I guess that depends on whether you define "stealthy" as "no one sees you" or "no one notices something was wrong until you've already completed the mission and escaped"
If you kill absolutely everyone that sees you before they can alert help and there's no one left to see the bodies, it's still stealth.
The thing is, blowing up shit tends to alert everyone in the vicinity Even if the AI in most games have the attention spam of a goldfish and quickly forget shit just blew up nearby.
Then make sure the explosion is big enough to kill everyone who can hear it. It's still stealth if no one alive knows there is danger nearby.
Combat is basically a revision of FFXII's combat (I LOVE XII) instead of characters having access to TONS of tiered abilities, there are significantly fewer and you upgrade them instead of automating skills based on context or selecting from menus, you set up to eight in an actions pane and activate manually instead of MP there's cooldown, meaning you manage timing and combos instead of resources characters are more balanced because they're more specialized but there's still some flexibility in terms of combat roles lots of equipment options I fail to see how any of this is problematic. World is FFXII on crack in terms of scale and contents, but because of the structure of the game universe isn't quite as interconnected. Somehow the game implemented lots of wide open areas without making me feel like "why is this place so empty, I want stuff to do" like Twilight Princess, but that's probably because there are still monsters and items everywhere and the world is actually impressively huge. Dungeons were average but that was okay because the idea is basically just to be a bit more claustrophobic and break up the logic of exploration a bit (instead of just running around everywhere you can go, you have to investigate things closely). I love the soundtrack in general (especially anything in terms of level/world themes on Bionis), my main problem was that they overused some of the tracks in cutscenes so some of those got kind of annoying. Sidequests are hit and miss. Many are fetch quests or "kill X monsters," but I think the idea is to rack up sidequests and go explorin', the sidequests clear themselves if you just naturally explore. Unique monster quests were still good and there were some unexpected and interesting MM-like sideplots. Fucking Nopon drug lords Finding quest NPCs and certain super-rare items was kind of a pain in the ass though. Characters and story are nothing particularly special but weren't bad either (with the exception of Riki's English voice actor). I did like how the story didn't feel very intrusive (no cutscenes every five minutes like we get with lots of JRPGs). I dunno, this was basically the spiritual sequel to FFXII I've always wanted, with a bit more involving combat system and a story that doesn't try too hard and therefore doesn't come off as pretentious and bad.
I loved FFXII's play style but I thought the skill system was really lame. I really want to play Xenoblade now...
I appreciate that someone who likes the game was at least able to call it out on some flaws. Even comparing it too FFXII is quite fair. After all, that's a game I stopped playing because other than staring at Fran's ass a lot, it was boring as fuck. And Xenoblade was even moreso Oh and the combat being problematic is all in how they decided to make it flow. Regular hits are auto hit but using skills is more like a hack and slash game. That combination is so beyond terrible, I'd call it the worst battle system in any RPG ever. Although that crap in FFXIII and XIII-2 is close.
If you disliked FFXII's battle style then we're of highly differing opinions >.< I thought it was the best thing to happen to the franchise and JRPGs as a whole.
Actually FFXII's battle system works because it doesn't mix auto and manual attacks in it's battle system (neither do the games it essentially stole it's battle system from, the CRPGs by Bioware from Baldur's Gate to Dragon Age). No, it's pretty much all the MMO style collecting and monster killing quests along with the overly large generic areas that you have to traipse through; honestly, if we're gonna call both FFXII and Xenoblade what they are, attempts to try to fit Dungeons & Dragons style battle gameplay into JRPGs, they kind of suck at it
Something that isn't Snake Eater. Pokémon: Heart Gold. Just beat the rival and informed the police that his name is Fenwald Agott.
