I was Lv26 when I went to the tentacles boss, and didn't control Shulk.
I played as Reyn, so Shulk did most parts automatically hehe
I like controlling other character to understand their abilities and decide which one I should upgrade first.
Edit:
As for answering the first post:
What level are you? 36
Where are you in the game? Left jungle village, need to fight that monster...
(same as you, hehe)
What do you think of the game overall?
Great game engine : map loading fast, menu are fine (though sometime missing few things, like better item sorting method).
Graphics are good, I don't care for the LoD, I don't care it's not HD. it's beautiful enough to look at the environment every time, searching where the "sword" is located, what position is the giant, where are you located on him, etc.
Dub : I switch US and Japanese, but I prefer japanese. I don't like some of the English dubs, like jumping for Reyn "Halley Hoooop", and I hardly understand what they are saying in and after battles, after many time hearing the same thng I still don't understand what Shulk is saying when winning battles hehe, I get irritated by their voices, so I prefer japanese.
Sub: French is fine, I don't know about other languages. It seems English subs are changing a lot of names (NPC names for example, and race names.) too bad to follow a discussion on the forum with someone playing another language.
Gameplay : I like the free feeling of the game. Areas are huge, You can go almost everywhere. Camera is working great (no clipping or bad positioning). Sometime I would like to run faster seeing how long it takes to go from one point to another, Hopefully you can Teleport whenever you want to specific places.
Battles : Sometime can become confuse, but battles are easy. Either you have the level and you win it without problem, either you don't and die quicly, you need then few more levels. Battles with same level to level+2 monsters are enjoyable, long but not hard. Auto attack is great and not a handicap, on the contrary it can let you hit the monster while you decide which action (ability) you will do next. Abilities are ATB system, it fills more or less quiclky depending your ability level. You upgrade them with Ability points. It's a mix of Action RPG and Turn based RPG, it feels like MMORPG. It's a turned based RPG without special battle screen. You need to place yourself correctly according to the action you want to do (long range, short range, back, side, etc.).
Battles have "frienship" system, where you can call your other character (you can't control them), they give supports, protection, in needed time (You can see future enemy action with Monado, so you need to select specific protection to prevent the action to happen).
The more you successfully do an action, the more relationship you get, etc.
Story : Well... don't expect an epic story evolving every minutes ... you don't spend your time watching the story but exploring the world. You walk a lot, you do a lot of missions, and you battles a lot. You don't see the story that often. only on beginning and end of each maps, which are huge.
I'm sure the dark facia is .... (hehe, when he looked at Reyn I knew there where someone inside/controled by someone/with someone's mind/etc. and I think I know who it is. Damn, what a bad character personality!)
I play it a LOT.
It's been 10 years since I didn't play a game all days long. around 10 hours a day all straight.
If you don't have time to play 100H+ game, don't focus on Xenoblade.
It's more an exploration, free move, many mission etc.
Of course, you can complete the game without doing any mission at all, except missions give a lot more exp. So you'll end doing only battles to level up.
Though, battles are a lot based on friendship, as you can't control the other players yourself, you need a good friendship to help you.