Having completed the game fresh on BoC twice I thought I'd give my opinion on it and talk about some other miscellaneous stuff I encountered

(Skip this paragraph if you want to get to the actual meat of this post) So for the longest time I only fully beat XC2 (NG+, Torna, all of it) on a second profile and left my original playthrough in cryosleep. However after my "attachment" to that first playthrough finally disappeared I figured I could just continue on and complete it so I could eventually back it up in the cloud. I went in, was horrified at its state being even less finished than I remembered and then did the only totally reasonable thing: I started over and because I hate myself I made it my second BoC playthrough with MCD being the NG+ playthrough (which I'm still in, ch 8 right now). Having completed it some time ago I think I can finally give some definitive thoughts about how I feel about the challenge while also noting a few findings I don't remember reading here and that didn't turn up with some words on the search bar.Bringer Of ChaosSo overall, I think the challenge presented is mostly fine without overleveling yourself - if you're using the stuff you're given with the expansion pass. It's just hard enough to switch up tactics compared to the way the game pushes you to play normally because of the various nerfs which make that playstyle a lot harder to realize. Accepting everything except helpful items is also a possible challenge (which I did), though that Auto Balancer would have been really nice. Also expect fights to last longer unless you've mastered DoT and/or fusion combos in general. Don't forget pouch items and seals. Use your surroundings in battle like cliffs and holes. Be mindful of Rage Strike and always look to have a means to counter it, primarily through evasion (best way btw because it leaves your party gauge alone unless the art was AoE) or invincibility frames.There are difficulty spikes though with a few exceptions I'd say the hardest part is the beginning when you can barely do anything. Agility is more important here. In fact it's so important that I would advise to also do the Argentum sidequests once Nia, Malos and Jin join the party so you can get skill points and gear that raises affinity. If you want to go all in, doing almost all sidequests (DLC included) until the end of chapter 3 gives you enough skill points to unlock arts chain on Rex's chart if you've been spending your points wisely. If you'd like some more leeway you can also turn on BoC when Tora joins the party, from then on it should be doable without going so hard on agility early on, though you should still work towards it.Important note: Crossette and Corvin are the MVPs. Corvin is great and can be a tremendous help, however be warned: You should not purge rage on every boss you come across. The spider in chapter 3 actually enrages again immediately after Corvin purges its rage, which means that it gets another Rage Strike. I haven't tested this on most bosses but I wouldn't be surprised if there are others that do this.I'd like to highlight two parts of the playthrough and give advice on how I got through, though with spoiler tags in case someone doesn't want to read them (and because they are spoilers).The end of chapter 3: The famous wall: Malos and Akhos. These two are relentless, hit really hard and are just generally annoying to deal with with the shackles Akhos can inflict. On my first playthrough this was bar none the hardest part of the game and I got through it after dozens of deaths and with an extremely useful yet extremely uncomfortable strategy using Tora. However with Corvin I found a strategy which worked surprisingly well: make Tora tanky (mainly against Akhos), Nia heals and target Akhos first. Immediately target Malos as Rex alone with Corvin out. Draw (enough) aggro from Malos and then run to the other side of the arena. This way you're out of range for Akhos' bs and you're party members are out of range for Malos' provoke. The entire fight then boils down to a one on one between Rex and Malos. High agility, maybe the Auto Balancer, using the evasion art smartly and using Corvins Lv 3 should carry you through the fight (and his Lv 1 for emergency heals). Just remember to run around when Corvin does it so Malos can get less attacks in and you can stack your guaranteed evades.Second location in chapter 8: The world tree has a room with a switch that drains water so you can progress. In this room are enemies that not only can summon reinforcements but they can enrage all enemies currently in battle immediately. The best way to go about this for me was to make a big puzzle out of it. Start the battle with the bots in front of that room and seal reinforcements. Now you want to keep the fight going so that the seal stays active which means you'll leave one of them alive and then start picking on those flying douchebags one by one. With driver combos you should work to incapacitate them as good as possible, if feasible try to add DoT in there as well. Remember, you only need to take out the one in front of the switch, but you will likely have to take down two of these guys.Stuff about mechanicsSo I don't know if some of those are known already in a discord or sth but I figured I'd still write them down here because these things were surprising to me.BreakSo the Break status effect is known to abort enemy arts and causes enemies to flinch for a second. Unless you use topple yourself the enemy might still have time to activate an art. However as it turns out, Break comes in two variations: the first one is the one we know, the second one however does neither of the two things the first one does, it just applies 'Break', nothing more, nothing less. When an enemy is launched and falls to the ground (either by itself of 'Smash') there is a short time frame that allows you to apply 'Break' without interrupting the enemies recovery animation. The enemy can then be toppled immediately, effectively fully driver combo locking them if you're party is built for this. Needless to say for the most consistent results you should be using 'Break' yourself, preferably with Tora because his Break art is the best (anyone else works too but you usually only get one shot with anyone else, especially risky to pull off with enemies your attacks can bounce off of and the 'Break' effect is applied through the final hit of an art).Driver combo locking obviously runs into problems for enemies with shorter/very short recovery animations or high resistances to 'Break', 'Topple' or 'Launch'. But it is a thing you can do and I'd especially encourage it against Ioth.The consistent inconsistency with LaunchSo 'Launch' is an interesting status for blade combos. It tends to end early when applying them yourself (party members don't care unless it's a finisher) during it and sometimes it just keeps going as you would expect it to. The key according to bullying testing with Tyrannotitan seems to be when the blade combo special starts:Launch happens while the special is already happening -> Launch keeps ticking or start descending so late that the timer runs out before ending it prematurelyLaunch happens before the special animations starts -> fusion combo screen will cause to end Launch prematurelyLaunch happens while Lv 4 is already happening -> enemy stays launched during it, falls when fusion combo screen comes upLaunch happens before the Lv 4 animations starts -> enemy slowly descends during the special, 'Launch' ends when it hits the groundIf anyone woud like to further test these I'd really appreciate it as I don't have a lot of time in the coming days and/or weeks.Miscellaneous stuffRex is on the pause screen on top of Gramps during daytime, during nighttime Gramps sleeps and Rex's old house has the lights on.The first option of Finch's H2H has two variations depending on whether it was seen before setting foot in Tantal. Nothing major, but interesting detail.The wrong recipes in Falala's quest are usable pouch items. They all have the same effect (party gauge gain +8%), last for 20 minutes and are therefore all awful because you can get items with better than 8% gain easily that also last longer. But they exist, so here they are.Sorry for the wall of text. I believe there was something else I wanted to talk about, but I can't remember it right now, I'll update the post if I happen to remember it. via /r/Xenoblade_Chronicles https://ift.tt/37RtojI