Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is an action RPG developed by Monolith Soft and published by Nintendo. It follows the adventures of Rex after he accidentally becomes the Driver to Pyra, a legendary blade known as the “Aegis.”
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New Blades
In New Game Plus several new blades become available for use, all of whom are members of Torna who were encountered during boss fights in the original playthrough.
Traveling Bards and Leveling Down
In New Game Plus, a number of Traveling Bards appear across Alrest, who will exchange Bonus EXP for a variety of useful items. Additionally, players are now able to lower character’s levels when resting, converting the EXP from those levels into Bonus EXP. The Bards can be found at the following locations and offer the following items:
Accessory Expander Kits allow players to increase the Accessory slots available to each Driver by 1.
The Elemental Core: Light and the various Master Mods allow users to enhance Poppi’s capabilities and switch out her role and stats in a number of different ways.
Overdrive Protocols allow players to swap blades onto a different Driver.
Hidden Affinities and Changes to Blades
Entering New Game Plus unlocks a second affinity chart for every Driver in the game, allowing each to unlock a number of powerful new skills. One particularly noteworthy skill is Zeke’s “Eye of Shining Justice”, which allows him to greatly increase his movement and attack speeds whilst becoming immune to all status effects for a short time.
All character-specific Blades can now be deployed on Mercenary Missions, though deploying any of Poppi’s forms will cause all of them to become unavailable and lock Tora out of the party until she returns. Additionally, Pyra/Mythra’s true form, “Pneuma” gains a level 4 special attack once she is re-unlocked in the story.
What Carries over
In terms of progress from the previous playthrough, the following is carried into New Game Plus.
Driver Levels Equipment and Growth, including skills All awakened Blades, excluding Roc, Aegaeon, Nia, Poppi’s second and third forms, and the Blade awakened using the Core Crystal Gramps gives to Rex in Gormott Items, Gold, and Store Deeds Development Levels for all Areas Mercenary Ranking Level Status and data for defeated Unique Monsters Status of all Events Theater Used Playtime
This saves a lot of time and prevents players from needing to reacquire their favorite Blades and skills during a second playthrough. Unfortunately, Quests, Merc Missions, and Heart-to-Hearts do not retain progression in NG+, so players will need to redo all of those. The same is true for Skip Travel locations and Salvager Rank.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is available for Nintendo Switch.
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