Tales of Xillia 2

• None of the conversation options change the story in any grand fashion. You'll get the option to chose which of two areas you want to go to first sometimes. They're mostly for improving your affinity with other characters for special items and such, so pick the answer they want to hear.

• When you start using the job board, the red jobs are sidequests and should be done before progressing the story. You'll get some that are gated behind certain titles, but they'll stick around long enough for you to do enough jobs and get the title. The game will ask if you want to advance the main story, so it won't sneak up on you.

• Speaking of jobs, the item collection ones can be done immediately if you already have the item(s) in question. If they have a pawprint, it can be picked up by using kitty collection. Some of the ones in towns can also be found hidden in bookshelves and such just like classic JRPGs. So just make a note of the item collection ones and actually accept the monster kill jobs to do at the same time.

• Only one cat is permanently missable. It is part of a sidequest in Duval in chapter 9.

• Elite Monsters are optional bosses that give lots of gald and job points for killing. However, a few of them appear long, long before you stand a chance of killing it. The reward for those make it fairly obvious. These monsters also have a weakness or gimmick that can be exploited. You can maybe find out about some of these by talking to NPCs in nearby towns.

• Once you get the world map and can fast travel, you can see if party member sidequests are active thanks to a marker on the town names. Make sure you do these before advancing the story. These will unlock special additional scenes in the main story and greatly raise your affinity with that character. Almost every dialogue option in these sidequests will also have an option that raises affinity.

• Unlike Xillia 1, you can use generic link artes regardless of what character you're linked to. When the link arte marker appears, it will be silver or gold depending on if it will activate a generic or unique link arte respectively.

• Party members generally stick to one type of weapon when it comes to link artes with Ludger, and it's usually the same type of weapon they have. Jude links with Dual Blade artes, Alvin with Gun artes, Leia with Hammer artes, etc.

• The Allium Orb is the new gimmick. Enemies now drop "elemental ore", and it can also be found easily in the field. The Orbs funnel these ores into certain elements, which unlock skills, artes, and arte upgrades depending on how much of each element you've accumulated. Generally, you should just change orbs around to keep your elemental values (viewed with R3) even unless you see an Arte to be unlocked. As the game progresses you'll unlock more orbs that add to multiple elements and also have multipliers to elements. If you like frivolous spending, you can buy an orb off PSN that fills every element at once.

• The Special skill unlocks Mystic Artes as usual, and will show up sometime after the character hits about 2000 in most elements. Sounds harder than it is.

• The rare floating block enemies have returned and show up occasionally in the field. Definitely kill these for the big elemental ore drops they have.

• Ludger will eventually get a certain ability you can activate in battle. It recharges at a decent clip, so feel free to use it out in the field. But when you're expecting a boss fight, it's best to save it. When bosses can start using Overlimit, activate it at the same time. The ability will prevent them from using their mystic arte.