History VideoGame / Xenoblade

** The Machina Swords are programmed to not be in their active state during cutscenes that are supposed to portray Dunban as wielding the Monado just so that the "Monado's blade" (and circle) would look like it's coming from said sword.
** Fiora uses the right Talent Art during the one cutscene in the entire game where she uses her drones to attack[[note]]Her Talent Art gimmick is that it's different depending on what Drone she has equipped as foot equipment at the time[[/note]]. Said Talent Art may even [[CutscenePowerToTheMax briefly change in behavior]] depending on its nature.

** The game adjusts cutscene animations accordingly should Shulk be using a Monado other than the one he should had at that point (which is guaranteed to happen on a NewGamePlus). This is more obvious when on the Fallen Arm. If Shulk's using the Monado III (the only Monado whose inactive state doesn't involve its blade disappearing) up to this point, the Monado III is embedded downwards into the ground in a logical way during the cutscene that involves Shulk resting with Fiora.

* IntimateHealing: Shulk steals Fiora her [[SacredFirstKiss first kiss]] this way to give her water mouth-to-mouth. She even [[LampshadeHanging lampshades it]]. Not that either party was complaining.

* Using certain tactics and with the aid of Night Vision gems[[note]]Normally high leveled enemies have agility so high it's otherwise impossible to hit them, but night vision in addition to agility gems helps offset that and lets the characters hit them[[/note]], it's very much possible to defeat enemies well above the level the game expects you to be at when you first reach an area. This also, in turn, allows for the player to gain access to items and equipment ''well'' above anything they can buy from stores for quite a good while.

** Fiora REALLY kicks some major ass in that Mechon body!
** Melia, too. When the party first meets her, she's a frail SquishyWizard on the verge of death. Some time with travelling with the party later, she's picked up some new techniques, [[TheWrestlerInAllOfUs including the ability to drop-kick enemies ten times her size hard enough to knock them on their ass,]] which brings her more up to a KungFuWizard or MagicKnight.
* TookALevelInJerkass: Mumkhar.He starts out as a DirtyCoward, and ends up attacking Colony 9 and opposing Shulk's party just ForTheEvulz.

** Shulk loves EVERYTHING that Fiora cooks, no matter how little effort she puts on it. So much that Fiora suspects he has no sense of taste whatsoever. Played with in that while he does hate vegetables (according to a Heart-to-Heart moment between Dunban and Sharla at Eryth Sea), he's willing to accept the ones cooked by Fiora anyway as to not upset her.

* DifficultyByAcceleration: A more subtle example than most. Higher-level enemies have their arts cool down faster than thier lower-level counterparts, so they pull them out more often and therefore need to be countered more frequently. Fortunately, the same is true of the player, so thier own cooldowns don't screw up the dynamic.

** A particularly memorable instance of this takes place when the party enters the Mechonis for the first time: at this point in the game, Melia will have just gotten her Starlight Kick technique (which inflicts Topple) and the area has a lot of flying enemies and walkways over bottomless pits. This makes it possible to end otherwise difficult encounters simply by luring enemies over, getting a Starlight Kick off, and laughing as they plummet to thier demise. [[NoFairCheating You don't get any loot this way, though.]]

** The player-controlled party leader sometimes displays this if a sufficiently tough monster is targeted for attack. The rest of the party [[ThisIsGonnaSuck tend to disagree with thier perspective.]]

** Melia, too. When the party first meets her, she's a frail SquishyWizard on the verge of death. Some time with travelling with the party later, she's picked up some new techniques, [[TheWrestlerInAllOfUs including the ability to drop-kick enemies ten times her size hard enough to knock them on thier ass,]] which brings her more up to a KungFuWizard or MagicKnight.

* SuicidalOverconfidence: Unique Monsters attack no matter how powerful the party is.

** In many heart-to-heart events, Sharla reveals that she loves fruit. Dunban, on the other hand, hates fruit.

** On the other hand, the same status effects are only mild annoyances when used by enemies: damage-over-time effects are easily out-healed, and active party members can snap each other out of Sleep, Topple of Daze (though an attack that renders this on the entire party can be problematic). Moreover [[TheMedic Sharla]]'s status-curing ability actually has the additional effect of making the target ''immune'' to further debuffing for a short while, (and she can hit your whole party with it later) making them all the more useless.

** If you decide to take on an enemy 5 or more levels above the party, your party members will respond witha combination of this, ThisIsGonnaSuck and YoureInsane A pretty well-justified response, given that these encounters are basically UnwinnableByDesign outside of tyrants and Casual Mode.

%%* PluckyGirl: Fiora.

* AbsurdlyHighLevelCap: Averted - the level cap is 99, but the final boss is around level 81.

* AIIsACrapshoot: Averted with Alvis, whose ascension from a ship AI to Monado made him more of an overlooker instead of going over his head. Granted, Zanza might have a different opinion, as Alvis did turn on him.

* LimitedWardrobe: Averted, there are several kinds of unique armor, which show on the characters when equipped. This said, some sets of armour are just palette swaps of each other, or even identical.

* NoCutsceneInventoryInertia:
** Averted in every possible way. Even in the NewGamePlus Shulk will show the [[InfinityPlusOneSword Monado III]], even in the scenes where its power should be way bigger than it actually is.
** There is one notable not-quite-exception: When Shulk has a vision about future events, and later flashes back to that vision as the moment approaches. In the vision-flashbacks, he wears whatever he had on when he first had that vision, rather that what he is more likely about to actually be wearing (i.e.: his current gear) when it comes to pass.

** Implied to probably be averted when Egil-as-Mechonis spears the Bionis' shoulder, off-handedly asking Shulk how many people he thinks died in that attack. Albeit he did hit a rather uninhabited region.
** Completely averted if "[[NonStandardGameOver Bionis Slash X]]" is allowed to succeed.

* NoPeriodsPeriod: Seemingly averted: there is a collection quest in Alcamoth where a High Entia woman is in need of a plant called Gold Burdock. She is very coy about her reasons for needing it (lots of elipses in her speech, and saying "You know what I mean?"), but she complains of bloating and stomach pain, and she refers to the plant as "a girl's best friend".

** Played straight and averted at the same time. When Fiora gets killed, she keeps whatever she had equipped for NewGamePlus while any gems equipped are automatically removed from her equipment. Since her early equipment is quickly outclassed and her weapons can't be equipped by anybody else, it's not a big issue.

* SpellMyNameWithAThe: The Bionis and the Mechonis.

* SuicidalOverconfidence: Averted. Even the most vicious predators will stop attacking once the leader's strength surpasses theirs by five or six levels. Unique monsters however will attack no matter how powerful the party is.

* EasilyForgiven: Averted with Bana. The citizens of Gran Dell he screwed over at first seem like they'll work with him to improve the town and forget about his drug dealing and stealing. Bana thinks he will get away scot-free until they all reveal they still plan to punish him too. He gets slapped with community service running food to the milita. [[RealityEnsues The High-Entia girl who was Bana's main victim alongside her also addicted boyfriend believe is too light of a sentence]].

** A small one in Tephra Cave. When Shulk and Reyn come across the bodies of dead Homs, Shulk is the first one to suggest returning them to the Bionis. It seems innocent enough, but once you find out TheReveal involving Shulk and the nature of the beings on Bionis plus the fact that Shulk was show to not be a religious person beforehand, this scene becomes yet more ''incredibly'' subtle foreshadowing to the major PlotTwist late game.

** A ''really'' subtle one but the fact that mechon are immune to most everything but the Monado or [[OnlyLikeCanCutLike weapons made from mechon armor]] is a very subtle nod to the true nature of the Mechonis and Mayneth; being mostly defensive in trying to ensure the protection of her followers. After all, it was ''Egil'' who spearheaded the creation of offensive mechon and programmed them to attack the Bionis.

** The Monado itself and its various incarnations (Except the Mayneth Monado briefly wielded by Fiora due to it being two giant mechanical-looking swords barely indistinguishable from her others). UpToEleven with the Monado III (AKA Shulk's Monado) which has a completely ethereal appearance, making it look like the entire Monado's made up of energy.

* LastChanceHitPoint: The "Unbeatable" gems give their wearer a up to a 50% chance to turn any lethal attacks into this, with the catch that it can work even if the wearer is already at 1 HP, and the Monado visions will inform in case that happens. All {{Guest Star Party Member}}s, as well as Fiora while wielding the Mayneth Monado, wear a special version that gives them 100% protection, effectively making them invincible.

** A ''really'' subtle one but the fact that mechon are immune to most everything but the Monado or [[OnlyLikeCanCutLike weapons made from mechon armor]] is a very subtle nod to the true nature of the Mechonis and Maynith; being mostly defensive in trying to ensure the protection of her followers. After all, it was ''Egil'' who spearheaded the creation of offensive mechon and programmed them to attack the Bionis.

* AndYourRewardIsClothes: If you choose to continue the game after the main story, you can play as Fiora in her Colony 9 attire.

* AbhorrentAdmirer: Non romantically, Gael'Gar for Melia. He's an insane zealot stalker who believes her to be the divine savior of the half breed High Entia from their tyrannical pureblooded ancestors. Understandably, Melia finds him disgusting.

* BigBadWannabe: Gael'gar is seemingly the BigBad for the main storyline, with him being shown right from the start, being the end to Melia's entire character arc while being quickly shown to be extremely deluded and hypocritical with him aiming to rule the remaining High Entia when he realizes Melia does not plan to lead them the way he wants her to (namely as a divine progenitor figure who demonizes their ancestors and idolizes half bloods), but he fails at killing Teelan and killing Melia. In the end, he never even gets close to the final goal he seeks and [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled performs suicide]], as the real main antagonist The Fog King starts to terrorise the Bionis Shoulder. Further, Melia and the rest of the group never treat Gael'gar as a major threat so much as a pitiable and seriously deluded man whose vileness all the same cannot be excused by whatever traumas he suffered as a half breed High Entia.

** Gael'Gar after being defeated once more in his sidequest jumps off the floating island when he realizes his AxCrazy dream of a racist holy half-High Entia empire will never come to pass.

* FantasticRacism: Downplayed somewhat: the main conflict on the Shoulder, aside from the Fog King, is flaring racial tension. After the Alcamoth refugees failed to retake their capital with heavy losses, a comment by the Machina leader was taken the wrong way and caused the resentment over the Mechon war to explode, until a good chunk of Gran Dell's High Entia population seceded and founded the Companions on the other side of the island. It's downplayed in that aside from Gael'Gar the raging supremacist, most of them are good people at heart (as Melia points out, the fact that they peacefully exiled themselves instead of trying to throw the Machina out speaks volumes) and they eventually reconcile when forced to join forces by the Fog Beast attacks.
* FloatingContinent: The Bionis Shoulder remained in position flying above the clouds after the rest the body was destroyed due to an absurd amount of Hoverstone concentrated in the ground. Shulk theorizes that due to the Giants' ruins there that the floating islands in Eryth Sea and Alcamoth were constructed by Giants mining it from the Shoulder and moving it to other parts of the Bionis.

* MightyGlacier: Reyn; a slow and strong tank that hits like a truck and can take hits like one.

* AwesomeButImpractical: Spike Damage gems and Spike aura on the playable characters. On one hand, it can be rather cathartic to use [[ScrappyMechanic one of the more hated enemy mechanics]] against the enemies and have a free damage increase for the party. On the other hand, it requires having your character take damage from the enemy; and in the late game and ''especially'' against the [[BonusBoss Bonus Bosses]], that's a sign you're doing something wrong.

** "Unfinished Business" is a boss theme used only once in the entire game, during an early-game boss fight that usually ends long before the track's end. The phrase "only once" is ''very'' literal here, since if the player lets the track fully play out, the music ''doesn't loop.'' Instead, the music abruptly switches to "You Will Know Our Names".

* NotTheIntendedUse: While Expert Mode in ''Definitive Edition'' is intended to make the game harder, it can also be used to make LevelGrinding easier by lowering one character's level and then defeating a high level enemy with a different character, with the highest bonus being granted if the enemy is at least 7 levels higher. However, if the enemy's level is at least 22 higher, then the experience gained is actually reduced, so it's best to keep the targeted characters between 7 to 21 levels lower than the enemy to maximize the benefit. This makes Expert Mode useful for circumventing the AntiGrinding that applies to AP and SP, which would otherwise be tedious to accumulate if one is preparing to fight the game's {{Bonus Boss}}es.

** Fiora also has a few arts that rely on taking advantage of enemies that're suffering from conditions like Topple. Naturally, her AI is actually pretty good at saving these arts

** Sharla's AI is somewhat smart with [[OneHitKO Head Shot]] -- her AI is normally focused almost entirely on healing, which makes her a pretty effective healer, but the AI knows to usually reserve Head Shot for dazed enemies.
** Reyn's AI is pretty good at tanking. And one reason people almost always use Riki is because Riki's AI does a ''very'' good job of keeping status debuffs on.

** Melia is ''notoriously'' stupid amongst the fanbase. Her AI almost always summons elementals for the status buffs - which is good, but what is ''not'' good is when she walks ''right up to the enemy'' and summons them. She is a SquishyWizard, too, which does not help her case. She also is somewhat famous for summoning Aqua, only to discharge it almost immediately when she's at full health and it won't do much. (To be fair, this is also because Melia can only discharge elementals in the reverse order that she summons them).

** Riki simultaneously falls into this and brilliance - Riki is good at keeping on Poison and Bleed, which are reliable [[DamageOverTime DoTs]], but he also has access to Chill and Burn, which damage even ''faster'' (and sometimes even ''harder'') than both. The problem? His Burn attack target groups of enemies, but his AI doesn't seem to realize that it's just as effective against single targets, meaning he has to be ''ordered'' to use Burninate against bulkier opponents in a Chain Attack.

* NotTheIntendedUse: While Expert Mode in ''Definitive Edition'' is intended to make the game harder, it can also be used to make LevelGrinding easier by lowering one character's level and then defeating a high level enemy with a different character. However, each level has a cap on how much EXP and AP can be earned, so it's best to keep the character around 7 levels lower than the enemy to maximize the benefit. This makes Expert Mode useful for circumventing the AntiGrinding that applies to AP and SP, which would otherwise be tedious to accumulate if one is preparing to fight the game's {{Bonus Boss}}es.