Once again, it’s time to check in on my progress in Xenoblade Chronicles X! I didn’t have as much time to play this week, due largely to Pokemon Go as well as dealing with a broken finger. The finger is really limiting how much I can use my left hand, meaning this blog post is being written one handed. This also limits how much I can play some video games. But thankfully, Xenoblade is relatively slow paced, and I’m finding that I can continue to play it. Anyway, let’s go over the numbers. I currently have about 60 hours of play time, my main character is level 41, and I still haven’t beaten chapter 10.

Not being able to finish chapter 10 is proving to be pretty frustrating. Thankfully, a friend of mine who has beaten the game before and says that chapter 10 wasn’t tough for him gave it a try with my characters. He lost, which shows to me that it’s not that I spent 60 hours playing a game and failed to grasp something about the combat, but rather I’m just not geared up enough. So, with that in mind, I went back to doing side quests.

My friend pointed me in the direction of a quest line involving a character named Mia. I had actually done the first of these quests last week, but didn’t bother talking about it since it didn’t seem like it was really going anywhere. Basically, Mia is a Blade in training who constantly gets in trouble and we bail her out. While the first quest didn’t seem like much, the increasingly ridiculous situations she finds herself in is pretty funny. At one point, she’s high up a tree in Noctilum and has lost her communicator. In another, she’s admiring the view in Oblivia when a giant bird like monster carries her off. I question how anyone was supposed to find these on their own, but maybe that’s part of the fun. The idea that you’re not really looking for her but keep bumping into her is kind of great.

Another quest I started and will probably never finish involves a mysterious character called the Blood Lobster. He seems to be some kind of terrorist who has planted 99 explosive lobsters around New LA. The first one you encounter you throw into the sky, causing it to explode out of harm’s reach. He then informs us that we can’t tell anyone about the lobsters or he’ll detonate them. This is all pretty silly, especially since there isn’t a time limit. So, now I just have another collectible to casually collect as I play through the game.

Finally, I did some quests that involve a new species of aliens. After obtaining enough FrontierNav points in Noctilum, Blade receives a distress signal. As per usual, it’s up to my team to check it out. So, we do that, and come across the Orpheans, another friendly race. But almost as soon as we arrive, we’re ambushed by the Ganglion. The Orpheans tell us they are a peaceful race, so it’s up to us to take care of the problem. Thankfully, I’m pretty over-leveled for this and immediately crush them. We invite them to New LA, and they agree.

Later, the Orpheans are having a meeting, but one of them has yet to arrive. Can you guess who’s job it is to find him? After talking to some people around New LA, I discovered where he was likely to be. Unfortunately, he’s been captured by a Definian, an all female race working for the Ganglion. We defeat her, but as we’re walking away, she gets back up and mortally wounds the Orphean. The other Orpheans show up and use something called Senirapa Water on their barely alive friend. This causes two new Orpheans to appear who have been given the memories of the fallen one. Apparently this is how they reproduce. Weird.

And that’s pretty much what I got done this week. But keep your eye on the blog for more content. There’s a new Random Game Wednesdays coming on, obviously, Wednesday, and I’ll have my thoughts on Pokemon Go posted very soon.