History VideoGame / XenobladeChroniclesX

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* TwentyBearAsses: Many quests require you to obtain materials from slain enemies to complete them.
* HundredPercentCompletion: This is a ''big'' game. In order to get 100% completion, you have to survey all 5 continents and all of New Los Angeles. Just reaching all of the locations isn't enough; each segment has a specific treasure to find, Tyrant to hunt, or quest/event to complete in order for it to count. And then there's the 749 achievements and level 90+ {{superboss}}es...
* AbsurdlyLowLevelCap: For you, the game caps at level 60. There are nearly 100 enemies that are level 61 or higher, the biggest of them clocking in at level 99.
* AbilityRequiredToProceed: Many regions, probe sites, and Affinity Missions can't be discovered or completed until after chapter 9, when Skell's flight pack becomes available.
* AbnormalAmmo: Physical-element guns use bullets, but other types fire [[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1 ether]], shoot flame or electricity, or create gravity fields.
* AcceptableBreaksFromReality: Some recruitable [=NPCs=], say that they can join you in the spare time from their rather busy schedules. Fortunately for you these rare moments [[ContrivedCoincidence always seem to come up whenever you approach them]], and last as long as you need them to.
* AchievementMockery: The game offers achievements for:
** Suffering a TotalPartyKill for the first time.
** Suffering a TotalPartyKill fifty times.
** Getting your Skell destroyed for the first time.
** Running out of Skell fuel.
** Falling into a BottomlessPit.
** Falling into a bottomless pit one hundred times.
** Failing an online mission.
* ActionPrologue: The game's story opens with an interstellar war over Earth that ravages the planet and forces humanity to evacuate in massive ships, one of which is chased by the hostile aliens and forced to crash-land on the planet of Mira.
* AdamAndEvePlot: The Orphe are reduced to a mere five individuals by the time humanity rescues them from the Ganglion. Fortunately, due to Orphe reproducing via "fission" rather than sex, there isn't any danger of inbreeding. Unfortunately, they require a specific chemical (senirapa water) to use as a catalyst for their reproduction, and they only have a few cups of it left. Once they find a way to produce more, their population grows extremely rapidly.
* AdaptationalHeroism: Telethia in the [[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1 first game]] are vicious creatures that kill anything they see out of simple savagery. In ''X'', Telethia the Endbringer not only spares Team Elma [[AlwaysABiggerFish after it kills three Tainted Sphinxes threatening them]], it is considered the guardian of Mira and is non-hostile toward the player and all non-Tainted life. You can later find it in its native habitat, [[{{Superboss}} and can attack it anyway if you want the fight of your life]]. There's also the Nemesis[[note]]multiplayer co-op boss[[/note]] Telethia Plume, which is just considered a very threatening indigen that shows up every now and then.
* AdventureGuild: BLADE. It's divided into 8 "Divisions" that each take on the work needed to survive on an alien planet. Each provides a minor stat bonus to players who share an online (asynchronus) multiplayer squadron.
** Pathfinders specialize in exploration and data probing. They recover HP at a higher rate.
** Interceptors specialize in combating enemies and completing missions. They do more damage with ranged weapons.
** Harriers specialize in fighting tyrants and enemies. They inflict more damage with melee weapons.
** Reclaimers specialize in treasure box recovery and data probe installation. They have increased item drop rates.
** Curators specialize in item collection and tyrant extermination. This Division bestows an increased critical hit rate.
** Prospectors specialize in resource acquisition and exploration. They have bonuses to defense.
** Outfitters specialize in investments towards Miranium and arms manufacturers. They provide bonuses to money earnings.
** Mediators specialize in quest completion and helping other [=BLADEs=]. They can earn TP when using Arts.
* AnAdventurerIsYou: There are six paths to level up your character[[note]]three at the start, each of which splits into two specialized class paths[[/note]], but Arts are tied to equipped weapons, which are restricted to certain classes. Once the final tier of a path has been maxed out, you can freely equip that class' weapons and thus freely use those Arts. Conversely, skills can be freely equipped by any class. This leads to quite a large number of combinations of weapons and builds.
* AfterTheEnd: Earth is destroyed in the opening cinematic, two years before the start of the game.
* TheAllegedCar: Your very first skell after completing the Skell License Exam is only level 20, making it greatly inferior to the level 30 and 50 skells that can be purchased on Armory Alley.
* AlienLandmass: [[http://i.neoseeker.com/mgv/6602/602/92/739751yVult.jpg Primordia]] is the starting area of the game. Its most distinctive feature are two arching landmasses (one, in fact, arcs on top of another) with sinewy "legs" reaching to the ground. Above that there's a ''floating'' landmass that becomes the first destination a player must reach once they've gain the ability to fly.
* AllThereInTheManual: The official website has [[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NZO8F6qMK8cWr8LYhj4g4P7Quu-_jZadkQXyFBaLm6g/pub a short story]] with more details on the game's intro. The second alien faction with the purple ships that is fighting the Ganglion is referred to as "Ghost." They have the ability to [[{{Intangibility}} phase through solid matter]] and their Skells are powered by matter-antimatter reactors. The [[SphereOfDestruction massive explosions on the Earth's surface]] are the result of the Ganglion fleet shooting down Ghost Skells, which causes their reactors to overload and detonate. The reason why the Earth is destroyed is because a particular large Ghost reactor detonated and took the Earth with it. The short story also reveals that the planet Mira was named by Maurice Chausson after a woman he admired who chose to [[spoiler:stay behind on Earth and not get her mind digitized and uploaded to the Lifehold because she valued her human body that much]].
* AliensAreBastards: The humans didn't want any part of the alien war, but that didn't stop the combatants from [[SinkTheLifeBoats shooting most of them down]] as the humans tried to escape Earth. At least the Ganglion have a reason to attack humans since [[spoiler:they are descendants of a mysterious race known as the [[{{Precursors}} Samaarians]] whom created the [[ServantRace Ganglion]] and humans contain the failsafe in their DNA to stop the Ganglion.]] The Ganglion's opposing faction that shot down the White Whale, the Ghost? No reason given.
* AlienInvasion: {{Subverted}} - there wasn't any landing; rather, the Earth was destroyed in the ongoing war between two alien races. One of them pursued, [[KillAllHumans intending to finish the survivors]].
* AlienSky: Not so much during the day, but there are four [[GiganticMoon very prominent moons]] visible in the night sky.
* AliensSpeakingEnglish: Played straight. All alien species encountered are able to speak English with considerable fluency. [[spoiler:Interestingly, when asked, the aliens believe they are speaking in their own native tongue and not English. It's later hypothesized that it is the planet Mira itself to blame for this odd phenomena.]] Played even straighter with [[spoiler:L'cirufe]], who admits to learning English by studying the data contained inside [[spoiler:a Lifehold archive of the Library of Congress]].
* AllDeathsFinal:
** The driving purpose of the story is for humanity to regain control of the Lifehold core, which stores the consciousnesses of all the humans on board, from which they pilot their mimeosomes, and even if a given mimeosome is destroyed, the person can be revived once they get the Lifehold. [[spoiler:However, the ending reveals that the Lifehold was flooded and destroyed from the start, meaning those who are dead will ''stay'' dead.]]
** Some alien [=NPCs=] can die on regular missions.
*** Kun'luarb. [[spoiler:He will die without passing on any offspring if you accept the Senirapa Water sample he found instead of imploring him to use it on himself.]]
*** Alien Nation. [[spoiler:Alex will kill the three Ma-non if you look on instead of trying to stop him.]]
* AllForNothing: [[spoiler:The ending reveals the Lifehold had been lost before the game even began, having been destroyed when it crash landed on Mira.]]
* AlwaysABiggerFish:
** The rather humiliating fact that the Ganglion are, [[spoiler:according to the Ma-Non, little more than a run of the mill crime syndicate doing some dirty work for the Samaar Federation]]. Earth was basically destroyed [[spoiler:not by the brunt of the Samaarian forces, but by thuggish stooges. Descendants of the mythical founders of the Samaar Federation or not]] Humans are very far from being on top of the food-chain, whether on Mira or beyond.
** Chapter Six sees the party surrounded by three copies of the chapter boss, until a goddamn [[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1 Telethia]] drops from the sky and rips all three apart.
* AlwaysChaoticEvil: The Marnucks and the Milsaadi serve little more than as the {{Mooks}} and EliteMooks of the Ganglion army. None are recruitable, none are named aside from the Tyrants, and all of them are absolute murderers. For emphasis, the Marnucks are a race of warmongers who kill people (and according to their background, sometimes each other) to appease their chief deity (who also happens to be their god of death) while the Milsaadi are a race of assassins and dictators who enslaved the rest of their homeworld's sapient species.
* AlwaysIdenticalTwins: Lara Mara and Lara Nara are twin brothers, though they won't tell you unless you talk to them while they're talking with each other, which requires you to do some side-missions involving them.
* AmazingTechnicolorPopulation: The player character creator allows for skin tones that are naturally impossible for humans. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] [[spoiler:as the player character's body is a robot "[[RemoteBody mimeosome]]", or "Blue Blood" in the Japanese version.]]
* AmbiguouslyBi: Lots of characters express what may amount to more intense feelings than mere "friendship" for members of the same sex. However, as almost none of them make their intentions clear, it falls squarely within the sphere of ambiguity.
* AmbiguousRobots:
** The Milsaadi are a species of SiliconBasedLife, and as such are often mistaken for robots when first seen. Their skin looks metallic, their eyes glow red, and their voices have a noticeable reverb. Nonetheless, they are suggested to be fully... whatever the silicon equivalent of "organic" is.
** The Oc-servs, Fal-swos, and Xe-doms running around the landscape of Mira are not creations of the Ganglion, but something they dug up on the planet and reprogrammed into serving them. Despite their mechanical nature, the metal they're made of is suggested to be "alive" in some sense, and doesn't match any known alloy.
** [[spoiler:The humans in the game all inhabit robotic bodies called mimeosomes, which are outwardly completely identical to a living human. They breathe, they eat, they sleep... they can even "bleed out" and "die" due to losing bio-circulatory plasma. In fact, the player character (and the player themselves) don't even realize they're in a robot body until a fair way into the story! One character even questions if the mimeosome bodies are human-like enough to conceive children (answer: no, they can't).]]
* AmericanKirbyIsHardcore: The giant robots were changed from "Dolls" to "Skells" in the English translation for this reason.
* AndYourRewardIsClothes: The game maintains the VirtualPaperDoll aspect of its predecessor, and add in "Fashion Armor" slots for those that want their stat boosts while displaying something different. "Casual Wear" armor - common street clothes - is occasionally offered as a reward for the randomly-generated TwentyBearAsses style quests, which is nothing new, but actually justified. Resources are tight on Mira, new threads actually are a pretty valuable incentive.
* AndYourRewardIsInteriorDecorating: Leveling up your BLADE rank not only gives you color and lighting variations for your barracks, but also gives you hologram projectors, where you can then earn holograms by completing certain quests or fighting certain monsters. Also, you can earn decorative pets to add to your barracks by completing certain quests. Multiplayer quests start in the team leader/originator's barracks, so there's an element of showing off there.
* AntiFrustrationFeatures:
** Story and affinity missions cannot be aborted once they are started. However, if a certain required enemy proves too difficult during said mission (such as defeating a large creature with a [[JokeWeapon prototype Skell rifle]] on foot), the game offers to lower that enemy's level a bit after you die against it a certain number of times.
** If a mission requires a certain piece of gear to be equipped, anyone in your party can do so - no need to switch classes and handle it personally.
** The game remembers the arts and skills you had equipped for each class. If you switch paths to experiment and then decide to switch back, you don't have to waste time re-equipping everything.
** The battle UI directly tells you which side of a targeting enemy you're currently facing. This means you can reliably know when to use Arts that have direction-based effects. In ''Xenoblade Chronicles 1'', you had to guess based on the enemy's model.
** Every single material dropped by any enemy in the game, even {{superboss}}es, can be bought directly by redeeming them with Reward Tickets, which you get whenever you or anyone else in your online squad completes a squad task, which typically involve simply collecting large amounts of materials or defeating certain types of enemies. You still need to hunt down collectable materials the old way, but they're much easier to find in large amounts and to respawn than in the [[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1 previous game]].
** Your AI-controlled party members tend to wreck their Skells. However, they always eject their Skells perfectly, preventing them from wasting Skell insurance if there's any left.
** The AI in general isn't nearly as effective as a player can be; they don't acknowledge high ground or environmental hazards, and have a difficult time binding larger enemies in their Skells. Fortunately there are commands that you can use to circumvent this, such as gathering the party around the player or having the party avoid binding in order to let the player do it instead.
** Aggressive enemies won't attack you if you're ten levels higher than them, unless they're an ambush type enemy who springs up when you approach it, like Mortifoles and Thalluses. Tyrants will also do this.
** If enough time passes between play sessions, every Skell's fuel is fully restored, allowing you to use all of it up right before you plan to end your current play session.
** You can't save after crossing the PointOfNoReturn, to prevent you from being totally hosed if you went into the battle underprepared and unable to defeat the final boss.
** There's a separate slot for equipping fashion gear. This allows you to equip a character with gear which only influences how they appear without effecting their stats. This allows for customization without having to worry about your character's appearance or stats.
** Affinity missions required to progress through the main story (namely Lao's and Gwin's) only require one heart's worth of affinity to start at most, compared to the three or four hearts required for later, optional affinity missions.
* AntiGrinding:
** Experience earnings are calculated by the base experience of the enemy and the difference in levels between the defeated enemy and your party members. A level disparity that favors the enemy will increase the experience gained while a level disparity that favors your party members will reduce the experience gained.
** The reason why 60 was set as the level cap for all party members is to discourage players from just maxing out their characters at the beginning and simply breezing through the rest of the story through brute force instead of using proper strategy such as selecting the proper equipment, skills, and arts.
* AppliedPhlebotinum: New Los Angeles is filled with a "shock-absorbing gel" found at the bottom of the city. Thanks to Captain Nagi's quick thinking when the city had to be jettisoned and fell into Mira's gravity well, they crystallized the gel, which allowed the city to survive the impact. Crystallized gel can be seen spiking out all over the exterior of the city.
* AntagonistAbilities: Early on, Elma warns you that a Tyrant's level means ''nothing''. Many Tyrants are not significantly strong in terms of offense or defense, but possess some sort of ability that makes fighting them difficult, such as reflecting certain attack attributes (Agnes, the Divine-Scaled), dealing spike damage (Xair, the Cerulean Walker), or having 100 resistance to a certain attribute (Vendura's Galdr). Then there are the {{superboss}}es, which have access to attacks and abilities that normal members of their species lack.
* ApocalypseHow: The game's opening cinematic shows the people of Earth being forced to flee a Planetary Physical Annihilation, due to Earth being caught in the crossfire between two warring alien races.
* ArbitraryHeadcountLimit: Your party consists of up to four members, and [[CantDropTheHero your avatar is always one of them]]. Inactive party members remain back in NLA, meaning quick traveling there is necessary whenever you want to adjust your formation.
* ArchEnemy: Several quest chains have these:
** [[spoiler:Alex]] and Eliza, the former of whom is a murderous xenophobic bigot calling other bigots to his cause so that they can eliminate all of the aliens in NLA. Eliza does everything she can to stop him, recruiting Rook to help.
** Corwin and the Black Skell. After it almost kills a young member of his team, Corwin sends out teams to try and eliminate it--most of which don't come back. Depending on the choices Rook makes, the entire unit can get wiped out.
** In a lesser sense, Rook him/herself can make a business archenemy in Tobias, if s/he does a good job installing probes. Tobias complains that Rook is installing probes for free, rather than doing it for profit like he did, and will repeatedly challenge Rook to see who can become wealthiest using the system.
** The ''entire'' reason that [[spoiler:Justin]] took up the mantle of the [[CardCarryingVillain Blood Lobster]] was to ''[[CreateYourOwnVillain become]]'' one for Rook, but not because they bear Rook any ill will or grudge, no; it's because the Blood Lobster is [[spoiler:a justice-obsessed freak who admires Rook and believes that s/he is the only one able to become his idealized version of a "true hero".]] When the Blood Lobster is cornered, [[IDidWhatIHadToDo Rook has the option to execute them for their actions]], [[spoiler:which [[TheBadGuyWins is exactly what the Blood Lobster wants]],]] or ''[[ArmorPiercingResponse refuse]]'' [[ArmorPiercingResponse to play the Lobster's game]] and [[NotWorthKilling spare them]], [[spoiler:which [[VillainousBreakdown results in the Blood Lobster essentially self-inflicting]] a FateWorseThanDeath.]]
* ArcWords: "[[FriendOrIdolDecision It's you or us]]" and variations, spoken in past tense by the male Classic voice option for the character at the end of most battles, in third-person by Lin in an early cutscene regarding self-defense, and reversed by Ryzz ("It's us or you") in [[spoiler:the Attack on New LA.]]
* AnArmAndALeg: The game uses this during a cutscene [[spoiler:as the cornerstone of its RoboticReveal]].
* ArtifactTitle: Averted in that while the Monado from the first game is absent in this one, the title still has meaning due to the military organization the PlayerCharacter joins being called "BLADE" and the various aliens are occasionally called "xenos". Some of the xenos have even joined BLADE, technically making them [=Xeno-BLADEs=], however, all but a couple of them are very minor characters. Then again, [[spoiler:Elma is a major character and she fits the term fine as she is a "xeno" and a BLADE member]].
* ArtificialStupidity: Teammate AI mistakes are much more noticeable in this game than in the previous. Here are some examples:
** An AI teammate piloting a Skell seldom manages to be able to bind an enemy for more than a second. For reference, how long an enemy can be subject to the bind debuff is determined by the QTE system much like how Soul Voices work, so it isn't too hard to begin with.
** Teammates ''cannot'' identify an enemy's reflect barrier, meaning that they'll often just keep [[TooDumbToLive damaging themselves]] with an attack element the enemy is reflecting.
** Teammates can't recognize terrain properties, meaning that they will charge into deep water (where they can't fight back), stand on damaging surfaces, position themselves to be knocked off cliffs, and take no advantage of inclines or higher ground.
** Teammates will use Area of Effect attacks when only fighting a single opponent. At best just drawing in a few more opponents. At worst drawing in an otherwise non aggressive high level opponent (most famously Luciel the Eternal, a gigantic level 92 tyrant with an equally gigantic hit box who wanders through a few starting zones.) Luckily you can selectively deactivate moves which your party members will use to prevent this.
* ArtisticLicenseEconomics: The prices of certain items can be a bit peculiar. In one affinity mission, you have to buy 10 Pizzas for the Ma-Non, which cost 10,000 credits, which would make you think that one credit is worth as much one Japanese yen (though it could be just that Pizzas are in high demand, thanks to the Ma-Non). Yet, in another mission you have to buy a car which is around 10,000 credits and in yet another mission, it takes 30,000 credits to sign a treaty with a nopon caravan (Though the dealer says that it's a good bargain). So we're suppose to believe that a pizza cost one tenth of a car, which cost one third of public treaty. Possibly justified in that NLA is an entirely new society, and the value of credits is determined by each person individually, so they can charge whatever they want.
* AttackDrone: Psycho launchers used by the Blast Fencer/Galactic Knight. Also a weapon option for Skells.
* AttractMode: If you leave the game sit at the title screen, it'll start showing off SceneryPorn as the camera moves through the landscapes of Mira.
* AttackOfThe50FootWhatever: Some monsters are several stories tall, and tend to easily squish all but the most prepared of on-foot characters. Taking them on in Skells is generally preferable.
* AutobotsRockOut: Going up against any of the Tyrants is a tall order. So they're highlighted by the accompaniment of ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgudF-hVlDA "Uncontrollable"]]'', instead of the game's usual battle theme. It becomes a near literal example, once you're outfitted with a full party of Skells to take them on.
* AwesomeButImpractical:
** The various Skell Superweapons you can develop for your Skells are split between InfinityPlusOneSword and this; the ones that fall into the former category generally have the highest overall damage values, on top of other properties that allows their damage to be boosted high enough to OneHitKill even the strongest Tyrants, while the ones in the latter category tend to be the ones that take up four weapon slots to equip, take up huge chunks of fuel, take an incredibly long time to activate, and have better alternatives. Hexad-Partican is probably the most obvious example of this, since it's the only superweapon you can get without having to make it yourself; it takes up the aforementioned four slots to equip, costs 1200 fuel per shot, and a good number of Skell weapons do the same thing it does except better and with just two slots. Dragoon-Lance is another big example; it also takes up four slots to equip, it rarely (if ever) comes across a normal enemy group that can survive its entire attack while being too weak against singular Tyrants on its own, you can't move or use other attacks when it's in use, and it takes 10 seconds for the attack to finally come out.
** A real-life scenario. Due to the hardware limitations of the Wii U, having the recommended downloads for optimal performance such as smooth transitions and consistent frame rate requires a whopping 22 [=GBs=] of disk space. The largest of any Wii U game. If you have the basic Wii U version, you can either run the game in less optimal performance, buy compatible storage SD cards, or to an extreme sell your basic Wii U for a more expensive Wii U Deluxe. If you have the Wii U Deluxe already, you can let it eat most of your hard drive space dedicated mainly for this game. While the Wii U hardware is not known for online play, having the free DLC that fixes the earlier issues downloaded will make online play better.
* AwfulTruth:
** [[spoiler:Rook turning out to be an android and not completely human.]] It's also a CallBack to the original ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1' as [[spoiler:the main protagonist, Shulk, turned out to be a re-animated corpse and not a normal Homs.]] However, this is subverted in that [[spoiler:while it's a surprise to Rook, it isn't to every other human in NLA since they already know they're all android avatars controlled by their in-stasis bodies, and Rook seems to get over this pretty quickly]].
** The Earth's [[spoiler:rich, powerful and connected used their influence to put themselves on the Arcs at the expense of the less fortunate]]. Learning that [[spoiler:his wife and daughter died so their place on the Lifehold could go to some trust fund kids is what drove Lao over the edge]].
** [[spoiler:When Team Elma finally reaches the Lifehold Core, the rest of the team sans Elma learn that there were never really any human bodies on board the White Whale and they all died with Earth. This is then downplayed when it's explained that their consciousnesses are stored inside a supercomputer (from where they control the mimeosomes) and they can make new human bodies from the protoplasmic fluid and the genetic data stored in the core, but it is hardly less unsettling to the team since it brings up the question of whether they're still really human if they can just make a new body they weren't born with.]]
* BackgroundMusicOverride:
** This the priority order of background enemy music: Wildlife creature fought on foot < Wildlife creature fought with a Skell < Ganglion or Ganglion-related creature fought on foot < Ganglion or Ganglion-related creature fought with a Skell < The ambush theme (when it finishes it reverts to the relevant song) < Tyrant < {{Superboss}} < Telethia. There are other battle themes, but they're tied to bosses from story chapters, Affinity missions and the like, so there's no way to test which themes they can override (though it's implied this includes all of them except Telethia's).
** Flying with a Skell will trigger the music "Don't Worry", replacing the current area's theme unless an enemy is fought. However, this isn't the case for the Divine Roost, the secret area located in the northernmost field of Noctilum; that place's theme is heard whether you're on foot or piloting your Skell.
* BackStab: Back Slash makes a return, though it's hardly the only art that gets a damage bonus when striking from behind.
* BadassCrew: BLADE is a military unit trained to be NLA's line of defense against hostile Indigens and the Ganglion. But only the elite among them, such as the Interceptor and Harrier factions, possess the skill to go up against Tyrants. Or have what it takes to qualify as a Skell pilot.
* BadassInANiceSuit: If you want, all party members can be decked out in full-dress military garb and business suits.
* BalancePowerSkillGimmick:
** Among the first four classes on the class tree: Drifter is Balanced, Striker is Power, Commando is Skill, and Enforcer is Gimmick with its focus on debuffs.
** Among the Skell frames: Medium is Balanced, Heavy is Power, Light is Skill, and Ares is Gimmick (fixed equipment).
* BarelyChangedDubName: The youngest BLADE member has her name Lynlee Ku changed to Lin Lee Koo overseas. The pronunciation is exactly the same.
* BattleAmongstTheFlames: The battle against Ga Jiarg and his group of Wrothian warriors in Chapter 9 will suddenly shift to having firey brimstone raining down from the sky as the battle goes on. The battle happens in Sylvalum, where that kind of weather does not happen (it does happen naturally on the nearby Cauldros). The explanation is that the battle between Elma's party and Ga Jiarg's warriors was so intense that they lit the surrounding environment on fire... or something. Interestingly, this isn't the final boss, and no other boss in the game has such a weather shift as part of their battle.
* BattleInTheRain: Chapter 8 is drenched with rain through the entire chapter, which is TheWarSequence. Aside from that, any major fight can take place in the rain, and a few enemies will only appear in rain or thunderstorm.
* BattleThemeMusic: There are a lot of boss themes. Most of the [[BossInMookClothing Tyrants]] use 'Uncontrollable', the first few story bosses as well as most of the Sidequest bosses use 'z37b20a13t01t08le'[[note]]z37 battle[[/note]], several later story bosses use [='NO.EX01'=], the boss of Chapter 11 uses the first half of 'aBOreSSs'[[labelnote:note (spoilers)]]Ares Boss[[/labelnote]], the boss of Chapter 10 uses the second half of 'aBOreSSs' in the first phase before switching to [='NO.EX01'=], the penultimate boss uses the first half of 'raTEoREkiSImeAra'[[labelnote:note (major spoilers)]]Lao Chimera/Telethia[[/labelnote]], the Final Boss uses the first half of 'The key we've lost', several of the {{superboss}}es use the last third of [=CR17S19S8=][[note]]Crisis[[/note]], Yggralith Zero uses 'In the forest <X→Z ver.>', some of the Time Attack bosses use an instrumental version of 'Uncontrollable', while [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Telethia, the Endbringer]], the strongest superboss in the game, uses the second half of 'raTEoREkiSImeAra'. Finally, both the final fight against Rexoskell (from the infamous Definian Downfall sidequest) and the fight against Interfearence (from Murderess's last affinity mission, Serial Thriller) use 'z30huri2ba0tt12le1110'.[[note]]z30 free battle[[/note]]
* TheBattlestar: Xerns are essentially flying aircraft carriers, but they wield enough firepower to make them even more powerful than the squadrons of Skells they carry.
* BeefGate:
** Many land bridges in northern and western Primordia have a mid-30s Grex waiting right in the center of them, to deter players from reaching certain probe sites. You'll also find high-level enemies blocking narrow passages in other parts of the world, but there are usually ways to get around them since many have a relatively small aggro radius.
** Trueno, The Cataclysm, is a level 60 Filiavent tyrant in Cauldros who is standing on top of a teleport pad that leads to a treasure. You have to kill him for the pad to activate.
** Lambert, The Divine Wind, is a level 15 Insidia tyrant that blocks the land bridge in Noctilum leading to Chapter 4's finale. There's no way to get around him and you'll have to fight him to get through. (Alternatively you can sprint through as the cut scene activating will stop the battle.)
** The only safe passage into eastern Cauldros by land before Skells give immunity to the lava is the Adder Byroad, a long, narrow path full of huge numbers of aggressive level 40+ enemies.
* BeliefMakesYouStupid: One of the questlines which splits from setting up the Water Filtration Plant involves [[spoiler:a religious zealot who secretly plants a chemical into the plant which, while harmless to humans, is incredibly toxic to several of the alien species living in New LA. She then proceeds to give out the antidote to the aliens who agree to convert to her faith, claiming it to be holy water from her faith's god. The player must assist a Ma-non who is extremely skeptical of religion as a whole (and constantly lets you know that) as he attempts to debunk the scam. Later on it's revealed that the "god" the zealot had seen was in fact a shapeshifting alien who took advantage of her faith to get her to poison the residents of New LA.]]
* {{BFG}}:
** Characters in the Shield Trooper job class can be equipped with gatling guns and gain range and accuracy bonuses while using them. While Psycorruptors/Masterminds use ray guns that're so bulky that they're more like [[Franchise/{{Ghostbusters}} proton packs.]]
** The "Retic" class of Sniper Rifles from Grenada Galactic Group are surprisingly large compared to the other weapons of its class. While most rifles fit over the right shoulder, Retics cover the entire back and are nearly as big as the Rayguns and Gatling guns.
** The Skells can be outfitted with far greater firepower, such as [[spoiler:[[InfinityPlusOneSword the "Super Weapons"]]]]; especially the Antimatter Round, Zenith Cannon, and the Skell-sized Hexad Partican most of all (seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajETylWuMxk @1:41-2:40]]).
** Most Skell Sidearms, while reasonably proportioned for them, are still assault rifles and shotguns the size of a human.
* {{BFS}}:
** Your party members can be armed with swords of the standard and [[LaserBlade beam weapon]] variety, some of which are as big as the characters themselves. Doubly so, for the ones that can be equipped to your Skells. Javelins are pretty damn big, too, and not just in length.
** Skells can be equiped with the G-Buster, a sword so large it takes noticeable effort for the skell to lift it and then just drop it on the enemy doing quite a lot of damage.
* BiblicalMotifs: As is tradition with the ''Xeno'' franchise, various biblical references are mentioned directly in the story, or certain story elements are inspired from them. Gwin comments about [[spoiler:Noah and TheArk]] in the ending.
* BigBad: Grandmaster Luxaar, the leader of the Ganglion. He's the figurehead commanding his race in their mission to drive humanity to extincion, all because [[spoiler:humans are descendants of the Samaarians and their existence is deemed by the Ganglion a big danger to theirs]].
* BigCreepyCrawlies: All of the insectoid indigens are ''big''. The smallest types, Blattas, are on average the size of a dog, and they just get bigger from there, up to the whale-sized [[CreepyCentipedes Millepods]] and the legendarily massive [[SandWorm Sabula]] Tyrants.
* BiggerOnTheInside: With the possible exception of the [[HumongousMecha Zu Pharg]], all Skells (both human and xeno-made) seem to have spacious cockpits compared to their actual in-game model size.
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:On the upside, the Ganglion are defeated, the Lifehold Core is successfully retrieved, the survivors can now explore their new home, Mira, without the sheer urgency from their previous mission, and Lao, despite his seeming HeelFaceDoorSlam, appears alive again in an organic body. On the downside, the computer in the Lifehold Core was destroyed, meaning that the data on it may have been lost, and the Ghost, the alien race who attacked the White Whale, are still out there.]]
* BizarreAlienReproduction:
** The Orphe are a vaguely insect-looking species that reproduce asexually. The method is by sprinkling some "senirapa" water upon themselves (even a single drop will suffice), which causes their body to spontaneously generate two new Orphe. The children possess all the memories of their parent. It is common for dying Orphe to do this as their final act, to ensure that their memories and experiences will not be lost, but the game suggests that they can do it at any time they please, as long as they have some of the water on hand. And this is before one Orphe randomly undergoes a mutation that leads to the sudden birth of the first female of their species.
** The Zaruboggan seem to be a OneGenderRace, and also reproduce asexually. The precise method isn't gone into, but the word they use for producing a child is "regurgitation".
* BizarreTasteInFood: The Ma-non race love frozen pizza. Their introduction to the food has them sampling one such pizza ''without cooking it first''.
* BlownAcrossTheRoom: Many of the guns don't noticeably knock down or back enemies on their own, but one sniper rifle art, "[[https://xenoblade.fandom.com/wiki/First_Down First Down]]," has a chance of inflicting the Topple status on humanoid enemies hit with it, knocking them off their feet and making them vulnerable for a few seconds.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality:
** The Ma-non are a society of technologically advanced anarchists. They have little to no organization and no leadership. Each Ma-non just does their own thing in their own time. Amazingly enough, this seems to work for them. It is less helpful when some of them try to get jobs with human companies, as they see nothing wrong with taking 3-hour lunch breaks and are utterly confused when their human bosses get angry about this. They also seem to experience less powerful emotions, and can at times be rather callous and insensitive to others' emotional states. It isn't that they're uncaring, they just don't understand human emotion.
** The Orphe are highly logical and have similar but more extreme issues with understanding emotions. They are dedicated to their own survival above all else and are very confused at the concept of altruism, something they would never contemplate. For the most part, they're friendly enough... mainly because being friendly makes their survival more likely. It's implied that exposure to human society is slowly changing this, however.
** Telethia the Endbringer features a heaping helping of this trope, made more blatant because Telethia cannot speak and thus cannot explain its actions. It supposedly exists to obliterate any form of life it deems "impure". Exactly what criteria it uses to determine this is wholly unknown. While [[TheCorruption the psychotic and rabid Tainted]] are obvious as to why they should be killed, Telethia also targets [[spoiler:the Orpheans, apparently due to the "Ovah" virus they all carry]]. At the same time, it leaves [[spoiler:the humans]] alone, despite their bodies being mechanical imitations of living creatures.
* BluntMetaphorsTrauma:
** Almost everything L'cirufe says in, mainly because he's self-taught to speak other species' languages [[spoiler: and not relying on Mira's universal translation magic]].
-->"It's a horse-eat-horse world!"\\
"Truly, we are on the ninth cloud of seventh heaven!"
** He even has a tendency to "correct" other people's metaphors:
--->'''Phog:''' Well, that one gave me pins and needles.\\
'''L:''' No, no, no. It ''had'' you on the pins and the needles.
* BonusDungeon: The game has several optional caves and Ganglion outposts, but the most prominent two are the Ganglion Anthropolis and the Divine Roost.
** The former is only available after starting the mission "Definian Downfall", which in turn requires the completion of a large amount of previous missions. It's rife with many powerful enemies whose level swing between 55 and 65, and is home to powerful opponents like Urdu (accompained by several Milsaadi followers), a Level 85 Ganglion Skell, Rexoskell and Blood Despair.
** The latter is only accessible via flying skells and has three powerful tyrants and quite a few level 60+ enemies including Telethia the Endbringer, which is level 99 and the ultimate {{Superboss}} in the game.
* BossBonanza: In the final story chapter, once your team enters the Lifehold Core, you'll have to fight and defeat Luxaar (the BigBad) who's piloting a Vita (Skell), then [[WolfpackBoss a group of Chimeras]], and finally [[spoiler:a mutated form of Lao]].
* BossInMookClothing:
** Tyrants look almost identical to their normal counterparts but have much higher stats and oftentimes have nasty abilities and attacks that their normal counterparts lack. Stay away until you have enough firepower, but remember that even if you're on even or superior ground, they can still put up a fight. For example, one particular Tyrant -- Sirene, the Lost -- is a level 13 Lepyx in Primordia that looks exactly like normal Lepyxes, save being much bigger, but the fact that it's killed over '''300,000 players''' and earned a gold crown in kill count speaks volumes that this thing is ''not'' something you want to mess with early on. Equally nasty is Oskar, the Summer Squall, which is only level 11 and is just as lethal, especially when it one-shots your party with Ether Field just after you think you've got it.
** Large enemies early on can become these, as they have colossal amounts of health and deal lots of damage, with some having access to nasty attacks. Don't think you can handle a large enemy like a Cinicula or Progen just because you're the same level as it; some of them can be a minutes-long struggle even for teams ten levels above them. This goes double for large Tyrants. And good luck if ''multiples'' of them show up.
** One of the Bismuth Xe-doms in Sylvalum is level '''92''', on par with Luciel, the Eternal, whereas all the other Xe-doms patrolling the region are 42-55 at most. The only thing different about it, besides its stats, is that it's being escorted by a pair of Oc-serv.
** Filiavents are giant anemone-like indigens who are level 55 ''at the least''[[labelnote:*]]not counting squad missions[[/labelnote]], are huge, fly out of reach of your attacks, attack with extremely powerful electrical-element attacks, have very high stats, and are ambush-types and so will attack no matter what.
** The Jacul and Auravis tyrant classes have powerful and difficult to dodge attacks all of which will hit you it you are next to it. Below the tyrant's level? You are absolutely dead. At the same level? Still very likely to die. Overleveled? Will still be able to kill you if you are careless. Bring a skell? You will have an easier time but these things hit like trucks going at 90mph and you can still end up saying goodbye to your insurance.
** Vainamo, the Bellower is a level 39 Vigent Tyrant that has offensive stats similar to the level '''58''' Volcannon Vigents nearby, and over twice as much health. One mid-game mission requires you to defeat it. Good luck, as it can take a serious beating even from level 50 Skell frames.
** Xerns are without a doubt the strongest normal enemy type. The lowest-leveled normal variant (and only non-Tyrant variant) is level '''75'''. With over a million HP, 4,000 attack, and some of the most powerful attacks in the game, they are certainly not something that you can hope to survive unprepared.
* BossRemix: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6uzC1u-GBM aBOreSSs]], the unique theme for the [[spoiler:Prog Ares]] fight, is a remix of a recurring theme from some cutscenes called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yywjVgkxRz0 D91M (Requiem)]].
* BottomlessPit: The canyon in Oblivia. If you fall down it, you'll unlock the achievement "Dive to Freedom" right before you respawn with a death cry. There's also Mount M'Gando in Cauldros, but the results of jumping into the mouth of a volcano should be exactly what you'd expect.
* {{Bowdlerise}}:
** The North American and European versions of the game alter Lin's skimpy costumes to be less revealing. Specifically, they changed her character model so she looks like she's wearing black underwear underneath the unaltered bikini/diving suit/bunny suit costumes, and black tights under a couple of other skimpy armor like Meredith & Co. light armor, Candid & Credible light and medium armor, Six Stars heavy armor, and some tiers of Grenada Galactic Group Skell armor. They also remove the [[BreastExpansion bust-size slider]] from the character creation menu, which is left intact in the Japanese version.
** The Italian subtitles replace several swear words with euphemisms.
* BraggingRightsReward: The Ares 90, if you're playing totally offline (whether by choice, lack of Internet, or the servers go down), become this. The Ares 90 requires Golden Yggralith Hearts dropped by Yggralith Zero, which is exclusively encountered online. The only way to obtain Golden Yggralith Hearts offline, therefore, is with Reward Tickets. The only way to obtain Reward Tickets offline is through the reward of 5,000 Reward Tickets for completing the survey of Mira... which requires you to defeat the highest-leveled enemy in the game, something you probably already built a top-notch Skell to do, and the slightly-weaker Ares 70 is craftable offline as well.
* BrainUploading: [[spoiler:Happens twice. First to survive the rigors of space travel, the humans uploaded their consciousness to the Lifehold Core computer, from which they remote controlled the mimeosomes; second, when the Lifehold Core crashed into Mira, and the central computer was destroyed, some unseen force, possibly [[EldritchLocation Mira itself]], uploaded the humans and kept them alive in their mimeosomes.]]
* BreadEggsBreadedEggs: "Tatsu no taste like chicken! Tatsu taste like poop! And poison! Tatsu taste like poison poop!"
* BreakMeter: The game uses a similar system as its predecessor, but with different names. Break is changed to Stagger and Daze is changed to Stun. The other major differences is Stagger also acts as an interrupt and Topple and Stun can be forced onto the opponent without the previous, but it becomes easier to do so if you follow the chain.
* BribingYourWayToVictory: For the Japanese, the extra character pack would be this, as most of its characters as well as the Ramjet Rifle can prove quite handy for hard levels. Averted in the Western release, as this pack is included with the main game free of charge.
* BrokenAesop:
** Early in the game Elma lectures the team about the differences between self-defense and being bloodthirsty when it comes to dealing with indigens. However, gameplay-wise, killing many or significant indigens doesn't impact the environment in the long run (they just spawn again upon returning to the zone) and during quests, [[spoiler:trying to deal with indigens peacefully almost never ends well]]. Suffice to say, there's no moral ramifications for [[BloodKnight mass-murdering indigens]].
** An early Affinity Mission has Irina help a couple of possibly misogynistic and definitely {{Jerkass}} [=BLADEs=], stating that humanity's future depends on everyone's efforts, even that of the dirtbags. This lesson come crashing down in flames when it comes to people like [[spoiler:Gadd, Alex, Fraise, and Gus]].
* BrokenBridge: Between the big deal made of how Skells help exploration, and the gaping blank spot on the map representing an ocean, most players would be inclined to think the two north continents were off-limits until the plot says so. Wrong. It's quite a hike, but you can actually hoof it along an archipelago and a couple of sandbars and get there from the word go. Said archipelago is a Prone fortress, though, so be prepared to go swimming, too.
* BubblegloopSwamp: Primordia has small sections of this, but the southern half of Sylvalum is nothing but sand and marshes covered in gigantic spore plants. Lake Ciel is more of a salt lake, but the spore plants basically make Sylvalum more of a BubblegloopSwamp instead of a ShiftingSandLand.
* ButtMonkey: Tatsu is always on the receiving end of some kind of joke about or ''attempt'' at eating him for dinner. Lin in particular, since she's stuck with him as his caretaker. They treat him well and listen to his advice otherwise.
* ButThouMust:
** ...join BLADE. Especially egregious when they insist several times before that it's your choice, and it appears that it is...unless you try to refuse, in which case Nagi asks you [[ArmorPiercingQuestion if you'd really "refuse the people who saved your life"]]...and if you say no to THAT, [[NoMeansYes the nature of the question makes him interpret otherwise]].
--->'''Captain Nagi:''' You said no, you wouldn't refuse--that's a yes, right?
** The same goes for using Elma and Lin, because you have no choice but to include them in your party for every story chapter and for most of [[RelationshipValues the affinity missions.]] And in many cases, the fourth character slot is predetermined too. Meaning, the game dictates who you take with you the majority of the time.
* CallARabbitASmeerp: Discussed. Random conversations compare several indigens on Mira to terrestrial animals, such as birds, wolves and dinosaurs. They realize, however, that those comparisons are probably arbitrary. Mia's affinity mission in the post game has the Nopon themselves calling local indigens "Birds" (even though said bird in question is a dragon-like Colubrim).
* CallASmeerpARabbit: Lampshaded. A couple of times, Tatsu mentions Earth terms, and at least once Lin calls him out. ("How do ''you'' know what an X is?") He also refers to the Wrothians as "Kitty-cat people", when cats are not native to Mira whatsoever. However, there ''are'' cats in NLA (brought from Earth), and Tatsu might be familiar with them by the time the Wrothians are encountered. (In fact, cats are some of the pet options for your barracks.)
* CallBack: A Tyrant you can have the misfortune of stumbling upon early in the game, "Hayreddin, the Territorial," is almost certainly referencing a very similar (and infamous) Unique Monster from the previous game, "Territorial Rotbart." Both are "territorial" level 81 red-furred simian-monsters wandering around the open plains, who are liable to crush new players.
* CallingYourAttacks: As in the original, your characters will shout the name of whatever art they're using (though a few will instead use a phrase), and some bosses get in on it, as well. While it generally doesn't apply while piloting a Skell, anyone who uses a superweapon or is in an [[spoiler:Ares]] model will call out the names of its signature weapons.
* TheCameo:
** The Bionis and Mechonis from the previous game appear on a figurine, and one of the male Avatar voice options in both [[Creator/AdamHowden English]] and [[Creator/ShintaroAsanuma Japanese]] is Shulk, along with Fiora (English) and [[Creator/AiMaeda Shi]][[VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}} on]], [[Creator/ShioriKatsuta Melia]] and [[Creator/MarikoSuzuki KOS]]-[[VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}} MOS]] (Japanese) for females.
** The Japan-DLC characters all make an appearance [[spoiler:when the team goes to fight at the Lifehold Core]]. Yelv is also shown [[spoiler:providing backup for Elma in TheStinger]].
* CampGay: Lara Nara. He sounds stereotypical, has purple hair, uses feminine poses, and wears purple mascara. He even mentions that he found a real looker of a BLADE, and he's just his type. He's wondering if he can get Vandham to "coincidentally" assign them together for a mission. As the game progresses on, the citizens of NLA acknowledge his success in finding a boyfriend. His twin brother, Lara Mara, isn't too far behind on the campiness either.
* CantDropTheHero: Your avatar is required to be in the party at all times. You can control anyone in the party other than the hired avatar of another player, though.
* {{Cap}}: To somewhat balance the game, there are a couple of things to keep in mind:
** Your party and Skell levels max out at level 60. Enemies in the world, Tyrants especially, can go up to the high 90s. Preparation, teamwork and strategy are needed to close the gap.
** Your BLADE rank caps at 10. There are 16 Classes to Max cap.
** The maximum experience you'll get against 1 enemy is 9,999. This is blatantly done to minimize exploits of reaching the level cap, which requires 451,900 total experience points. However, this doesn't stop players from getting to Level 60 quickly due to defeating [[PinataEnemy Joker, the Unknowable]], which always generates 9,999 Experience every time.
* CartographySidequest: One of BLADE's primary missions is to explore and map out planet Mira, in order to gather data on the indigenous wildlife, search for resources, and to recover wreckage from [[ColonyShip the White Whale]]; particularly, [[spoiler:what's left of [[MacGuffin the Lifehold]]]]. In return, [[NonCombatEXP you'll be rewarded with EXP]], credits (the in-game currency), and SP which can be used to increase your skill level in your chosen field.
* TheCasanova: A BLADE named Christopher believes that he's got every girl in New LA wrapped around his finger. At the very least, he's right about Dana, although he's rejected her several times according to her. If you give him the wrong gift, he even laments the fact that there's one girl whom he can't or won't pursue.
* CasualDangerDialogue: Subverted in that it doesn't take place ''during'' combat, but after you finish a battle, the characters often say something as if the fierce battle they just fought hadn't happened at all. There's a conversation for each and every character with almost everyone else. Even the voice of your own character determines the subject.
-->'''Mature Female''': These Miran winds aren't very compatible with my hair.\\
'''Elma:''' I know a good treatment. Hit me up once we're back in the city.\\
'''Irina:''' Hey Colonel, wanna go shopping when we're done?\\
'''Elma:''' Sure. I hear Mall Cruz is having a sale.\\
'''H.B.''': Follow my example, Mia, and you'll go far.\\
'''Mia:''' YES, SIR! ''[[SarcasticDevotee (muttering to herself)]]'' ...Almost as far as that stick up your butt.
* CentralTheme: There is a line between self-preservation and genocide, and doing right means knowing which one is which. Is it better to kill out of fear of what's unknown and different or take a chance at peace and mercy, even knowing that it can end disastrously? These questions are brought up in the story proper regarding the Ganglion and their fear of humans, in sidequests regarding humans who kill aliens out of fear, and in gameplay regarding killing the hostile flora and fauna of Mira as threats to humanity's survival. Neither killing nor mercy are the right answer on every occasion, and the choice is always difficult.
* ChainOfDeals: A quest in the commercial district has you taking a Bronze Blatta Miralife card and slowly working your way up to the legendary Golden Nopopotamus. [[GrailInTheGarbage The person holding that card doesn't seem to find much value in it]].
* ChainmailBikini: A lot of the armor sets inexplicably are a lot more revealing on female characters. It gets sillier when some of the light armor sets actually cover more then the heavier ones do (The Six Stars heavy armor is easily the biggest offender). Liviana in the commercial district even lampshades it:
-->'''Liviana:''' I went there once myself out of curiosity-- they were selling items from a wide variety of manufacturers. I was impressed at how risqué a lot of the ground gear for women was! Not that I could hope to pull it off...
* CharacterCustomization: The player character can be customized in looks and name, a first for the Xeno series.
* CharacterDeath: Subverted in regards to humanity. [[spoiler:It's revealed that everyone in NLA is really a robotic humanoid called a Mimeosome that closely mimics humanity, but their real bodies are stored in the Lifehold Core, so if their Mimeosomes die, they can just be reborn later. But then, ''DoubleSubverted'' when it's revealed that the Lifehold Core's systems were destroyed months ago. So all those Mimeosomes that died? It turns out those people are KilledOffForReal.]]
* CliffHanger: While humankind's immediate future on Mira is secure, [[spoiler:it turns out that the Lifehold control system was destroyed during atmospheric entry. Everyone should have died months ago, but ''something'' about the planet prevented that.]] Additionally [[spoiler:Lao's alive, and has seemingly recovered a flesh and blood body.]] What any of this means will need at least one sequel to explain (and the game's follow-ups, ''Xenoblade Chronicles 2'' and ''3'', opted for presenting different stories on their own).
* ColorCodedItemTiers: There are five different tiers for collectibles, materials, and equipment: gray (Common), blue (Rare), green (Unique), yellow (Prime), and orange (Intergalactic). Quality of materials reflect the strength of the enemy (early-game enemies like Grexes mainly drop Common-quality items, while late-game enemies like Seidrs mainly drop Unique-quality items), while the quality of collectibles and ores reflect their rarity. For equipment, quality reflects how many built-in skills they have. Common have none, rare has one, unique has two, and prime has three. Intergalactic-quality gear is exclusive to Skell equipment, and equipment of this tier has higher stats than lower-tier versions.
* ContinuingIsPainful: The one time this is played straight is in the final boss sequence. Lose your Skell, and there's no going back to get it replaced.
* LesCollaborateurs: How the Ganglion operate. They appear to a species with a mighty show-of-force and give them the option of JoinOrDie, and then sit back and watch as {{The Quisling}}s and the ones too afraid to resist go to war with the ones who want to fight back. The resulting civil war weakens them further, and the Ganglion help their new subordinates win.
* ColonyShip: The White Whale, and every ship in Project Exodus. New Los Angeles was actually the Habitat unit of the ship, and was BUILT in space over a period of two years.
* CollisionDamage:
** Small enemies take damage and are launched if a Skell steps on them.
** This is subverted for the player; while you will be knocked back if you collide with a monster that's much larger than you, you won't take any damage.
* ColorCodedItemTiers:
** White (Common): Collectibles are plentiful but have low sell value. Weapons and Armor have no permanent battle traits. Augments have a rather insignificant if hardly noticeable effect.
** Blue (Rare): Slightly less plentiful but more sell value. Weapons and Armor have one permanent battle trait. Augments have a somewhat noticeable effect.
** Green (Unique): Collectibles appear infrequently but are valuable. Weapons and Armor have two permanent battle traits. Augments have a significant effect.
** Yellow (Prime): Collectibles are difficult to find but sell for a lot. Weapons and Armor have three permanent battle traits. Augments have a much more positive effect but are really expensive to make.
** Orange (Intergalactic): Weapons and Armor have four permanent battle traits. Augments have a game-changing positive effect but require Materials that are dropped by High-Level Tyrants.
* ColourCodedForYourConvenience: A system of colors is used for marking [=FrontierNav=] Sectors and Level Indicators to evaluate the danger to your character's party when they're traveling to an area or faced with a hostile. As your character increases their level, the Threat Levels will gradually downgrade to indicate new areas that you can go to and enemies that you can fight with a good chance of winning.
** White / No Color: Low Danger. This sector is safe for travel and has enemies that can be defeated easily with minimal damage.
** Purple: Concernable Danger. This Sector has some enemies that are significantly stronger than the player's party and can take down at least one party member. Being attacked by two enemies with Purple Level Indicators may result in the party being annihilated.
** Blue: Significant Danger. Considerable caution is required for traveling this sector as it has powerful enemies. Using at least 1-2 high-level skells is advised.
** Green: Medium Danger. Absolute caution required for traveling this sector. Enemies require 3-4 high-level skells to fight with any chance of victory.
** Yellow: High Danger. Enter this sector or fight this enemy at your own risk as there is a low chance of survival, even if the party is equipped with high-level skells.
** Orange: Very High Danger. Sector or enemy presents a very low chance of survival, even if party is equipped with high-level skells.
** Red: Extreme Danger. Do not enter this sector or fight this enemy under any circumstance as there is zero chance of surviving, even if you're party is equipped with the very best skells.
* CosmicHorrorStory: It's revealed partway through the game that [[spoiler:Mira has some kind of supernatural power that draws in alien races and keeps them from leaving]], but the real moment this hits home that this is what kind of universe this is for both the player and Elma is when [[spoiler:it's revealed that Mira itself has somehow kept the humans alive despite them dying a couple of days before the beginning of the game, and created Rook from scratch]].
* ContractualBossImmunity: Bosses and Tyrants are universally immune to Brainjack and [[OneHitKill Servant Sacrifice]].
* ContrivedCoincidence: It seems incredibly unlikely that EVERYONE in NLA would avoid mentioning [[spoiler:being robots]] before it is revealed in the most dramatic fashion. Especially since afterwards it's mentioned quite regularly. If you do Hope's first affinity mission as soon as possible, it is mentioned once, but the player doesn't have the context to understand it yet.
* ConvectionSchmonvection: Giant lava pit? Won't hurt you unless you step in it, and even then you only lose 600 health per second while Skells are completely immune to it. [[spoiler:Again, largely justified by the durability of mimeosomes.]]
* CoolDown: The main combat mechanic, like in the [[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1 previous game]]: it functions more or less identically here, with the addition of secondary cooldowns that fill up whenever you use the type of weapon associated with that Art without using it when it's available and which greatly increase its effects the next time you use it if it's filled up all the way.
* CoolHelmet: Unlike [[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1 last game]], where the helmets' [[HelmetsAreHardlyHeroic open-faced designs]] left the heavier sets looking ridiculous, this time there's a wide array of fully enclosed helmets.
* CrapsaccharineWorld: Compared to its predecessor, the game is a bit more overt about the crapsack nature of the world. Sure, Mira is full of gorgeous views, but Earth has been destroyed, humanity is on the brink of extinction on a planet filled with hostile monsters, and some of the same aliens who destroyed the earth in the first place have come to finish the job. It's most noticeable with the citizens of New Los Angeles: when you first arrive, everyone seems friendly, cooperative, hopeful, and disagreements are minor. It's only later in the game that the ugliness of humanity begins to come out, as you encounter humans engaged in "[[FantasticRacism ethnic cleansing]]", murder, terrorism, and even ''human trafficking''.
* CreatorsCultureCarryover: Despite the White Whale and its crew being primarily American, many of the themes and cultural values of the developers' native Japan shine through. For example, during an Affinity Mission for Lao, Lin accidentally says something that upsets Lao and when Rook tries to cheer her up and fails, Rook falls to the ground in a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogeza Dogeza pose]]. Also, characters are very quick to assume the best intentions of someone who works hard and personal problems are brushed off as too personal to bring up. For example, despite numerous issues that jeopardize the lives of his teammates, everyone gives Lao a lot of slack. Of course, since this story takes place forty years in the future of its release (plus the exceptional circumstances they're in), who knows how cultural values have changed.
* CreatureHunterOrganization: While the military organization BLADE (acronym of "Builders of the Legacy After the Destruction of Earth") has different functions, two of the divisions that constitute it are explicit Creature Hunter Organizations: The Harriers and the Interceptors. Since the planet humanity crash-landed into (Mira) is infested by dangerous lifeforms (known as Indigens), their function is to exterminate any monster or entity that is considered too dangerous for the survival of humans. Harriers focus on the Tyrants (seemingly normal creatures that have buffed strength and skills), while Interceptors seek to kill the creatures that approach New Los Angeles.
* CripplingOverspecialization:
** The Psycorrupter and Mastermind are support classes geared towards crippling the enemy with debuffs and [[StatusBuff bolstering the party's resistance.]] The downside? You'll only be able to use [[StarterEquipment knives]] and [[BeamOWar ray guns.]] Plus you won't receive the stat bonuses the other job classes do.
** On the upside, rayguns are key to at least one Game Breaker build, and the Psycorruptor line has some skills that are useful to any class.
* CrusadingWidow:
** [[spoiler:Lao, a party member,]] became TheMole in revenge for [[spoiler:losing his family after they were denied passage on the White Whale.]]
** [[spoiler:Powell]] becomes a xenophobic SerialKiller in revenge for his wife being DrivenToSuicide.
* CrystalLandscape: Sylvalum has an area that is covered in large, crystalline formations.
* CuteButCacophonic: Terebras are non-agressive indigens that look something like a cross between a river otter and a fennec fox. They're cute to look at, but the fact that their signature attack is a weaponized scream means that the player will probably find them more irritating than anything.
* DamageSpongeBoss: Many high-level bosses and Tyrants have loads of HP and hit hard, but Gradivus, the Headless Emperor, is a post-game Millesaur Tyrant whose most notable feature, besides lacking a neck, is a planet-sized '''''100 million HP''''' and a resistance to all types but Ether and Thermal to back it up. For comparison, Telethia, the Endbringer, has about a tenth of that.
* DamnYouMuscleMemory: The B button is the universal Cancel command in the game. In combat, you'll be presented with command prompts that require you to hit the B button for various purposes. Depending on what you do and how fast you do it, the prompt can appear and the ring will shrink either really slow or extremely fast and everywhere in between. This alone throws your timing off because you start to expect a pattern. When fighting bosses or if a fight drags out too long, the prompts are likely to be very fast, and if they happen in rapid succession (such as Binding a large enemy with a skell), then you may accidentally cancel out of the command. This becomes a problem because you can cancel out of combat altogether, and cancel out of Overdrive immediately after you activated it. Players will end up wasting their Overdrive at some point or another because they hit B on accident.
* DarkerAndEdgier: The original had its moments, but ''X'' stops pulling punches after chapter 5. Uncautious or unlucky players can get an impressive number of named characters killed off during [[SideQuest Side Quests]]. Not helping is the amount of named characters acting as major antagonists in side quests. [[spoiler:Then there's Elma discovering that they're living in a CosmicHorrorStory in the ending, where all of the humans shouldn't exist and that Rook is some kind of HumanoidAbomination]].
* DarkIsEvil: The Ganglion wear very dark clothing, their technology is either black or dark purple, and even the interiors are very dark and unlit. Also, Cauldros itself is basically a RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver {{Mordor}}. Naturally, the Ganglion choose to make it their main base.
* DarkSecret: Like most organizations, the Earth Colonization Project has several.
** The people chosen to get on the White Whale [[spoiler:were the rich and powerful elite, along with anyone those elites deemed "useful".]]
** Related to the above, the people who got on the White Whale [[spoiler:in fact, didn't get on at all. The inhabitants of the Whale are all the downloaded consciousnesses of the people who were picked to be saved. The original people those consciousnesses came from were lied to, and then died when the Earth blew up. The rest of NLA proper are also living with the delusion that their "real bodies" are in the Core.]]
** Whatever the heck is going on between [[spoiler:Eleonora and Yelv.]]
* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler:Technically ''the entire human race.'' For an unknown reason, the Mimeosomes that were created to carry their consciousnesses are alive on their own and have fundamentally replaced the original human for good. Unknown on Lao's fate on the ending.]]
* DeathOfAThousandCuts: Guns and related arts tend to do their damage across many small hits. This makes them ideal for [[SuperMode Overdriving]], as Overdrive increases art strength as the combo counter rises.
* DeathMountain: Mt. M'gando in the center of Cauldros is an active volcano with a spring at the bottom. The volcanic crater in the center is also a scenic viewpoint.
* DeathWorld: Mira may be an ecological paradise, its air is breathable and most of the flora is edible or harmless, save the dandelions that shoot parasitic seeds into your skin and the explosive papayas. However, it's also filled to the brim with hordes of house-sized megafauna that want you dead. The five continents are all nasty: Primordia is covered in steep cliffs, Noctilum is a huge jungle with poisonous rivers and home to a madness-inducing virus that makes the infected wildlife attack all living creatures, Oblivia is an arid wasteland where dust storms and electromagnetic storms are common, Sylvalum is choked with spores and patrolled by mysterious giant robots, and Cauldros is a [[{{Mordor}} war-torn volcanic landscape]] patrolled by hostile forces. And that's not factoring in the hostile alien invaders and dormant machines that can lay waste to an entire army. Death is a constant fact of life for anyone that works outside New Los Angeles, as BLADE members die in droves to the megafauna, even with the aid of [[MiniMecha Skells]]. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking And the water is contaminated with foreign, dangerous bacteria]]. And all these notes on human survivability? [[spoiler:Every human in the place is using a robotic body capable of taking a 10-storey fall without consequence. Biological humans wouldn't have a hope.]]
* DebateAndSwitch: The Affinity Mission "New in Town" involves Rock, an ActualPacifist who does not want to fight, due to traumatic events which led to him killing everyone in his friend, Celica's, hometown. Despite this, Director General Chausson presses Rock to fight, because Rock is otherwise contributing nothing to help out the city, and according to Chausson, NLA can't afford idle citizens. To prevent Rock from being forced to leave, Celica goes on a suicidal mission to become a BLADE and almost gets herself killed as a result, only being saved by Elma and Rock, who [[TechnicalPacifist wrestles with an indigen to save Celica and stays out of the way while Team Elma kills it]]. Despite her efforts, Chausson still isn't satisfied. Rock finally submits to the Director's insistence to fight, but it turns out that Chausson has decided Rock can just as well pay his debt to society by working in heavy industry. As a result, though the mission ostensibly ends with Rock remaining a pacifist, the fact that he only moments ago relented to fight out of guilt is brushed aside. As is the fact that he was doing it to save Celica, who is now an active BLADE soldier despite being less capable in combat than ''he'' is. The end result is that his pacifism is treated as a character quirk that can only be afforded because it's now convenient to do so.
* DeliberateValuesDissonance:
** Nopon see money and commerce as their highest value. While, granted, many of them will express concern over the safety of their loved ones or innocent strangers, profit to be gained from any endeavor is a very close second. To wit, when they learn that humans have a tendency to do what they want ''for free'' because they're cute, most Nopon are quick to exploit this fact.
** Ma Non pride themselves on science and advancement over anything else. They don't know how to fight, nor can they do manual labor--and don't ''want'' to do them, either. As such, anything they can't understand or do physically they will figure out via science and technology, and if it ''can't'' be tackled that way, it becomes either extremely interesting or frustrating to them. Further, although they pride themselves on viewing any issue scientifically, when they ''do'' get caught up in their emotions, it's completely uncontrolled. A Ma Non overcome with strong or intense feelings is one of the most dangerous things you could ever imagine.
** Prone are a ProudWarriorRace that sees every situation in regards to military strength and power. They measure both themselves and their allies up at every turn, and tend to show outrage if they don't like what they see. Also, Prone don't tend to forgive a slight of any kind. The Tree and Cavern clans have been at war for a long time, and neither is likely to stop feuding any time soon. Even when the Tree Clan are rescued from the Ganglion, many of them (aside from clan leaders) are still itching for payback. When some of the Cavern clan defect to NLA, the Tree and Cavern clans continue to feud, only avoiding outright violence for the most part due to both the laws of NLA and the decree of their leaders. Still, some of them will run off to fight Ganglion forces at the drop of a hat, simply because they can't stand not satisfying a grudge.
** The Wrothians are a ProudWarriorRace and a FantasyCounterpartCulture of {{Samurai}} Japan. As such, both [[JapaneseSpirit fighting spirit]] and honor are ''everything'' to them and most of their values can be directly transferred from Feudal Japan. For example, the Wrothians have great praise for one of their warriors when she takes off alone to satisfy her need for vengeance against the Ganglion, with the full knowledge that she is almost certain to die from such an attack. In Japanese, this is known as "Makoto", whereas someone who is under obligation to redeem honor or act upon an intense emotion (or, as in this case, both) is supposed to act without thinking of logic or consequences. This is why attempting to appeal to the logic of said warrior, to stop her from killing herself, will fail. However, you ''can'' stop the warrior from getting herself killed by asking her to think of her friend's feelings, which falls into ''another'' Japanese virtue called "omoiyari".
* DevelopersForesight:
** Each team member has unique dialogue for recruitment during each story chapter.
** After completing the Celeste Three arc [[spoiler:and in turn, get nothing on account of a Wrothian snatching the entire vault under everybody's noses]], [[spoiler:visiting the mountain north of FN 312 in Oblivia while it rains will allow you to get at least a part of the gold as an apology and explanation from said Wrothian]].
** If you didn't complete the segment recon for [[spoiler:talking to Lao at his hangout spot]] before [[spoiler:he permamently leaves the team]], the segment will automatically complete itself upon completing the game.
** The Enemy Index's placement of the human enemies [[spoiler:isn't in the Humanoids section, but rather ''Mechanoids''.]]
* DiegeticCharacterCreation: This is the only ''Xenoblade'' game with a fully customisable protagonist. Later on in the game, it's revealed that [[spoiler:every human character is a robot that can change their appearance]]. A player is locked into their first choice until they complete a sidequest that [[spoiler:gives them a pod that changes their robot body]].
* DifficultButAwesome: The Enforcer's primary class line. Their weapons are the Raygun and piddly knife, which do terrible damage and build TP slowly. Push on to Psycorruptor and Mastermind and you'll get the ability to put an entire group of enemies to sleep for 30 seconds or more, or the ability to force an enemy to fight for you (or just stand and take damage) and make it KILL ITSELF TO BUFF YOU. The Enforcer weapons are also tied to the game's best healing spell (gained through Irina's first affinity mission which you have to do to progress the story), and the Mastermind's passive skills include Secondary Accelerator, which can make any class's arts much more effective.
* DiscOneNuke:
** The Affinity Mission where you recruit Alexa comes with the one of a kind Ramjet rifle. While weak, it gives the player ''900'' TP per round. This makes it really easy for players to keep up Overdrive and trivialize boss fights and other nasties, at least until they get the hang of Augments and stack skills that can do the job better.
** The knife's arts gained after the Drifter class can be this while also being DifficultButAwesome. Smooth Recovery makes health much less of an problem, the Brainjack + Servant Sacrifice combo makes gaining TP easy while also getting rid of non-tyrant/boss enemies, and Screamer makes fighting multiple enemies more manageable and there are even more useful arts from the Knife. Late-Game sees you make use of different, and more effective weapons, as the the knife's arts will deal with non-issues at that point.
* DoubleStandard:
** The armor for men and women are completely different, with women getting a variety of extremely skimpy wear. The imbalance is only ''somewhat'' alleviated by the fact that men can receive custom armor that amounts to nothing more than {{Sarashi}}, but women get a ''vast'' variety of swimsuits, {{Chainmail Bikini}}s, and {{Playboy Bunny}} outfits as well. The discrepancy is even noted in-universe, one of the people doing so being a female Ma-Non armor crafter, who explicitly asks why it is "so wonderful to let female parts flop around and not male parts".
** A non-negative example, depending on how you feel about censorship of jailbait. When her Affinity is high enough, Lin Lee Koo will say that she thinks of the PlayerCharacter as either a CoolBigSis (if female) or ParentalSubstitute (if male). This may be due to the prevalence of the LittleSisterHeroine trope in Japanese media, and thus referring to the player as a "big brother" could send the wrong messages--especially to a ''Western'' audience.
* DownerBeginning: Earth is caught in the crossfire between two warring alien armies and destroyed. One of the ships that escaped the planet's destruction is chased down by one of the alien armies and forced to crash-land on a nearby planet.
* DownloadableContent: The Japanese version saw the release of four additional characters for recruitment: H.B., Yelv, Boze and Alexa. They were added into the base content for the overseas version, so the only thing players should look for in the Wii U's [=eShop=] is the massive data packs, which alleviate the loading times and improve the textures, and are cost-free.
* DramaPreservingHandicap: In Chapter 12, [[BigBad Luxaar]] decides to enter the fray himself [[spoiler:using the super-Skell recovered in Chapter 6, the Vita. Before he does this, one of his minions reminds him that the Vita is badly damaged and he is incapable of using it to its fullest power, but he goes anyway. The Vita was present in the battle during the opening cutscene and was easily cutting a swathe through the Ghost fleet. If the Vita had been repaired, Luxaar would have won.]]
* DrawAggro: Assault Rifles and Shields provide arts that focus the enemy on the user. The game calls this effect "taunt".
* DrivenToSuicide:
** [[spoiler:Ornella commits suicide at the end of the mission "A False Hope", guilty about her betrayal of Hope and their clients.]]
** Subverted with [[spoiler:Toluera, if the player decides to take a step further in uncovering the truth. It looks as if Toluera [[GoMadFromTheRevelation suffers a mental breakdown]] after discovering that the Golbogga are real. He then runs off the cliff he was perched on.]] Talking to Feloran reveals that [[spoiler:Toluera is alive and well, just insane]].
** [[spoiler:Powell's wife breaks under the unrelenting stress of delivering Pizzas to the Ma-non customers and ends her life.]]
* DualBoss:
** Ryyz and Dagahn are the collective boss of Chapter 8. Though Dagahn's enormous size and strength makes him appear to be the more dangerous of the duo, Ryyz's strange gravity powers make her nearly as powerful a combatant.
** After you deplete about half of Atreides, the Distinguished's health, his roar gets the attention of his mate, Gesserith, the Wileworm, who joins the fray.
* DualWielding: The Commando and its 4 sub-classes can equip dual pistols and dual swords.
* DubNameChange: Some of the names were changed in the English localization.
** BLADE's full name was changed from "'''B'''eyond the '''L'''ogos '''A'''rtificial '''D'''''estiny '''E'''mancipator" to "the '''B'''uilders of the '''L'''egacy '''A'''fter the '''D'''estruction of '''E'''arth".
** The "Dolls" were changed to "Skells".
** Some of the characters were renamed, like Ru (Changed to L). Other character's names were simply respelled (Van Damme to Vandham and Guin to Gwin).
** "Overeds" are referred to as "Tyrants".
** "World Enemies" is changed to "Nemeses".
** "Growth" to "Ganglion".
* DueToTheDead: Several missions that can be performed for the Tree Clan involve their version of a funeral: placing the deceased's body in a field and watching it get devoured by wild beasts. It sounds barbaric at first, but the solemnity with which the Tree Clan treat the custom and their explanations of how it ties into [[InHarmonyWithNature their belief system]] make it clear that it honors the dead and is of tremendous importance to them.
* DynamicLoading: The game uses this for its vast overworld - the only loading screens are for entering or leaving your room, for loading the game up, and for using fast travel. Speeding around in a Skell reveals the DynamicLoading Fail at times, though, especially if you rocket around to New Los Angeles from a significant distance to the east - the basic blurry textures loaded don't match the actual geometry, and the next 10-15 seconds will load everything.
* EarlyBirdCameo: When Vandham is going over the different sects of BLADE, you can see many of your future party members as their representatives in the presentation, including ones that were originally DLC.
* EarlyGameHell: Starting out is not an easy feat. The combat system can take some time to get used to, let alone learn the intricacies and hidden mechanics. Movement is fairly slow, which combined with the immense world means it takes a ''long'' time to get to places. The world is littered with enemies that you won't be able to have a fair fight against for hours, and you'll be sneaking around a lot of them. Getting killed while trying to explore uncharted territory before finding a node or landmark and losing all that progress is an all-too-real possibility. Weapon choices are relatively limited, and aside from a few Arts, you won't have other elemental types besides Physical. Decent healing skills are also ''very'' hard to come by. Levelling up, expanding your influence, and obtaining the Skell and its flight abilities makes life much easier on Mira.
* EarthShatteringKaboom: In the opening, the Earth becomes the focal point of a fight between two warring alien species. Unfortunately, the fight does a number on the planet, forcing humanity to launch several colony ships to escape, shortly before the planet is completely shattered.
* EarthThatWas: Earth is outright destroyed as collateral damage due to a war between two alien factions. Humanity flees in colony ships before that happens, but they're harassed by one of the alien factions, and one of the ships crash land on an uninhabited planet, and the game starts with the main character awakening on this planet.
* EasySexChange: The game allows you to change your character's gender once you complete a side mission. Since [[spoiler:your body isn't human but rather a mimeosome]], Yardley's machine is easily capable of changing every appearance, including gender.
* EldritchLocation: [[spoiler:The planet Mira itself translates the languages of the inhabitants and allows the Mimeosomes to retain their personality. It didn't appear on any star-charts and seemingly came out of nowhere before the White Whale crashed. The Ganglion suddenly got trapped on the planet and have no idea how. Aliens/xenoforms describe a "white light" and then suddenly being transported to the planet. A NPC named Professor B claims to be a [[TimeTravel time traveler]] so it's possible some of these life forms could even come from different time periods. Professor B mentions the galaxies and stars have all been charted yet Mira has never appeared on them. The planet also prevents lifeforms from leaving it, and Professor B's sidequests reveal that even traveling through time wont let someone escape the planet. It causes faster mutations and individual changes to the Orphe that normally take generations of division. And as the final scene for the ending shows, it's been keeping humanity alive as part of their Mimeosomes long after the Lifehold Core's database, that holds all of humanity's consciousness, was destroyed in a flood; shortly after their crash landing, and long before they could find it, much less reclaim it.]]
* ElementalTiers: By default, very few things have any resistance to the gravity element, larger enemies naturally take the most damage from it and the G-Buster series of weapons, which are the cornerstone of doing large amounts of damage early on with Skells, are gravity element. That being said, a number of strong weapons ignore enemy resistances, allowing them to do large amounts of damage by default, and on foot, ether is the preferable element to focus on if you want to see large damage numbers as there's a passive skill unique to it that increases all damage done by it by 150% at the cost of being unable to destroy appendages, and a large number of enemies weak to ether.
* TheEndingChangesEverything: [[spoiler:The Lifehold's database being destroyed since making planetfall on Mira now means that there is a completely different reason for the mimeosomes being active.]]
* EnergyWeapon: Not only are ray guns the preferred weapons for Psycorrupters, but "beam" is actually an elemental damage type.
* EpicTrackingShot: [[MythologyGag Much like the beginning of]] ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'' in Sword Valley and Colony 9, we get an incredible shot of New Los Angeles when entering the city for the first time.
* EquipmentHidingFashion: This game allows you to be well protected on the fields of Mira while also wearing the most fashionable clothing you can buy over your current armour, though you are restricted by your chosen gender.
* EveryoneCanSeeIt: Gwin's repressed feelings for his senior officer, [[IronLady Irina]], is [[EverybodyKnewAlready the worst kept secret]] in the BLADE administration. Even Lin and Tatsu, who are a pair of 13-year-olds, spot it and call him on it during his "Boot Camp" affinity mission. So does Alexa, during her post-fight banter with him:
-->'''Gwin''': "Hey, Alexa, think you can teach a bit more about skells?"
-->'''Alexa''': "Sure. I'll show you a trick that'll knock Irina's socks off."
* EveryoneHasASpecialMove: While various characters can share weapon loadouts and classes, each of them has a pair of arts restricted to them, and them only, usable by Rook upon completing their respective Affinity Missions.
* EveryoneIsATomato: The game quickly follows up a surprise RoboticReveal of the protagonist by revealing that ''all'' the "humans" in New LA are RidiculouslyHumanRobots, and that the protagonist, by virtue of [[AmnesiacHero having no memory,]] was literally [[LockedOutOfTheLoop the only one who didn't know this from the start.]]
* EverythingTryingToKillYou: Mira rivals Australia in terms of environmental hazards and aggressive wildlife, plus all the indigens that hide as objects ''just'' so they can attack things. While there is a fair number of species that ''don't'' attack on sight or proximity, any splash damage will make them just as mad.
* EvilCounterpart: {{Inverted}}. Celica and Rock are the good counterpart to Ryyz and Dagahn respectively. Celica and Ryyz are young and powerful girls who are uncertain about humans and are more aggressive compared to Rock and Dagahn, who are much larger and less human-like. Team Elma even thought that Ryyz and Dagahn were in Noctilum, based on their signals, because Celcia and Rock were hiding in there.
* EvilLaugh: Almost every time Ryyz is on screen and it's quite menacing and psychotic.
* ExactTimeToFailure: [[spoiler:The percentage counter on BLADE Tower is an indication of how much auxiliary energy remains in the Lifehold Core. If it reaches zero, the remnants of humanity in the Lifehold will die when their life support ceases, causing the Mimeosomes they control to shut down and spelling the end of the human race entirely.]]
* ExponentialPotential: While at first your arts and weapons are limited by the class you're currently in, any class can use the arts of ''any'' other class that you've mastered alongside 2-5 of your known skills, meaning that eventually you'll be able to mix-and-match nearly every art and skill in the game. Want to stack two health increasers on the SquishyWizard class? Easily done! And when you master all the classes in a particular branch of the class tree, you can also equip the class-specific weapons in any other class, allowing for hundreds of potential configurations (216 counting just weapons x master classes).
[[/folder]]

[[folder:F-J]]
* FailedASpotCheck:
** During Nagi's first Affinity Mission, Vandham comes to Elma's team with an assignment. He doesn't notice that Nagi is part of said team until after he speaks.
** None of the [=BLADEs=] that have visited Cauldros noticed the massive citadel and ruins that serve as the main base of the Ganglion's forces until Ga Jiarg specifically tells them that's where the Ganglion are located. It could be argued that since Cauldros is a ''continent'', they simply never explored any place nearby. Except during one mission, a member of Corwin's team specifically asks for directions by giving his position relative to where the Citadel is and the base camps also mention them. It could ''also'' be argued that they noticed the ruins, but not that it was the Ganglion headquarters, except that it also serves as the place from which all of their ''massive'' ships and mobile bases dock and launch from and base campers flat out tell you as much.
* FakeDifficulty: It is entirely possible for high level enemies and tyrants to wander into your area and start attacking while you'reach focused on battling a group of enemies. Be mindful of the fast speed and wide travelling range of Barnabas, the Despot in Oblivia while you're hunting low level mephits for a quest.
* FallingDamage: A justified aversion; unlike its predecessor, this game lets you fall from any height whatsoever without even getting a scratch. Early in the story, Elma suggests to the Player Character that they jump off a hundred-foot-plus-high cliff with the only concern being the tougher monsters on the beach below. [[spoiler:It's the first hint that neither she nor the main character are normal Humans]].
* {{Fanservice}}: This game does not shy down to having LOTS and LOTS of clothing, especially 'risqué' clothing. You can strip down all characters to their underwear that looks like shorts or even wear skimpy clothing on specific armor types that goes beyond the default armorless set. Thanks to fashion gear option, you can wear those types of clothing cosmetically while wearing your badass armor. Later in the game, you can change your character, including gender and skin color to match your desires. Of course, for skintight outfits, you can even match the skin color to those skintight outfits, making them more deceiving.
* FantasticMedicinalBodilyProduct: There's a side mission to collect a scale from the Telethia, a dragon-like megafauna known throughout Mira as the planet's guardian. A single scale is said to act as a {{Panacea}} and cure anything. However, you have to fight it and test your worth to obtain the scale, which the story treats as a death sentence. This side mission [[spoiler:is ultimately PlayedForLaughs when you discover that Tatsu's rival Tora just needed to cure some rather bad indigestion and milked it as a life-threatening ailment.]]
* FantasticRacism:
** New LA becomes the home to numerous different alien species, such as the Ma-Non, and [[spoiler:the Prone]]. While most humans find it quite appealing to interact with the different xenos and learn from them, there are still a few who are scared and resentful of them. One shopkeeper refuses to let Ma-Non shop at her store because she has a crippling fear of reptiles, and their skin creeps her out. More than a few of the [[spoiler:Prone]] receive hatred for what their race has done in the story. The absolute shining example would be Alex, who not only murders three defenseless and unsuspecting Nopon but also attempts to murder three Ma-non, a race that showed absolutely ''no'' signs of threatening the humans in NLA. All things considered, the aliens all take it rather well, as they respond more out of confusion rather than offense.
** According to the [[AllThereInTheManual art book]], the battle that destroyed Earth seen at the beginning of the game was between two alien civilizations who are at war due to differences in their physiology, making it an interesting variation on this trope.
* TheFarmerAndTheViper:
** One early quest involves a BLADE named Carl being asked to kill some indigens because their proximity to New LA makes them a future danger to it. But he's too lazy to do it himself, so he dumps the mission on Rook. Upon discovering that said indigens are younglings, Rook is given the option to spare them or to kill them as ordered. [[spoiler:Sparing them yields the consequence of them growing up and attacking people, including Carl, who is fatally wounded]].
** There's a mission where Quincy offers some typical jobs only for Gus to attempt to hijack them and steal the reward. Later he's seen being chased by an indigen. [[spoiler:If you "rescue" him, he's an UngratefulBastard and screws you over anyway]].
* FeatheredDragons: The Telethia is a large dragon covered in feathers and scales, and is claimed to be the fabled guardian of Mira. It shows up a few times throughout the game to save the humans from disastrous scenarios, its scales have curative properties (which it only gives to those it deems worthy), and it only attacks you in self defense (meaning you have to attack it first).
* FighterMageThief: The game has this dynamic with its classes:
** Strikers are tanky fighters who have high HP and an array of offensive and defensive arts. One branch of the class, Samurai Gunners and Duelists, increases the offensive capabilities of the class while the other branch, Shield Troopers and Bastion Warriors, focus on their defensive capabilities, including their ability to draw aggro.
** Commandos occupy the "thief" niche, being nimble fighters who can deal a lot of damage very quickly. One branch of the class, Winged Vipers and Full Metal Jaguars, focuses on their ability to land and evade attacks. The other, Partisan Eagles and Astral Crusaders, favor raw damage.
** Enforces fill the niche of "mage", specializing in long-ranged attacks and support. One branch of the class, Psycorruptor and Mastermind, focus on supportive arts to buff allies and debilitate enemies. The other branch, Blast Fencer and Galactic Knight, are MagicKnight classes that confer a mix of powerful melee attacks and supportive capabilities.
* FightingForAHomeland: The premise of the game. After being displaced following Earth's destruction and crashing on Mira, the humans of New Los Angeles intend to make Mira their new home while dealing with hostile Indigens and other enemies whom are all too eager to wipe them out.
* {{Filler}}: Chapter 10 could have been taken out of the game or have been pushed to the last chapter, and nothing would have been lost. [[spoiler:Ryyz takes a never-before mentioned weapon from the Ganglion Base to attack NLA and is stopped and killed long before she even reaches it. She's never mentioned again.]] The only thing taken from this chapter is a small character moment for Lin that could have been in an Affinity mission and getting [[spoiler:Ryyz and Dagahn]] out of the story, which they could have done at any time.
* FillingTheSilence: Like in its predecessor, each character has a voice line for each kind of situation, even during the moment when the enemies gain reinforcements or a strong creature enters the fray on their own.
* FinalBossPreview: One Affinity Mission, "The Nopon Heir", requires you to go up against the game's most powerful superboss: [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Telethia, the Endbringer]]. ''Very'' thankfully, you don't actually have to defeat Telethia, just challenge it. After losing about 5% of its health it will give you the reward you need and leave, and it seems coded to not use any of its really powerful attacks during this encounter. Still, it gives you an inkling of what exactly you'll be up against when you ultimately try to fight it for real.
* FirstContact: As noted in the backstory, it involved Earth being blown up in the crossfire between two alien races. Fortunately humanity had been working on an Arc Ship program, even if most of them didn't make it. [[spoiler:In actuality, First Contact was twenty years before that, when Elma showed up and warned world leaders this was coming.]]
* {{Flanderization}}: The Nopon. In Xenoblade Chronicles, some of them were nomadic, and focused much of their efforts on business, but most of them were content with staying in Frontier Village and were pretty carefree. In this game, they're a ''lot'' more on the penny-pinching side, often scamming people on a regular basis, and they all have a caravan in every continent (save for Primordia, where they stay in NLA).
* FlashStep: [[CutscenePowerToTheMax A feat only shown in a cutscene]], the character [[spoiler: Nagi]] is shown using this when facing his enemies.
* FlavorText: The Collectopaedia returns from the first ''Xenoblade'', along with the new [[MonsterCompendium Enemy Index]], which contains a short bio for each type of enemy, giving some insight into the life-cycle of many of Mira's indigenous species and the culture of some of the alien races.
* FloatingContinent: Oblivia's Floating Reef comes closest, though there are small platforms near the Third Talon in Primordia.
* FluffyTheTerrible: Some of the Tyrants have utterly ridiculous titles, like Casper, the ''Unhealthy Eater'' or ''Sheldon, the Dentally-Challenged''.
* FlyingSeafoodSpecial: A large portion of the piscine indigens are capable of levitating or soaring through the air by various, usually ether-based means. It wouldn't be fun to have to fight them in the water, would it?
* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** The very first conversation hints at a plot thread that won't be resolved until the end of the game, though most players will see it coming around the time that the game reveals the other twist that same conversation foreshadowed. [[spoiler:Specifically, Elma tells the player that their senses need time to "reactivate", which foreshadows the RoboticReveal. In addition, the basic healing Art is called "Repair" rather than "Heal", and in one early mission, a character mentions having "performed basic repairs" rather than "given first aid" to a wounded BLADE.]]
** In hindsight, there are a number of lines Elma makes that foreshadow [[spoiler:the fact that she isn't human. She refers to Earth, for instance, as "''your'' homeworld" rather than "our homeworld". Whenever she speaks of humanity's virtues, she always calls humans "them" rather than "us". She says that "you won't find Mira on any star charts"... except humanity had done no space exploration, so they wouldn't ''have'' any star charts. It's also said early on that "Without [Elma], there wouldn't have been a Project Exodus"... which is a curious thing to say about someone who, by all appearances, is a mere colonel. She even outright says that her friends will be "in for a real surprise" once they see her real body.]]
** One of the responses to L going to NLA is to reject him on account of him possibly being a Ganglion spy. [[spoiler:There was indeed a Ganglion spy introduced in that same chapter, but it's not L]].
* FreezeFrameBonus: [[spoiler:The Vita can be seen in the introduction cutscene during the space battle.]]
* FreeSamplePlotCoupon: The game has the Blood Lobster sidequest, where the main character has to find 99 lobster-shaped toys stuffed with explosives, scattered all around New Los Angeles. Why 99 and not 100? Because Rook manages to spot one and throw it away before it explodes in their hands (as the culprit planned to kill them before the start of the collection).
* FreudianExcuse: Powell. [[spoiler:He becomes a xenophobic serial killer because his wife could no longer take the stress of delivering Pizzas to the Ma-non and committed suicide.]]
* FridgeLogic[[invoked]]: A couple of in-universe moments:
** In Chapter 5, Elma finally questions just why [[AliensSpeakingEnglish all the aliens encountered on Mira can speak to each other without translators]]. An answer is never given.
** In the final battle, Luxaar is flabbergasted to find that the humans' Lifehold is protected by a "Trion Barrier", apparently extremely advanced technology. This leads him to wonder: where did humanity get ''any'' of their advanced tech, for that matter? There's a major gap between the tech humanity wields and what they ''should'' have available to them given their level of development. [[spoiler:The answer is apparently that Elma (and possibly others of her people) gifted humanity that technology to survive the impending attack on Earth.]]
* FunWithAcronyms: B.L.A.D.E stands for "the '''B'''uilders of the '''L'''egacy '''A'''fter the '''D'''estruction of '''E'''arth" in the North American localization. In the original Japanese, it's "'''B'''eyond the '''L'''ogos '''A'''rtificial '''D'''estiny '''E'''mancipator".
* FurryFemaleMane: Played with. Many of the humanoid alien species have some sort of head ornamentation that simulates feminine human hair.
* GainaxEnding: TheStinger shows us that [[spoiler:the database in the Lifehold that was supposed to be storing everyone's consciousnesses was [[DeadAllAlong destroyed all along]], raising the question then of how any of the humans could possibly still be alive. In addition, Lao somehow survived the final battle and washes up on a beach somewhere back in either his mim or original human body, and is found by someone. There's also the implication that Lao may no longer be Lao, but some new entity that is the result of fusing Lao and Luxaar's minds together.]]
* GalacticSuperpower: [[spoiler:The Samaar control a region of space spanning 6 ''million'' light years [[SmallUniverseAfterAll across numerous galaxies]]]].
* GameBreakingBug:
** The game has a high chance of softlocking by making the cancel/confirm buttons unresponsive if you use the filter function when viewing affinity charts after recruiting H.B.
** In the affinity mission Bff's, If you go to the Oblivia caravan before the Noctilum one, the trigger after the cutscene to find Tatsu's mom never plays. This is especially devastating when you realize that this is an affinity mission, meaning you can't cancel it. Hoped you didn't save the mission when you had it active!
* GameplayAndStoryIntegration: With a game this large, it is very easy to overlook every detail
** You know how the faces had to take a hit to facilitate for the game's visual effects? It can be justified in story because [[spoiler:of the RidiculouslyHumanRobots [[GameplayAndStorySegregation ...for the humans at least]]]].
** While exploring, you can easily survive jumping or falling from any height, and indeed, shortly after starting the game, Elma makes the suggestion of jumping off a high cliff to get down faster. Turns out, there's a reason for that.
** The fact that [[spoiler:your player character is an android avatar, like all the "humans" in NLA]] justifies being able to re-edit your character after starting the game (even changing their gender!), though you have to unlock the ability through a side quest.
* GameplayAndStorySegregation
** You can decide to explore the entire planet with the main three, yet some chapters still have Elma and Lin react as if they've been in an area for the first time (like when you enter Oblivia[=\=]Sandy Butt Canyon during Chapter 5's story missions).
** Lin will mention Tatsu in some of her post-battle quotes, even before you meet him.
** Some [[NonPlayerCharacter NPCs]] will ask the party certain things that Nagi shouldn't be around to hear such "sensitive information" or planning to [[http://i.imgur.com/tuZPAEE.png assassinate]] [[http://i.imgur.com/53vW9MY.png him]] while he is [[ImStandingRightHere in the party]].
** At one point during her affinity missions, Irina complains that there aren't many female BLADE members. But just by running around NLA and even looking at the playable characters list, there are lots of them.
** The White Phosphor Lake in Cauldros is said to be radiated and it's possible to accidentally ([[VideoGameCrueltyPotential unless the player's doing so on purpose]]) get a named NPC killed from phosphorus poisoning due to poor directional guidance, yet the player character won't be affected by the radiation, but only standing in the phosphorus.
** When you add Elma to your party, she says that she's pleased to serve under ''your'' team until your next big assignment (namely, Story Missions, whereupon she becomes commanding officer again). Except, in any cutscene where she has a speaking role, Elma instantly becomes the leader. For example, there's L's, Celica's, and Gwin's first Affinity Missions, which amounts to the team just helping out those characters and not being on any type of assignment. It can become ''really'' noticeable, though, when Elma gets credit for a lot of things that you accomplished without her needing to be in the group whatsoever. For example, his Affinity Mission has Nagi state that he's been serving under Elma for some time. Except that, when you add him to the party, he says it was ''you'' he wanted to serve under. This is possibly [[TheArtifact an artifact]] from early production design, in which there was no SupportingProtagonist, and so the team leader and the PlayerCharacter were likely the same person.
** In the Affinity Mission, "Boot Camp", Gwin says that he is too weak and wants to train. Elma then wants to fight him to see how "weak" he is. When you fight him, he is level 40, when it is highly unlikely you trained Gwin to level 40 by the time you do this Affinity Mission. Then Elma tasks Gwin to do some missions with her (or Rook's) team, and his levels drop back down to what they are when he is a regular party member. After you and Gwin do those missions, Gwin takes another battle with your party. In this fight, he is now level ''46''. Somehow a BLADE can all-the-sudden grow by 6 levels just by doing some missions from Elma.
** Elma, Doug and Lao are all shown to be Skell pilots before joining your party, but until you get ''your'' Skell License, you can't even have them support you with their own Skells. Similarly, despite a big deal being made about Skells being a limited resource, you can buy as many as you have credits for, and can even hand them out to inexperienced [=BLADEs=] such as Phog or L.
** The fact that [[spoiler:L and Celica]] can use [[LimitBreak Overdrive]]. [[spoiler:It's heavily implied that Overdrive is a function of the characters' robotic bodies, since you can't use it until after the reveal, and the icon depicts a set of gears. Despite being flesh and blood, both L and Celica are somehow capable of using it, too.]]
** You can take Celica and L with you on the initially racist Bozé's recruitment mission and he doesn't seem to care at all. Being nice to non-humans in conversation also raises his affinity as much as any other character.
** A female Orphean may appear as the client for a Basic Mission before completing the Mission where they are brought into existence.
** In Chapter 12's cutscene, it doesn't matter what your Skells look like, because they're not the ones you're piloting. In the same cutscene, certain [=NPCs=] like Alexa and H.B. will be leading their own separate teams with the objective of holding enemy forces off while you [[spoiler: secure the Lifehold Core]]. If they were in your party they will suddenly be part of your team after the cutscene even though they were no where near you a few seconds before.
** You can take any member on missions where you fight the Definians, yet most of the time in their affinity missions (i.e. Bozé and Hope), they act as if the Definian they encounter there were the first they saw.
** After Chapter 5 a mission requires Rook to give a Ma-non worker some means of compensation in exchange for their technology and knowledge. Pizza is the key, and the worker immediately gets hooked. Exploring NLA before doing this still shows the Ma-non mad for pizza, even though it's often stated that it's Rook who started the Pizza fad in the first place.
** It's possible to find combat probes in mechanical treasure spots before undergoing Hugo's missions, which imply that said probes are his inventions and the first of their kind.
** The missions involving Alex and Fraise are required to be completed before being able to access Good Fortun, and by extent, Definian Downfall, as [[spoiler:they both heavily involve Definians while Definian Downfall is all about finishing them off]]. However, other such missions such as Corwin's missions, The Duel Part IV, and Slovity's Revenge, aren't required to be completed beforehand, and the Definians involved in those missions often brag about Fortun, even when [[spoiler:she's either dead or lobotomized]].
** [[spoiler:The main game's story ending heavily implies you have completed most of the affinity missions and unlocked every character in the game, even if you did not recruit the optional characters. An example is Celica's Affinity Mission: not completing New in New LA. Rock seems to be working in construction when he obtains the job after the affinity mission is completed. Then there's Mia as well, who can only become recruitable in a bonus mission.]]
** It's possible to find most of the lifehold segments long before the story actually sends you looking for them but your team will never acknowledge them until the story allows it despite it apparently being a desperate search for them.
* GameplayProtagonistStoryProtagonist: PlayedWith in regards to the player character Rook/Cross. The game's central storyline surrounding the discovery and reactivation of the Lifehold Core focuses almost entirely on Elma and Lin, who for most of the game's story missions are required party members. Elma is already a hero to New Los Angeles, and her skills back that up. This isn't to say that Rook/Cross has no importance though. The game's side missions that has you helping out and solving other conflicts squarely paints you as the hero and savior, with the recognition you deserve. Elma is the main storyline's protagonist, but the player character still helps shape the rest of the world.
* GenderBender: A subquest, once completed, will allow the player to change their character's design almost at will (it's at a single location that can only be done late at night. The nearest waiting area is a good distance away, but fortunately that distance is [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou mostly straight up]], and you can quick-travel to the location anyway), even voice and gender. This is explicitly mentioned as an option in-story, though when you do it, everybody acts [[{{Retcon}} as though you had always been that way]].
* GenderRestrictedGear: There's a small handful of Casual Wear exclusive to each gender, mainly L and Celica's armor (male and female, respectively), craftable replicas of said armor, and female-exclusive PlayboyBunny outfits.
* GenericCuteness: A common criticism of the game is how generic, artificial or "doll-like" the characters all look. Most of them have a generically cute aesthetic, especially women (there's somewhat more variance with men--particularly older characters like Vandham and Nagi). This is because [[spoiler:the humans are mimeosomes]] and are thus ''supposed'' to look slightly artificial. This doesn't apply to alien characters like Celica or [[spoiler:Elma (in her real body)]], however.
* GenocideBackfire: The Ganglion [[spoiler:tried to destroy humanity due to being descended from the Samaarians. This backfired ''before the genocide had even started'', as Elma had given humanity faster than light travel and warned them about the Ganglion, and although the Ganglion destroy Earth, Luxxaar is killed by Lao and the Ganglion is, for the most part, destroyed by BLADE]].
* GiantEnemyCrab: The Forfex and Petramand indigens are basically this in all but name.
* GiantFlyer: Every flying indigen save Vesper and Adsecula are ginormous.
* GiganticMoon: Mira has 5 moons, all but one of which are absolutely massive with the largest dominating the eastern night sky.
* GlobalAirship: The game doesn't have an airship per se, but every [[MiniMecha Skell]] functionally becomes this after obtaining the flight module. It allows you to fly anywhere, and thus reach previously inaccessible places, as well as make navigating the treacherous landscape much easier, especially when used in conjunction with the [[WarpWhistle quick travel]] feature.
* GoingCosmic: The majority of the game is normal SpaceOpera fare in a StandardSciFiSetting where humanity is fleeing [[EarthShatteringKaboom the destruction of Earth]] and trying to [[SettlingTheFrontier colonize a new world]]. It briefly gets thrown for a loop when [[spoiler: the humans are all revealed to be using robot bodies being controlled by their real bodies [[HumanPopsicle which are in stasis in their missing mothership]]]], but gets back on track quickly enough. But then the final chapter reveals [[spoiler: that ''there are no human bodies'' because everyone's minds [[BrainUploading have been copied into a quantum computer]] which is the real source of the robot bodies' control, and goes into a heavy debate on the nature of TheSingularity and what it means to be human if you can just copy-and-paste yourself into a new body whenever you feel like it.]] As if that wasn't enough, TheStinger then takes things up a notch when [[spoiler: the computer containing everyone's minds was actually destroyed since the beginning of the game, raising even bigger questions on how everyone can even still be existing.]]
* GoldColoredSuperiority: "Ultra Infinite" armor sets which provide the highest defense ratings in the game are all colored with a metallic-gold sheen.
* GottaCatchEmAll:
** The Holofigures, which can be used to decorate the barracks. Most of them are earned through quests, while the rest are earned by defeating specific Tyrants, specifically by destroying their Head segment during the battle.
** In-universe, the citizens of NLA are obsessed with collecting Miralife cards, which feature artwork of various indigens.
** The Enemy Index makes registries of every hostile that you've encountered and will provide complete information when you kill three of each one. Tyrants and special encounter hostiles only require one kill for registration.
* GracefulLoser: [[spoiler:Roselle]] accepts defeat after her battle and either offers Rook a bribe or simply turns herself in for kidnapping, depending on the player's decision. Probably the only time something like this happens with a hostile BLADE.
* GratuitousEnglish: Like in ''Xenoblade Chronicles'', occasionally prompts to hit the B button will appear; hitting the button in time offers various subtle rewards. There are two levels of success; hitting the inner circle (hitting the button a little late, but still in time to be successful) will tell you that you've "Succeeded". Hitting the outer circle (precisely when hitting the button would no longer be considered "too soon"), however, will tell you that you've "Huge Succeeded". (Un)fortunately, this turned out to have been [[SubvertedTrope beta text]], as later videos have shown that it's been changed to "Good" and "Perfect," respectively.
* GratuitousGerman: Wir Fliegen, literally meaning "We Fly" in English, have lyrics that are completely in German, in a Japanese game that usually uses songs in {{Engrish}}. Possibly a quirk of the composer, who also had lots of Gratuitous German in his ''Manga/AttackOnTitan'' work.
* GrayingMorality: [[spoiler:The game starts out with BlackAndWhiteMorality, but steadily gets more complex as time goes on, with the {{Big Good}}s lying to the entirety of New LA, the AlwaysChaoticEvil gang of villains losing a lot of members from their side, and [[JerkassWoobie Lao]] being a HeelFaceRevolvingDoor]].
* GreatOffscreenWar: There is a massive conflict between two alien armies that just so happened to break out over Earth. As shown in the opening sequence, the battle resulted in Earth's destruction and humanity's forced exodus into space, with one of the alien armies pursuing them and causing one of their ships to crash-land onto Mira.
* GreenHillZone: Primordia. It's the first continent that is explored in the game, and along with the vast green plains it has plenty of beaches and coastlines plus a lot of tall mountains. The beaches and coastline make areas of PalmtreePanic work in.
* GreyAndGrayMorality: The game takes a very "choices and consequences" approach to morality in its many, many sidequest dialog options, and the road to hell is truly paved with good intentions - sometimes being a dick is the only way to minimize the body count, and the people involved may or may not sympathize with this after the fact. This comes to a head late in the plot when [[spoiler:Elma points a gun at a traitor and Rook, unbidden by the player, will join Lin in [[GoThroughMe standing between them]] because they find said traitor's story sympathetic. The thing is, the ''player'' might very well be on Elma's side, and a very strong case can be made that it's irresponsible of everyone involved not to put a bullet in the traitor on the spot when you weigh one tragic story against humanity's survival. And to cap it off, what at the time is an ambiguous situation or message about humanity [[BrokenAesop proves Elma completely right]] when the traitor's actions later compromise or destroy the subject of humanity's entire efforts thus far.]]
* GrimyWater: Your first encounter will be Noctilum's corrosive ponds which eat away your health at a very slow rate. Those are nothing compared to the Phosphor Lake in Cauldros, which is significantly deadlier than the molten lava found everywhere else on the continent.
* TheGuardsMustBeCrazy: By real-life standards, many of the Ganglion humanoids and mechanoids have incredibly bad hearing and vision. Even when you start a fight in a Ganglion Base where most of the guards are within earshot and clear sight of each other, they don't take notice of what's happening unless you get their attention by attacking them or wandering into their aggro range. Using wares that have the Optical Cloaking Augment can also really make the Ganglion look woefully incompetent when it comes to guarding their facilities: You can move within 1.5 feet of a Puge, Prone, or Marnuck and they still wouldn't react to your presence, even when you're right in front of them and stealing the goods from their containers. It gets even more ridiculous when you're piloting a Skell in Cauldros: You can actually avoid fighting most of the Ganglion by moving and jumping very carefully ''between them''.
* GuideDangIt:
** Despite the lengthy in-game manual, there's still a number of features that go completely unexplained and unmentioned: the largest one of these is the total lack of info on how much various buffs boost said stats, making it hard to decide which one of them is the best one to use, especially since the main character can ultimately learn all of them and because each buff's effect was thoroughly documented in the previous game's art list. The annoyingly small font doesn't help with any potential in-game help text either.
** Not counting the Player Character, there are 18 additional party members. Seven of them are recruited over the course of the story. Ten of them require you to complete an Affinity Mission in order to unlock them. That one last party member, Mia, is a pain in the ass if you don't know what to do: you need to complete a certain chain of ''Normal Missions'' in order to finally unlock her, 3 of them first requiring you to find her in specific locations out in the wild, and even then the earliest point you can unlock her is right between Chapter 11 and Chapter 12, and that's only if you're ridiculously OCD about doing segment recon, as the requirement for the last quest to unlock her requires you to have 65% completion rating in Cauldros, which is the last continent.
** You will get quests asking you to gather items from the overworld. However, the quests will only tell you the continent the items are on, despite most overworld items being located only in particular portions of the map (and even if you are looking in the right place, what you find is randomized). This lead many players to run around in circles for hours, hoping to find the one item they are missing to complete their quest. This can get quite infuriating when important quests require you to find such items, such as the mandatory one to get your Skell licence.
** Completing the Collectopedia, a fetch quest on a much larger scale. In order to get a 100% completion, you must collect and register at least one of ''every'' item that spawns on map. It sounds simple enough, but items have different levels of rarity meaning the [[RandomNumberGod RNG]] plays a big factor into this. Items are also exclusive to ''specific regions'' within each continent and the game will not give you clues where to locate them. Also, more common in Sylvalum and Cauldros, some items can only be picked up at specific times of day with specific weather conditions. In other words, the only way to get 100% without using a guide for reference is through dumb luck.
** Indigens, aliens, and mechanoids recorded in the Enemy Index only show what continent they're on, not a specific location they appear. If you want to find them again, you'll have to find a bounty mission that points out their area, or consult the Internet. The Index also records item drops from enemies, but doesn't tell you which appendage needs to be destroyed to have a chance at obtaining one. This really bites for missions that require you to obtain items from enemies. For example, the objective may tell you to get a Topaz Wine from a Clay Tectinsula in Oblivia, but it doesn't show you ''where'' they appear or which appendage you have to destroy to get a chance at obtaining one.
** Heart-to-heart conversations and Affinity Shifts. They're not marked on [=FrontierNav=] unless you happen to pass by someone who knows the information, and even then the info isn't available until after completing certain missions. Some of them have specific requirements, such as finding the person at a certain time of day in an area they usually aren't found while they're not in your party, after completing a previous heart-to-heart with them, and sometimes having a certain type of pet in the barracks. Unless you manage to find the information or have a guide, finding the heart-to-hearts involves stumbling upon the people by pure luck or intense searching. Affinity Shifts take the above but replace "party member" with random civilians.
** Getting the "[[VideoGameCaringPotential best]]" outcome on some [[SideQuest Normal Missions]] sometimes means knowing some technical bits about the world beforehand (whether it be getting random info from random unnamed [=NPCs=] with some cryptic context behind it or understanding the geography and names of different parts of the continents) or talking to {{Non Player Character}}s that aren't listed in your objectives. While some actions you take to save lives are common sense (such as stepping in to defend an endangered person), being ill-prepared for some decisions (whether it be the player character not having gained info on how to do something or not having a specific item when someone's in danger) can result in negative outcomes such as the death of someone you were supposed to save. One such quest requires you to talk to another person nearby before speaking to the person the quest requires you to speak to, another quest can get another person killed if you don't do a specific part first and gain information regarding an item from them and yet another quest requires you to provide information about an enemy type's weaknesses and attacks on the fly without being given the option to check it in your enemy index beforehand so that the other party's attack won't result in casualties.
** There are hexes on the continential maps that have the quest icon, indicating that either a quest mostly takes place in that area, or a quest is obtained in that area. Sometimes it's not obvious, and said missions can be easily missed (such as Conner's second quest).
** The Dopang Caravan is harder to locate than the other Nopon caravans in Mira, since it doesn't have any affinity missions tied to it. It's also hidden in a secluded place in Sylvalum and the fast travel point name it uses is based on the spring nearby.
** Deep in your journey you may find a mission on the BLADE terminal ''Off the Record'', where navigation hints and indicators are unavailable, the hints are especially cryptic, and there can be multiple versions of this mission as well. It turns out these missions are required for getting a field skill up to level 5, and only become available upon reaching level 4 in a skill.
** The weapons your current teammates use affect the type of on-foot weapon drops that you'll receive from enemies, in addition to your selected class (ie having Elma, Phog, and Celica, and being a Winged Viper or Full Metal Jaguar will increase the chances of getting Dual Guns).
** Affinity relations with a border are set in stone, and are often the final stage in a relationship. Trivial, but you wouldn't know what the difference is between a link with a border and one without unless you looked it up.
** The golden blatta Tyrants are ''extremely'' well-hidden. They're tiny and almost always hidden enemies so they don't appear on the minimap. Three appear at nighttime high above where you'd normally look, one of them rarely spawns amongst other blattas, another only shows up after defeating enemies around it, and the remainder are deep in caves.
** Shuravas, the Enraged is equally obscure. Absolutely ''nothing'' hints to its existence, and it only appears in a specific place (Suncatch Ravine in Noctilum) during a specific weather condition (thunderstorm).
** Just as obscure is Zohan, the Thunderbolt, another Tyrant that nobody alludes to and that only appears during a specific weather condition. This weather condition also happens to be the one in which ''you can't see anything''. Not only that, but Zohan appears very high up ''and'' it can't be targeted until it spots you, though it has a huge aggro radius.
* GunsAkimbo: The ranged weapons for Commando, Winged Viper, and Full Metal Jaguar classes.
* HateSink: Tobias. Even before he challenges Rook on account of "stealing" his probe income he's an absolute JerkAss to [[ReasonableAuthorityFigure Kirsty]], and is only in it for the money. When he does challenge Rook he's a complete SmugSnake and frequently accuses Rook of underhanded tactics, which Tobias himself is implied to be doing behind the scenes. However, he's really a JerkWithAHeartOfGold, so he has a justified reason for his greed.
* HaveIMentionedIAmGay: Lara Nara and Lara Mara are very flamoyantly CampGay characters and will never stop talking about either men they find cute/attractive, or the fact that they supposedly have a boyfriend. It can also be interpreted that they're [[AmbiguouslyBi at least somewhat bi]], because they also have some praise for women they finds cute/attractive also, although this isn't brought up nearly as often.
* HealerSignsOnEarly:
** Irina becomes a recruitable party member after Chapter 3. She comes with the Buff Art "Repair", which restores some HP and removes debuffs and eventurally learns "Smooth Recovery," her unique party wide heal. At the same time, all characters are capable of healing one another through Soul Voice: using an Art corresponding with a party member's request restores HP for both the requester and the character performing the Art.
** [[PlayerCharacter Cross]] can become one early on if they choose the Enforcer class. Not only can you learn "Repair" fairly early on into the class, but you can also unlock Irina's "Smooth Recovery" as soon as you finish her first affinitiy mission, which unlocks when Irina becomes recruitable after chapter 3.
* HeKnowsAboutTimedHits: The game is rather forgiving about breaking immersion when talking about game mechanics, but a little of this still happens. You'll get advice from characters that pauses the game and mentions story missions and other game mechanics. One NPC in particular, Wolf, gives you advice on handling enemies, such as knowing how to take advantage of an Art's 2nd cooldown timer (the green ring that fills up.)
* HelloInsertNameHere: For the first time in the series, the player creates their own fully customizeable avatar; including their name. But your fellow party members and [=NPCs=] will only address you as such during onscreen text (i.e. scenes that aren't voice acted), not during cutscenes. Elma and other characters eventually start calling you "Rook", for "rookie".
* HeroicMime: {{Zigzagged}}. For the most part, your avatar is limited to calling their attack names and a few lines in battle, but doesn't speak during cutscenes. Instead, you'll occasionally be given a prompt, followed by 2 or more responses to choose from. Lampshaded by Commander Vandham, who says that "Chatty Cathy" isn't much for conversation.
* HiddenInPlainSight: Some indigens like to camouflage themselves in the scenery, not being detectable by the targeting system until they ambush you. Mortifoles and Sacrifoles disguise themselves among ordinary plants (though moving petals might tip you off); Germivores, Tectinsulas and Arenatects disguise themselves as land formations; in Sylvalum, some Cantors like to pose as perfectly stiff statues (aside from their heads turning in different directions with clock-ticking sound) next to stone walls.
* HigherTechSpecies:
** The Ganglion. Apparently they're [[NormalFishInATinyPond small-time criminal thugs in galactic terms]], but against humans, they have a planet-killing technological edge. Humanity can only pretend to keep up [[spoiler:due to a [[SpaceElves Space Elf]] taking pity and helping accelerate their technology to survive the aforementioned planet-killing]].
** The Ma-non are the standout example, casually stating that their tech puts everything in the Samaar Federation (which spans multiple galaxies, and whom the aforementioned Ganglion are part of) to shame. They even regard a PerpetualMotionMachine as a trivially mundane power source. The only reason they can't invent superweapons that instantly win the war is because they don't like making weapons and therefore aren't used to considering harmful applications of their tech.
* HoldTheLine: During Chapter 8, your team has to protect the entrance to New Los Angeles from the incoming Ganglion army, which tries to invade and destroy the last bastion of humanity. For the first wave, you have to defeat any incoming enemy during three minutes, and for the second wave you have to do the same during five minutes. There's an Affinity Mission involving Fog and Frye with this gimmick (the duration of the line holding will depend on which character you choose to join during the mission (three minutes with Fog, six with Frye). Finally, there's a normal mission during the PlayableEpilogue where you have to protect the city's entrance from an assortment of indigenous creatures, who were in their migration period and were inadvertedly approaching the city.
* HollywoodOld: ArtisticAge example, [[VagueAge probably]], but one of the face options for a male Rook is called "Old Man". The actual face doesn't look over 55, and can pass for 35. The kicker here though is that the "Man B" option looks older than the "Old Man" option.
* HomeworldEvacuation: The game starts with humanity flying off on massive Ark Ships to escape an alien war. Very few of them even make it out of Earth's atmosphere before being shot down by the alien forces. The game proper follows one of the surviving ships in the months after it's begun colonizing a new planet.
* HopeSpot: All the citizens of NLA are waiting with baited breath for the day they'll finally be able to bring everyone out of stasis from the Lifehold Core [[spoiler:and return to their biological bodies]]. Some citizens can't wait to see their loved ones again, especially their children, or fallen BLADE members. [[spoiler:The Lifehold core mainframe was destroyed upon impact with Mira. All those people can never be brought back, even though the technology to recreate bodies is still functioning. While the game doesn't go into detail about it, it's pretty obvious that Chaussen, Nagi, Vandham, and the rest of the leaders in NLA will have to choose very carefully how and when they'll break the news, because some citizens are getting impatient]].
* HostileWeather:
** Electromagnetic storms can break out in Oblivia. Like other environmental hazards, it deals damage to your party, but it has the benefit of reducing mechanoids' detection ranges. It covers a sizable chunk of the whole continent, and only getting to a relatively enclosed place will stop the damage.
** Cauldros has electromagnetic storms as well, albeit much more rarely than Oblivia. The real problem in Cauldros is the brimstone rain, aka ''raining chunks of fiery rock'', which deals heavy damage to anyone not in a Skell or under some sort of hard cover.
** Sylvalum has the spore clouds weather. Every so often, the fungus that seems to cover most of the continent releases huge amounts of spores. While they aren't harmful themselves, they reduce visibility to almost zero. This makes it nigh-impossible to tell where you're going, and practically guarantees that you'll walk right into one of the [[BossInMookClothing super-powerful enemies]] wandering around. Worse, there's a Tyrant that will only spawn in this particular weather.
* HotWings: The Ares 90 Skell produces phoenix wings while flying.
* HubCity: It's the last bastion of humanity and home to the headquarter of BLADE, the military organization that employs the many characters.
* HubLevel: New Los Angeles. Not only has it become the home of the entire human race, it is also your base of operations because it is the location of the BLADE Barracks.
* HubUnderAttack: During Chapter 8, the game's HubCity (New Los Angeles) is under attack by the Ganglion military. In the duration of the event, Rook and their team have to dispatch the incoming mooks that attempt to enter the city on foot (aerial enemy forces try to attack from above, but they're being handled by the city's army offscreen). At one point, some enemies manage to get in and they have to be dealt with as well. After this chapter's completion, and provided that certain prior sidequests have been completed, you can unlock an Affinity Mission with Phog and Frye where you have to protect the city once again from incoming enemies. Finally, near the end of the game, you can unlock a normal sidequest where a friendly Prone asks you to protect the city yet again, but this time from wild creatures that approach it during their path of migration. In all these cases, it is not necessary to worry about the safety of the city proper (it's not based on TowerDefense mechanics), as enemies will always attack you instead and the challenge is based on surviving during a specific time limit (usually three to five minutes).
* HumanitysWake: [[spoiler:Humanity, as we know it, went extinct when the Earth was destroyed. The Lifehold, which is said to contain humans who are in stasis, actually contains a liquid pool of genetic material for creating new humans. The ending reveals that when the ''White Whale'' crash-landed on Mira, the computers containing humanity's collective memories was destroyed: as such, all that remains of humanity are the "mimeosomes", androids created in humanity's likeness.]]
* HumanPopsicle: The entire human race is this, having been frozen ever since they boarded the White Whale to escape Earth's destruction. Their bodies are waiting in the Lifehold Core, controlling artificial bodies called mimeosomes from a distance. This is why retrieving the Lifehold Core before the Ganglion is so imperative: if the Ganglion finds and destroys the Core first, the human race will die out. [[spoiler:It's eventually subverted: this was the story the people in New Los Angeles were ''led'' to believe. In truth, the humans' consciousnesses and memories were [[BrainUploading uploaded to a huge database inside the Core]]. The humans' original bodies were destroyed alongside Earth, and the Core only houses the aforementioned database, as well as protoplasm and DNA banks to recreate new flesh-and-blood bodies for the humans to go back to after Mira is made safe. Only ''one'' body was actually frozen like they told the people in New LA: Elma's real body.]]
* HumansAreBastards:
** One might think that humanity's dire circumstances might've promoted greater unity among them, but deception, backstabbing, and other shady business is still commonplace, both among the civilians and BLADE members. Some of them also prove to be less then accepting of their alien visitors...sometimes to a deadly degree.
** The quest to help Professor B, a friendly alien in the Industrial Sector, is a simple fetch quest to help further his research. Upon finding the item, you're ambushed by four BLADE members, led by Gadd, who don't want you to help him out, and they're ready to kill you to see it through. They attack you, and you have no choice but to kill them. You're forced to cross swords with Gadd again when Professor B reappears on Mira in the Oblivia Region and sends a distress call.
** Fraisie at the Chapel tries to exploit the Ma-Non into following her religion. See the SnakeOilSalesman entry below.
** One human noticed how the Ma-Non were having trouble adapting to New LA and wanted to hold a seminar teaching them some basics of humanity, but talking to him reveals it has nothing to do with concern for the Ma-Non and is fueled by his own frustration with them. In the end, the "seminar" is really a plot to round them up and kill everyone, which the player interrupts. Unfortunately, he's not alone in his opinion.
** [[spoiler:A good bit of Lao's entire shtick as a villain stems from his view that humans are bastards ''to each other''. Not only is he furious that his family was denied a place on the Whale, but he's certain it was due to their socio-economic status and stops ''exactly'' short of outright accusing the NLA leadership of full-blown racism in its selection process. He even goes so far as to warn Lin that "people like us" are only treated as valuable so long as they're seen as useful, which is about as subtle as a brick to the head.]]
** Business for Army Pizza had been lukewarm since [=NLA=] was forced to land on Mira but all that suddenly changed when the Ma-non took up residence and began buying Pizzas non-stop. The sudden spike in patronage led to a meteoric rise in success for Army Pizza but the demand gradually proved to be too much in the short-run. Human customers for Army Pizza felt themselves driven away by the Ma-non. [[spoiler:And Powell's wife commits suicide which drives him insane with Xenophobic sentiment, turning him into a serial killer who blames the Ma-non for her death, even though all they ever did was buy Pizzas.]]
* HumansAreDiplomats: The game has the forging of new alliances between humans and various xenos forming a major part of the story and quests. Humans do this primarily on account of having recently fled a destroyed Earth and having run into the Ganglion, the evil coalition responsible for said destruction, on Mira; they desperately need all the allies they can get. It also helps that many of these new allies were former members of the Ganglion who changed sides [[BecauseYouWereNiceToMe because the humans were much nicer]].
* HumansAreSurvivors: Humanity is forced to flee into the stars after Earth is destroyed in the crossfire between two warring alien races. One of those races continues to pursue humanity, forcing them to crash-land on the planet of Mira, a beautiful but hostile world teeming with dangerous alien flora and fauna. In spite of their circumstances, humanity continues to survive, building a colony the size of a small city and settling into their new niche in space.
* HumansAreWhite: Played with. Within NLA, almost every character is of fair skin, and characters like Lin and Nagi are Chinese and Japanese respectively. Other than that, due to the lack of clear skin tones and ethnic features, it's hard to tell if there any, say, Black or Alboriginal people. Many players, in fact, have complained that the character creation system does not do a good job of providing options for non-White and non-Asian characters. As such, pre-made [=NPCs=] (such as Powell at Army Pizza) are a slightly darker shade than others, but could just be tanned for all we know. [[spoiler:However, given the tenor of some of Lao's comments during chapter 11 in particular, the marked "whiteness" of the White Whale crew may not be unintentional on the part of the developers...]]
* HumongousMecha:
** The [[spoiler:Zu Pharg]], while outwardly appearing to just be a spacecraft, turns out to be one of these.
** While not nearly as huge as the previous example, [[spoiler:the Vita]] still towers over Skells, being more then twice as as tall.
** Xe-doms are some of the biggest mechanical enemies in the game.
** Xerns are by far the biggest flying mechanical enemies in the game right after [[spoiler:Zu Pharg]] and it's more than likely that you initially mistake one as a piece of scenery as they resemble parts of the abandoned mining towers found in Cauldros.
* HungryJungle: Noctilum is full of overly-dense tropical plant life, acidic water, and enemies literally HiddenInPlainSight who don't show up on your radar until it's too late and you've already entered battle.
* HybridMonster: The Lifehold generates a group of creatures known as chimerae as a defense mechanism. Unfortunately, it's also malfunctioning, so what it creates are twisted amalgamations of multiple Earth creatures, resulting in... ''things'' that resemble lizards with three tails, a triple-split mouth, eyes in their shoulders, and other extremely creepy attributes. [[spoiler:And that's not even getting into what it does to Lao and Luxaar...]]
* IAteWhat: Inisae gives chocolate candies to Sarona that were made from Cinicula viscera which was dried out, condensed, and then reconstituted with bile.
-->Sarona: PFFFTHRRBPPPBBT! NO! Are you SERIOUS, Inisae!? Girl, you gotta tell me these things ahead of time!
* ICannotSelfTerminate: In the final chapter of the game, Lao and [[BigBad Luxaar]] fall in the Lifehold Core's protoplasm, containing all the stored human DNA. While Luxaar dissolves, Lao mutates into a montrous chimera, and since he doesn't have control over his body anymore, he requests his former teammates put him out before he destroys the Core.
* IcarusAllusion: There's a collectible item named the Icarus Wings, described as an invention of [[RidiculouslyCuteCritter Nopon]] who wished to fly. Unsurprisingly, they don't work, though the flavor text notes that [[BlackComedy this doesn't stop many Nopon from plummeting to their deaths trying.]]
* IdiotHair: Almost every hairstyle in the character creation screen gives you the option to give your character a forelock that sticks out apart from the rest.
* IHaveToGoIronMyDog: Frye and Phog can't both be in the party at the same time until you complete a certain Affinity quest. If you have one in your party, the other will make up an excuse to decline your invitation.
* ImpossiblyCoolClothes: In stark contrast to most of the costume and armor sets of [[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1 the previous game]], the ones found in ''Xenoblade Chronicles X'' are not only awesome to look at it, they're fully customizable. During [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab-uRDnwILo GameXplain' 3-hour livestream]], Derrick shows you can even set the characters' headgear to be invisible (@1:06:13-1:10:09). Plus, there are costume sets that are referred to as [[SharpDressedMan "fashion]] [[KickingAssInAllHerFinery armor".]]
* InfinityPlusOneSword:
** There are a number of weapons that far outclass normally available weapons' damage rating and have passive skills to match, but they're only either dropped by a single {{Superboss}} each or need a large number of rare materials and a maxed out arms manufacturer level to create or buy.
** The Skell version of these are Skell Superweapons: with the exception of a single one you get as an affinity quest reward, you need a large number of materials to make them and the blueprints for level 60 versions of them are only gotten from finishing affinity quests. Although some of these superweapons tend to border on, or are just flat-out AwesomeButImpractical.
** The Ares 90 is this for the Skell Frames. On its own without any augments, the Ares 90 is strong enough to steamroll through the majority of the high level Tyrants in the game. It can practically kill everything short of the {{Superboss}}es with ease.
** For Ground Weapons there's Ultra Nebulan/Ultra Diamond Weapons and Original Weapons. Ultra Nebulan/Ultra Diamond Weapons can only be farmed from Level +61 enemies and are completely subject by random chance. If you don't want to put up with that, then there's the AM Terminal which lets you create Original Weapons which have more attack than the Ultra Nebulan/Ultra Diamond Weapons but have no battle traits, require blueprint drops from Level +60 Ganglion enemies, and materials from high-level bosses.
* InfinityMinusOneSword:
** Bonus points for being actual swords, you can obtain the Unbreakable Blade and the Legendary Nopopopopon from post-endgame quests. Both are level 50 and offer considerable strength that surpass many of the level 60 swords, but they can't be upgraded with more skill slots.
** Skell-wise, both Ares models are significantly easier to make than other level 60 Skells and have extremely high starting stats, plus a weapon that's comparable to other superweapons in damage output. However, you can't change their equipment, meaning that outside of their augments, their power can't be increased with stronger weapons and they only have 4 weapons, meaning they'll have to wait for their cooldown that's much longer to use any of them again and they miss out on a significant number of augment slots. That being said, making a normal level 60 Skell that can consistently out-damage an Ares and has overall higher stats is a massive time and materials investment and isn't really that useful for anything besides the novelty of being able to take down the strongest {{Superboss}}es in a [[OneHitKill single hit]].
* InsectoidAliens: The Orphe are bipedal with two major arms, but otherwise look and act insectoid, being linked to each other by a force called the Ovah giving them a hive-like mind. They are technologically astute, but socially limited, and like to eat plants.
* InsistentTerminology: Ga Jiarg and Luxaar with their titles, but in opposite ways. Ga Jiarg is the ''former'' prince of the Kingdom of Wroth. Luxaar, on the other hand:
-->'''Ga Jiarg:''' I never cared much for titles, Councilor Luxaar.
-->'''Luxaar:''' It's "Grandmaster", damn you!
* InSpiteOfANail: Some decisions in missions don't affect the long-term outcome at all, or only affect the reward prize. Examples can include deciding which materials to gather for someone (and it turns out they need the other anyway), failing to kill a target and ''only'' that target, failing to kill a target within a specified time, which character to side with, or [[spoiler:deciding to look the other way from an incident and accepting a bribe]].
* InterfaceSpoiler:
** There's an area in NLA called the [[spoiler:Mimeosome Maintenance Center]].
** The first time you have a Heart-to-Heart with each of your different party members, you'll receive an achievement for it. Not so much for characters that are DownloadableContent for Japan [[spoiler:and ''The Master Sniper'' though...]] Heart-to-Hearts are also recorded on the map when they're found out and/or completed, and there's also an achievement for maxing out a party member's affinity, unless they're once again for said DLC characters in Japan [[spoiler:and for Lao]].
** During character creation, you can pick from a rather wild variety of skin, hair and eye colors, as well as some extremely non-human eyes. Moreover, [[UnusuallyUninterestingSight nobody feels moved to comment about it]] if you do. [[spoiler:This is because you're customizing your mimeosome, rather than a biological human body. Nobody comments because they all know you're a tricked-out robot, even if you don't at first]]. Lastly, ''none'' of the eye designs [[spoiler:look all that natural]].
** Chapter 3 introduces you to the Prone race with the implication that they were behind the destruction of Earth, and the base you encounter them in also has [[MechaMook Puge and Pugilith]] support. Chapter 4 then formally introduces the Ganglion coalition as a whole, which the Prone are just one race in. However, the enemy index entries on the Prone, Puges and Pugiliths (accessible as soon as you engage any of them in combat) mention the Ganglion before you even hear of them in-story. On another note, the entry for the Prone lists them with "Cavern Clan" in parentheses, [[spoiler:indicating that not only are the Prone divided into two races/clans, there are a few mission-exclusive fights with Tree Clan Prone, the aforementioned second Prone clan that becomes one of your allies]]. On a ''further'' note, there's an Achievement called [[spoiler:Cavern Clan Immigration]], implying [[spoiler:the seemingly AlwaysChaoticEvil clan of Prone will become allies too.]]
** The "[Race] Immigration" achievements usually don't spoil much seeing as the race names won't mean much until you meet them, with two exceptions: the one listed above is one, but you get "[[spoiler:Definian]] Immigration" for completing a quest that involves the HeelFaceTurn of ''one'' of their race, and it isn't until the post game that only a couple more join in.
** It might seem a little odd that the Enforcer healing skill is called "Repair". It removes debuffs as well as heals, so maybe it's just named a little thematically for the high-tech setting of ''Xenoblade X''? [[spoiler:Well, yes, but there's a bit more to it than that. This even ties in to Irina mentioning getting repaired during an early affinity mission and she herself having the art.]]
** Ever wonder why the empty bottom left section of NLA has a survey percentage number like the rest of the districts?
** Irina and Gwin of Team Irina can join you on missions, despite technically being part of another BLADE team, with Irina even leading it as Team Irina. They have another member, Marcus, who curiously never actually becomes playable. [[spoiler:There's a fairly good reason for that, and it involves a lot of Ganglion missiles.]]
** One of the categories in the Enemy Index is [[spoiler:Chimeroids]], and a category of Criticals Up and Slayer augments exist for this enemy type, all of which can be seen long before you encounter them.
** After you defeat Luxaar for good and go through the cutscene, you earn a story achievement. [[spoiler:But because the progress says ''4/5'', you know there's still more...]]
** Subverted before proceeding to Chapter 11. Both of Gwin's Affinity Missions need to be completed to begin, [[spoiler:but nothing happens to Gwin at all]].
** During ''Serial Thriller'', Eleanora provides two leads on a serial killer at large. One is located in Sylvalum, the other in Oblivia. Taking one good look at the [=FrontierNav=] grid, the Affinity Chart, or simply remembering the names of every NPC will indicate which one is the correct lead.
* IntergenerationalFriendship: Lin (13) with most other characters by virtue of being the youngest human not in stasis by several years. Most notably with Elma (29) [[spoiler:true age unknown but likely much more than that as it is stated that 29 years ago was when she [[AlienAmongUs first came to Earth]] rather than when she was born]].
* AnInteriorDecoratorIsYou: Once you join BLADE, you can customize the barracks, and when you get a Skell later on, the Hangar as well.
* InterspeciesRomance: Most of the romance in this game is implied rather than explicit, and while there are plenty of interspecies friendships happening, romances seem very rare. The one that we do see involves a human and a ''[[PredatorPastiche Prone]]'', of all things.
* InUniverseGameClock: Similar to the previous game, one second of gameplay is equal to one minute in-game. Certain characters and enemies only appear at certain times of day, and every area has separate tracks for day and night. Unlike the previous game, the time can only be changed at Time Stations scattered throughout the world. The time becomes locked to late night in Chapter 8 when [[spoiler:the Ganglion attack NLA.]]
* InventedLinguisticDistinction: It's implied that the various alien races encountered on the planet Mira have their own languages, but an [[HandWave unexplained phenomenon on the planet translates them all]], so we mostly end up getting everyone speaking the same language in the same way. Some quirks still manage to make their way through though, such as the Ma-Non tendencies to repeat conjunctions or phrase sentences as questions, or the many oddities of the ever present Nopon dialect. Professor B is an aversion to this: He has a language that the translator simply can't comprehend so some of his words end up being unintelligible. A clear example of this is his name which comes out as "B°&7k%±|".
* {{Irony}}: Filiavents are among the strongest enemies in the game and most of their attacks are Electric-based. Yet they are very susceptible to Electric-weapons, meaning they can't take what they dish out.
* IrrelevantSidequest: Justified. BLADE is explicitly a combination of armed forces, police force, and every public service there is. The Mediators might specialize in keeping the peace in NLA, but every BLADE is expected to at least consider every job that needs doing, from mundane coffee machine repair through to Tyrant hunting.
* ItemCrafting: The game isn't too reliant on this, as many of the weapons and gear can be seized from the enemies defeated (the only condition necessary to use them is to be at the minimum necessary level). However, after clearing the main story, you'll be able to create Skells from scratch, and for them you may need up to ''six'' different items (and of each a given amount), for which you'll need to do some serious grinding as some of the parts are either very rare or dropped by formidable enemies. Those Skells, in addition, [[DoubleUnlock need your characters to have reach the maximum level cap (60) to be piloted]].
* JackOfAllTrades: The player character [[PlayedStraight plays the trope straight]] and [[SubvertedTrope subverts it]] at the same time by being the only one allowed to change job classes. Once any class is mastered, you're allowed to retain all Arts acquired from it and can still use the weapons associated with it even if you change to a different class[[note]]If, for example, you master the Bastion Warrior then switch to being a Psycorruptor, you'd still be allowed to equip shields and gatling guns, whereas the Psycorruptor is normally limited to knives and ray guns[[/note]]. Meaning, it's entirely possible to master every job class and weapon that the game has to offer.
* JapaneseRanguage: The songs in this game are all sung in English, but it's pretty easy to tell that the singers are Japanese. "Black Tar" gets better about this halfway into the song-- After the first mentions of "roosing your way" and "brack tar", you can clearly hear the L sound from there on. Both singers in "Uncontrollable" are especially hit hard by this, as it's hard for them to enunciate properly.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: During Kristy's questline, you discover that she's working on the framework for a new [=FrontierNav=] system, [[spoiler:believing she is the only survivor of the team after crashing on Mira]]. Along the way, Tobias challenges you and says you're cutting into the profits he's trying to make using the system himself. He comes off as a smug asshole who only cares about money. An "Avatar of Avarice", as she calls him. At the end of the questline, [[spoiler:you discover that Kristy never realized that he was part of the team, and that he transfered all the money he'd been saving up into her account so they can both work on the project together.]] Kristy is left wondering what the hell just happened.
* JobSystem: Each character is pre-designated to one of the game's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF2YzesZiBo 15 available job classes]], but your player created avatar is the only one allowed to switch between them. The one you choose will determine which weapons you'll be able to equip and which Arts and Skills you can learn. Once your skill level in any job class reaches max rank, it will be marked "Mastered", allowing you to keep all Arts you've acquired from it and use the weapons associated with it in any class.
* JoinOrDie: The standard recruitment technique for the Ganglion when it comes to the races that make up their ranks. The Prone and the Marnucks in particular were fighting planetwide civil wars on their homeworlds, and the factions that joined the Ganglion were the ones they treated leniently. The Wrothians were even subjected to a planetary blockade until they agreed to join them.
* JokeWeapon:
** In the affinity mission in which you get it, the Ramjet Rifle, a prototype weapon with Skells in mind, is treated as such in-story. For said mission, you are testing the weapon on foot against creatures in Sylvalum. Said rifle has even worse stats ([[LethalJokeWeapon aside from its amazing tension point gain for the earliest point you can access the mission]]) than your starter rifle. If you decide to test the rifle against the larger creature as suggested by Alexa ([[NintendoHard which is quite a challenge]] if you don't know how to take advantage of its hidden potential), the results of said test give everything the rifle's designer needs to know that weapon as it is would be abysmal against the things Skells are made to fight ([[GameplayAndStorySegregation not taking TP gain into account story-wise]]).
** Murderess's second affinity mission makes you fight against a large indigen with a high kill-count (Skells recommended for support) with a crap-stats weapon as part of a bet between unruly [=BLADEs=] (although you have the option to chicken out and let them win the bet). The weapon in question: the Scrap Duo, which unlike the Ramjet Rifle, don't have any positive traits that could turn them into a LethalJokeWeapon. Worse yet, the weapon is flagged as an essential quest item, so you can't get rid of it from your inventory even after you complete the quest.
* JumpScare: There are quite a few enemies who are HiddenInPlainSight, and don't become targetable until they ambush you. Mainly plant creatures, but there are others that become more prevalent once you leave Primordia. An NPC in the Admin District mentions that one BLADE member is now traumatized by the sight of flowers because she barely escaped a plant that jumped her. There are also some enemies that are just plain hidden, such as a level 65 giant [[SandWorm Sabula]] tyrant in Oblivia that makes the [[Franchise/{{Dune}} Spice Worm]] look like an earthworm in comparison. Woe be to any player who doesn't think there's anything unusual about the sand on the ground looking slightly different from the rest of the area.[[note]]Sometimes if you look at the area from far away you might see it poke its head out briefly, but it's rare.[[/note]]
* JungleJapes: Noctilum, the second continent in the game, is where the dense vegetation makes a great hiding place for poisonous water and tough enemies. During certain days, fog will make visibility more difficult.
* JustifiedSavePoint: It's common understanding that saving and quitting is your character dismissing their current party, heading back to NLA, and taking leave of their BLADE duties for a while, and the loading and squad selection sequence when you return is punching on, regathering your group, and picking up where you left off. This [[TakeYourTime falls apart]] during Story and Affinity Missions, but it's a nice effort.
* JustifiedTitle: The focus is around the conflict between the military organization Blade and their various encounters with aliens, [[CallARabbitASmeerp which in this universe are referred to as Xenos]]. [[spoiler:One of the main characters is secretly a Xeno and also a member of Blade]], which technically justifies the title.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:K-R]]
* KatanasAreJustBetter:
** The longswords are basically this in all but name and are widely regarded as the strongest weapon type in the game, due to having an extremely powerful damage-boosting aura in Offensive Stance, a multitude of special and powerful weapons dropped exclusively by specific tyrants and an absurdly strong tension art in Blossom Dance, which on top of possessing one of the highest damage multipliers in the game ignores the enemy's damage resistances, meaning everything is going to be feeling equal amounts of pain from it, even the superbosses. However, while ''acting'' like Katanas, they rarely ever ''look'' like them, and typically resemble broadswords. So they are definitely [[PlayingWithATrope Playing With This Trope]].
** Nagi's second Affinity Quest shows how much of a badass he really is with his signature katana in an awesome display of CutscenePowerToTheMax.
** Various post-endgame tyrants drop Signature Weapons-- legendary longswords that almost always look like a katana. There are no signature weapons for any other weapon type in the game.
** Ralzes (Grenada GG-made dual swords) resemble dual katanas.
* KickingAssInAllHerFinery: The game's "fashion armor" sets allow you to dress up party members without altering combat stats. You can wear full combat armor but appear wearing anything else. They'll be armed and ready for a night on the town, spent mowing down enemies with melee weapons and heavy artillery!
* KillAllHumans: The aliens (well, some of them, anyway) that destroyed Earth have this as their motivation. They repeatedly state that "all Earth-aliens must die!" and any attempts at diplomacy are shut down instantly. The only reason they give is that humanity is a "blight" that must be "cleansed". We don't learn their real reasons until the very end of the game: [[spoiler:the species that leads the Ganglion can be killed by human DNA. Human bodies are completely, lethally toxic to them. The Ganglion were engineered as a ServantRace to the Samaarians, who built in a weakness to their DNA in case the Ganglion ever rebelled... and humanity are the descendants of the original Samaar species]].
* KillerGorilla: A common enemy in Primordia. Simius are very aggressive and ''will'' attack the main characters upon sight. Their KingMook is a high-level Tyrant known as 'Hayreddin, the Territorial'.
* KillerRabbit:
** Terebras are adorable giant otter-like creatures with huge ears. They will still rip you a new one if your gear isn't up to par. Mephites are about the same, though not nearly as cute, and always aggressive.
** Sirene, the Lost looks like a cross between a giraffe and a sea slug and is just level 13. It has ''the highest kill count of any Tyrant'', likely because players didn't expect it to be so tough for its level.
* KillSat: The superboss Leva'el, the Terminus has the ultra-powerful Apocalyse Wand art. You are given a five-minute warning before it uses this attack, just to show how powerful it is. When the attack comes, a burst of purple energy rains from the sky upon you. It is a guaranteed OneHitKill on your Skell and then you.
* LamePunReaction: Everyone has a suitably awesome response to the Joker Female's lame after-combat joke.
-->'''Joker Female:''' Whew! I'm bushed. Did I do all the work or what?\\
'''Elma:''' You did enough, but next time you can do more.\\
'''Hope:''' If you're bushed, then I'm shrubbed. So, there.\\
'''H.B:''' Show some humility! That was all ''me''.\\
'''Murderess:''' Oh, please... I stretched a little.
* LaserBlade:
** The photon sabers utilized by the Blast Fencer and Galactic Knight classes. They generally deal beam damage, but variants capable of inflicting heat, electric, or even gravity damage exist.
** Skells can have energy swords, katars, rings, and claws.
* LastLousyPoint: It's inevitable in a game this massive: whether it's collectibles, items, indigens, or [[ItMakesSenseInContext stuffed lobsters]], there'll always be that one thing that just won't be found. The nasty part about the Enemy List is that it doesn't log how many total of each species there are, and there are several species that only show up in certain weather conditions (like Frenzied Coronids during a Red Aurora).
* LastNoteNightmare: A weird, fairly downplayed example is [[WordPureeTitle z30huri2ba0tt12le1110]], the boss theme for [[spoiler:Rexoskell as well as Interfearance]]. It's an utterly terrifying, loud, unpleasant song that violently abuses {{Scare Chord}}s throughout, but by far the part of it that's ''strangest'' is the ending, where it very abruptly goes from creepy orchestra to [[NothingIsScarier near-silence]] [[https://youtu.be/MS-oMrE0_DQ?t=2m40s and some strange clicking noise.]]
* LateArrivalSpoiler: Can be {{Exploited}} by players accidently or not. In this game, you can set up Holograms that you gain multiple times through the game. Players who join other people's squad missions will visit the host's barracks, and they can go to the hologram room and view the host's holograms they put up. Some of the holograms feature {{WalkingSpoiler}}s, and while you can't view the hologram's name, you can still get spoiled by certain things, [[spoiler:like the Prone Tree Clan and chimeras]], even if the player won't understand the contexts they are from.
* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: The Ares skells. Every other skell model has an industrial aesthetic, TronLines and blade fins at the feet and shoulders. The Ares are more human in form and movement, and get [[PowerGivesYouWings wings]] during flight.
* LeaningTowerOfMooks: Among the various indigenous species are a series of turkey bird-like Saltats, who often go about their nature dancing and and making strange musical noises. Some of them can be seen stacking on top of each other as part of their natural behaviors.
* LearntEnglishFromWatchingTelevision: One alien the player meets on Mira, L, is remarkably fluent in English from the first time you meet him. It's quickly explained that he happened upon an archive of the Library on Congress that happened to crash near his home, and has been studying it, learning English through that. Though he does not have a particularly [[{{Malaproper}} good grasp of idioms, frequently getting sayings wrong]].
* LemonyNarrator: The narrator for the English-language "Survival Guide" videos, who becomes more dickish with each new video. "If Map View is too difficult for you, [[TooDumbToLive consider staying on Earth to witness its destruction."]]
* LethalJokeCharacter: Drifter!Rook is a JackOfAllStats at best, MasterOfNone at worst, and only really has the extra passive slots to go for them. Master the class lines for whatever weapon combo you want and a variety of skills, however, and you can turn it into TheAce when it comes to Rook's classes.
* LethalJokeItem: The Ramjet Rifle. You get to keep it after field-testing it for a weapons researcher, who decides against developing it further as most of its stats are absolute garbage (for instance, it has an attack of ''one'' at a point in the game where other weapons of the same type will be closer to ten). The key word being ''most'': While its attack is awful and it has an absurdly long cooldown, it also gives 300 TP per attack, meaning with the right build you can practically spam powerful attacks that would otherwise take a while to build up TP for.
* LethalLavaLand: Cauldros. The continent serves as the largest host for the Ganglion headquarters, thus overlapping with RemilitarizedZone; even without the dangerous monsters lurking within, the place is harmful due to the frequent rain of volcanic debris. Because of the high amount of lava, using a Skell to explore it is recommended.
* LetteredSequel: It's the only ''Xenoblade'' game to use a letter in its name instead of a number (which means the next game, ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'', is the ''third'' installment). The X stands for Cross.
* LetXBeTheUnknown: The [[WordOfGod developers]] [[http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wiiu/xenoblade-chronicles-x/0/5 stated]] that the "X" in the title of the game represents alien life or the unknown.
* LimitBreak:
** Overdrive functions this way: you can activate it after you beat chapter 5 in the main story and have 3000 or more TP. It greatly lowers Art cooldowns and enables tetriary cooldowns, which allow Arts to have even greater effects if you wait long enough after it becomes available. You also gain a number of different bonus effects if you use Arts in a specific color order, such as extending Overdrive duration, doubling the hit count (which increases the effectiveness of every bonus effect) for the next Art you use and increasing experience and TechPoints gained. You can also fully max out Overdrive duration if you gain another 3000 TP during it, which can be done with the right skill setup and gear augments: you can do this as many times as you like during a single Overdrive, which makes it a key to a number of highly effective setups. You also get various bonuses if multiple characters have Overdrive active at the same time, but since your AI-controller partners won't save enough TP to have it available unless you specifically tell them to do so, don't expect to see it often.
** Skells also have their own form of Overdrive that generally seems use much more often, since their TP equivalent, GP, isn't needed to use their Arts: its exact effects change depending on the base Skell model, but generally speaking it increases stats, negates fuel consumption, speeds up Art cooldowns and increases the change of triggering Cockpit Time with Art use, which makes the Skell invincible for its duration and resets all its cooldowns. Like the human version, it can also be extended beyond its default 10 second duration: the first extension is guaranteed, but anything past that is randomized and depends on whether you manage to trigger Cockpit Time.
* LivingGasbag: Most of the flying critters in the game clearly have gas sacs keeping them aloft, ranging from the man-sized floating jellyfish to [[GiantFlyer Giant Fliers]] like Colubrims. Even the land-bound Millesaurs (utterly enormous dinosaur things) are noted to have huge gas bags in their bodies, lightening them to the point they don't collapse under their own body weight.
* LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading: A concession to fitting such an expansive game onto a single blu-ray is that all the game assets are stored heavily compressed; combined with the Wii U's modest hard drive space precluding any large, uninvited install procedures, load times of 20-30 seconds are the norm when playing from a disc, and crop up any time you trigger a cutscene or fast-travel. As a counter to this, uncompressed asset packs can be downloaded for free from the e-shop, dramatically reducing loading times for those with the space to store them.
* LoadsAndLoadsOfSidequests: There are three kinds: basic missions that give out small rewards for killing [[WithThisHerring enemies]] or [[TwentyBearAsses finding objects]], [[SidequestSidestory normal missions]] that deepen the setting, and [[LoyaltyMission affinity missions]] which are voiced and develop your party members or major [=NPC=]s.
* LogicalWeakness:
** Large enemies and machines are especially vulnerable to gravity-based attacks. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, after all. In addition, wearing bulky armor reduces your defenses against gravity attacks -- it's heavy, after all.
** Insectoids and Theroids are often vulnerable to thermal attacks. Living beings are vulnerable to ''KillItWithFire'', which makes sense.
* LongSongShortScene:
** "Black Tar" is over three minutes long (and has two versions). You'll finish most battles before the lyrics start.
** Likewise, "Uncontrollable" plays when you fight Tyrants, though you'll probably only hear the lyrics in full if the battle starts to draw out.
** "Wir Fliegen", the song that plays when you activate [[LimitBreak Overdrive]] has a 2nd verse after the chorus before looping, and on the same track there's a version that uses more rock instruments for the second half. However, both of these are missing from the game, especially considering that Black Tar has the second half in place while fighting in Skells.
* LostColony: The game takes place on a Lost Colony called Mira, which was established when a colony ship from Earth crash-landed on the planet. The reason the colony ship launched at all is because Earth itself was destroyed in a clash between two warring alien civilizations. It's speculated that other colony ships may have survived and founded their own colonies, but there's no way to confirm this.
* LoveDodecahedron: It goes like this: Gwin has a crush on Irina, who doesn't like men but just might have a soft spot [[HomoeroticSubtext for Elma]] or Rook. Murderess makes several flirtatious comments towards Rook, with some hints that it's more than just idle talk. Lyvia is [[spoiler:Definian]] who is the romantic rival of Eri, who has a crush on Rook. Mia flirts with Doug in an after combat dialogue, who is in love with Hope (who has numerous NLA citizens in love with her), who is vaguely hinted to be in love with...you guessed it...'''Rook'''. Rook is a Love Vortex, and all of these examples are just if Rook is ''male'', the female Rook includes all of these and MORE.
* LoyaltyMission: Every party member (save Rook of course) has Affinity Missions to advance their story, build their relationship to Rook (and other characters) and allow a Rook which uses their weapon to learn their unique Art. Some of these are even required to progress the story.
* LostInTranslation:
** Black Tar's lyrics include, "Standing as long as we can until we get all '''Dolls''' up", which would make more sense if you understand that Skells are called Dolls in the Japanese game. At least it's not in the Skell combat part.
** The names of Tatsu's younger siblings are all puns on the Japanese numbers 2-6, a joke that non-Japanese speakers wouldn't get.
** In-Universe, Professor B's native language contains words that don't translate into English, so he does the best he can to describe it when asked. The words just appear as jumbled garbage text.
* LuckyCharmsTitle: As with most games composed by Sawano, the songs' names have abstract names which combine words with numbers in a scrambled fashion.
* LyricalDissonance: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofqsC2v6N4c Uncontrollable]]", the song that plays against Tyrants, sounds like a kickass battle theme, but it's ''very'' easy to miss the lyrics that tell the story of a broken relationship and the uncertainty of mending it.
* MacGuffin: The Lifehold Core. Finding it is the primary goal of BLADE, and it isn't located until the end of the game.
* MachineBlood: As part of the RoboticReveal, [[spoiler:the PlayerCharacter bleeds blue circulatory plasma when they get their arm blasted off]].
* MageMarksman: The Psycorruptor and Mastermind classes specialize in buffs, debuffs, and minor healing Arts, and have very powerful raygun weapons.
* MagicKnight: By contrast, the Fullmetal Jaguar and Partisan Eagle specialize in close combat and have many melee attacks that have elemental properties, and attacks that also inflict debuffs.
* MagikarpPower: A minor example: the starting class, Drifter, has barely any Arts of its own and can't use any notable weapons but it's the only class that has 5 passive skill slots. Since you can use a class' weapons in any other class once you master its most advanced form and what Arts you can use is determined by the type of weapon you're equipped with, you'll ultimately switch to Drifter permanently to make use of its 5 skill slots once you master every other class since at that point you have no limitations on what types of weapons you can use.
* MagmaMan: Gularths are walking titans made of lava and rock, and breathe fire and launch lava bombs as their attacks. Millesaurs could be seen as volcano-like as well, as their materials include obsidian, they have a large conical port on their back, and some of their attacks, like Dino Mortar, fire blobs of lava.
* MaleGaze: The Ganglion women get noticeable camera attention on their bodies, especially the rear end.
* MarathonBoss:
** The two Global Nemeses, Yggralith Zero and Telethia Plume, offer an interesting spin on the concept. Fought in online events in the style of an MMO raid, these bosses have utterly obscene amounts of HP spread across hundreds of thousands of individual "lives". Each instance against them is timed, and a sufficiently prepared party can be reasonably expected to only shave off a few hundred lives in one sitting. The idea is that the entire community is supposed to work together to take these bosses down over the span of a few days.
** There is far tamer example outside of online: a [[{{Superboss}} Milesaur Tyrant]] named ''Gradivus, the Headless Emperor''. It has ''one hundred million'' HP, the highest of any non-Global Nemesis enemy in the game despite being just level 74, but unlike the Global Nemeses, you ''have'' to kill this one in a single sitting. There's ways to reduce that HP relatively fast with absurd builds, but it's a testament to its resilience that even the strongest builds in the game can't one shot it and take a while to bring it down.
* MasterOfAll: It's possible for the player to fully master all 16 of the game's Classes and acquire the skills each one has. However, the problem that prevents this from being practical is the Level 60 Cap: At best, you'll only be able to master 9 Classes (Drifter, two Tier-2 Classes, three Tier-3 Classes, and three Tier-4 Classes) before your Class Point gain peters out to just one per battle.
* MatchMakerQuest: There are a few twists to the formula. One of the first is a compulsory quest to help the subordinate of a team member, that involves getting a favor from an alien craftsman that comes with a steep price; [[AllThatGlitters 10 pizzas]]. Doesn't seem like much until the shop owner charges you 10,000 credits for them. Another has gotten the girl with little issue already, but needs your help convincing her ProudWarriorRace father. But the third is the doozy; The questgiver is actually asking for help on behalf of a friend of hers. Like in its predecessor, it ends in failure. But mostly because the client decides she'd rather get with the player instead... then the ''questgiver'' gets jealous and decides she likes you too!
* MechaMooks: There's a big family of hostile mechanoids, all created by the Ganglion race. Examples include the Fal-swos (flying drones shaped like manta rays), Oc-servs (hovering machines shaped like squids), Xe-doms (large sentries with a Skell-like metallic carapace), and Xerns (''gigantic'', hovering aircraft carriers shaped like cranes; they're large enough to be BossInMookClothing enemies, and one of them is indeed entrusted the role of {{Superboss}} in the postgame).
* MechanicalMonster: There are various large, mechanoid Tyrants across the continent of Cauldros. Among them is Leva'el the Terminus, a {{Superboss}} that only appears in the PlayableEpilogue.
* AMechByAnyOtherName: Referred to as "Skells", which is short for "exoskeletons". The original Japanese calls them "Dolls".
* MechanicalLifeforms: According to Luxaar, The Vita, the Ganglion's ultimate weapon, was once the physical body of their god "The Great One". [[spoiler:The post-credits scene reveals humanity itself has become this, as despite the Lifehold's inner core being destroyed, the mimiosomes are all still functional.]]
* MegatonPunch: An attack used by Simiuses and Cantors. It's a thermal-based attack with extremely high damage, and will send whoever it hits flying if it doesn't outright kill them.
* MercyMode: If you die on a story or affinity mission boss for a certain number of times, you are given the option to lower the boss's level by 5.
* MetaphoricallyTrue:
** At face-value, Weapons that fire multiple projectiles per attack are weaker than weapons that have higher damage but fire fewer or even only one projectile. So this means you should only stick to using high damage weapons, right? Wrong. You need to take into account the number of projectiles that a weapon fires and then use the most basic equation (Damage output x number of projectiles per attack) to get the actual base damage output of the multi-shot weapon.
** For reasons unknown, the percentage sign in the Stability stat (which is [[https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nwOvEZzbFWI/maxresdefault.jpg clearly visible as day in the original Japanese version]]) was [[https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZVVc7FHcPNQ/maxresdefault.jpg omitted in the localized versions]]. This made the Stability stat ambiguous and hard to understand in its function and importance.
* MidSeasonTwist: Chapter 5 ends with your player character's [[AnArmAndALeg arm being blown off]] by an enemy mech, [[RoboticReveal leaving behind a metal stump filled with wires and leaking a blue liquid]]. This is because you, along with every other human in New L.A., are being held in stasis within the missing Lifehold Core, and have been remotely controlling robotic bodies from there. This is also where we learn what the countdown on the BLADE Tower is for -- it shows the Lifehold Core's remaining power, and if it hits zero before it can be recovered, everyone dies.
* MileLongShip:
** The settlers leave Earth on enormous motherships, which seems to double as a colony on their adopted home planet.
** The Ma-Non ship shown casually hovering above New Los Angeles is not too shabby either, being nearly as large as the city itself.
* MiniMecha: Mechs known as "Skells" form one of the game's key gameplay mechanics. They're just over twice the size of a human pilot and can transform from a humanoid combat form into land vehicles for faster travel. Eventually, you can unlock an upgrade that enables flight.
* MissingSecret: After beating the game, a BLADE member at two camps in Primordia tells of a powerful Marnuck Tyrant hiding at Talon Rock. He does not exist.
* MobySchtick: Most of the main plot concerns with the Ganglion's attempt to pursue and destroy the crew of the ''White Whale'' ColonyShip out of dogmatism, even as the humans start killing high-ranking members one by one.
* AMoltenDateWithDeath: Exposure to the lava in Cauldros will eventually kill you or your party members, but the white phosphor lake on the western part of Cauldros makes the lava relatively safe to stand in by comparison.
* MonsterCompendium: The Enemy Index keeps track of all the indigens, Ganglion, and otherwise that you've encountered over the game. It also includes a bit of information on their biology and culture (for nonhumans).
* MoodWhiplash: Practically ''any'' scene that involves Tatsu. In fact, most conversations are completely serious and formal...then Tatsu makes a joke or does something silly (which may or may not be followed by a rebuttal)...after which the scene plays goes back to playing out as normal. Whenever you hear that oh-so-familiar bass guitar start playing, you know the scene has turned comedic.
* MoralityKitchenSink: Initially the game starts out [[BlackAndWhiteMorality Black and White]], as the humans of NLA are the one thing standing in the way of the Ganglion, a ruthless, tyrannical syndicate. [[spoiler:Gets [[GreyAndGrayMorality less so]] as time goes on as side missions reveal there are quite a few scumbags among the human NLA population, such as racist [=BLADEs=] ready to commit genocide against all alien races, criminals and murderers raising hell in the city, and that's not even getting into the late-game reveals that the selection process for the White Whale was corrupt to the bone. In addition, there are some notable defections from the Ganglion, such as the Cavern Clan of the Prone and the entire Wrothian race. But it becomes this again when said defectors join the ranks of NLA, and the criminal humans start conspiring with the Ganglion.]] To say nothing of [[spoiler:discontent within certain BLADE members and their willingness to commit treason as revenge]].
* MoralPragmatist: Most alien races fall into this trope. Since virtually all of them have been press-ganged into joining the Ganglion, they leap at the chance to rebel once they realize that A) they're stranded on Mira and the Ganglion are without most of their reinforcements and B) humanity actually has a good chance of defeating the Ganglion and thus freeing them. The Orphe and the Wrothians, in particular, make it clear that their alliance with humans are strictly a tool for survival (the Wrothian prince even flat out tells you that if there ever comes a time that Wrothian interests oppose human ones, he will void the truce immediately), but both species come to respect humanity in the meantime.
* MultiArmedAndDangerous:
** Simius and Cantors have four arms.
** The Telethia has six limbs; the upper two always serve as wings/arms while the lower two always serve as legs, but the middle two switch between functioning as arms or legs depending on its stance.
* MundaneLuxury: One of Mia's Heart-to-hearts reveals that pets in NLA are this. Mimeosome dogs and cats are available to citizens, but are outside of most peoples' reach because they're very expensive and require special permission to buy. The party can only get a pet by tracking down ones that have been lost.
* MusicalSpoiler: Right before you first encounter the Prone, it's painfully obvious someone's sneaking up on you because the music is suspensefully building up to a climax.
* TheMusketeer: All classes use two weapon types, a melee weapon for close range combat, and a gun for long range combat.
* MutuallyExclusivePartyMembers: Phog and Frye Christoph are brothers who are [[SiblingYinYang opposites in every way]] and had a major falling-out over a past tragedy. You recruit Phog first, but Frye's recruitment mission requires Phog to be recruited but ''not'' in your active party. Afterwards, both of them will refuse to join your party if the other is present. Until they resolve their differences in the "Blitzkreig" mission (unlocked after raising your RelationshipValues with both of them to a certain level), you can't have both in your party at the same time. Different examples can be found regarding Celica and Mia; [[spoiler:these two characters become recruitable only after the point where Lao becomes permanently unavailable as a party member]].
* MythologyGag: As per use in Creator/MonolithSoft.
** There are a few inside the character creator alone:
*** Several default faces are reproductions of popular characters from previous games of the metaseries, specially ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}''.
*** One of the face paint options is the red X from the ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'' logo.
*** In the English dub, there's a "Classic" voice option for the main character in each gender. The voice actors are Creator/AdamHowden and Carina Reeves respectively, who voiced Shulk and Fiora, the male and female leads in ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1''.
** Lin's Monado hairclips.
** In the affinity mission "The Ties That Bind", when Tatsu returns home, his brothers and sisters mistake him for their father. Lin calls out Tatsu as a "middle-aged deadbeat", something that could describe Riki. Lin also wonders if the Nopon live in trees, a call back to Frontier Village from the original ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1''.
** At one point, Lin and Elma call Commander Vandham "Colonel Square-tache", something Reyn called Vangarre in the original game. In the Japanese version, the two share the same name.
** In Chapter 10, [[spoiler:Tatsu claims the Zu Pharg is even bigger than the "legendary" Frontier Village.]]
** Choosing the right dialogue in Chapter 12 [[spoiler:may lead to Tatsu calling his friends "hom homs", what the Nopon called the Homs in the original game. Gwin asks him what those are, and Tatsu doesn't have a clue. He then looks at the camera and smiles.]]
** In both ''Xenoblade'' games, there is a boss battle near the end of the game [[spoiler:against a close ally who was EvilAllAlong who is the last major boss before the finale. However, unlike the guy in ''Xenoblade'', Lao makes a HeelFaceTurn.]]
** [[spoiler:The quote "Not Like This" at the end of Chapter 11 is a reference back to the original ''Xenoblade''. Both involve traitorous events and giant mechs. Mumkhar says it after being stabbed by a giant stalagmite. Lin, defending Lao, shouts it to avoid Elma from shooting him.]]
** [[spoiler:Said event in X is a lot like the end of the second fight with Jade Face/Gadolt, where a talented sniper is forcefully ejected from his mech]].
** There is the mention of Ether, this time as a damage element independent of weapon class, determined instead by a certain weapon manufacturer.
** The Blast Fencer and Galactic Knight classes contain a few to the original ''Xenoblade'', such as an attack that resembles the Monado Buster, as well as a skill that deals extra damage to mechanoid enemies.
** One of the Full Metal Jaguar's arts shares its name with Shulk's "Stream Edge"[[note]]though the attack itself bears no resemblance to it[[/note]].
** Two of Doug's arts also taken from Shulk: "Phenomenon" looks similar to Shulk's version of Stream Edge and Galactic Cataclysm is the same as Monado Buster.
** Shield Gunners act as tanks and use taunts to aggro the enemy. They also learn Reyn's "Wild Down".
** Melia's Starlight Kick also returns as a Galactic Knight skill.
** Funnily enough, though, despite the Melia-and-Shulk reference attacks, the ''weapon choice'' for Blast Fencer/Galactic Knight? Attack drones and a beam saber - ''exactly'' the weapon loadout for Fiora.
** By the same token, one of Nagi's unique arts is "Blossom Dance", which was Dunban's signature move in Xenoblade.
** One of the arts for the Commando is Shulk's Back Slash and one of the arts for the Drifter is Shulk's Slit Edge.
** [[spoiler:The quantum computer running the Lifehold greatly resembles Zohar from ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'' and ''VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}}'' both in shape and overall appearance, and the capsule where Elma's real body is stored in is also greatly remiscient of the one KOS-MOS is kept in when she's offline or undergoing maintenance, which is fitting considering she's essentially a biological alien {{Expy}} of her.]]
** In the English dub, Celica has an British accent and pronounces Nopon the same way it was pronounced in the original ''Xenoblade Chronicles'' (everyone else, including the Nopon, pronounced it differently), both of which call back to how ''Xenoblade'' was dubbed.
** One of the collectibles is a pair of statues depicting the Bionis and Mechonis.
** One of the collectibles is the Gem crafting furnace from the first game. Its description makes a joke about how there aren't any ether crystals or cylinders in this game.
** The Sword of Legendaryness sought after by a pair of Nopon is [[spoiler:(a Nopon-made replica of) the Monado.]]
** Mia nicknaming Rook as "Chief" is similar to Allen who also always refer to Shion Uzuki as "Chief".
** In the Predator and Prey quest [[spoiler:two BLADE members gets ripped apart by the Prone and their body parts are [[http://i.imgur.com/qezHUv2.jpg used]] [[http://i.imgur.com/DmWAy5T.jpg as weapons]]]] which is similar to the Soylent System.
** Irina and Gwin always referring to Elma as "Colonel" is similar to how Captain Jin Uzuki always calls Commander Margulis "Colonel".
** The song [=NO.EX01=]'s German lyrics is a nod to the ''Xenosaga'' titles.
** The Telethia return from Xenoblade, though play a completely different role in this game.
** Galactic Cataclysm's attack animation is nearly identical to Monado Buster. Side Slash's animation is quite similar to Double Wind.
** Numerous items from ''Xenoblade'' drop off enemies, such as the Cloudy Eyeball from certain Diluses or the Bloodied Face from Qmoevas.
* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: Some of the Tyrants are dangerous for this reason. They have abilities or powers that bend or break the normal rules of combat and force the players to find ways to counteract them in order to win.
* NaiveAnimalLover: An early quest has an Interceptor named Carl task you with clearing a cave of indigens, but balk at the prospect when it turns out the beasts in question are all young. You're given the option to spare them, in which case [[spoiler:they come back later in the game, now grown up and very hungry, and kill several [=BLADEs=] in their rampage -- including Carl himself.]]
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Applies to the Tyrants as a whole. Experienced BLADE members know they aren't to be taken lightly and are usually best avoided, unless you're outfitted with a Skell... and can still prove dangerous ''even then''.
* NatureIsNotNice: The game utilizes this trope much like the previous game, except that it's much more obvious this time around. Mira is full of hostile beasts, and it's usually ''not'' a good idea to take mercy on the wildlife. Just ask [[spoiler:Carl, who, if you decide to spare a group of infant Suids (swine creatures), they'll eventually grow up and attack some people, including Carl himself]].
* TheNeedsOfTheMany: Every citizen of NLA is expected to contribute something to the city's greater good, whether BLADE, alien, citizen or government official. In fact, during Celica's first Affinity Mission, Director General Chausson specifically says that the city cannot spare any resources whatsoever for idle citizens (especially one who eats as much as Rock). Even after Celica risks her life to become a BLADE for the sole purpose of helping Rock, Chausson still gives Rock the choice of either working in heavy industry or ''leaving the city outright''. Every single character present (Rock, Celica, Vandham, Elma, Lin and [[ButThouMust you]]) applaud Chausson for how generous this decision is.
* NegativeSpaceWedgie: There is ''something'' weird going on around the planet Mira. People keep crashing on the planet for no adequately explained reason, those that repair their tech enough to try to go off-planet always have something mysteriously go wrong, [[TranslatorMicrobes everyone can understand each other's speech despite speaking different languages]], and the planet itself is not on any known star charts... even those made by civilizations that have mapped out entire galaxies. One highly advanced scientist confirms the existence of some kind of space-time anomaly around the planet but is unable to explain anything about it.
* NeverSmileAtACrocodile: Diluses are Mira's answer to the crocodilians. Your first encounter with them will likely be the Merciful Diluses in southern Noctilum, which have levels in the late 30s when the other indigens in the area are early teens. And despite the name they're aggressive, too.
* NewNeoCity: The HubCity is named New Los Angeles.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero:
** Many quests can result in innocent [=NPCs=] getting killed or their lives ruined by a lack of preparation or missing a crucial clue or item needed to save their life.
** By killing and looting a simple Nopopotamus hanging out at Lake Ciel, you end up causing quite a bit of strife for a Nopon at the local Caravan who was planning on buying a wedding dress and proposing to his fiance. He was waiting for his friend and that Nopopotamus to arrive at the caravan so he would finally have the money needed to buy the dress, and give her a nice ring as a proposal as well. Instead, he's forced to take a loan from a local LoanShark and deal with the consequences of not paying up in time. Fortunately, you help him get around the issue.
* NinjaPirateZombieRobot: The Ares Skell series are named after a Greek god of war, skate around on their oversized wheels when moving normally, sprout energy wings when flying and have Hinduism-themed weapons.
* NoBiochemicalBarriers: Discussed. When the party first encounters Tatsu, one of the first things Lin does is scan him for pathogens before letting him into New LA. The same is also applied to every other species that is allowed to immigrate. An initially-xenophobic store owner tries to use this as an excuse for keeping Ma-Non out, but it's pointed out to her that every species is scanned for pathogens. The Zaruboggan race averts this by not being oxygen-breathers and feeding on pollutants.
* NoBisexuals: PlayedWith. Heterosexuality is assumed to be the default in nearly all cases that the subject of love or sex comes up--especially in regards to alien species. For example, when a Definian tries to seduce [[spoiler:Female Rook]], she disguises herself as male. There are many cases of AmbiguouslyBi all over the place, but they're just that--ambiguous. Lara Nara is the only character who openly states an attraction for the same sex/gender, and while he also flirts somewhat with women, it's hard to know if he's just teasing. A possible exception is the suitor Rook finds for [[spoiler:Male!Lyvia]], who is female, but professes to like Lyvia regardless of what form she takes.
* NobodyHereButUsStatues: Aeviters and Cantors do this often. There are a few [[GlamourFailure problems with their disguises]], though: Disguised Cantors keep moving their heads with a loud clacking sound. And the Aeviters' disguises ''would'' have been perfect... if not for the fact that there are ''no'' non-Aeviter statues in the game.
* NoCutsceneInventoryInertia: Annoyingly, the game is ''extremely bad'' at recognizing whether or not you are driving a Skell for cutscenes. A few late-game missions mandate Skell use and show everyone in their cockpits, but most missions just assume you're walking up on foot even if your entire team is in Skells. This means you walk up to the cutscene point in your Skell, somehow hop out of your Skell for the cutscene, draw your ground weapon for a fight, and then get inexplicably teleported back into your Skell the instant the cutscene is done with the game not missing a beat. A few standout examples:
** This gets ''especially'' weird in Chapter 8. [[spoiler:You're defending New LA from Ganglion attack, okay, sure... and the cutscenes imply you're helping to hold the gate and later clear the city on foot. Not only is this a full chapter after you get the ability to unlock at ''least'' a starter Skell (and has a level limit that puts you exactly at level to get a "proper" Skell and get Elma and Lin into Skells too, if they match yours) but ''literally everyone else defending New LA is using a Skell''. The only other non-Skell folks are Lao's team, and that's because they're defending the relic mech inside a hangar. And yet, if you bring the Skells you almost certainly have, and which the scale of the crisis rather suggests you bring, it doesn't get acknowledged at all and you're apparently ground-pounding for some reason while everyone else is in robots, including Team Irina, who otherwise ''need to bum your Skells when they're on your team''.]]
** Chapter 9 also gets fairly strange about this: [[spoiler:once again you have Skells and are heading into hostile territory, which rather passively suggests you should bring the robots for this run. You have to dismount to talk to Lao, which is a fair enough do, but you're then shown walking into Sylvalum on foot regardless of your robot status. You then reach the ambush point, and this time you're once again just shown as being on foot, regardless of Skell status, and are detained. You then have the duel with Jiarg, the first part of which is absolutely mandated as a foot battle - and when the second part begins and he summons his Skell... he tells you to "arm yourselves as you wish", and doesn't aggro immediately when you gain control. And your Skells are once again available to board. It's a very ''odd'' way of acknowledging that you probably want to use Skells for this fight without actually showing the Skells in the cutscene, and has left a few people wondering just what's going on with Skells and cutscenes.]]
** Chapter 10 damn near goes off the rails with it - [[spoiler:it seriously seems to be implying that you took on the Zu Pharg, AKA the robotic siege weapon the size of a large ''building'', ''on foot''. And ''won''. In reality, you not only probably had everyone in Skells for that, but you very likely had flight modules!]]
** It should be noted that the game regularly averts this outside of Skell-related issues.
* NoLongerWithUs: When the player first meets Tatsu's family, his father is absent, and several comments are made as to him not having been around for a while. Lin assumes Tatsu's father is dead, but it's later revealed he's actually just on a long journey to repay debts he owes and hasn't been home in a while.
* NonCombatEXP: The game expands on its predecessor by also awarding EXP for launching data probes to mine resources in each area of Planet Mira.
* NonMammalMammaries:
** Many alien women are not based on any sort of primate (or even mammalian) species and yet have human-shape breasts. Milsaadi women in particular have breast-like structures despite being mechanical.
** Averted with the Nopon, who are all spherical in appearance; Ma-non, who all possess slim figures; and the Orphe, who are simply red.
* NonHumanSidekick: Tatsu, a merchant of the native Nopon race accompanies you in the story. He serves as comedy relief for the most part.
* NoNameGiven: The name of the alien faction that fought the Ganglion over Earth and shot down the White Whale is never revealed in the game [[spoiler:as well as a mysterious [[VideoGame/{{Xenosaga}} Black Testament]]-[[{{Expy}} like]] character who approached Lao in the epilogue.]]
* NonCombatEXP: As in the previous game, you mainly earn EXP by exploring the world map and discovering landmarks, hidden areas, and completing sidequests and story missions.
* NonIndicativeDifficulty: The amount of stars for each basic mission on the board usually represents the BLADE Level required to unlock it, ''not'' the overall difficulty of the mission. For example, there's a two-star mission that requires hunting ''high level 30'' Purgovents, which can take a beating even from a Skell. Meanwhile, there are missions above five stars that involve killing level ''15'' Tyrants or enemies, and so forth.
* NoOSHACompliance: Subverted. New Los Angeles has a few unfinished bridges between some of the districts without roadblock signs to stop people from driving off. Even the bridges that ''do'' have roadblock signs don't stop some exceptionally clumsy or drunk residents from stumbling off of them. The subversion kicks in when it's explained that the liquid at the bottom of NLA is [[SoftWater shock-absorbing gel]], which keeps uncoordinated residents from killing themselves this way. However, it's still a long climb to get back up.
* NormalFishInATinyPond: The Ganglion. They were one of the two factions that destroyed Earth and continue to aggressively hound human refugees on Mira. Fighting them off is a struggle and they're easily winning a war of attrition for most of the game. It's later revealed that the Ganglion are actually a criminal syndicate -- and not even a major one, they're the space equivalent of thugs the real players use as hired muscle. That's just what happens when a HigherTechSpecies decide to pick on a race still figuring out spaceflight.
* NoSuchThingAsAlienPopCulture: Almost every alien species that joins NLA gains some sort of fascination for human pop culture. The Ma Non become obsessed with pizza and fashion, L is captivated by human sayings and idioms, and at least one Prone is interested in human military strategy. However, for the most part, nothing of the aliens' culture aside from technology and weapons seems to catch on with humanity. In fact, there's barely ''any'' sign of alien pop culture at all. There's one Prone woman who seems to be a dancer, but that's about it.
* NotAlwaysEvil: The [[spoiler:Cavern Clan Prone]] and the [[spoiler:Definians]] seem like the Ganglion's signature evil {{Mooks}}, but a few can make a HeelFaceTurn and live in NLA. Both of the defectors wish to exact revenge on the Ganglion for [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal leaving them for dead or treating them like expendable slaves]].
* NotQuiteTheRightThing:
** In one side mission, a man hires your team to clear all of the dangerous indigens out of a cave. Upon exploring the cave, it's discovered that the creatures inhabiting the cave are all juveniles, prompting the man who hired you to decide that you shouldn't kill them all. If you decide to listen to him and leave the creatures alone, [[spoiler: [[NatureIsNotNice they eventually grow up into extremely dangerous monsters that end up killing a number of people]], including the guy who originally hired you to clear out the cave.]]
** In another side mission, you're introduced to a guy who often harms other soldiers and takes the credit for their missions. When you're later assigned to find a rock, you see him in trouble running from an indigen. Should you give him the benefit of the doubt, he'll reveal that it was (partly) a ruse, and takes the rock and takes the credit for ''that'' mission. Should you refuse to help him, he gets eaten, you complete the mission, and it's stated that what he got was karma (plus there's one less traitor within the army).
* NotSoDifferentRemark: When the player saves a bunch of Ma-Non from a [[HumansAreBastards racist human]] who wanted to kill them, they say they hold no grudge against you because every race, Ma-Non included, have their [[AliensAreBastards fair share of bastards]].
* NotWorthKilling:
** Some of the Indigens ignore you depending on whether you're in a Skell or not. The medium sized enemies think of humans as lunch, but a giant armored robot would be [[BullyingADragon too difficult to fight]] to bother with; the large enemies barely notice humans at all, but see the Skells as a threat.
** Murderess learns that the serial killer who killed her parents on Earth somehow managed to get onto the White Whale, and has killed some of her friends in NLA since then. Knowing full well that she'd be throwing away everything she's worked so hard to obtain up to this point if she took her revenge and killed the guy, she decides to just walk away [[spoiler:and lets him get eaten by a Caro]] instead.
** Can be invoked with [[spoiler:The Blood Lobster]], resulting in a VillainousBreakdown instead.
* OddballInTheSeries: ''X'' is the only game in the series to be explicitly set in our reality rather than in a ConstructedWorld, and eschews most of the {{Magitek}} and mythological elements of the other games in favor of being a mostly straight sci-fi story about humanity trying to rebuild itself on a new planet after Earth is destroyed. Aside from the [[RecurringElement Nopon]], none of the other races from the other games appear, and instead the game introduces several new alien species that don't appear in any of the other games. It's also the only game to have no direct[[note]]the protagonist, Elma, does appear as a DLC character in ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles2'', but the two games are otherwise unrelated[[/note]] plot ties to the other games in the series, being a [[ThematicSeries thematic sequel]] instead.
* OffscreenTeleportation: Your party members are always right beside you outside of combat. If you're running across a field, they'll just be running behind. If you jump off a cliff, you sometimes see them land with you. If you climb up a steep cliff face in such a way that they can't path their way to you, they will instantly appear as soon as you get up top.
* OffWithHisHead: While most monsters only lose tails, horns, or maybe a limb on occasion in battle, Millesaurs and Coronids aren't so fortunate and can have their heads removed if their necks take enough damage. Doing this simply causes them to reveal their real head (or a large "eye" in the case of Coronids) that's normally concealed within their chest, though. Gradivus, the Headless Emperor, like the name suggests, doesn't have one to begin with.
* OlderThanTheyLook: A father-son duo of Prospectors, Keifer and Leland, has everyone appropriately confused over their age and appearances. [[spoiler:Leland is well into his senior years and insisted on having a mimeosome that looks younger than his son. His speech mannerisms support his age, but you certainly wouldn't know by looking]].
* OminousLatinChanting: The game has a lot of English lyrics in its songs, but it's not really chanting. The chanting comes in the form of wordless chants for the game's main theme, and some German chanting for the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Nez_ZRw8Q&t=1m30s primary boss theme]].
* OneHitKill: Two of the post-ending {{Superboss}}es have attacks that can destroy instantly all Skells piloted by the party members, namely Dadaan The Strongest Prone (through a destruction command that is activated during the first ten seconds of the battle) and Leva'el the Terminus (with the Apocalypse Wand). While you can still continue fighting the former on foot, the latter will ruin your day if it triggers its deadly move, because it's far too high in the sky to be fought from the ground.
* OneManArmy: Once you reach the endgame status with any combination of powerful setups, you'll essentially be this compared to the rest of the party, simply because the AI-controlled party members can't make proper use of infinite Overdrive to reach the same kind of damage values you can and they will mostly serve as a distraction to the enemy, assuming you can be bothered to bring them along to begin with. That being said, they still contribute a decent amount in endgame Skell combat, mostly because it focuses more on overpowered gear setups over abusing a single battle mechanic.
* OneStatToRuleThemAll: Among the available field skills, Mechanical is this, as it serves not only to open up White Whale and vehicle wreckage, but it's also required to establish [=FrontierNav=] probes. And said wreckage often contains probes, which are miles more valuable than the augments and cosmetics Archaeological and Biological treasure spots occasionally yield.
* OneTimeDungeon: [[spoiler:The Lifehold Core]] is the only place in the game that can only be played once; afterwards you can only hang around the outside parts.
* OnlyOneSaveFile: There's only one save file per Wii U account. This is due to the online features (and the achievements unlocked with them) tied to the player's profile.
* OnRideOnFootCombat: Players first start off the game on foot, but later can obtain humongous mecha called "Skells" to fight and explore in. There's no restriction in what enemies you fight in and out of Skell, so it's entirely possible to take on gigantic megafauna on foot or step all over enemy grunts in your mech, though a Skell-loving NPC finds the latter behaviour to be dishonourable.
* OptionalStealth: A limited but still useful version: the dual swords Art Shadowrunner makes the character untargettable by enemies, which not only means that they can't be targetted in battle, but also makes the character untargettable out of battle as well, preventing the enemy from attacking you even if they'd normally see or hear you. This allows you to target an enemy without engaging it, use the Art, cancel the targetting and run past any BeefGate that might otherwise OneHitKill you on your way to your destination or quickly grab whatever treasure they might be guarding. While this is normally limited by the fact that Shadowrunner is a TP art, you can just use another dual swords Art Blood Sacrifice to gain an instant 1000 TP on command at the cost of half of your current HP, which you can just quickly recover back by the virtue of not being currently in battle. There are also augments that reduce the likelihood of detection.
* OptionalPartyMember: Just under half of your possible party members in the game are completely optional. This makes sense, as they're simply fellow [=BLADEs=], and "recruiting" them just involves doing an assignment together, after which they're impressed enough to offer you backup in the future. One of them, Mia, requires doing some out-of-the-way sidequests and is potentially the very last recruitable character in the game (at earliest, you must not only complete her standard sidequests but also one that is in turn locked behind a complex branch of ''other'' sidequests, and ultimately this can only be achieved once you've completed the penultimate chapter in the game).
* OtherworldlyTechnicolourHair: Despite literally taking place on another planet, and the character creator allowing for the usual outlandish anime hair colors, the citizens of New Los Angeles are all humans who came from Earth, and as such exhibit usually normal physical qualities. This trope applies to [[spoiler:Elma, who is actually an alien who came to Earth to give them the technology to escape from the planet before it was destroyed in the crossfire of two warring factions. Her human form has dark skin and white hair, but her true form has pale skin and blue hair that may very well [[BizarreAlienBiology be made of crystals]]]].
* OurMonstersAreWeird:
** Saltats are supposed to be birds, but they look more like huge primates with hand-shaped wings, a masked face, a huge trumpet horn on the back of their head, and colorful eye markings on their wings. They also constantly make horn noises, make spinning dances when not in battle, make BringIt gestures, and generally clown around. Liceors are similar, but have a more ethereal and bright design.
** Gerrids look like an oversized flea with a nautilus's shell, except the shell is bright red or green, and the tentacles are more insectoid, and they have long, spindly legs. They also generate electricity and have a habit of jumping around and happily flailing about on the ground. And according to the Enemy Index, [[MisterSeahorse the males incubate eggs inside themselves]].
** Millesaurs are massive sauropods with a praying mantis-like head and a volcano built into their backs. The mantis head isn't even their real head either; the real head is actually in their chest cavity behind their false neck. The same principle applies to their Sylvalum counterparts, the Coronids, which have a large eyeball inside their neck.
* OutOfFocus: Any character who is not required for the current story/affinity mission is visible in cutscenes, but will not interject or have their presence acknowledged. A jarring example of this becomes rather humorous if you take Irina as your 4th party member when you complete chapter 11, since she'll be just be standing there beside you and Elma [[spoiler:while Elma talks extremely personal details about her to Vandham]].
* TheOverworld: The world map is said to be approximately 400 sq. miles - spread across five continents, floating land masses, and [[spoiler:the islands out in the ocean]]. And the only way you'll be able to fully explore it is by unlocking your Skell's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRBhInst8XQ flight capability.]]
* PaleFemalesDarkMales: Female aliens tend to have lighter coloration than their male counterparts. Notably, Buidhe is much paler than her master Jiarg.
* PaletteSwap: Nearly all the different indigen species have a counterpart that looks and acts very similar to them. For example, Liceors are swaps of Saltats, Caros are swaps of Grexes, Viragoes are swaps of Vigents, and Jaculs are swaps of Auravis. Usually, the two species live on different continents (Liceors are only found in Sylvalum, for example, while Saltats are everywhere else), but there is some occasional cross-over.
* PalmtreePanic: The game features plenty of coastline but most of it is seen in Primordia.
* PeoplePuppets: This entry in the series carries the status effect of Control, which can make enemies your allies instead. However, this can also be used on party members, forcing them to lose control of themselves and attack at random.
* PermanentlyMissableContent: This game tries very hard to ensure that it never hits this trope at all. Even if there were one-time only things, there are alternatives that give you another chance at them. None of the quests have a time limit on them, and certain Affinity Quests that would logically become permanently missable later in the plot are mandatory toward progression anyway. However, there are a few things that slip through the cracks:
** The only thing the player can truly miss out on are [[spoiler:Lao's Heart-to-Hearts]], but because of their temporary nature the game does not count them toward completion; all they provide is some dialogue and extra affinity points. [[spoiler:And, of course, there's Lao himself.]]
** A more minor aversion of this is BP, which only comes from examining various alien objects, finding new locations and completing missions, all of which are only available in limited amounts and might potentially make it so that you can run out of BP to max out the Arts and skills needed for your preferred type of build if you spend it on every new Art and skill you learn: this is averted with the addition of Support Missions that're unlocked when you finish the main story and allow you to gain up to 60 BP per mission as many times as you want.
** In Murderess's recruitment mission, if you [[spoiler:give in to her demands]], you won't fight a unique Skell that has an entry in the Enemy Index.
** For the absolute completionist that wants to collect every piece of equipment that exists in the game, there are two particularly startling details that make it very hard: 1. Unlocking Meredith AM after completing chapter 4 will make Broken Skell Sidearms, Broken Skell Arm Weapons, and Broken Skell Spare Weapons disappear. 2. Wrothian Skells can drop their own unique brand of weapons which you can use on your own skell. However, there are only a finite number of times where you can encounter and fight them. After that, they're gone for good.
** Selling very rare items such as Level 20 Skell you first get means you won't ever get it back.
* PerpetualMotionMachine: The Ma-non's starship is stated to have a couple of perpetual motion machines aboard, generating power in each of its two wings. [[HigherTechSpecies They regard these as mundane technology]], one character compares how they view it to how humans view campfires. It is stated that the machine doesn't really output very much power ''at once'' though, so the Ma-non do require alternative fuels for more energy-intensive tasks.
* PinataEnemy:
** Aquatic Visgels are a common source of farming [[InfinityPlusOneSword Ultra Diamond/Nebulan weapons]] due to them being level 66-67, the minimum level to drop items of that quality consistently, as well as being weak enemies. Just be careful about [[{{Superboss}} the sleeping level 97 Yggralith right next to them]].
** Joker, the Unknowable is level 90, but is a very common enemy to defeat for levelling up BLADE Scouts and obtaining Ultra Diamond/Nebulan weapons because, being a [[TheGoomba Blatta]], it has relatively low health and attack power. It can be tough for lesser-prepared players because of its [[FragileSpeedster ridiculously high Evasion]], though. The nearby Squall Blattas, which appear in huge numbers, also contribute to the grinding effort.
* PinkGirlBlueBoy: For suids outside of Noctilum, boars are blue and sows are reddish-pink.
* PinkIsFeminine: The female Orphe are red, while the males are blue or green.
* PistolWhipping: The Assault Hammer/Breaker arts for the assault rifle both have you bludgeon your target with it, potentially knocking them down or stunning them, respectively.
* PlayableEpilogue: The game continues after Chapter 12 with the quote [[spoiler:"this story never truly ends"]]. Completing the game unlocks new missions, new skells, new equipment, and new enemies (including the optional superbosses) you were unable to fight before. By the time you complete the main game itself, you most likely completed less than 50% of it. Have fun spending the rest of your hours getting a 100% completion. On the good side, you can play online multiplayer with less worries. However, likely as a reminder of the aforementioned quote, some things are left unfinished: [[spoiler:You cannot get Lao back, but at least you know he's still alive. You cannot locate the unknown knight. You cannot find Ghosts in this game. You cannot eradicate the entire Ganglion race in Mira. And certain matters pertaining the supporting characters, such as those between Gwin and Irina, are left unresolved.]]
* PlayboyBunny: Female players can craft up two different bunny suits. One is the traditional one shown on the trope page, and the second is a bikini variant.
* PlayerHeadquarters: The BLADE Barracks inhabited by the player character, Elma, and Lin, where you can customize the decorations, fine-tune your [[HumongousMecha Skells]], go on quests with other players, and start the main story quests. New Los Angeles as a whole also counts to a lesser extent, as you receive almost all other quests and interact with most [=NPC=]s there including all the recruitable party members; excluding a handful of BLADE stations and Nopon caravans, the rest of the game world is hostile territory.
* PointOfNoReturn: There's no turning back once you enter the site of the final battle, [[spoiler:the Lifehold Core]]. You can't save while inside, to prevent you from being locked in the place while underprepared.
* PostEndGameContent: Completing the final chapter rewards you with blueprints for the level 60 [[InfinityPlusOneSword Skell Superweapons]], allows you to craft the level 60 Skells and some unique armor, unlocks several missions, including the Support Missions to grind affinity, money and Miranium, or Battle Points, and adds five {{Superboss}}es to the world.
* PowerfulButInaccurate: The Six Stars arms manufacturer produces weapons with high offensive stats but poor accuracy, operating under the principle that the user should be able to compensate with their own skill.
* PowerGlows: Overdrive has a visual tell. It shows up in the rare cutscene as well, meaning that it's probably not just a gameplay thing.
* ThePowerOfFriendship:
** The core lesson behind almost every side mission. People are fragile, flawed, weak, or straight-up bastards on their own, but learning to rely upon and help each other makes everyone stronger and capable of doing anything. Elma flat out states this as her KirkSummation several times.
** Mon'Barac worries that he isn't strong enough to survive on Mira, so he tries his hand at beast taming like the Prone are capable of. After you save him from being swallowed whole by a Lophid, you suggest he go ask the Prone for advice on his methods. He overcomes his fears of talking to other races and quickly makes friends with a Prone, Ma-Non, and Nopon. After you save him again from being swallowed whole by a Lophid, his friends come up to him and tell him that he can survive by working together with his newfound friends, and you teach him what the bonds of friendship mean.
* {{Precursors}}: The resident Precursor race was known as Samaar, who are said to have come into this universe from someplace else soon after its creation. The civilization they founded, the Samaar Federation, still exists in the present day, and is stated to control a radius of over 6 million light-years (which means it spans many galaxies, including the Milky Way and Andromeda). The game is rather ambiguous on whether the original Samaarians are still around, they're never directly said to have died out or disappeared, but everyone speaks of them in the past tense, and [[spoiler:humanity is revealed to be their direct biological descendants]].
* PredatorPastiche: The Prone are a large, imposing ProudWarriorRace that judge everything (including allies) by martial superiority. There are two warring clans (the Tree Clan and Cavern Clan), which have been at odds for centuries; the Tree Clan is willing to work alongside humanity against [[EnemyMine their greater foe]], while the Cavern Clan are almost all hostile upon sight. Even their faces have some resemblance to Predators, with wide, mandible-like mouths.
* PreexistingEncounters: Carried over from its predecessor; enemies will litter the landscape, and the player can seamlessly transition into fighting them at will.
* PunyEarthlings: It appears that humanity is very far south of the average tech level of the universe. All life on Earth is wiped out as a ''side effect'' of a battle in orbit between two warring alien powers (though we later learn that at least a portion of one side of the conflict was deliberately targeting Earth). Humanity only survived by a rushed evacuation of the homeworld into unknown space, [[spoiler:and even the technology to do that was gifted by a friendly alien... on their own, humans would have been screwed]]. The leaders of humanity are later dismayed to find out that the multi-species alien army that very nearly caused humanity's extinction is considered nothing more than a minor crime syndicate by the ruling governments of local space (which, incidentally, encompasses ''multiple'' galaxies).
* RaceAgainstTheClock: The big number at the top of BLADE Tower isn't arbitrary: it's [[spoiler:a countdown indicating how much energy the Lifehold Core has. If the heroes don't reach the Core and activate its secondary energy generator before it reaches zero, the mimeosomes (Robotic bodies housing the humans' souls) will shut down, and bye-bye humanity. While the residents of New LA do know they have a time limit, only a select few know the meaning behind the number, to prevent widespread panic.]]
* RagnarokProofing: Mira, the main setting of the game, has numerous ancient ruins of unspecified age, most notably the O'rrh Sim Castle that takes up a large portion of [[LethalLavaLand Cauldros]].
* RandomlyGeneratedLoot: Discussed in-game. An NPC in NLA comments that weapons found inside the stomachs of various indigens tend to take on special properties. He wants to research why a gun found inside a Grex's stomach may end up being more powerful than store-bought equipment.
* RandomlyGeneratedQuests: There's a mission board where BLADES gather to look up jobs. It's a large pool of mostly pre-determined quests that tasks you with gathering certain materials or killing certain enemies, but you almost never know which ones will be available from day to day, or which ones will show up next after you complete some of them.
* RandomNumberGod:
** Weapon Stability is definitely something that is not self-explanatory at first glance. What it actually is is a range modifier that adds or subtracts from the base attack value of the weapon. Weapons with high stability (lower numbers) are desirable because their damage output is very consistent. However, Weapons with low stability (higher numbers) can inflict more damage but at the risk of inflicting very weak hits if you're unlucky. Stabilizer traits and augments allow a player to remain on the safe side of damage output whereas Destabilizer traits and augments offer a "high-risk, high-reward" fighting style to those that want to take their chances.
** "Jarosch, the Sensational" is possibly the worst example of a Tyrant that you'll never find in your game unless you look up a guide. It becomes even more annoying if you're trying to collect it's Holofigure. Jarosch's spawn point is on a cluster of giant, red flowers growing on an arching tree in Rustpool Banks which will not activate unless you step directly inside it since it has a very short trigger distance. The huge catch here is that Jarosch shares that spawn point with a Jade Saltat which has a higher chance of appearing. So expect to do lots of reloading to get that very elusive tyrant to appear.
* RareRandomDrop: Enemies can rarely drop a weapon or piece of armor in a higher tier than what is normally found. This is the only way to obtain certain Ultra Regal and Ultra Infinite armor sets, as their droppers might be only level 56-60 or 61-65, below the levels they normally drop (UR drops for 61-65, while UI drops for 66 and above).
* RealTimeWeaponChange: The game gives the player a melee and ranged weapon and they can switch between the two at the push of a button or when they use an Art with the weapon they aren't currently holding.
* RedAndBlackAndEvilAllOver:
** One chraracter effectively refers to Cauldros as "hell". It looks the part, too, what with all the black rock and lava everywhere. The place also happens to be the main base of the Ganglion.
** Luciel, the Eternal, is a Millesaur with a distinctive red and black color scheme. It's also aggressive, a Tyrant, and one of the highest-leveled indigens in the game.
** Tainted indigens are black-colored, have red electricity coming out of their eyes, and are aggressive and have an insatiable hunger for flesh.
* RedBaron: Tyrants have unique names that illustrate how dangerous they are, such as "Pharsis, the Everqueen" and "Telethia, the Endbringer".
* RedMage: When it comes to stats, Blast Fencers and Galactic Knights have a global boost to them, meaning that there won't be any one of them that will go to what the [[LethalJokeCharacter Drifter]] has or worse. If the [[LethalJokeCharacter Drifter]] can be made TheAce due to its fifth skill slot, the Galactic Knight can be considered a close second as all of it's stats are boosted evenly. Obviously, the class is the second option for fully ranked-up Enforcers, which is the game's mage class.
* RedshirtArmy: The Ganglion treat the Zaruboggons as nothing more than expendable scouts. As an entire race, they have no aptitude for combat. Their ability to adapt to any environment is the only reason they're useful at all, and the Ganglion expect them to put up a fight and die.
* ReducedDowntimeFeatures: There are very few healing arts in the game (with the most powerful one, Smooth Recovery, only available in the US edition or Japanese DLC). To heal consistently, players have to perform Quick-Time Events that allow them to combo abilities with their teammates. This allows the player to focus entirely on the battle and not need to stop and heal. Also, abilities work via a {{Cooldown}} feature, and health automatically regenerates outside of combat.
* RefuseToRescueTheDisliked: There's an NPC named Gus who attacks you during a mission. Later in the mission, he's seen being chased by a Petramand (a giant crab spider hybrid creature) and is asking for help. [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential You can refuse to help him]]. [[spoiler:This is ultimately the better choice, as it was all a ploy by Gus (again) and he screws you over if you rescue him]].
* RegionalBonus: The Western releases have the DLC characters (Alexa, Bozé, H.B., and Yelv) released for free on the disc.
* RelationshipChart: The Affinity Chart shows how all the characters on Mira are interconnected with each other. The relationships will change over the course of the game as the story plays out, but more importantly from the dialogue choices the player makes which affects the outcomes of side quests. If a player isn't careful, they can get an NPC killed, with the chart placing an X over their picture. It also shows the RelationshipValues the the player has with the other party members, which is necessary for unlocking more of their story missions when the game advances to the proper chapter in the story.
* RelationshipSalvagingDisaster: The lyrics for "Uncontrollable" are about a man and woman who put aside their differences and failed relationship in order to board Project Exodus to escape Earth and start anew.
* RelationshipValues: Every party member has these, and raising them is necessary to take certain quests. They're also needed if you're interested in striking a conversation with them while they're on a break (not in your party).
* RemilitarizedZone: There is a much larger number in this game than in the first game, in the form of Ganglion bases scattered through the five continents of planet Mira (among which [[LethalLavaLand Cauldros]] is by far the most occupied).
* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: Invoked and defied. A human clothing store owner refuses to let the reptilian Ma-non enter her shop due to a preexisting phobia of Earth reptiles. This is despite the Ma-non looking like miniature Gungans with floppy dog-like "ears" with thoroughly non-malicious ManChild personalities. The player character has to bring word back about their helpfulness around New Los Angeles from people who have worked with them on a regular basis to convince the store owner that it's worth suppressing her phobia to let them shop there.
* RequiredPartyMember: All missions that continue the main story require Elma and Lin on the party. Most missions unlocked through affinity with other party members must include them from the start, though some instead limit the party's usual size and disallow a character so that they can join midway through.
* TheReveal:
** At the end of Chapter 5: [[spoiler:All of the humans wandering around Mira are actually androids called Mimeosomes. Their ''real'' bodies are stored on the Lifehold and remote-control the Mimeosomes from there. That big, mysterious countdown on BLADE Tower? That's the reserve power level for the Lifehold, and it's a countdown to death for every remaining human.]]
** Towards the end, there's a nasty reveal that [[spoiler:the Lifehold was destroyed when the White Whale crashed. Humanity, at least in this sector of the universe, is dead. And somehow the humans' consciousness has integrated with the mimeosomes.]]
* RewardingInactivity: Depending on how you set up your probes on Mira, you can get high amounts of money and Miranium after a certain amount of time has passed in game. As such, it's a valid tactic to leave the game playing in the background with the [[UsefulNotes/GeneralGamingGamepads Game Pad]] plugged in to have resources build up while you're busy doing something else. However, the game apparently has algorithms to determine if a player is idle; after a while, resources WILL stop accumulating until you start playing again.
* RewatchBonus: There are so many plot twists (especially at the Eleventh Hour of the game) that if replay the game (or watch a LetsPlay of someone else playing it), you can catch tons of stuff that you missed now that you have knowledge of said twists.
* RidiculouslyCuteCritter: The Nopon from ''Xenoblade'' return, and they're even more adorable than before due to updated graphics.
* RidiculouslyHumanRobots: As per ''Xeno'' tradition, you'd probably expect at least one to show up and be a major plot element, and you might even suspect that various major characters might be one. [[spoiler:The twist is that the ''player character'' is one - along with ''all'' the other humans. The residents of NLA for the duration of the game are all near-perfect human androids, piloted by the consciousnesses of the sleeping humans in the Lifehold.]]
* RoboticReveal: In Chapter 5, [[spoiler:when the player character throws themselves in front of Tatsu to protect them from an enemy Skell attack, their arm is blasted off, revealing metal, sparks, and blue bio-electric fluid where their arm used to be. As it turns out, they are actually a highly advanced android controlled via a human consciousness from within the core of the Lifehold, as is ''every'' person in New LA. You were never told because it was such a basic fact that Elma never realized you didn't know it.]]
* RocketTagGameplay: Post-game bonus bosses can certainly feel like this. Even with Skells, the strategy for a few of them can boil down to "use high powered attacks and an Overdrive extension abuse set to flatten them as soon as possible" or "die horribly in the first five seconds".
* RunningGag: Most story missions begin the same way: Lin asks the player for ideas on what to cook. The dish she ultimately prepares is based on the player's choice ([[FoodPorn which includes fried chicken, pot pie, and foie gras]]). During the preparation of the dish, Lin will try and trick Tatsu into becoming part of the dish, to the Nopon's unending chagrin. Once the meal is prepared, other BLADE members may drop by for a meal before laying out the mission.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:S-Z]]
* SadBattleMusic: "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkHmZ0tKKww aBOreSSs]]", the first half of which plays during [[spoiler:the second phase of the Prog Ares fight (hence the title's uppercase and lowercase letters splitting into 'ares' and 'BOSS')]]. The [[https://youtu.be/CkHmZ0tKKww?t=2m57s other half of it]] (which is echoed in [[LastNoteNightmare the last note of the first part]]) is instead a lot more menacing, and plays for [[spoiler:the Zu Pharg fight.]]
* SandWorm: Sabulas, which can be found in certain sandy terrains (though, oddly enough, ''not'' the actual desert region). They're about thirty to fifty feet long, but are mostly docile, only attacking if attacked first. However, there are certain individual Sabulas that are ''gigantic'' (on the order of a mile or more in length) that serve as optional post-game bosses... two of which are named [[Literature/{{Dune}} "Atreides" and "Gesserit"]].
* {{Sarashi}}: The Six Stars ceremonial uniform you can develop fits around a male's stomach or female's breasts.
* SavageSetpiece:
** ''Tons'' of them. Indigens like Progens, Millesaurs, and Coronids are never going to attack unless you do so first, with rare exceptions, but given how strong and highly leveled they are, you ''really'' don't want to unless you can handle them.
** Telethia, the Endbringer itself is one of these. At level 99 it's the most powerful enemy in the entire game, but it's also totally non-hostile.
* SavedFromTheirOwnHonor:
** At one point, the Wrothian (the game's Japanese FantasyCounterpartCulture) AntiVillain Ga Buidhe decides to disobey her master Ga Jiarg and kill the protagonists, intending to protect him and her people against them despite his willingness to negotiate. When she fails, she tells the protagonists that she's willing to pay with her life, until Ga Jiarg arrives and says that, despite her disobedience, her death isn't necessary.
** During Celica's Affinity Mission, we learn that her friend Rock is in danger of being kicked out of New LA because the city can't afford "idle citizens", and despite having SuperStrength, Rock [[ActualPacifist doesn't want to fight]]. Being told that Rock will be forced out unless some sort of compensation is made, Celica asks how she can join BLADE (a paramilitary operation) and is jokingly told by the Commander that she could do a mission by herself. Celica does so without question and almost dies before Rock and the protagonists show up to save her. Later, Chief Executive Chausson still says that this isn't enough and Rock sadly announces that he's willing to fight if it means he and Celica can stay. However, Chausson says that isn't necessary because Rock can instead use his strength for heavy industry. Everyone then applauds Chausson for his generosity, and later Rock says he's hoping to one day pay Chausson back for the favor.
** One side mission has another Wrothian who wants to go on a SuicideMission to fight against Ganglion forces. The only way to talk her down from this is to remind her that dying isn't '''what her friend''' would want.
* SaveScumming: The player is only given [[SaveGameLimits one save file per account]]. Like the first game, a good number of the side quests have multiple outcomes depending on your choices (and some of them affect connected future side quests). The rewards stay the same regardless of outcome this time, but [[GuideDangIt unless you know ahead of time]], you're not going to get the [[VideoGameCaringPotential favorable outcome]] on the first attempt every time. If the "bad choice" doesn't lead to damaged [=NPC=] relationships, it usually leads to one or more friendly [=NPCs=] getting killed.
* ScaryDogmaticAliens: The Ganglion coalition, while called [[NGOSuperpower a crime syndicate with an exorbitant amount of political influence]], are a mix of Nazis and religious fundamentalists. They have a hierarchy where the Ganglion species is the dominant race, and other species are to either serve them or be destroyed, and they seek to destroy humanity under the claim of them being a plague, [[spoiler:which is actually a cover for the fact that humans are the legitimate descendants of their creators, the Samaarians, and Saamarian/human DNA is a failsafe against the Ganglion species]]. As religious fundamentalists, they not only paint the extermination of humanity as a holy mission, they worship the Samaarians like gods and have reverence for an as-yet-unseen entity known as the Great One, [[spoiler:but given the revelations about humanity's ancestry and the Ganglion's status as an artificial servant race]], it's not quite clear how much of it is genuine dogma or cultural propaganda to cover up a power grab.
* SceneryGorn: Much of [[{{Mordor}} Cauldros]], notably The Capital Wreckage, The Ruined City of O'rrh Sim, and The Kw'arah Cloister.
* SceneryPorn:
** As with the original, its spiritual sequel offers a wide variety of terrain and breathtaking [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvpNXhzscjQ vistas]]. The amount of detail in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUK1b_ysTnI New Los Angeles]] alone is a vast improvement over either of the Colonies. Made moreso, once you get your first Skell and gain the ability to fly -- you may even get to see an electromagnetic storm!
** A prime example of this is right after the first boss fight, when you reach the Western Gate. Walk up the stairs and take a good look at the scenery from the extended balcony. If you waited until nightfall, auroras fill the sky, accompanied by a full moon. For that matter, cutscenes are rendered according to time. Whether you first enter, and then tour, NLA at morning, daytime, dusk, or at night is entirely up to you.
* SchizophrenicDifficulty: The game is absolutely lousy with enemy placement. Nowhere than the very start of the game is this made clear; Elma herself informs you that you really should take the upper route to New Los Angeles, as while the fall to the lower level won't kill you, the high-level indigens certainly ''will''. Even then, you will spend much of the early game stealthing your way around high-level threats by exploiting the terrain, because trying to brute-force your way past them will only end in you getting wasted in record time.
* SchmuckBait:
** Every continent has enemies who just so happen to look like rocks or the local foliage, who just "happen" to be hiding out near tempting resource nodes or shortcuts.
** A cove in Noctilum has a mysterious wrecked robot half-submerged in the water. Go ahead. Investigate it. [[TotalPartyKill See what happens]]. [[spoiler:Thought you could get revenge on it once you had the Ares 90? Hope you have reflection negation gear, or else this trope will happen to you ''again'']].
** In Sylvalum's North Silent Sandsea, you can find a large ring of tooth-like protrusions sticking out of the sand. Get closer and you can see that the innermost ring is opening and closing slightly. [[SandWorm Go ahead, walk on the mysteriously mouth-like structure.]]
** The first Filiavent the player is likely to encounter at first looks like a very large, ornate flower, but the top parts are swaying around and the game ''plays ominous music'' if you get close. It's not quite as dangerous as the previous two examples, but it's still likely to be a TotalPartyKill until you get a more powerful Skell.
** There's a probe spot in Oblivia set on a floating island in the middle of a bottomless chasm. One wouldn't be blamed for thinking it could be reachable by driving a Skell off a ramp. [[spoiler:It can only be accessed with a flight module, and even then, said probe spot needs one's mechanical skill to be level 5]].
* SchrodingersQuestion: The player can decide to make an effort to negotiate with [[AbsoluteXenophobe Alex]] on behalf of [[AllLovingHero Eliza]], the former having possibly murdered a few innocent people and plans on doing nothing short of genocide in NLA. This decision affects the ending of the related mission chain; if the player does go the full mile with negotiation, Alex dies whimpering that he and Eliza used to see eye to eye, indicating that he wasn't always that evil before. If the player shows absolutely no mercy to Alex during negotiations, Alex spews out one more HannibalLecture before getting shot in the back (long story), implying that he's always been a xenophobic monster.
* ScrewDestiny: The implication of the acronym B.L.A.D.E. in Japan - '''B'''eyond the '''L'''ogos '''A'''rtificial '''D'''estiny '''E'''mancipator.
* SeaOfSand:
** Averted with the game's designated desert region of Oblivia, which despite being referred to in-game as "Sandy Butt Canyon" by Tatsu, actually has very little sand and is mostly rocky badlands. There is one area that actually is sandy, but it stands out from the rest of the continent and is a dead givaway of a trap-- in this case a giant Tyrant SandWorm.
** The trope is played more straight by the continent of Sylvalum. It is covered in a layer of fine, ghostly-white sand, and even has a number of regions explicitly named "sandseas" because of how sprawling and sandy they are. However, Sylvalum is actually a continental sized forest and the sand is implied at times to actually be pollen. Thus, though it fits the bill of being a sand sea, it is much more alien and surreal than other examples of this trope.
* SecondarySexualCharacteristics: Most alien females possess human-like sexual characteristics, such a human-like bust. See also NonMammalMammaries and TertiarySexualCharacteristics.
* SecretAIMoves: Subverted. You'll quickly notice most of your allies are listed as being "[class]+" with impossible weapon combinations, and even those that aren't have arts which you can't learn. However, mastering a class path allows you to use its weapons to mix and match, and unique arts can be learned from your allies through Affinity Missions.
* SensibleHeroesSkimpyVillains: While players can dress their characters and teammates in anything from bulky armor to bikinis, the female characters start out wearing reasonable clothing and armor. For the two main female antagonists, Goetia wears a [[ThongOfShielding thong]] [[LeotardOfPower leotard]] with a CleavageWindow, and Ryyz goes for a NavelDeepNeckline. The female Cavern Clan prone tend to wear more revealing outfits than the female Tree Clan prone, and the Definians aren't too different either.
* SequelEscalation: Well, more of a ''thematic'' sequel escalation, but still...
** The last game's world was already about the size of Japan, but since the Skells are five times bigger than the characters, this game's world is five times bigger than the previous game's.
** Just how expansive is this game? [[http://www.gonintendo.com/s/246182-xenoblade-chronicles-x-barely-fits-on-wii-u-disc-seems-to-support-data-installation-for-faster-loading At one point, Monolith was worried one disc wouldn't be enough.]] While they did fit the final release on one disc, the thing is so jam-packed that optional data packs were released on the eShop to help decrease loading times.
** To put that in perspective, a [[Website/YouTube YouTuber]] named Griffon Li Britannia posted a video showing the elapsed time it took to sprint from the outermost edge of Oblivia, to Noctilum's outermost edge [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb60TSKlJqw was 31 minutes.]] And that was travelling in a straight line, while ignoring both the northern continents and [[spoiler:the islands, out in the ocean]]!
* SequelHook: "This story never truly ends" indeed, [[spoiler:once you beat the main game's story, that is.]] There are many, ''many'' mysteries and questions left unanswered.
* SequenceBreaking: It's possible through careful mountain climbing to find and enter Bedrock Hold in Primordia and meet [[spoiler:Ganglion forces]] before the story introduces them. Later cutscenes will still have characters surprised to meet them anyway. This is a bit strange since they put invisible walls to prevent you from entering other regions from over the mountains until the story allows it yet missed this one area.
* SequentialBoss: The final boss is four different fights in a row. First you fight the Vita, piloted by [[BigBad Luxaar]]. Then Luxaar [[TransformingMecha transforms]] the Vita into a more powerful form. Then a lengthy cutscene ensues, after which you fight a swarm of grotesque chimeras. After another cutscene, the chimeras merge with Luxaar [[spoiler:and Lao]] to form the actual final boss.
* SerialKiller: There are a couple in NLA, who you have to investigate and take down during missions.
* SettlingTheFrontier: After Earth's destruction by a pair of warring alien fleets, one of the few surviving colony ships crash-lands on a new world they name "Mira", and the game is mostly about the colonists' attempts to establish a permanent colony there. Things get complicated when they learn that (some of) the aliens that destroyed Earth have ''also'' crash-landed on Mira.
* ShaggyDogStory:
** Naza Tenpanzi, [[spoiler:a Prone]] who carried a seed from her home planet is trying to grow it in New LA, and gets help from an Orphean botanist, who sends the player on a FetchQuest for something to help the tree grow. When the seed sprouts, the Orphean mistakes it for lunch and eats it, not realizing Naza's desire to grow the tree to preserve it, so she beats him up. The Orphean sends you on another fetch quest so that he can clone the sapling to appease Naza, only to have another Orphean walk by and eat the plant. [[spoiler:Can actually be averted, in a GuideDangIt. Talk to Yun'tonam, who is nearby the two xenos and tell him what happened [[TalkToTheFist last time the tree got eaten]] at night.]]
** The entire Sword of Legendaryness plot ends up like this. [[spoiler:After a lot of searching and misadventures, Muimui and Moimoi finally get their hands on the namesake sword and make a profit, only to spend all the money on a feast]].
** A less comical version is the Celeste Three plot. After [[spoiler:being betrayed by Fodsyke and Moorehouse]] when confronting Briggs, the safe remains closed until ''much'' later, where Adolphus and Ga Bewehe asks the player to find the remaining key needed to open it. Turns out [[spoiler:the whole request was a wild goose chase, Adolphus had the key all along, and Ga Bewehe attacks the player]]. After all that, [[spoiler:it's revealed that Ga Bewehe was playing both the player and Adolphus and took ''everything'' from the vault for her own purposes]]. The quest even ends with describing the whole story as "a waste of time". [[spoiler:Though you can resolve the mission on a happier note if you visit a certain cliff in Oblivia in the rain...]]
* ShieldBash: The Shield weapon used by the Shield Trooper and Bastion Warrior classes do this for all of their physical arts, they ever have an art where they hit the ''air so hard they can hit multiple enemies and [[StatusEffects slow]] them''.
* ShiftingSandLand: The continent of Oblivia. It is not a totally straight desert because it does have an oasis in the middle. Instead of extreme heat or quicksands, the primary environmental hazard is an electrified sandstorm that gradually depletes the party members' HP, as well as that of the Skells if they're being piloted.
* ShopFodder: The golden blatta Tyrants all drop a special item that has no purpose except to be sold for at least 10,000, most 50,000 credits apiece. These items are some of the only in the game that can't be purchased with Reward Tickets.
* ShoutOut: ''X'' makes nods to previous ''Xeno-'' games, going all the way back to ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}''. Other science fiction tropes and works get the nod as well. Briefly:
** The start of the game mimics the backstory of ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'' as humanity flees planet Earth. One of these ships crashes on to an alien planet under less than ideal circumstances.
** In the prologue:
--->'''Elma:''' [[Film/GroundhogDay Watch yourself--that first step's a doozy.]]
** Wels is the name of Elma's favorite Skell, but don't worry, the Skell isn't a [[spoiler:[[VideoGame/{{Xenogears}} mutated human]]]].
** The questline for an NPC named "Professor B" not only has you build a time machine out of a luxury car, but the arms manufacturer you unlock for completing it is called "Factory 1.21", both of which are references to ''Film/BackToTheFuture1''.
** So "Galactic Knights" use [[LaserBlade Photon Sabers]], [[Franchise/StarWars do they]]?
** Two of the [[SandWorm Sabula]] Tyrants are called [[{{Franchise/Dune}} Atreides, the Distinguished and Gesserith, the Wileworm]].
** According to a collectible, the White Whale had an on-board A.I. called [[Literature/MobyDick A-HAB]].
** The Ma-non [[WesternAnimation/AlvinAndTheChipmunks are short, have extremely high-pitched voices, and the first three you meet respectively wear red, green, and blue]].
** An NPC you can eavesdrop on in the hangar lounge after meeting the Ma-non speaks about trying to befriend the xenos by [[Film/ETTheExtraterrestrial sticking out their index finger and telling them to phone home]]. "...It didn't work out like it did in the movie."
** Another NPC takes note of the Ma-Non's technology and expresses worry that humanity will be "[[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Killed five times before they hit the ground]]" if they ever get on their bad side.
** The upgraded version of the Formula skell model is called the [[VideoGame/FZero Formula Zero]].
** One of the collectible holofigures you can decorate your barracks with, simply called "Assassin", depicts a Milsaadi doing [[VideoGame/AssassinsCreedII Ezio's famous pose]].
** Another holofigure shows a Prone chucking barrels in [[VideoGame/DonkeyKong a familiar way]]. Two others depict a [[TheHero red Nopon]] jumping over a barrel and a [[ButtMonkey green Nopon]] getting smacked in the face by one.
** A trio of Tyrants in Noctilum have their names and descriptions based on the main characters from [[Anime/HeidiGirlOfTheAlps Heidi, Girl of the Alps]], specifically Pyotr, the Shepherd (Peter, also a shepherd), Heidi, the Lively (the titular character herself, who is very lively) and Claire, the Sheltered (Clara, who lived a sheltered life until meeting Heidi).
** Plenty of nods to {{Mecha Show}}s.
*** In an Affinty mission Tatsu puts on a pair of [[Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann Kamina/Gurren glasses]]
*** The Goliath Piledriver superweapon is a reference to the [[Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann Giga Drill Break]]
*** Sakuraba Skellwear looks a lot like [[Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion Eva unit pilot suits]].
* SiliconBasedLife: There are numerous indigens and races who aren't carbon-based all throughout Mira. The game's bestiary states that the Milsaadi are metallic lifeforms similar to robots. The giant Gularths found in Cauldros are basically rock creatures. They absorb lava into their bodies in order to bolster their own defenses. Numerous petramands, lophids, scintimures, tersquals, and other indigens live in the lava. One of the collectibles you can find in Cauldros is a fox who eats lava, and will die if exposed to the rain.
* SkillGateCharacter:
** The class selection menu describes the Striker as being "beginner friendly," since it grants you [[JackOfAllStats a balanced mix]] of attack/defense/and HP bonuses as you increase your skill level. However, it doesn't gain as many specialized Arts and skills as the Commando and Enforcer classes do.
** Skells become this late game. Most players, after gaining the best Arts, Skills, weapons and equipment, choose to battle everything on foot. The reason being that the cooldown for Skell-based moves becomes a liability while ground-based ones recover much quicker and thus deal more damage-per-second. As such, Skells become only useful for taking out weak enemies easily (for farming or grinding levels) or fighting enemies that fly or are far too deep in the water.
** Rook, Elma, and Lin, being required for all the story missions in addition to many affinity missions, become this as well. Without paying attention, the levels of these characters (''especially'' [[CantDropTheHero Rook]]) will tower over that of anyone else. Elma having the SecretArt Ghost Factory (which grants Decoy to the entire party) makes this more apparent.
* SilenceIsGolden: The opening cutscene doesn't have dialogue until over two minutes in.
* SinisterScythe: A skell weapon, they hit twice and do extra damage from behind, making them a good way to kill enemies that should be too strong for you until you get the best weapons.
* SleeperStarship: The ''White Whale'' was designed this way, with a portion of the crew running the ship [[spoiler: using robot bodies remote-controlled by their still-sleeping selves in stasis]]. When the ship is destroyed, the bodies still in stasis are preserved in the ship's core. [[spoiler:But in truth, rather than storing bodies in stasis, their [[BrainUploading consciousness' were uploaded]] into the core's computer.]]
* SlidingScaleOfGenderInequality: The game rests at the "Near-perfect equality" range, albeit a number of problematic issues. For example, the people of NLA and the [=BLADEs=] are pretty evenly male and female, and humanity is in such dire straits that OldSchoolChivalry and StayInTheKitchen mentalities are pointless. As such, in terms of being actors and agents of the story, men and women have an equal time of it.\\
\\
However, most of the top brass of BLADE and NLA are male. The three superiors your team reports to are all male, and another character states that women are rare within BLADE proper.[[note]]Curiously, though, this [[GameplayAndStorySegregation doesn't bear out in the game]] ''itself'' - out of the eighteen(!) recruitable non-Rook party members, eight are women, which is pretty close to an equal spread. And it's only the DLC characters shifting it male - in the original Japanese print copy, without H.B., Bozé, Yelv and Alexa, the gender ratio was dead-on even at 7:7. There's also tons and tons of NPC BLADE women in the sidequests.[[/note]] Furthermore, a number of design choices are still very gender-unequal. Case-in-point, female characters tend to be given very {{Stripperiffic}} outfits and the MaleGaze is ''everywhere''. There's actually only ''one'' outfit in the entire game that is exclusive to the male gender, and it looks like L's outfit, six-pack abs and all. Even well-armored women wear conspicuous amounts of BreastPlate and SensualSpandex armor. Alien women wear thigh-high boots, CombatStilettos, ThongOfShielding, and low necklines.
* SlippySlideyIceWorld: {{Subverted}}. At first glance, Sylvalum looks like it's covered in a thick layer of snow and ice, and has music evocative of an ice world, but the material is actually ''pollen'' and white sand. However, during Moimoi's quest to find the Sword of Legendaryness, he mentions that Sylvalum is pretty cold.
* SmallRoleBigImpact: The Ghosts only appear in the opening cutscene as one side in the war that destroys Earth and later as the side that attacks the White Whale, causing it to crash on Mira. None of the plot would happen without them, but they aren't even named in the game with the name "Ghost" comming from [[AllThereInTheManual the game's Japanese artbook]].
* SmallSecludedWorld: It's implied to be the case with planet Mira. [[spoiler:The Ganglion mention that they are unable to leave the immediate space around the planet and previous attempts to leave resulted in them just ending up back at the planet and a random Manon NPC will mention that their sensors indicate that the space around the planet is very small, implying the planet is in some kind of sub-dimension.]]
* SnakeOilSalesman: Fraisie at the cathedral tries to exploit the Ma-Non into following her religion by selling "Miracle Water" that will cure them of their ailments. The water really is a miracle cure, as it contains [[spoiler:the antidote to the poison she's been slipping into the local drinking supply that are making the Ma-Non sick in the first place]].
* SniperRifle:
** Used by the Partisan Eagle and Astral Crusader classes. While it hits about as hard as one might expect, its range isn't much better then the other ranged weapons, and needs to be boosted with arts, augments, or skills before it can hit enemies at somewhat appropriate distances.
** Skells have their own version of sniper rifles as sidearms. They have higher range than other sidearms.
* SocializationBonus:
** When you start or reload your game, you're asked to choose a type of Squad to join, one focused on story progression, another focused on multiplayer and one focused on people you are friends with: these consist of up to 32 random players that you can hire to use as party members over the normal [=NPCs=], offer up enemy drops you don't need yourself and do specific types of missions with together. The most visible component of this system are randomized Squad Tasks that require you to collect specific types of items or kill specific types of enemies: doing so awards some Reward Tickets every time someone contributes towards a task to that person and a larger amount of them to every Squad member when one of them is completed. Completing said Tasks also contributes towards unlocking more online Squad missions.
** Squad Missions are mini-excursions that can be undertaken with your party, or you can recruit other players to play alongside you(the game will usually tell you(the gold-bordered announcements) if a recruitment call goes out while you're playing, but not if you're in a menu). Completing these grants you a large amount of materials (sometimes from enemies that are otherwise only fought as {{Bonus Boss}}es), more Reward Tickets and Battle Points. In additon, completing some missions in a certain way(examining suspicious objects, fighting extra enemiess the mission points out, or destroying the right part(s) of the mission's final enemy) can unlock another squad mission with even bigger rewards. All squad members also get reward tickets when somebody completes these, with final bonuses gained if all Squad Tasks and Squad Missions are completed.
** Finally, {{Bonus Boss}}es might appear at specific times for a limited amount of time: you have a preset amount of time to deplete as many of their lifebars as possible and if you reach specific milestones, you can get a number of rare items when either all of their lifebars are depleted or they escape at the end of their availability period. However, the real purpose of fighting them is destroying their appendages: each one drops 1-2 items when destroyed and you can get 7-14 of them per fight, which you can redeem for large amounts of Reward Tickets and is by far the quickest way to get a large number of them assuming you're strong enough to fight them long enough to dismember them without getting killed yourself, which isn't particularily hard to accomplish, then abandoning the mission. You don't get the normal rewards, but you ''do'' get to keep the parts you broke off.
** Like stated above, you can hire other peoples' avatars to use as party members for a limited amount of time: killing enough enemies with them in your party increases their scout rank, which gives you some free items(you also get a free item when your avatar gets hired) and if it's maxed out, a BLADE Medal when you release them: this is one of the few ways to get them and you need them to fight the {{Bonus Boss}}es mentioned above. Even if you don't want to hire another player's avatar, you can still ask them to provide Division Support, which nets you various buffs and bonuses in gameplay.
* SoftWater: Explicitly so. But the "water" at the bottom of New LA is actually impact gel, not water. That said, you can already survive a fall of nearly any height, even onto solid ground.
* SoLongAndThanksForAllTheGear: [[spoiler:Lao leaves forever during and after Chapter 9, and it doesn't get any better from there]]. However, this is subverted when [[spoiler:Doug gives back all of Lao's gear during his final Heart-to-Heart once Chapter 12 is complete]].
* SortingAlgorithmOfThreateningGeography: The game gives you free reign to travel where you want to from the get-go, but the game's story campaign explores each of the planet Mira's regions in order, starting with the [[GreenHillZone idyllic plains and lakes of Primordia]], followed by [[JungleJapes the thick and toxic rainforests of Noctulum]]. Next is [[ShiftingSandLand the desertous Oblivia]], then the [[AlienLandmass mysterious and alien Sylvalum]], and finally, the [[LethalLavaLand volcanic mountains of Cauldros]].
* SoundtrackDissonance: Incredibly dangerous (natural) locations use a slow, ominous song when you approach it, and they're usually home to particularly dangerous enemies, hazardous terrain, or JumpScare enemies. More often than not there's a nasty [[BossInMookClothing Tyrant]] in the mix. It also plays in the Cleansing Spring, where the Dopang Caravan is located. This place is the ''safest'' place in Sylvalum, since none of the indigens there are aggressive, and the local Tyrant is a level 15 Murra.
* SpaceOpera: Though the gameplay is confined to land and sky, the plot begins with an interstellar war between multiple alien species.
* SpaceOrcs: Two of the Ganglion's primary {{Mook}} races fit into this archetype:
** The Prone's skin colors include pink and purple rather than green, and they have tentacles hanging off their faces, but aside from appearance they are essentially Blizzard orcs. They tend to have aspects of both Tolkien and Blizzard orcs, usually depending on how likely they are to shoot you.
** The Marnucks are essentially Tolkien orcs, aside from their blue skin, being reptilian, preference for guns, and having invented their own military technology. [[AllThereInTheManual What little we know about them]] is that they don't just love war; their chief deity is their god of death, and they think killing people in battle is an honorable act. Their homeworld was destroyed by a global civil war, and the only ones left are the ones that sided with the Ganglion.
* SpoilerTitle: One of the soundtrack's name is, decoded, Lao [[spoiler:Chimera Telethia.]] Strangely, the actual track has nothing to do with those details, even though [[spoiler:it all happens later]].
* SpyCatsuit: The Skell gear and Orphean Technologies light gear are the closest things to this.
* SquareCubeLaw: The game has a lot of very large animals wandering the surface of Mira. Most of the enormous creatures are shown to have very large organic gasbags keeping them aloft, like living blimps, but the Millesaurs and Coronids are just plain gigantic four-legged dinosaurs. The in-game fluff explains the Millesaurs as having a surprising amount of their bulk consisting of an internal buoyant gas sac, which means they are a lot lighter than they look.
* StabTheSalad: There's a Normal Mission where Rook has to search for a Wrothian. Said Wrothian has a woman cornered in an alley and asks for a sword. [[spoiler:Turns out he wants to be a chef and his sword will be his cooking knife]]. Played with in that this Wrothian was introduced in an Affinity Mission earlier and is clearly trustworthy.
* StalkingIsLove: One Normal Mission has you working for a Ma Non who wants to analyze human emotions and satisfy them. His third and final subject is Dana, a female BLADE officer who has an unrequited crush on another BLADE named Christopher. At this point, she says that she's asked Christopher to go out with her several times and he's rejected her each time. His rejection, however, is framed as a misunderstanding or misevaluation on ''his'' part, thus she continues to follow him around and enlists your help to try and win him over. To this end, she asks you to help her assemble one of two gifts. One of the gifts will finally win over Christopher's heart and the other will have him reject her for a final time. There is no option, however, to tell her to back off of the guy. For his part, though, Christopher [[TheCasanova invites these assumptions.]]
* StarfishAliens:
** The Orpheans (or the Orphe as they call themselves) are an [[InsectoidAliens insectoid race]] that are not only very logistical by human standards, they are connected to what appears to be a divine HiveMind [[spoiler: which is actually a symbiotic virus]] called the Ovah. In addition to initially having no concept of gender, they reproduce by using Senirapa water to split themselves into two Orpheans (or create two new Orpheans if the Orphean receiving the water is on the brink of death), with the new one already at adulthood and inheriting their parent's memories. It gets to the point that after replicating the water, the race goes from a mere five members on Mira [[spoiler: (there were two others, but one's a traitor that stuck with [[ScaryDogmaticAliens the Ganglion coalition]] and the other got eaten by Visigels, thus spreading the Ovah to non-Orpheans)]] to making up a noticeable chunk of New LA's xeno population. Eventually, [[spoiler: [[HumanityIsInfectious enough contact with humanity]] results in one Orphean spontaneously fissioning into a "female" gendered Orphean]].
** The Zaruboggans can only survive in environments that other species would consider toxic and polluted, and in addition to wearing hazmat suits all the time, they carry around gorkwa staffs to filter out voltant material from polluted areas. Also similar to the Orpheans, they have NoBiologicalSex (or concept of gender) despite being referred to with masculine pronouns and reproduce by regurgitating their offspring, which are born from the voltant they were consuming.
** The Milsaadi, a race of assassins allied with the Ganglion, are [[SiliconBasedLife silicon-based]], to the point of looking almost like robots in robes. They also have the ability to shut off their ability to feel pain rather than FeelNoPain altogether.
* StarterEquipment:
** Any time the PlayerCharacter switches classes, they're given a free set of the most basic weapons that class can equip[[note]]Yes, you could farm money like this... but these items go for less than 20 credits, when the stuff you want to save up for tops 200,000 by midgame[[/note]].
** An odd example of this trope kicking in well into the game: your first Skell. It's given to you for free, and it's the only level 20 frame in the game. Meaning you're not getting a party full of them, its stats are nothing gamechanging, and it can only equip a fairly basic suite of weapons. It's still thrilling to explore with while you level everyone and save up for better gear, though.
* StatsDissonance: While most Tyrants are simply enemies with much higher levels and stats than other enemies in the same area (for example, a Level 80 wandering around areas where the mobs are usually Level 10 or below), [[TheLeader Elma]] warns the player early on that a Tyrant's level and stats mean nothing. Some Tyrants have special properties, immunities or abilities that can make them ''harder'' to defeat than enemies much stronger than them statistically. For example, Agnes, the Divine Scaled can reflect all Thermal-type damage, and Blaudolch, the Chalcedony can make the player's party freeze in place for a while, rendering them helpless to its attacks.
* StockAudioClip: [=NPCs=] may often share voice clips when interacted with, such as with Powell & Giotto and Corwin & Trevor.
* StrictlyProfessionalRelationship: Gwin joined BLADE because he nursed a crush on [[ColonelBadass Irina]], but [[HopelessSuitor his feelings are unrequited]] due to [[DoesNotLikeMen her bad history with men.]] So she only regards him and Marcus as valued subordinates at best. Which is [[SubordinateExcuse good enough]] for Gwin.
* {{Stripperiffic}}: Risque indeed in many occasions, especially the alien gear. Then again, aliens do not follow human decency standards, so it doesn't matter. And for the playable characters (mainly females), the equipment shop follows under this [[AndYourRewardIsClothes once you unlock them late in the game]], including [[spoiler:Elma's alien suit she wears in the "ending"]]. Yes, you can battle with a playboy bunny suit, the bunny bikini, or even ones that don't show much on the lower regions. How everyone [[ClothingDamage manages to take a ton of damage without losing clothes]] remains a mystery.
* StoneWall: The Shield Trooper and Bastion Warrior class has bonuses to health and damage resistance, as well as skills that grant damage and debuff resistance while wielding their signature Shields, but the Shield weapon has few good damage-dealing Arts despite its high base power.
* SubsystemDamage:
** Enemy limbs and external features can be specifically targeted. These parts have their own HitPoints, indicated by a circle over the targeted part. Destroying parts can affect enemy status, remove their ability to use certain attacks, and earn you extra loot.
** The same is true of Skells, lose an arm and you lose the arts attached to it. They regenerate after battle though.
* SubvertedSuspicionAesop:
** A recurring question in the story is where the line between survival, justice, and genocide begins and ends. While this lesson is best shown in the main story, there are a number of subplots that tackle it as well. For example, there's a side mission where you can choose whether or not to kill baby suids in their nest. The orders were to slaughter them all, but Rook hesitates to do so. If you let them live, the QuestGiver, Carl, tells you he respects your choice and says he'll handle the report. Everything seems fine [[spoiler:until later where you find out those suids you spared are now slaughtering many of your fellow Blades.]]
** Another more short-term example is during The Celestial Three quest. When you finally confront [[spoiler:Briggs]], you either have the option of [[spoiler:sparing him and listen to his side of the story or finishing him off anyway when he's defeated. Sparing him means that you have to fight Moorhouse, Fodsyke, ''and'' Briggs rather than fighting just Moorhouse and Fodsyke]].
** The vast majority of the time, sparing [[spoiler:anyone that attacks you in cold blood]] during missions is a bad idea. The one exception is [[spoiler:Roselle, who offers a bribe]] and never causes trouble again.
* SuddenlyHarmfulHarmlessObject: There are lots of monsters like this in the game:
** They tend to be completely indistinguishable from the bits of scenery they're disguising themselves as, and can't be targeted directly until they've revealed themselves, nor do they show on your radar. This can occasionally lead to you getting into a bigger fight then intended if an area effect attack happens to hit some hidden monsters accidentally.
** While they don't disguise themselves, some of the robots and mechs utilized by Ganglion can be encountered in an inactive, untargetable state, only for them to suddenly spring to life and attack when approached. One will quickly learn that just because it ''looks'' broken doesn't mean that it necessarily is...
* SuddenlyVoiced: Rook doesn't have any voiced dialogue until they get into battle, where they talk all the time.
* {{Superboss}}: Much like its predecessor, the game has numerous tyrants that breach the level cap of 60.
** The most powerful Tyrant is the level 99 monster Telethia, the Endbringer. It's first shown in a cutscene near the end of Chapter 6, and is later challenged in a ZeroEffortBoss fight in an Affinity mission ("The Nopon Heir"). The real battle comes during the normal mission "A Fateful Choice".
** There's also [[DualBoss Neilnail Albus and Neilnail Furvus]], a pair of [[MiniMecha Skells]] fought in the 'Twin Dolls of Mystery' Time Attack mission. They were originally supposed to be a story boss, but that plot thread was scrapped.
** The Global Nemeses, Telethia Plume and Yggralith Zero, put an interesting spin on this. They appear on the online mission list when a certain amount of multiplayer tasks have been completed, but instead of beating them, you're supposed to just deal as much damage as possible to them within 8 minutes (or until you die three times). This takes away from an absolutely '''massive''' healthpool shared across every player meaning thousands of players need to work together over the course of about a real time week to actually kill either of them.
** Completing the game adds five powerful Tyrants to the world: Dadaan, the Strongest Prone, who summons [[ZergRush his squad]] and will scrap your Skell with his bazooka if you try to use one against him; Lugalbanda, the Wanderer-King, which can debilitate you with EyeBeams and summon ovis to eat for healing; Gradivus, the Headless Emperor, a BarrierChangeBoss millesaur with a permanently destroyed neck and ''[[MarathonBoss 100 million HP]]''; Leva'el, the Terminus, a [[TheBattlestar Xern]] that summons squads of enemy Skells and Satellis units and has a OneHitKill KillSat attack; and Nardacyon, the Shadowless, a souped-up version of the Chapter 7 boss and a LightningBruiser extraordinaire that is summoned if you try to fight its pilot Nahum, the Red Hare while you're in a Skell. Some of these Tyrants drop unique weapons or special augments that add reflect effects to certain auras and Overdrives, and most of them drop unique holofigures.
** Also found in the postgame are several non-Tyrant mission bosses at or over level 60, such as Blood Despair, the Gleaming Sphinxes, Ozuchi Caladar, and Nopopon Incarnate.
* SuperMode: Overdrive is both this for the characters and the Skells. By sacking 3,000 TP, the characters temporarially gain a boost in attack power and the ability to spam their arts with little cooldown. When you first get it, it's a tad bit AwesomeButImpractical since the TP cost is rather steep and it doesn't last very long, but once you reach end game, through proper use of TP Gain augments and certain art sets, it's very possible to permanently stay in Overdrive mode for the rest of the fight after you activate it.
* SuperPersistentPredator: Enemies will chase you ''far'' longer than in the original Xenoblade; it takes considerable effort to run away from a hostile indigen.
* TakeYourTime:
** [[spoiler:The degradation of the Lifehold's core]] only increases when you decide to continue with the main story.
** [[spoiler:Nagi]] has a busy schedule as a [[spoiler:Secretary]], but you would forget about that if you have him in the party for 24+ in-game hours straight. This also applies to the other [=BLADEs=] who have do other missions on their own time, yet you can have them in party for a very long time.
** Even though the Ganglion are mercilessly attacking the shields of [[spoiler:the Lifehold Core]], they'll never break through until you go in.
* TechnologyUplift: Very downplayed at first. A quick, glossed-over line in the opening cutscene mentions that humanity, despite being technologically outclassed by the aliens that attacked their planet, had "known the war was coming" and had prepared themselves for it. Despite Earth being their only home, humans were well-prepared for FTL velocity, space travel, as well as alien world colonization. The Skells they use are also fairly new to them, as they're the only species that hasn't figured out how to make theirs fly (at first). A Ma-non engineer comments mid-way through the game that there's a significant disparity between different areas of human technology: some of it is primitive, and some of it is surprisingly advanced. He assumes that humanity must have had a random super-genius come along and invent the advanced stuff. The intrigue involved with this, as well as how humans caught up in technology so fast, is brought up by BigBad Luxaar in the final mission. It turns out that this was all thanks to [[spoiler:Elma, the alien who warned humanity of the war]], and helped them jumpstart their technology to survive it.
* TechPoints: Two varieties, CP and BP: the former are accumulated from killing enemies along with EXP and are used to level up your classes in order to learn more Arts and passive skills, while the latter are received from missions, finding new base camps, and performing Field Actions on the various alien artifacts and flora you can find and are used to level up said Arts and passive skills.
* TeleportingKeycardSquad: Very often, seemingly unguarded Miranium deposits or treasure boxes have enemies set to ambush you just as you're setting the probe. At least one Tyrant will only appear if you approach a certain treasure box.
* TemporaryOnlineContent: Once the servers go down, a lot of content will go with it:
** Division Rewards such as Salvage Tickets cannot be obtained.
** The Global Nemeses, as well as Phanatos, the Netherlord, are gone for good, and their drops can only be obtained from the Reward Tickets obtained by completing the survey of Mira.
** Reward Tickets cannot be obtained very easily. Good luck finding those Crude Neilnail Masks!
** BLADE Scouts and Division Support are gone.
** Any and all achievements relating to online mode, such as doing Squad Missions or Tasks, fighting the Global Nemesis, scouting [=BLADE=]s, getting Division Support, and obtaining every Holofigure, are unobtainable.
** Due to the shutdown of Miiverse in November 2017, BLADE Reports can no longer be sent, and the achievements relating to them can no longer be obtained.
* TertiarySexualCharacteristics: The alien races that are not very humanoid (such as the Nopon and the Ma-Non) possess characteristics that make it easy to tell them apart. For example, they may be [[PaleFemalesDarkMales lighter in color]], have Tareme eyes drawn to look like they have eyeliner, or have slightly wider hips. Some of them (such a female Nopon) are even pink.
* TimeTravel: Professor B is from the future. His sidequests are about him trying to return via a Back to the Future car. What ends up as a funny set of references also ends as a disturbing important episode for the plot as a whole, [[spoiler:because it reveals that the planet Mira won't even allow someone to bend time to escape it.]]
* TheEndOrIsIt: The epilogue reveals [[spoiler:a revived Lao who is approached by a mysterious character who is only identified as "BlackKnight" showing that there is more unidentified forces to deal with on Mira.]]
* ThemeNaming:
** The two main Wrothians are Ga Jiarg and Ga Buidhe, which are similar to the names of two mythical spears owned by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diarmuid_Ua_Duibhne Diarmuid Ua Duibhne]]: Gáe Dearg and Gáe Buidhe, literally "red spear" and "yellow spear". To carry the connection further, Ga Jiarg [[note]]"Jiarg" is Manx Gaelic for "red" while "Dearg" is Irish Gaelic[[/note]] has red/orange fur, and Ga Buidhe wields a polearm.
** Given that the ColonyShip that brought everyone to Mira is named the White Whale, it's natural that there are plenty of ''Literature/MobyDick'' and Creator/HermanMelville references in several collectibles and areas of New Los Angeles.
** Tatsu's siblings are named for puns on the numbers 2-6 in Japanese, a theme that was LostInTranslation.
* ThereAreNoTherapists:
** Someone suffering PTSD like Lao or Irina (who lost family on Earth) and Reggie (who survived a monster attack by abandoning his unit as they were eaten) has no known outlet to cope and get a grip on their emotions. The closest NLA has are Hope and Joy, who are not certified therapists in any sense--just very good at listening and giving advice, and recommending how playing sports (tennis in particular) is good for lowering stress, respectively. From a Watsonian (in-universe) perspective, this can be {{Hand Wave}}d by saying no therapists were on the White Whale or survived the crash. From a Doylist perspective, it could be because the game was made in Japan, where therapy is a very taboo and shameful thing to be made known.
** Another major issue with this point is that Elma flat out tells Vandham that PTSD cases like Lao and Irina are ''expected'', considering what everyone went through on Earth, then in space, then on Mira. [[spoiler:And there are the bombs dropped during TheReveal at the very end of the game.]] Considering all of this, mental health ''should'' have been a major priority on the White Whale and in New LA. Again, this can partially be HandWaved by assuming that most of the designated therapists died (or were lost) during the crash on Mira, but that still seems odd considering that most other essential crew at least survived well enough to function.
* ThereIsAnother:
** [[spoiler:Concept art of [[http://40.media.tumblr.com/2e42dd6f88ad4cf8b7a07210c1f9691d/tumblr_o04mq2S0PS1rhxw9lo5_1280.jpg Mira]] reveals another city on Mira exists, possibly [[http://www.fangirl.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/partsecret06_B.jpg New Tokyo]] confirming that the White Whale is not the only survivor of the invasion on Earth as well as unexplored continents a few [[NonPlayerCharacter NPCs]] mentioned in-game.]]
** [[spoiler:There is a quest from Lara Nara to locate a piece of the Lifehold in Sylvalum, only to discover--aside from some Milsaadi setting up an ambush--that it's from another ship.]]
* ThisIsADrill: The massive Goliath Piledriver Skell superweapon is a cross between a drill and a pile bunker, [[ShapedLikeItself as per the name]]. It also does more damage when hitting things from behind leading to the obvious joke.
* ThongOfShielding: The Six-Stars heavy legwear on women show this. Goetia wears one by default.
* ThreePointLanding: You do this upon landing from a very long fall, and ''everyone'' does it in cutscenes.
* ToBeContinued: The epilogue of the main story ends with an equivalent: "this story never truly ends" or "this story is never ending" in the Japanese version rather than displaying TheEnd on-screen.
* ToughLove: A common theme over and over again throughout the story is that people who lose their nerve or are unfit for combat/duty/responsibility need some tough love to keep them in line. In particular are Bozé and Corwin, who both resort to physical violence against one of their soldiers suffering from PTSD in two separate missions. No other alternatives are suggested, and as stated below, ThereAreNoTherapists in this game. The theme exists in civilian facets too, such as the newlywed husband of a Prone woman whose father-in-law says he will use tough love to toughen his son-in-law until he's fit to protect his daughter.
* TrademarkFavoriteFood: The Ma-non love pizza. LOVE it. They consider frozen pizza a good trade for the technological secrets the Ganglion were trying to kill them for.
* TransformingMecha: All of the Skells have a vehicle mode they can switch into whenever they please. Depending on the model, you might end up with a three-wheeler, four-wheeler, or even a tank.
* TranslationConvention: {{Lampshaded}} in an early chapter, when Elma finally questions exactly how humanity is able to understand all these aliens without any lingual difficulties. L at least has the excuse that he was obsessively studying human records and learned English that way, but the Nopon and Ma-non have no trouble communicating either, despite having had zero contact with humans beforehand. They ask Tatsu about it, and Tatsu replies that from his perspective, they've all been speaking the Nopon language like natives from the moment they met. Everyone's confused but don't have the time to question it any further at the moment.
* TravelingAtTheSpeedOfPlot:
** The game has a "traveling companions" mechanic that shows characters who are supposed to be "traveling with you" to and from certain locations. However, only one of these characters (Tatsu) is visibly shown to be travelling with you (and only if Lin is in the party). Other than that, the character will usually already be waiting for you when you arrive at the destination (some will even chide you for being "late"). For that matter, characters who are NOT Blades or combatants in any way can somehow make it all the way to places like Oblivia (with heat waves, level 30+ monsters and electromagnetic storms) or even '''''Cauldros''''' without any assistance or protection while full-fledged BLADE members can barely travel five feet without needing backup.
** And then there are the "retrieve my pet" missions. The first few aren't so bad -- a cat you retrieve from a waterfall in Primordia, a dog that's at the bottom of a cave a few minutes' walk from N.L.A. -- but in the late game, you're left wondering how in the hell a Dalmatian made it to an enemy base, on a FloatingContinent ''two continents and an ocean away''.
* TreacherousQuestGiver:
** There are a lot of examples of quest-givers that wind up turning on Rook, but the main story example is [[spoiler:Lao, who starts two Story Missions (Chapter 6 and Chapter 9, specifically) and is revealed to be TheMole.]]
** On the sub-quest side, there are [[spoiler:Fosdyke and Moorhouse, who feign being the victims of a cover-up, but turn out to have been in on the plan the entire time.]] That same quest is later followed up with [[spoiler:Ga Bewhe, who feigns helping the player in giving out vital information, but then betrays them ''and'' [[RedHerring Adolphus]] and takes all the cash reward for herself. Her intentions were pure though, as a follow up on the quest reveals that she spent all the money on medicine for her people and quickly became known as the "Wrothian Robin Hood". In addition, if you visit the mountain northeast of FN 312 in Oblivia while it rains, you can find Ga Bewhe and she'll explain herself and give you a cut of the money]].
** Then there's the hindsighted example of [[spoiler:Alex, who is a xenophobic and genocidal terrorist]].
** Depending on the player's actions, there's also the more [[LighterAndSofter domestic]] examples of [[spoiler:either Leroy or Loda and De Ezich]], where the player doesn't follow through with the quest giver's demands and the quest giver attacks you out of anger. [[spoiler:Nobody gets seriously hurt though.]]
* TreeTrunkTour: A large hollow tree can be found and entered in Noctilum, and it's connected to a network of trunk bridges that lead to other areas of the continent. Notably, a sidequest involving Mia starts here.
* TrialAndErrorGameplay: There are several missions in which picking the wrong dialogue choice results in an innocent NPC's death. At least three of these missions require you to overhear information from somebody in the massive New Los Angeles or the many BLADE camps scattered across Mira in order to even be ''able'' to make a life-saving choice; one of them requires you to have obtained a certain rare collectible on top of that. Two other missions require you to be able to know the geography of a region and the attacks of a specific enemy type, respectively, from memory.
* TrialByCombat: The Wrothians love to implement these. Any uncertainties or disagreements are typically settled with a fight of some sort (sometimes on foot, sometimes in Skells). Most Wrothians will gladly step down and let the winner dictate things after the trial by combat is over, but a few require either additional convincing or will demand that their life be ended because they can't bring themselves to agree with the outcome. Even the latter, however, will be more amenable to some sort of compromise.
* TurnsRed: A vast majority of enemies get the "Enraged" status when their health gets low or an appendage is broken, increasing their offensive power. Many of the special Tyrants with descriptive text also change the flow of battle after taking certain amounts of damage or certain requirements being met. For example, Pyotr the Shepherd in Noctilum will turn enraged if you kill the two Ovis that he's watching over.
* TutorialFailure: The few tutorials you get at the beginning of the game are accurate, but incomplete; they cover ''maybe'' 10% of the game's actual mechanics. While some of the stuff they skip over isn't needed to beat the main game (changing Soul Voices, how to control characters other than Rook, etc.), it also skims over things like how to increase survey percentages (each hex has a specific objective that increases the survey percentage; doing other stuff in that hex won't get you any points) and how to switch out your party members (you have to go to their locations in NLA and talk to them to add them to your party). The game also clearly indicates the elemental properties of attacks and armour, but doesn't clearly indicate which elements enemies are weak/resistant to. Unless you [[ReadTheFreakingManual read the]] [[https://cdn03.nintendo-europe.com/media/downloads/games_8/emanuals/wii_u_6/xenoblade_chronicles_x/ElectronicManual_WiiU_XenobladeChroniclesX_EN.pdf manual]] which should make the gameplay easier to understand.
* TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture: The game takes place in 2056 A.D. Earth was destroyed in 2054.
* UncommonTime: While partly in 4/4, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS-oMrE0_DQ z30huri2ba0tt12le1110]] also has fairly long 6/4 parts.
* UndergroundMonkey: There are lots and lots and '''lots''' of variants of certain enemy types, which are only differentiated by their level, location, size, and/or [[PaletteSwap color scheme]]. There are a few similarities between certain species, though there's still a very distinguished design between them.
** Liceors are similar in design to Saltats, but are found exclusively in Sylvalum. They have round feathers compared to the pointed feathers that Saltats have.
** Vigents are large ape-like quadrupedal creatures who inhabit Noctilum, Sylvalum, and Cauldros. Viragoes have more defined muscles, more eyes, and pointed horns on their heads. Buchwald, the Guardian, and Behemoth, the Netherdweller are tyrant Viragoes who happen to literally live underground. The former lives in Rockburrow Cave in Noctilum, and the latter at the bottom of the Abyss Reservoir in Sylvalum.
** Auravises and Jaculs both have long spear-like horns on their heads, but that is about where their similarities end. Jaculs have larger bodies, are more skeletal in design and have large fan-like tails, while Auravises have the gas sac between their wings, and have more bird-like features.
* UniqueEnemy:
** There's only one Millepod out of three that isn't a Tyrant in the game: the Brute Millepod you fight during the mission ''The Unbreakable Sword''.
** The Qlurian Skells only appear in a certain Timed Mission and a certain Squad Mission. They otherwise might as well not exist. No wonder they call it "The Unknown Threat".
** A few non-Tyrant, non-mission enemy species have only one (respawning) member. Such species include Mountain Sylooth, Goliath Sylooth, Lord Xe-dom, Macho Armored Suid, Jade Saltat, and Spore Filiavent.
** The Squad Mission "Hunting the Headless" has a unique millesaur variant, the Greedy Millesaur, which has the color scheme of Luciel, the Eternal but is missing its neck. It's also ''far'' lower level than other millesaurs.
* UniquenessDecay:
** At the beginning of the story, you're told that people who gain the privilege of driving a Skell are rare. The license to pilot one is only given to BLADE members, and then only the ''elite'' who prove that they're one of their most productive members. And ''then'', only if they pass a difficult test. And ''then'' only if they have the money to buy it themselves. However, by the time you are able to buy/pilot one yourself, suddenly ''everybody'' has one. Characters whom you have to buy one for in gameplay (such as Irina) have their own, and evil [=BLADEs=] (such as [[spoiler:Alex, Gadd, and Fosdyke]] have one. Hell, even [[spoiler:Powell from Army Pizza]] has one, and ''he'' isn't even a BLADE! The last one gets lampshaded by the Ma-Non BLADE, Ackwar after the related sidequest ([[spoiler:[[GuideDangIt provided you did everything to ensure he survived it]]]]), pointing out that [[spoiler:Powell]] shouldn't have access to a Skell even if he's ex-military, leading him to suspect that he had outside help in claiming it.
** Inverted with the Telethia in terms of the game universes. In the original ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'', Telethia were an entire family of monsters [[spoiler:that are [[BodyHorror the devolved and mutated form]] of the High Entia race and [[GodIsEvil Zanza's]] antibodies]]. In ''X'', there are only two Telethia in the game, [[spoiler:both considered the planetary guardians of Mira]].
** Also inverted with playable characters who use sniper rifles. Lao and Bozé are the only two who use it, and [[spoiler:Lao becomes unplayable after Chapter 9]].
* {{Unobtainium}}: Miranium. It's a mineral vital to creating various things on Mira, and it's always in short supply. One Ma-non states that it's extremely malleable and can be both extremely hard or very soft depending on how it's manufactured, and can be used as a fission-based power source.
* UnusuallyUninterestingSight:
** No one comments on your appearance (save gender), no matter how crazy your PlayerCharacter gets. [[spoiler:After all, it's not your REAL body.]]
** At the same time, no one bats an eye when you park your skell on main street while you chat up the locals. This one is sadly an engine limitation, vehicles and shrubbery lack collision detection to prevent ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto''-style antics. On the other hand, this also means that everything that DOES have collision detection is unbreakable, meaning that you can leave your Skell kneeling down on some random park bench or chain-link fence without damaging it in the slightest.
** After you've found half of the lobsters for the Blood Lobster quest, the villain himself detonates a lobster in the commercial district after tricking some random citizens to gather at the spot. Nobody even mentions the explosion or the loss of life.
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: You introduce the Ma-non to [[TrademarkFavoriteFood pizza]]. Which, to some of them, becomes very...''very'' addictive. So much so that Army Pizza sees an explosion in sales. [[spoiler:Which overworks Camilla, the wife and co-owner of the establishment, until she commits suicide from the stress of dealing with it and pizza-crazed Ma-non. Her death prompts her husband, Powell, to become a SerialKiller that targets Ma-non, which leads to a lot of innocent Ma-non and Powell himself being killed in the end.]]
* UselessUsefulSpell: The [[spoiler:Chimeroid]] Slayer and [[spoiler:Chimeroid]] Criticals Up augments for Skells are only really useful during Chapter 12, as afterwards the only remaining enemy that they work against is found in an area that Skells can't enter (unless you glitch your way in).
* TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon: The final story mission in the game takes place inside [[spoiler:the Lifehold Core, located very far from any of the five continents explored up to that point]].
* VideoGameCaringPotential:
** Once it becomes apparent that some {{Non Player Character}}s can die during side quests as a result of your decisions (usually by accident), you may start being more evaluative about the decisions you make to reduce the number of preventable deaths that can occur (or [[SaveScumming prepared to Save Scum]] or [[GuideDangIt do some research]]).
** Like the previous game, there's also an incentive to preserve positive relations between characters, and the wrong choice in missions (and in Affinity Shifts too) can send those relations downhill.
* VideoGameCrueltyPotential:
** On the flipside, not only can you make your character out to be a {{Jerkass}} through some dialog decisions that go far beyond PragmaticHero, some of the preventable NPC deaths you can cause can be a result of you executing them or [[MurderByInaction choosing to do nothing about their trouble]]. In some cases [[TheFarmerAndTheViper this is the]] [[KickTheSonOfABitch right thing to do]].
** It's possible to kill certain enemies through stomping on them with your Skell over and over. Watching them get launched so high into the air can be sadistically funny.
** It's also possible to kill weaker enemies with overpowered weapons in a single hit. Sometimes this is the best way of racking up kill counts for Squad Tasks.
** [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking You can repeatedly bump into citizens walking along NLA for no real reason other than to be a dick]].
* VideoGameFlight: Flight modules for [[MiniMecha skells]] can be unlocked late in the game. Flying allows players to access areas of the planet Mira that would otherwise be inaccessable and challenge flying monsters, including a few {{superboss}}es, at the expense of continuously using fuel (and doubling fuel consumption during battle).
* VideoGamePerversityPotential: The Character Creation allowed the ability to adjust a female PC's height and breast size. Fearing this trope would ensue, the breast slider was removed for the international release. However, while some of the armor pieces where changed to be more modest (most notably the swimsuits) many people still outfitted the female party members with the skimpiest or skin-tight armor the game had, most notably the 13-year old Lin.
* ViolationOfCommonSense:
** During ''L's Conundrum'', it's better off that Rook [[spoiler:''not'' recommend the kind of products that the two customers are looking for during their request. Thomas won't be satisfied with the honey smoke bomb and Nelly won't be too happy with the cooking pot, but they won't mind getting the other two items]].
** For ''Child of Mira'', sending Orleron to see humans instead of his own kind, the Zaruboggan, for help, makes the mission slightly easier in the end (sending him to the humans only requires escorting him somewhere while sending him to the Zaruboggan requires a material from a particularly nasty enemy).
* VirtualPaperDoll: The gear you equip can be seen on your character. If you happen to find your stat-giving gear unfashionable or ridiculous, each character also has "fashion armor" slots, which provide the visuals without compromising stats.
* TheVirus: Some indigens in Noctilum are affected by a virus that turns them into black-colored flesh-hungry creatures with bolts of electricity coming out of their eyes, known as "the tainted." Fortunately, this virus can't survive outside of Noctilum, and the tainted indigens won't eat anything inorganic or other tainted. [[spoiler:That includes Mimeosomes and Skells, but ''definitely'' not Tatsu and L.]]
* WakeUpCallBoss:
** Many a new player who chooses to plow through the story missions right away has stumbled on the encounter with Goetia in Chapter 4, since it's the first fight in the story where brutal elemental attacks, the necessity of singling out certain enemy targets, and the value of soul voices really come into play. Getting through it requires fully wrapping one's head around how the combat system functions, as well as equipment upgrades and the various defense stats that need to be kept track of. This is made worse by the fact that not all of the game's complicated mechanics can be spoonfed to players, so you either need to look over the manual thoroughly or just ''really'' be paying attention.
** Chapter 5's battle against 3 Qmoeva Skells, nearly equal leveled and difficulty, can easily wreck your if you come in this battle not properly equipped with higher gear and not plan a good strategy. Hopefully, you did not just run away from most of the battles throughout this very long road before approaching this, right?
** Chapter 6 pits the player against tainted enemies, and culminates with a fight against a giant one. This stresses the absolute influence of Overdrive, and there's plenty of tainted enemies on the way to the objective (that won't attack the player despite the icons above them) to build up TP to prepare for this fight. Funny that this Chapter is required to [[CurbStompBattle finally get your skell]].
** Chapter 9's battle against the Wrothians will let you know that you can't [[CurbStompBattle just cheese your way through every human-sized opponent with Skells]] since the game won't let you use them in the first half and remind you to continue keeping your ground builds up to date. The fact that you're dealing with six powerful enemies at once means that you ''have'' to be able to handle their weaknesses, use Overdrive effectively, ensure that your teammates are of a sufficient level and not just yourself, and equip your team with the best items and weapons you can just to survive. The second half, which throws a huge amount of Skells at you, may tell you that the dinky level 20 Skell you started with won't cut it when you have to go through ''six'' powered-up Skells, as its low defenses and HP simply can't handle the punishment your enemies throw at it.
* WalkingTechbane: Jo, a barrista for a coffeeshop in the commercial district, just has absolute horrible luck with machines. Everything she touches breaks. This includes numerous coffee makers, an espresso machine, a freezer, and even her own comm device. She sends you on a quest to gather some repair parts while she has a freak out over how useless she is. Fortunately, her boss easily forgives her and wants her to keep working. She's used to it by now.
* WarFromAnotherWorld: The premise of the game starts with Earth getting blown up in the crossfire of two alien forces. While one of the two factions actually was trying to kill off humanity, the planet was blown up by accident before they had a chance to actually destroy it. Humanity just barely managed to escape, and most of the fleeing ships didn't even make it out of orbit.
* TheWarHasJustBegun: The endings invokes this, as [[spoiler:the Ganglion are defeated, the Lifehold Core is secure, and survey of Mira to make it safe for human habitation is underway. However, there are many questions left unanswered, many dangers still looming, and the Ganglion were ultimately only a ''tiny'' part of the larger Samaar Federation, whose interests and role is still unknown. That's not even counting the Ghosts. In short, the entire game was basically you playing Paul Revere, and the real war hasn't even started yet.]]
* TheWarSequence: Chapter 8, which, rather than being a mission where you explore someplace new and kill some enemies at your leisure, is an enormous assault by the Ganglion on your home base of New LA. Most of the Chapter consists of fighting wave after wave of enemy war machines as they bear down on the city while sirens roar, bullets fly, and explosions happen all around.
* WarmUpBoss: Lambert, The Divine Wind, is a level 15 Insidia Tyrant on the natural bridge leading to Chapter 4's end. There's no way to avoid it. Fortunately, it's not too difficult to defeat compared to most Tyrants of its size, but it's almost certainly there to test the player's capabilities for [[spoiler:Goetia]] mentioned above.
* TheWarSequence: [[spoiler:Chapter 8 subverts this trope. The Ganglion send an army to attack NLA, but Team Elma is tasked with protecting the East Gate and only that, even though you can prompt that you feel like taking on the whole army by yourself. Even though you fight off a fair share of enemies, Team Irina is shown fighting off far more enemies in the cutscenes]].
* WarpWhistle: Using the Wii U's [[UsefulNotes/GeneralGamingGamepads Game Pad]], players can warp to areas they have already visited.
* WaveMotionGun: The Hexad-Partican and Agashura-Cannon fire combined laser beams that can obliterate all but the must durable of enemies in a single hit.
* WeaponBasedCharacterization: Each class has their own weapon loadout, although certain ally characters have variant classes with alternate loadouts.
** Drifters use knives and assault rifles.
** Strikers, Samurai Gunners, and Duelists use [[{{BFS}} longswords]] and assault rifles.
** Shield Troopers and Bastion Warriors use [[LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe shields]] and [[GatlingGood gatling guns]].
** Commandos, Winged Vipers, and Full Metal Jaguars use [[DualWielding twin swords]] and [[GunsAkimbo twin guns]].
** Partisan Eagles and Astral Crusaders use javelins and sniper rifles.
** Enforcers, Psycorrupters, and Masterminds use knives and [[EnergyWeapon rayguns]].
** Blast Fencers and Galactic Knights use [[LaserBlade photon sabers]] and [[AttackDrone psycholaunchers]].
* WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou: When the playable character gets KO'd a thirty-second timer starts counting down. Your allies ''can'' finish off the enemy themselves during that time, and if they do the battle is won; they'll also revive you if possible (though this isn't terribly likely since it requires 3000 TP, which the AI rarely conserves). If the timer runs out, everyone else falls, or you simply choose to skip it, you are, again, sent back to a nearby landmark.
* WeHelpTheHelpless: BLADE's primary mission is to recover the Lifehold core, but they're generally designed to be able to respond to anything and everything that the citizens of New Los Angeles need. From fighting off dangerous Indigens and hostile Xenoforms, Scouting the planet and installing Data Probes, solving domestic disputes, [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking finding lost pets]], and anything else under Mira's five moons. Granted, BLADE IS divided into divisions that supposedly specialize in more specific fields but any BLADE, regardless of division, can accept any job if they feel they can handle it. So it's not uncommon for, say, a [[TheBigGuy Harrier]] to provide marriage counseling, or an [[TheBlacksmith Outfitter]] to gun down a rampaging [[AttackOfTheFiftyFootWhatever Millisaur]] if they need to. This is justified in universe, as humanity has only been living on the planet for a couple of months prior to the game's start, and they know next to nothing about it. Such flexibility is ideal in a situation where anything can happen.
* WeirdMoon: Mira has 5 moons, all but one of which are absolutely massive with the largest dominating the eastern night sky. They're each different colours, don't have phases, don't move in the sky and ''stars can be seen through them''.
* WeirdWeather: Planet Mira has weather patterns similar to Earth's, including rain and sandstorms. But its harsher environments have unusual weather phenomena that are unique to their respective continents. Such as: Oblivia's electromagnetic storms, Sylvalum's spore clouds, and Calduros' [[LethalLavaLand brimstone rain.]]
* WelcomeToCorneria: [=NPCs=] come in two varieties: generics you overhear and named ones you speak to. The dialogue changes as you explore and complete missions.
* WeUsedToBeFriends: In the "End of an Idealist" quest chain, [[spoiler:Alex]] says that the woman who's been foiling his plans, Eliza, used to be a friend and someone whom he saw eye-to-eye with (if Rook did make further attempts to negotiate with [[spoiler:Alex]] during ''Shotgun Diplomacy'').
* WeWinBecauseYouDidnt: Elma takes this approach after the Ganglion's assault on NLA, which also results in them stealing the mysterious super-mech the player recovered a few chapters earlier. Ryyz tries to claim that this was a Ganglion victory because they stole the mech, but Elma, intent on wounding Ryyz's pride, declares that so long as the human city of NLA is standing, regardless of how much damage it took, then it's the Ganglion's loss. Since they couldn't destroy the city completely, humanity wins. Ryyz is reduced to barely coherent rage at this.
* WhamEpisode:
** Chapter 5, in which [[spoiler:Cross gets their arm blown off, revealing [[AlienBlood blue blood]] and [[RoboticReveal metal servos]].]]
** Chapter 8, in which [[spoiler:the Ganglion attack NLA and successfully steal The Vita.]]
** Chapter 11, in which [[spoiler:Lao is revealed to be a traitor and steals an experimental Skell, The Prog Ares, and the revelation that the selection process for who made it aboard the [[TheArk White Whale]] wasn't as fair as previously thought.]]
** Chapter 12. Nearly everything, but especially the realization that [[spoiler:the internal structure of the Lifehold Core was destroyed upon crash-landing, and yet the mimeosomes that sustain the physical life of humans still work just fine]].
* WhamLine: The game manages to fit one into TheStinger.
-->'''Elma:''' The system, everyone's consciousnesses and memories, the entire database... [[spoiler:has been destroyed for some time!]]
* WhamShot: In Chapter 5, Rook [[TakingTheBullet pushes Tatsu out of the way of a massive energy blast]] and is sent flying. After they land, they try to clutch their left arm in pain but realise that [[spoiler:it's been blown clean off. Instead of what they expected to see, they find [[RoboticReveal a sparking, mechanical stump]]]].
* WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong: The game itself asks you this when, for an affinity mission, you make the somewhat dubious choice of teaming up with a person named [[spoiler:Murderess]].
* WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove: Half of the xenos who come to New LA don't understand the concept of love. So it's especially hilarious when they start dealing with romantic feelings for the first time in their sidequests.
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: A reoccurring theme throughout the game. As more Xeno lifeforms migrate to NLA, many sidequests will become available specifically dealing with human's anxieties to sharing their homes with these new races. This get pushed even further in the last chapter when it's revealed that [[spoiler:the true human bodies were left on Earth, with the plan to have new cloned bodies serve as the substitutes. This causes a minor identity crisis with Doug, who questions if they can even be considered humans anymore if they will no longer be returning to their old bodies.]]
* WideOpenSandbox:
** In contrast to its predecessor ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1'', which was more of a stage 5 on the SlidingScaleOfLinearityVsOpenness. Players are not restricted to exploring the map as defined by the story, either. If you want to run to Sylvalum or Noctilum at a low level, you're free to do so, provided you can get around the numerous hazards in your way if you don't just want to swim there. There are even low level monsters scattered around the other continents, just as there are high level monsters interspersed in Primordia.
** According to ''Magazine/NintendoForce'' editor Lucas Thomas, the game world is bigger than the worlds of ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', ''VideoGame/TheWitcher3WildHunt'', and ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' ''combined''. It is so big that Thomas spent four hours simply running around the world map, seeing how far he could get, and cleared little more than three percent of the map.[[note]]This is a severe misnomer, as the game grades map completion by completing key objectives in each cell, not by simply traveling there.[[/note]]
* WingedUnicorn: Progens and Monoceroses are giant alien unicorns with wing-shaped projections, though they cannot fly.
* WitchWithACapitalB: According to the game's subtitles, Elma calls Goetia a "Samaarian witch" in Chapter 6. Most players are in agreement that this is definitely not what Creator/CaitlinGlass actually said.
* WithCatlikeTread: No matter how much you run, stomp, jump, or fly around, as long as you don't step into an enemy's aggro range, they'll never notice you, so sneaking around them can turn into this at times. Augments exist to crank this trope up to eleven as well, reducing aggro range of enemies.
* TheWorldIsJustAwesome: After getting introduced to NLA Rook and Elma walk out into Primordia, and the camera cuts back and forth to different parts and Indigens to show off how amazing and beautiful and exciting Mira is.
* WorldsSmallestViolin: The game occasionally has fun with its {{Dialogue Tree}}s and players have the option to make their PlayerCharacter act snarky. One such instance is responding to another character complaining that you are crushing his business reputation by how well you are doing by, "Rubbing your fingers together like you're playing the world's smallest violin"
* WorldsStrongestMan: Dadaan, the Strongest Prone is this for the Prone (obviously). [[{{Superboss}} It's not a lie, either.]]
* YouAreACreditToYourRace: Inverted by the Ma-non. Even after a xenophobe attempted to round up and exterminate a large crowd of them [[spoiler:under the guise of a inter-species relations seminar]], the would-be victims quite amicably tell [[PlayerCharacter Rook]] that they know every race has its bad examples and they aren't going to tar all humanity with the same brush due to one extremist.
* YouBastard: Surprisingly, the game goes out of its way as much as it can to make you feel horrible for pursuing the ultimate {{Superboss}} of the game. [[spoiler:The Telethia shows up during the main story to save the party from a hopeless situation, though they do theorize it may have been taunting them over its power, and when you have to face it in an affinity quest to get an item from it, its stats are lower as if holding back, and it cuts the battle after dealing one-fourth of its health, giving the item you were after while possibly deeming you worthy to live on the planet. Its enemy description even describes it as 'guardian of life'. And when you ''do'' encounter it outside of the affinity mission, it's non-aggressive. It'll only attack in self-defense once you attack it first, and it's death animation is rather disturbing to watch.]] Despite all this, you can still gun it down for the thrill of the challenge, and to complete a Tyrant tile to achieve OneHundredPercentCompletion.
* ZipMode: The game features landmarks across the world to Fast Travel to, to the point where nearly half the hex grids on any continent's given map have warp spots in them. The game counters this by making the process of exploration both the entire point of the game and a game-long reward in itself, so that players will sometimes still want to take the long way around even though they don't have to.
[[/folder]]

** The various Skell Superweapons you can develop for your Skells are split between InfinityPlusOneSword and this; the ones that fall into the former category generally have the highest overall damage values, on top of other properties that allows their damage to be boosted high enough to OneHitKill even the strongest Tyrants, while the ones in the latter category tend to be the ones that take up four weapon slots to equip, take up huge chunks of fuel, take an incredibly long time to activate, and have better alternatives. The Hexad Partican is probably the most obvious example of this, since it's the only superweapon you can get without having to make it yourself; it takes up the aforementioned four slots to equip, costs 1200 fuel per shot, and a good number of Skell weapons do the same thing it does except better and with just two slots. Dragoon Lance is another big example; it also takes up four slots to equip, it rarely (if ever) comes across a normal enemy group that can survive its entire attack while being too weak against singular Tyrants on its own, and you can't move or use other attacks when it's in use and it takes 10 seconds until the attack finally executes.

** The Skell version of these are Superweapons: with the exception of a single one you get as an affinity quest reward, you need a large number of materials to make them and the blueprints for level 60 versions of them are only gotten from finishing affinity quests. Although some of these Superweapons border on AwesomeButImpractical.

** Skell-wise, both Ares models are significantly easier to make than other level 60 Skells and have extremely high starting stats and a weapon that's compareable to other superweapons in damage output. However, you can't change their equipment, meaning that outside of their augments, their power can't be increased with stronger weapons and they only have 4 weapons, meaning they'll have to wait for their cooldown that's much longer to use any of them again and they miss out on a significant number of augment slots. That being said, making a normal level 60 Skell that can consistently outdamage an Ares and has overall higher stats is a massive time and materials investment and isn't really that useful for anything besides the novelty of being able to take down the strongest {{Superboss}}es in a [[OneHitKill single hit.]]

* WaveMotionGun: The Hexad Partican and Agashura Cannon fire combined laser beams that can obliterate all but the must durable of enemies in a single hit.

** Every single material dropped by any enemy in the game, even {{Bonus Boss}}es, can be bought directly by redeeming them with Reward Tickets, which you get whenever you or anyone else in your online squad completes a squad task, which typically involve simply collecting large amounts of materials or defeating certain types of enemies. You still need to hunt down collectable materials the old way, but they're much easier to find in large amounts and to respawn than in the [[VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles1 previous game]].

** This the priority order of background enemy music: Wildlife creature fought on foot < Wildlife creature fought with a Skell < Ganglion or Ganglion-related creature fought on foot < Ganglion or Ganglion-related creature fought with a Skell < The ambush theme (when it finishes it reverts to the relevant song) < Tyrant < [[BonusBoss Superboss]] < Telethia. There are other battle themes, but they're tied to bosses from story chapters, Affinity missions and the like, so there's no way to test which themes they can override (though it's implied this includes all of them except Telethia's).

* VideoGameFlight: Flight modules for [[MiniMecha skells]] can be unlocked late in the game. Flying allows players to access areas of the planet Mira that would otherwise be inaccessable and challenge flying monsters, including a few [[BonusBoss superbosses]], at the expense of continuously using fuel (and doubling fuel consumption during battle).

** The Battle UI directly tells you which side of a targeting enemy you're currently facing. This means you can reliably know when to use Arts that have direction-based effects. In ''Xenoblade Chronicles 1'', you had to guess based on the enemy's model.

* SequelEscalation: Well, more of a thematic sequel Escalation, but still...

** The questline for an NPC named "Professor B" not only has you build a time machine out of a luxury car, but the arms manufacturer you unlock for completing it is called "Factory 1.21", both of which are references to ''Film/BackToTheFuture''.

%%* BladeOnAStick: The Javelin weapon class.

** The two main Wrothians are Ga Jiarg and Ga Buidhe, which are similar to the names of two mythical spears owned by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diarmuid_Ua_Duibhne Diarmuid Ua Duibhne]]: Gáe Dearg and Gáe Buidhe, literally "red spear" and "yellow spear". To carry the connection further, Ga Jiarg [[note]]"Jiarg" is Manx Gaelic for "red" while "Dearg" is Irish Gaelic[[/note]] has red/orange fur, and Ga Buidhe wields a [[BladeOnAStick polearm]].

** Partisan Eagles and Astral Crusaders use [[BladeOnAStick javelins]] and sniper rifles.

* SequelEscalation: Well, more of a ThematicSequel Escalation, but still...

** There's a number of weapons that far outclass normally available weapons' damage rating and have passive skills to match, but they're only either dropped by a single {{Superboss}} each or need a large number of rare materials and a maxed out arms manufacturer level to create or buy.

** Skell-wise, both Ares models are significantly easier to make than other level 60 Skells and have extremely high starting stats and a weapon that's compareable to other superweapons in damage output. However, you can't change their equipment, meaning that outside of their augments, their power can't be increased with stronger weapons and they only have 4 weapons, meaning they'll have to wait for their cooldown that much longer to use any of them again and they miss out on a significant number of augment slots. That being said, making a normal level 60 Skell that can consistently outdamage an Ares and has overall higher stats is a massive time and materials investment and isn't really that useful for anything besides the novelty of being able to take down the strongest {{Superboss}}es in a [[OneHitKill single hit.]]

* FeatheredDragons: The Telethia is a large dragon covered in feathers and scales, and is claimed to be the fabled guardian of Mira. It shows up a few times through the game to save the humans from disasterous scenarios, its scales have curative properties (which it only gives to those it deems worthy), and it only attacks you in self defense (meaning you have to attack it first).

* CliffHanger: While humankind's immediate future on Mira is secure, [[spoiler:it turns out that the Lifehold control system was destroyed during atmospheric entry Mira, meaning everyone should have died months ago.]] Additionally [[spoiler:Lao's alive, and has seemingly recovered a flesh and blood body.]] What any of this means will need at least one sequel to explain (and the game's follow-ups, ''Xenoblade Chronicles 2'' and ''3'', opted for presenting different stories on their own).

* WeAllLiveInAmerica: Despite the White Whale and its crew being primarily American, many of the themes and cultural values of the developers' native Japan shine through. For example, during an Affinity Mission for Lao, Lin accidentally says something that upsets Lao and when Rook tries to cheer her up and fails, Rook falls to the ground in a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogeza Dogeza pose]]. Also, characters are very quick to assume the best intentions of someone who works hard and personal problems are brushed off as too personal to bring up. For example, despite numerous issues that jeopardize the lives of his teammates, everyone gives Lao a lot of slack. Of course, since this story takes place forty years in the future of its release (plus the exceptional circumstances they're in), who knows how cultural values have changed.