Xenoblade Chronicles X / Tropes A - J

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A-E

• 20 Bear Asses: Many quests require you to obtain materials from slain enemies to complete them.
• 100% Completion: 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+ superbosses...
• Absurdly Low Level Cap: 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.
• Ability Required to Proceed: Many regions, probe sites, and Affinity Missions can't be discovered or completed until after chapter 9, when Skell's flight pack becomes available.
• Abnormal Ammo: Physical-element guns use bullets, but other types fire ether, shoot flame or electricity, or create gravity fields.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Some recruitable NPCs, say that they can join you in the spare time from their rather busy schedules. Fortunately for you these rare moments always seem to come up whenever you approach them, and last as long as you need them to.
• Achievement Mockery: The game offers achievements for:
  • Suffering a Total Party Kill for the first time.
  • Suffering a Total Party Kill fifty times.
  • Getting your Skell destroyed for the first time.
  • Running out of Skell fuel.
  • Falling into a Bottomless Pit.
  • Falling into a bottomless pit one hundred times.
  • Failing an online mission.
• Action Prologue: 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.
• Adam and Eve Plot: 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.
• Adaptational Heroism: Telethia in the first game are vicious creatures that kill anything they see out of simple savagery. In X, Telethia the Endbringer not only spares Team Elma 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, and can attack it anyway if you want the fight of your life. There's also the Nemesis^note multiplayer co-op boss Telethia Plume, which is just considered a very threatening indigen that shows up every now and then.
• Adventure Guild: 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 (asynchronous) 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.
• An Adventurer Is You: There are six paths to level up your character^note three at the start, each of which splits into two specialized class paths, 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.
• After the End: Earth is destroyed in the opening cinematic, two years before the start of the game.
• The Alleged Car: 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.
• Alien Landmass: 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.
• All There in the Manual: The official website has 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 phase through solid matter and their Skells are powered by matter-antimatter reactors. The 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 stay behind on Earth and not get her mind digitized and uploaded to the Lifehold because she valued her human body that much.
• Aliens Are Bastards: The humans didn't want any part of the alien war, but that didn't stop the combatants from shooting most of them down as the humans tried to escape Earth. At least the Ganglion have a reason to attack humans since they are descendants of a mysterious race known as the Samaarians whom created the 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.
• Alien Invasion: Subverted - there wasn't any landing; rather, the Earth was destroyed in the ongoing war between two alien races. One of them pursued, intending to finish the survivors.
• Alien Sky: Not so much during the day, but there are four very prominent moons visible in the night sky.
• Aliens Speaking English: Played straight. All alien species encountered are able to speak English with considerable fluency. 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 L'cirufe, who admits to learning English by studying the data contained inside a Lifehold archive of the Library of Congress.
• All Deaths Final:
  • 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. 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. 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. Alex will kill the three Ma-non if you look on instead of trying to stop him.
• All for Nothing: The ending reveals the Lifehold had been lost before the game even began, having been destroyed when it crash landed on Mira.
• Always a Bigger Fish:
  • The rather humiliating fact that the Ganglion are, 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 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 Telethia drops from the sky and rips all three apart.
• Always Chaotic Evil: The Marnucks and the Milsaadi serve little more than as the Mooks and Elite Mooks 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.
• Always Identical Twins: 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.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: The player character creator allows for skin tones that are naturally impossible for humans. Justified as the player character's body is a robot "mimeosome", or "Blue Blood" in the Japanese version.
• Ambiguously Bi: 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.
• Ambiguous Robots:
  • The Milsaadi are a species of Silicon-Based Life, 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.
  • 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).
• American Kirby Is Hardcore: The giant robots were changed from "Dolls" to "Skells" in the English translation for this reason.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: The game maintains the Virtual Paper Doll 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 20 Bear Asses style quests, which is nothing new, but actually justified. Resources are tight on Mira, new threads actually are a pretty valuable incentive.
• And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: 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.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • 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 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 superbosses, 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 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 Point of No Return, 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.
• Anti-Grinding:
  • 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.
• Applied Phlebotinum: 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.
• Antagonist Abilities: 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 superbosses, which have access to attacks and abilities that normal members of their species lack.
• Apocalypse How: 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.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Your party consists of up to four members, and 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.
• Arch-Enemy: Several quest chains have these:
  • 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 Justin took up the mantle of the Blood Lobster was to become one for Rook, but not because they bear Rook any ill will or grudge, no; it's because the Blood Lobster is 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, Rook has the option to execute them for their actions, which is exactly what the Blood Lobster wants, or refuse to play the Lobster's game and spare them, which results in the Blood Lobster essentially self-inflicting a Fate Worse than Death.
• Arc Words: "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 the Attack on New LA.
• An Arm and a Leg: The game uses this during a cutscene as the cornerstone of its Robotic Reveal.
• Artifact Title: 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 Player Character 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, Elma is a major character and she fits the term fine as she is a "xeno" and a BLADE member.
• Artificial Stupidity: 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 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.
• Artistic License – Economics: 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.
• Attack Drone: Psycho launchers used by the Blast Fencer/Galactic Knight. Also a weapon option for Skells.
• Attract Mode: If you leave the game sit at the title screen, it'll start showing off Scenery Porn as the camera moves through the landscapes of Mira.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: 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.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: Going up against any of the Tyrants is a tall order. So they're highlighted by the accompaniment of "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.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The various Skell Superweapons you can develop for your Skells are split between Infinity +1 Sword 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 One-Hit Kill 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 Wii U Basic model^note which only has 8 GB of internal storage, you can either run the game in less optimal performance, buy compatible SD cards, buy and connect an external USB hard drive, 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 32 GB 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.
• Awful Truth:
  • Rook turning out to be an android and not completely human. It's also a Call-Back to the original ''Xenoblade Chronicles 1' as the main protagonist, Shulk, turned out to be a re-animated corpse and not a normal Homs. However, this is subverted in that 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 rich, powerful and connected used their influence to put themselves on the Arcs at the expense of the less fortunate. Learning that 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.
  • 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.
• Background Music Override:
  • 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.
• Back Stab: Back Slash makes a return, though it's hardly the only art that gets a damage bonus when striking from behind.
• Badass Crew: 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.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: If you want, all party members can be decked out in full-dress military garb and business suits.
• Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick:
  • 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).
• Barely-Changed Dub Name: The youngest BLADE member has her name Lynlee Ku changed to Lin Lee Koo overseas. The pronunciation is exactly the same.
• Battle Amongst the Flames: The battle against Ga Jiarg and his group of Wrothian warriors in Chapter 9 will suddenly shift to having fiery 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.
• Battle in the Rain: Chapter 8 is drenched with rain through the entire chapter, which is The War Sequence. Aside from that, any major fight can take place in the rain, and a few enemies will only appear in rain or thunderstorm.
• Battle Theme Music: There are a lot of boss themes. Most of the Tyrants use 'Uncontrollable', the first few story bosses as well as most of the Sidequest bosses use 'z37b20a13t01t08le'^note z37 battle, several later story bosses use 'NO.EX01', the boss of Chapter 11 uses the first half of 'aBOreSSs'^{note (spoilers)}Ares Boss, 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'^{note (major spoilers)}Lao Chimera/Telethia, the Final Boss uses the first half of 'The key we've lost', several of the superbosses use the last third of CR17S19S8^note Crisis, Yggralith Zero uses 'In the forest <X→Z ver.>', some of the Time Attack bosses use an instrumental version of 'Uncontrollable', while Telethia, the Endbringer, the strongest superboss in the game, uses the second half of 'raTEoREkiSImeAra'. Finally, both the final fight against Rexo Skell (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
• The Battlestar: Xerns are essentially flying aircraft carriers, but they wield enough firepower to make them even more powerful than the squadrons of Skells they carry.
• Beef Gate:
  • 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.
• Belief Makes You Stupid: One of the questlines which splits from setting up the Water Filtration Plant involves 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 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 the "Super Weapons"; especially the Antimatter Round, Zenith Cannon, and the Skell-sized Hexad Partican most of all (seen @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 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.
• Biblical Motifs: 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 Noah and The Ark in the ending.
• Big Bad: Grandmaster Luxaar, the leader of the Ganglion. He's the figurehead commanding his race in their mission to drive humanity to extinction, all because humans are descendants of the Samaarians and their existence is deemed by the Ganglion a big danger to theirs.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: 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 Millepods and the legendarily massive Sabula Tyrants.
• Bigger on the Inside: With the possible exception of the Zu Pharg, all Skells (both human and xeno-made) seem to have spacious cockpits compared to their actual in-game model size.
• Bittersweet Ending: 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 Heel–Face Door-Slam, 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.
• Bizarre Alien Reproduction:
  • 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 One-Gender Race, and also reproduce asexually. The precise method isn't gone into, but the word they use for producing a child is "regurgitation".
• Bizarre Taste in Food: The Ma-non race love frozen pizza. Their introduction to the food has them sampling one such pizza without cooking it first.
• Blown Across the Room: Many of the guns don't noticeably knock down or back enemies on their own, but one sniper rifle art, "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.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • 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 the psychotic and rabid Tainted are obvious as to why they should be killed, Telethia also targets the Orpheans, apparently due to the "Ovah" virus they all carry. At the same time, it leaves the humans alone, despite their bodies being mechanical imitations of living creatures.
• Blunt Metaphors Trauma:
  • Almost everything L'cirufe says, mainly because he's self-taught to speak other species' languages 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.
• Bonus Dungeon: 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, Rexo Skell 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.
• Boss Bonanza: In the final story chapter, once your team enters the Lifehold Core, you'll have to fight and defeat Luxaar (the Big Bad) who's piloting a Vita (Skell), then a group of Chimeras, and finally a mutated form of Lao.
• Boss in Mook Clothing:
  • 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^*not counting squad missions, 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 if 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.
• Boss Remix: aBOreSSs, the unique theme for the Prog Ares fight, is a remix of a recurring theme from some cutscenes called D91M (Requiem).
• Bottomless Pit: 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 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.
• Bragging Rights Reward: 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.
• Brain Uploading: 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 Mira itself, uploaded the humans and kept them alive in their mimeosomes.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: "Tatsu no taste like chicken! Tatsu taste like poop! And poison! Tatsu taste like poison poop!"
• Break Meter: 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.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: 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.
• Broken Aesop:
  • 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, trying to deal with indigens peacefully almost never ends well. Suffice to say, there's no moral ramifications for 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 Gadd, Alex, Fraise, and Gus.
• Broken Bridge: 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.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: 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 Bubblegloop Swamp instead of a Shifting Sand Land.
• Butt-Monkey: 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.
• But Thou Must!:
  • ...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 if you'd really "refuse the people who saved your life"...and if you say no to THAT, 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 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.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": 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).
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": 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.)
• Call-Back: 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.
• Calling Your Attacks: 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 Ares model will call out the names of its signature weapons.
• The Cameo:
  • The Bionis and Mechonis from the previous game appear on a figurine, and one of the male Avatar voice options in both English and Japanese is Shulk, along with Fiora (English) and Shion, Melia and KOS-MOS (Japanese) for females.
  • The Japan-DLC characters all make an appearance when the team goes to fight at the Lifehold Core. Yelv is also shown providing backup for Elma in The Stinger.
• Camp Gay: 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.
• Can't Drop the Hero: 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 Joker, the Unknowable, which always generates 9,999 Experience every time.
• Cartography Sidequest: 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 the White Whale; particularly, what's left of the Lifehold. In return, 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.
• The Casanova: 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.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: 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! (muttering to herself) ...Almost as far as that stick up your butt.
• Central Theme: 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.
• Chain of Deals: 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. The person holding that card doesn't seem to find much value in it.
• Chainmail Bikini: 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...
• Character Customization: The player character can be customized in looks and name, a first for the Xeno series.
• Character Death: Subverted in regards to humanity. 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, Double Subverted 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 Killed Off for Real.
• Cliffhanger: While humankind's immediate future on Mira is secure, 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 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).
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: 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.
• Continuing is Painful: 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.
• Les Collaborateurs: How the Ganglion operate. They appear to a species with a mighty show-of-force and give them the option of Join or Die, and then sit back and watch as The Quislings 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.
• Colony Ship: 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.
• Collision Damage:
  • 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.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers:
  • 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.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: 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.
• Cosmic Horror Story: It's revealed partway through the game that 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 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.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Bosses and Tyrants are universally immune to Brainjack and Servant Sacrifice.
• Contrived Coincidence: It seems incredibly unlikely that EVERYONE in NLA would avoid mentioning 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.
• Convection, Schmonvection: 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. Again, largely justified by the durability of mimeosomes.
• Cool Down: The main combat mechanic, like in the 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.
• Cool Helmet: Unlike last game, where the helmets' open-faced designs left the heavier sets looking ridiculous, this time there's a wide array of fully enclosed helmets.
• Crapsaccharine World: 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 "ethnic cleansing", murder, terrorism, and even human trafficking.
• Creator's Culture Carryover: 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 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.
• Creature-Hunter Organization: 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.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • The Psycorrupter and Mastermind are support classes geared towards crippling the enemy with debuffs and bolstering the party's resistance. The downside? You'll only be able to use knives and 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.
• Crusading Widow:
  • Lao, a party member, became The Mole in revenge for losing his family after they were denied passage on the White Whale.
  • Powell becomes a xenophobic Serial Killer in revenge for his wife being Driven to Suicide.
• Crystal Landscape: Sylvalum has an area that is covered in large, crystalline formations.
• Cute, but Cacophonic: 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.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: 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.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: 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.
• Darker and Edgier: 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 Side Quests. Not helping is the amount of named characters acting as major antagonists in side quests. Then there's Elma discovering that they're living in a Cosmic Horror Story in the ending, where all of the humans shouldn't exist and that Rook is some kind of Humanoid Abomination.
• Dark Is Evil: 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 Red and Black and Evil All Over Mordor. Naturally, the Ganglion choose to make it their main base.
• Dark Secret: Like most organizations, the Earth Colonization Project has several.
  • The people chosen to get on the White Whale 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 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 Eleonora and Yelv.
• Dead All Along: 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.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Guns and related arts tend to do their damage across many small hits. This makes them ideal for Overdriving, as Overdrive increases art strength as the combo counter rises.
• Death Mountain: 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.
• Death World: 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 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 Skells. And the water is contaminated with foreign, dangerous bacteria. And all these notes on human survivability? 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.
• Debate and Switch: The Affinity Mission "New in Town" involves Rock, an Actual Pacifist 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 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.
• Deceptively Cute Critter: The Nopon are a Proud Merchant Race to whom doing or giving something for free is unthinkable, even in situations where both parties would benefit from the greater good. When someone helps them without compensation, they refer to this as "Freeworking" and treat it as if labor is on sale. After they make First Contact with humans, a lot of Nopon notice that humans are more likely to "freework", or settle for vastly unfair deals, if the Nopon exploits their cuteness or vulnerability. However, there are limits to this, and most of the more ethical Nopon will swiftly put a stop to it if this tactic gets too abusive.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • 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 Proud Warrior Race 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 Proud Warrior Race and a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Samurai Japan. As such, both 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".
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Each team member has unique dialogue for recruitment during each story chapter.
  • After completing the Celeste Three arc and in turn, get nothing on account of a Wrothian snatching the entire vault under everybody's noses, 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 talking to Lao at his hangout spot before he permamently leaves the team, the segment will automatically complete itself upon completing the game.
  • The Enemy Index's placement of the human enemies isn't in the Humanoids section, but rather Mechanoids.
• Diegetic Character Creation: This is the only Xenoblade game with a fully customisable protagonist. Later on in the game, it's revealed that 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 gives them a pod that changes their robot body.
• Difficult, but Awesome: 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.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • 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 Difficult, but Awesome. Smooth Recovery makes health much less of a 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 knife's arts will deal with non-issues at that point.
• Door to Before: Played for Laughs during Chapter 11 when Rook and their team storm the facility of the Ganglion and notice an energy barrier requiring a key to be dispelled. They take an alternate route to find the key and access the whereabouts of Lao and the Ganglion mecha he stole. After a roundabout and several enemies defeated along the way, they find the key... and then see the barrier that blocked their original entry, now from the other side. On the positive side, they've not only opened a shortcut, but the big size of the now-open entrance will allow them to bring the Skells with them to the boss battle that lies ahead.
• Double Standard:
  • 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 Bikinis, 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 Player Character as either a Cool Big Sis (if female) or Parental Substitute (if male). This may be due to the prevalence of the Little Sister Heroine trope in Japanese media, and thus referring to the player as a "big brother" could send the wrong messages—especially to a Western audience.
• Downer Beginning: 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.
• Downloadable Content: 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.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: In Chapter 12, Luxaar decides to enter the fray himself 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.
• Draw Aggro: Assault Rifles and Shields provide arts that focus the enemy on the user. The game calls this effect "taunt".
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Ornella commits suicide at the end of the mission "A False Hope", guilty about her betrayal of Hope and their clients.
  • Subverted with Toluera, if the player decides to take a step further in uncovering the truth. It looks as if Toluera 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 Toluera is alive and well, just insane.
  • Powell's wife breaks under the unrelenting stress of delivering Pizzas to the Ma-non customers and ends her life.
• Dual Boss:
  • 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.
• Dual Wielding: The Commando and its 4 sub-classes can equip dual pistols and dual swords.
• Dub Name Change: Some of the names were changed in the English localization.
  • BLADE's full name was changed from "Beyond the Logos Artificial D''estiny Emancipator" to "the Builders of the Legacy After the Destruction of Earth".
  • 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".
• Due to the Dead: 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 their belief system make it clear that it honors the dead and is of tremendous importance to them.
• Dynamic Loading: 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 Dynamic Loading 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.
• Early-Bird Cameo: 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.
• Early Game Hell: 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.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: 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.
• Earth That Was: 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.
• Easy Sex Change: The game allows you to change your character's gender once you complete a side mission. Since your body isn't human but rather a mimeosome, Yardley's machine is easily capable of changing every appearance, including gender.
• Eldritch Location: 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 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.
• Elemental Tiers: 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.
• The Ending Changes Everything: 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.
• Energy Weapon: Not only are ray guns the preferred weapons for Psycorrupters, but "beam" is actually an elemental damage type.
• Epic Tracking Shot: Much like the beginning of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 in Sword Valley and Colony 9, we get an incredible shot of New Los Angeles when entering the city for the first time.
• Equipment-Hiding Fashion: 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.
• Everyone Can See It: Gwin's repressed feelings for his senior officer, Irina, is 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."
• Everyone Has a Special Move: 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.
• Everyone Is a Tomato: The game quickly follows up a surprise Robotic Reveal of the protagonist by revealing that all the "humans" in New LA are Ridiculously Human Robots, and that the protagonist, by virtue of having no memory, was literally the only one who didn't know this from the start.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: 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.
• Evil Counterpart: 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.
• Evil Laugh: Almost every time Ryyz is on screen and it's quite menacing and psychotic.
• Exact Time to Failure: 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.
• Exponential Potential: 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 Squishy Wizard 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).

F-J

• Failed a Spot Check:
  • 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.
• Fake Difficulty: 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.
• Falling Damage: 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. 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.
• Fantastic Medicinal Bodily Product: 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 is ultimately Played for Laughs when you discover that Tatsu's rival Tora just needed to cure some rather bad indigestion and milked it as a life-threatening ailment.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • New LA becomes the home to numerous different alien species, such as the Ma-non, and 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 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 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.
• The Farmer and the Viper:
  • 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. 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. If you "rescue" him, he's an Ungrateful Bastard and screws you over anyway.
• Feathered Dragons: 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).
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: 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 Magic Knight classes that confer a mix of powerful melee attacks and supportive capabilities.
• Fighting for a Homeland: 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. 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 Ryyz and Dagahn out of the story, which they could have done at any time.
• Filling the Silence: 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.
• Final Boss Preview: One Affinity Mission, "The Nopon Heir", requires you to go up against the game's most powerful superboss: 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.
• First Contact: 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. 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).
• Flash Step: A feat only shown in a cutscene, the character Nagi is shown using this when facing his enemies.
• Flavor Text: The Collectopaedia returns from the first Xenoblade, along with the new 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.
• Floating Continent: Oblivia's Floating Reef comes closest, though there are small platforms near the Third Talon in Primordia.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Some of the Tyrants have utterly ridiculous titles, like Casper, the Unhealthy Eater or Sheldon, the Dentally-Challenged.
• Flying Seafood Special: 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. Specifically, Elma tells the player that their senses need time to "reactivate", which foreshadows the Robotic Reveal. 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 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. There was indeed a Ganglion spy introduced in that same chapter, but it's not L.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The Vita can be seen in the introduction cutscene during the space battle.
• Free-Sample Plot Coupon: 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).
• Freudian Excuse: Powell. 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.
• Fridge Logicinvoked: A couple of in-universe moments:
  • In Chapter 5, Elma finally questions just why 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. The answer is apparently that Elma (and possibly others of her people) gifted humanity that technology to survive the impending attack on Earth.
• Fun with Acronyms: B.L.A.D.E stands for "the Builders of the Legacy After the Destruction of Earth" in the North American localization. In the original Japanese, it's "Beyond the Logos Artificial Destiny Emancipator".
• Furry Female Mane: Played with. Many of the humanoid alien species have some sort of head ornamentation that simulates feminine human hair.
• Gainax Ending: The Stinger shows us that the database in the Lifehold that was supposed to be storing everyone's consciousnesses was 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.
• Galactic Superpower: The Samaar control a region of space spanning 6 million light years across numerous galaxies.
• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • 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!
• Gameplay and Story Integration: 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 of the Ridiculously Human Robots ...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 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.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation
  • 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 Bum Canyon during Chapter 5's story missions).
  • Lin will mention Tatsu in some of her post-battle quotes, even before you meet him.
  • Some NPCs will ask the party certain things that Nagi shouldn't be around to hear such "sensitive information" or planning to assassinate◊ him◊ while he is 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 (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 an artifact from early production design, in which there was no Supporting Protagonist, and so the team leader and the Player Character 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 L and Celica can use Overdrive. 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 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 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 she's either dead or lobotomized.
  • 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.
• Gameplay Protagonist, Story Protagonist: Played With 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.
• Gender Bender: 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 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 as though you had always been that way.
• Gender-Restricted Gear: 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 Playboy Bunny outfits.
• Generic Cuteness: 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 the humans are mimeosomes and are thus supposed to look slightly artificial. This doesn't apply to alien characters like Celica or Elma (in her real body), however.
• Genocide Backfire: The Ganglion 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.
• Giant Enemy Crab: The Forfex and Petramand indigens are basically this in all but name.
• Giant Flyer: Every flying indigen save Vesper and Adsecula are ginormous.
• Gigantic Moon: Mira has 5 moons, all but one of which are absolutely massive with the largest dominating the eastern night sky.
• Global Airship: The game doesn't have an airship per se, but every 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 quick travel feature.
• Going Cosmic: The majority of the game is normal Space Opera fare in a Standard Sci Fi Setting where humanity is fleeing the destruction of Earth and trying to colonize a new world. It briefly gets thrown for a loop when the humans are all revealed to be using robot bodies being controlled by their real bodies which are in stasis in their missing mothership, but gets back on track quickly enough. But then the final chapter reveals that there are no human bodies because everyone's minds 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 The Singularity 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, The Stinger then takes things up a notch when 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.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: "Ultra Infinite" armor sets which provide the highest defense ratings in the game are all colored with a metallic-gold sheen.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All:
  • 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.
• Graceful Loser: 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.
• Gratuitous English: 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 beta text, as later videos have shown that it's been changed to "Good" and "Perfect," respectively.
• Gratuitous German: 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 Attack on Titan work.
• Graying Morality: The game starts out with Black-and-White Morality, but steadily gets more complex as time goes on, with the Big Goods lying to the entirety of New LA, the Always Chaotic Evil gang of villains losing a lot of members from their side, and Lao being a Heel–Face Revolving Door.
• Great Offscreen War: 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.
• Green Hill Zone: 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 Palmtree Panic work in.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: 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 Elma points a gun at a traitor and Rook, unbidden by the player, will join Lin in 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 proves Elma completely right when the traitor's actions later compromise or destroy the subject of humanity's entire efforts thus far.
• Grimy Water: 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.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: 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.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • 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 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 "best" outcome on some 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 Characters 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 continental 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.
• Guns Akimbo: The ranged weapons for Commando, Winged Viper, and Full Metal Jaguar classes.
• Hate Sink: Tobias. Even before he challenges Rook on account of "stealing" his probe income he's an absolute Jerkass to Kirsty, and is only in it for the money. When he does challenge Rook he's a complete Smug Snake and frequently accuses Rook of underhanded tactics, which Tobias himself is implied to be doing behind the scenes. However, he's really a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, so he has a justified reason for his greed.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Gay?: Lara Nara and Lara Mara are very flamboyantly Camp Gay 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 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.
• Healer Signs On Early:
  • Irina becomes a recruitable party member after Chapter 3. She comes with the Buff Art "Repair", which restores some HP and removes debuffs and eventually 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.
  • 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 affinity mission, which unlocks when Irina becomes recruitable after chapter 3.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: 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.)
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: For the first time in the series, the player creates their own fully customizable 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".
• Heroic Mime: 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.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: 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.
• Higher-Tech Species:
  • The Ganglion. Apparently they're small-time criminal thugs in galactic terms, but against humans, they have a planet-killing technological edge. Humanity can only pretend to keep up due to a 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 Perpetual Motion Machine 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.
• Hold the Line: 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 Playable Epilogue where you have to protect the city's entrance from an assortment of indigenous creatures, who were in their migration period and were inadvertently approaching the city.
• Hollywood Old: Artistic Age example, 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.
• Homeworld Evacuation: 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.
• Hope Spot: 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 and return to their biological bodies. Some citizens can't wait to see their loved ones again, especially their children, or fallen BLADE members. 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.
• Hostile Weather:
  • 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 super-powerful enemies wandering around. Worse, there's a Tyrant that will only spawn in this particular weather.
• Hot Wings: The Ares 90 Skell produces phoenix wings while flying.
• Hub City: It's the last bastion of humanity and home to the headquarter of BLADE, the military organization that employs the many characters.
• Hub Level: 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.
• Hub Under Attack: During Chapter 8, the game's Hub City (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 Tower Defense 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).
• Humanity's Wake: 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.
• Human Popsicle: 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. 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 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.
• Humans Are Bastards:
  • 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 Snake Oil Salesman 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.
  • 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. 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.
• Humans Are Diplomats: 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 because the humans were much nicer.
• Humans Are Survivors: 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.
• Humans Are White: 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 Aboriginal 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. 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...
• Humongous Mecha:
  • The 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, 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 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.
• Hungry Jungle: Noctilum is full of overly-dense tropical plant life, acidic water, and enemies literally Hidden in Plain Sight who don't show up on your radar until it's too late and you've already entered battle.
• Hybrid Monster: 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. And that's not even getting into what it does to Lao and Luxaar...
• I Ate WHAT?!: 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!
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: In the final chapter of the game, Lao and Luxaar fall in the Lifehold Core's protoplasm, containing all the stored human DNA. While Luxaar dissolves, Lao mutates into a monstrous chimera, and since he doesn't have control over his body any more, he requests his former teammates put him out before he destroys the Core.
• Icarus Allusion: There's a collectible item named the Icarus Wings, described as an invention of Nopon who wished to fly. Unsurprisingly, they don't work, though the flavor text notes that this doesn't stop many Nopon from plummeting to their deaths trying.
• Idiot Hair: 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.
• I Have to Go Iron My Dog: 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.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: In stark contrast to most of the costume and armor sets of the previous game, the ones found in Xenoblade Chronicles X are not only awesome to look at it, they're fully customizable. During 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 "fashion armor".
• Infinity +1 Sword:
  • 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 Awesome, but Impractical.
  • 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 Superbosses 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.
• Infinity -1 Sword:
  • 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 Superbosses in a single hit.
• Insectoid Aliens: 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.
• Insistent Terminology: 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!
• In Spite of a Nail: 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 deciding to look the other way from an incident and accepting a bribe.
• Interface Spoiler:
  • There's an area in NLA called the Mimeosome Maintenance Center. Downplayed in that you wouldn't know what the word "Mimeosome" even means.
  • 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 Downloadable Content for Japan 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 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, nobody feels moved to comment about it if you do. 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 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 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, 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 Cavern Clan Immigration, implying the seemingly Always Chaotic Evil 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 "Definian Immigration" for completing a quest that involves the Heel–Face Turn 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? 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. 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 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. 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, 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.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Lin (13) with most other characters by virtue of being the youngest human not in stasis by several years. Most notably with Elma (29) true age unknown but likely much more than that as it is stated that 29 years ago was when she first came to Earth rather than when she was born.
• An Interior Decorator Is You: Once you join BLADE, you can customize the barracks, and when you get a Skell later on, the Hangar as well.
• Interspecies Romance: 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 Prone, of all things.
• In-Universe Game Clock: 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 the Ganglion attack NLA.
• Invented Linguistic Distinction: It's implied that the various alien races encountered on the planet Mira have their own languages, but an 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.
• Irrelevant Sidequest: 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.
• Item Crafting: 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, need your characters to have reach the maximum level cap (60) to be piloted.
• Jack of All Trades: The player character plays the trope straight and 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. Meaning, it's entirely possible to master every job class and weapon that the game has to offer.
• Japanese Ranguage: 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.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: During Kristy's questline, you discover that she's working on the framework for a new FrontierNav system, 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, you discover that Kristy never realized that he was part of the team, and that he transferred 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.
• Job System: Each character is pre-designated to one of the game's 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.
• Join or Die: 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.
• Joke Weapon:
  • 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 (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 (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 (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 Lethal Joke Weapon. 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.
• Jump Scare: There are quite a few enemies who are Hidden in Plain Sight, 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 Sabula tyrant in Oblivia that makes the 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.
• Jungle Japes: 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.
• Justified Save Point: 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 falls apart during Story and Affinity Missions, but it's a nice effort.
• Justified Title: The focus is around the conflict between the military organization Blade and their various encounters with aliens, which in this universe are referred to as Xenos. One of the main characters is secretly a Xeno and also a member of Blade, which technically justifies the title.