2 xenoblade - learning to fight alongside reyn

Dear Readers,

A year after the opening battle, the protagonist mutters happily to himself as he scavenges the remains of the mechanised beings for parts. One of them comes alive and his friend joins in to help. The tutorial continues.

This time it's about cooldown, one of my least favourite mechanics in games that's become prevalent over the years. The enemy is eventually beaten and a chest appears with Iron Krabble Shell and Small Shell inside.

There's another monster to deal with and the concept of Aggro to learn.

I am Shulk! The protagonist! The friend who came to help me is Reyn, a name that rhymes with "time", so he likes to say "It's Reyn Time" a lot, inspiring one of the earliest memes inspired by the game.

Aggro is a red ring around the character the enemy is focused on, and it's explained here by encouraging me to use a back attack while the aggro is on Reyn. Nice way to encourage a bit of strategy.

After the fight, Reyn scolds me for going outside the colony but he has praise for my interest in figuring equipment out. The Monado, is the one piece of equipment that's a mystery to me. We make our way back.

I take the spoils of the battle, a Caterpile Syrup and a Broken Antenna. I look through the menus as well for a bit, looking at the tutorials and achievements. Some of the tutorials are in the form of conversations between characters, explaining abilities and strategies. I better go through this stuff really slowly. There's explanations for menu abilities as well as concepts of Break, Topple, Daze.

I tried to get used to the system a little more by fighting other creatures. Then I picked up Sweet Wasabi and this introduced the "Collectopaedia". Whoo... what a spelling. Imagine if Wikipedia was spelled with the British English style!

It's a straight path back home to Colony 9. We fight a bit, plunder a bit, pick up some other bits and it's night by the time we get there.

The music of the town is a lovely gentle tune. The music outside was nice too and had a bit of a wild beat to it as well. Reyn heads away to report while I declare I'm going to the equipment lab to sell stuff I can't use. It doesn't feel natural but it does do a bit of worldbuilding and explains a feature, which has its own charm.

So I'm big into gadgets, while Reyn is a big burly dude who's good at fighting. I got it. There doesn't seem to be a bestiary though, which is a let down. On the bright side, enough time has passed for many online resources to pop up.

Some more tutorials came up about shops, trading, accepting quests and a note to encourage doing quests and trading while doing the story. One of my memories of the game was being at a disadvantage when the story bits got a bit too tough for progress, so I'm going to take my time now.