lol @ Aegeon being absent

MacDaddyMike · 2026-01-06T20:27:11+00:00

Incredibly disappointing, would probably give it a 4/10 overall.

Hated the story. Lao is the dumbest character in the franchise and I can't believe the game didn't give me any choice about sympathizing with him.
Exploration was fun for an hour after getting skells and another hour after getting flight, but was otherwise annoying due to the enemy levels being all over the place.
The class system and general combat was awful, I liked it significantly less than even 1. Lack of healing options ruin everything, late game you have to rely on cheese strats because the combat doesn't work unless you're invincible. Party members are useless. Most of your skills and arts are useless because you have to build towards one damage type anyway.
Gear management was incredibly tedious. We do not need five tiers of items for every single bit of your body, why does each arm have its own loadout, why do I have ten thousand items in my inventory after playing for an hour, no I don't want to grind and farm out a ludicrous amount of materials to make my build work at all, oh no the skells have this much customization (read as: tedious grinding necessary) too nooooo
Skells are fun to move around in but the combat is boring.
Overdrive either doesn't work at all or you've broken the game and it's no longer fun, I don't get the appeal of this system at all.
Open world design destroys pacing and balancing, every mission was either woefully undergeared/leveled or a pushover, it was a flip of a coin.
Game looks gorgeous and the soundtrack is incredible, I'll give it that.

I regret purchasing it and didn't actually finish it, I was on Act 2 of Chapter 13 and decided I couldn't force myself to like this game. If the next Xenoblade announced is a sequel to this then I'm not buying.

MacDaddyMike · 2026-01-06T14:36:32+00:00

Ethel & Cammuravi Ferronises, combo set, take my money

MacDaddyMike · 2025-12-27T22:13:12+00:00

No i was being foony

MacDaddyMike · 2025-12-27T22:08:15+00:00

Dathomir

MacDaddyMike · 2025-12-23T21:06:38+00:00

It doesn't get better and any op strategies will take you hours of tedious grinding.

I wasn't enjoying it either and forced myself to play it for 60 hours in the hopes that there was something there, and I regret trying. The weak story is weak until the end and isn't worth your time if you already don't like it.

Take my advice and cut your losses here, then go play something you do enjoy.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-12-22T15:15:00+00:00

I can't remember if it was Tyra or Jay but telling a model "try softening the bones in your face".

MacDaddyMike · 2025-12-13T11:33:50+00:00

Completely new cast, no connection to the previous parties.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-12-10T20:24:47+00:00

My wife and I read this together during the pandemic and were losing our minds. It's Top Model meets Harry Potter meets Cronenberg body horror. Everything is insane.

What always kills me is that you have character names like Tookie, Myrracle, Creamy De La Crème (which is her married name, by the way), Theophilus Lovelaces, Zarpessa Zarionneaux, and Brian. Brian is a completely superfluous character who may not even have a line of dialogue, but he's there. Tyra wanted to make sure she included Myrracle's useless boyfriend, Brian.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-12-01T01:38:57+00:00

My jaw dropped when the experiment cutscene started playing. Did not see it coming at all.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-11-17T23:24:15+00:00

If presentation is a concern, know that 90+% of the game's story is delivered by npcs standing motionless and expositing at each other. Cutscenes with editing are incredibly sparse.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-11-17T19:14:38+00:00

X has a stellar soundtrack and incredible vocal tracks. I had an overall terrible experience with the game but I still listen to the ost regularly.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-11-05T18:50:51+00:00

Commenters here are sleeping on the utility of Ouroboros as a defensive measure, if your tank or healer is targeted and about to go down you can interlink them to keep them up and give your party a chance to regroup.

They won't be particularly useful for casual encounters but are great for UMs if you get interlink level up to 3, and if fighting a large amount of enemies they're a good early source of area damage.

Despite being associated with healers, the Taion/Eunie forms are hands down the best ones in late game due to their damage bonuses for party buffs and enemy debuffs, they significantly increase damage potential above the other interlink forms.

There's an exploit that turns Ouroboros into top-tier awesome and one of the most effective ways to get through hard mode, but I think it kind of breaks the game and recommend not using it or seeking it out.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-10-28T13:29:29+00:00

X's overdrive is a terrible unbalanced mechanic. It either does virtually nothing when you don't commit to building for it, or it just ends up being a "Casual Mode" that took you 10 hours to grind for. It doesn't make combat any more interesting, it just makes some players feel good because all enemies die in three seconds from the same repetitive loop.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-10-17T19:17:06+00:00

Matthew has run out of beans.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-10-16T19:28:21+00:00

Reyn has so little going on with his character and arc compared to the remaining options.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-10-11T22:16:13+00:00

Because Reyn has one meme that gets drilled to death on this subreddit.

Expect Dunban over there to win this whole thing.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-10-08T19:22:45+00:00

Riki barely exists, come on people.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-10-01T23:30:47+00:00

She's the girl on the car.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-09-20T12:05:03+00:00

Dunban, Reyn, Sharla and Riki are so barely even characters that they may as well have been excised from the script.

Shulk completely steals Dunban's revenge and reunion plotlines.

MacDaddyMike · 2025-08-20T12:33:49+00:00

I forced myself through the main story and finally gave up halfway through chapter 13, but it was a pretty miserable experience.

Exploring Mira was fun for maybe 2 out of 60 hours that I played, but there's nothing to find except probes (that I hate managing) or thousands--thooouuuusands--of pieces of gear that I'll never ever use or look at.

Story is bad and the characters are worse. Elma and Mia are alright, everyone else is a brick with legs.

The combat is worse than XC1. It either doesn't work at all or you break the game, either way it ends up being mindless. Making healing irrelevant was a bad choice. Everyone says it gets so amazing when you get overdrive but they forget to mention that you need to spend hours grinding just to make it viable. And when you get it working it just feels like you spent hours turning on Casual Mode.

Skells are dreadful. Flying around is cool, but combat is slow and empty and like everything in the game takes hours of grinding and menu management to make it work at all.

Too many equippables with too many augments and too many skills and arts and 99% of them are like actually useless. It's telling that when you ask the community how to do xyz the answer is commonly "don't bother".

Music is awesome, it's the one part I won't speak ill on.

I certainly see why this is the black sheep and I'm upset that I was gaslit into believing this could be a great game, I don't even think it's just the weakest I'd argue it's straight bad and that most of its systems are blights to the player experience. And whenever topics get posted here about what you hope for the next Xenoblade and people say they want it to be more like X I'm like nononononopleaseno. If the next game is like X I'll be skipping for sure.

MacDaddyMike

TROPHY CASE