Sad as it is, that weekend without water has ended up being beneficial in the long run. I moved a bunch of empty cat liter buckets outside to collect water dripping from the gutter and because of that the basement's no longer flooding. But emptying seven containers every time it rained was becoming tiresome, so I cleaned out the gutters and duct taped up what I could. At first this meant they actually dripped more because the water was no longer being absorbed by the shingle bits stuck in there but now the water drops are concentrated. Best of all, it's no longer running down the side of the house and into the window below.
My window.
So this winter will be the first one in years I don't actually have to break ice in the windowsill. And despite the fact that water is now almost constantly falling into the buckets, I can actually sleep easier. The incredibly erratic drips of previous set-ups completely threw me off my two ignore factors. If something's a one-off, I can ignore it. If something's constant, I can ignore it. But the random drip-drops from before made it utterly impossible for me to sleep.
Couple all this with my increasing tolerance to the lowering temperatures due to switching to cold showers(sub-zero is barely noticeable!) and this may end up being the easiest winter in my life.
Out of curiosity, why do you feel ToX1’s battle system is better?
Under a Read More because RANT.
Xillia 2 falls into the same trap I hate in Abyss' Unknown in that instead of making actually challenging enemies, they jack up the stats to absurd levels and let that pass for difficultly. The Shadow Bosses are the worst for this because they can heal themselves for minutes worth of damage without you being capable of actually stopping it.
Because enemy damage is so significantly high, healing is nerfed in a terrible way. Many times I was killed from full to 0 with no chance of healing in the seconds it took.
Making the game so dependent on the weakness system but then making so many bosses with no weakness is just painful. You're forced to wait 5 seconds between attacks gathering Power Charge because one hit can't break through enemy Iron Stance.
Bosses will just randomly drop out of being in a weakness chain too. Even during the middle of attacks. I was never once able to actually use a weakness chain in Chromatus because even between individual hits of an arte, bosses would just randomly drop out of the weakness counter even with half time left.
5 seconds between combo attempts(if the boss doesn't try and obliterate you) and combos just randomly dropping makes combat feel slow and sloppy all around.
The constant party changing means it's difficult to actually play with other characters you want to, and Ludger's weakness efficiency and Chromatus make others feel gimped. PCs without a two element attack are strictly inferior to those who do for weakness starting. Some characters don't have access to all elements even with Linked Artes included.
I mean, i realize the thought process of "well Elize is a better healer than Leia in X1!" I do. But Leia also brought several other different advantages. If you set her to item bot she can actually keep the party topped off with health even better than Elize. Not to mention the plethora of different Linked Artes for situations. Leia has my highest Use percentage for a reason.
Not being able to switch your party in battle is just... a terrible downgrade. Using Gradic Claw as an example, I forgot to put Rowen in my party for the fight. All I had was Ludger's water artes! The fight was an utter goddamn mess. In X1 that wouldn't have happened.
Some people say that it forces you to use PCs you wouldn't otherwise... but you always have Ludger forced on you until aftergame or NG+. I used everyone in X1 a good deal, I didn't need this asinine restriction places on me. And Ludger's still required for the Bonus Dungeon anyway.
There's also this incredible input lag that I never noticed in Xillia, and I played Xillia a ton more. I was often completely whiffing attacks in X2 simply because the game stocked up on registering my actions despite the situation changing in the meantime. I would sometimes have to put in a move a few times before it'd activate, then it'd go off multiple times in a row despite the enemy being long gone. With the overall increase in TP need, this was damaging to combo effectiveness.
