Xenoblade Chronicles 2

• Tutorials cant be repeated, so internalize that info or prepapre to look it up again

• Rare blades sky-rocket in difficulty acquiring them after the first dozen or so due to the games fucked up gacha mechanics, to the point where getting the last one or two often requires several hundred rare cores.

• English has Mia’s best voice, japanese assuming you dont speak it lets you ignore how badly directed cutscenes are but the lip flaps will still haunt you.

• Dont open blades on Rex. Rex gets several mandatory rare blades during the story and at around chapter 6 a unique ability to himself that lets him equip anyone elses blades.

• Every character has a skill they can learn on their chart that lets them cancel a weapon art into another weapon art. This is the most important skill in the game and even if you buy this skill and forget about this menu and never use it again you'll still be fine.

• Salvaging is how you make money, but you need to know two things. 1) Using anything less than Gold Canisters (they are available once you get to Mor Ardain) is going to lose you money. 2) Every town has a little shop with a scale symbol. This is where you sell sets of items you've acquired for the big bucks. Recommend to just salvage at the very first salvage point in Mor Ardain as its the easiest way to rack up cash.

• Characters have a role, try to equip blades that match their role rather than jack of all trades. The AI is extremely bad about healing you so if the one healer you get doesn't have three healing blades you will die a lot unless you make Rex an off healer.

• In addition to the obligatory "don't use core crystals on Rex" my main advice would be to remember that blade roles are more important than rarity. If you want Nia to heal then make sure she has three healer blades equipped. A common blade of the correct role is a better choice than a rare one of the incorrect role.

• For quick time events, you want to press the button on the brighter portion of the circle.

• Blade Chips are your primary source of damage increases. Use these liberally

• If you ever don't have a party of 3 characters keep doing the story until you have three characters again. Absolutely no sidequest is balanced around having less than a full party and you will get crushed. There is nothing missable to worry about.

• If you move your character slightly after the final hit of a standard auto-attack string, it will cancel the animation cool-down, and move directly into the next string of hits as soon as you stop moving. This is a way to do more damage over time.