Special (XC2)

Specials, also sometimes called Blade Specials, are a kind of attack in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna ~ The Golden Country. They can be used by pressing A in combat. They are one of few attacks for which the player has control of when the party members use them; the 2nd active Driver performs a Special when ZL is pressed, and the 3rd performs it when ZR is pressed.

Specials tend to be of greater power than s and Driver Arts, but are less strong than Blade Combos and s. However, they are an integral part of the function of Blade Combos and Chain Attacks, making them fundamental to the combat of these games.

Special levels
There are four 'levels' of Specials, ranging from level to level. In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the Specials available are determined by a Driver's active Blade; each Blade has four Specials, one of each level. All Legendary and Rare Blades have unique Specials; Common Blades' Specials are determined by their gender and weapon. (A full list is included below.) In Torna ~ The Golden Country, all playable characters (both Drivers and Blades) have a set of three unique Specials of level to, and Blades have a fourth of level ; those currently available to the player are those of the character(s) currently in the vanguard (level  to ) or the active Blade (level ).

Specials of a higher level tend to deal more and have longer animations than Specials of lower level. For Specials of level, , or , these trends are by no means universal; however, level Specials essentially always have much longer animations than those of lower levels, and are almost always stronger than lower-level Specials of the same Blade. Level Specials also grant the entire party invulnerability to damage, reactions, and s (except for the infliction — but not the activation — of Doom) for the entire duration of the animation. Visually, Specials of level to  are performed by the active Blade (in Xenoblade Chronicles 2) or character in the vanguard (in Torna ~ The Golden Country). Those of level have animations that include both the active Driver and Blade using the active Blade's weapon together.

In Blade Combos
Specials are intricately linked with Blade Combos. Using a Special will begin a Blade Combo, indicated by a depleting metre on the right side of the top of the screen and a tree icon in the upper-right corner. If another Special of level (or higher) and of an appropriate element (see the article on Blade Combos for details) is performed before this metre fully depletes, the Blade Combo will advance to stage 2 and the metre resets. If a third Special of level or higher and of an appropriate element is then performed before the metre depletes, the Blade Combo will advance to stage 3 and finish; the Special's animation will be zoomed in on, all allies and enemies pause their attacking, and the party becomes invulnerable for the duration of the animation. The importance of Specials towards Blade Combos also makes them an integral part of Fusion Combos.

Special gauge
To use any Special, one must fill up the Special gauge. This is visualised as a light-coloured line running clockwise around the rightmost square in the lower right of the screen in combination with a Roman numeral from to. The Roman numeral indicates the current level of Special built up, whereas the line indicates progress towards building up to the next level. Pressing A when the Special gauge is built up to at least level will perform a Special at the current level built up; pressing it when the gauge is not yet at level  does nothing.

Building up the Special gauge is typically done via using Driver Arts. Normally, performing a Driver Art will increase the gauge by 1/4 of a level; this is increased, however, if an was cancelled into the Driver Art in question. Cancelling the first auto-attack increases the gauge by 3/8 of a level; cancelling the second auto-attack increases it by 1/2; and cancelling the third increases it by 5/8. Cancelling a Blade Switch or Vanguard Switch into a Driver Art, or (with the Arts Chain skill or equivalent) a Driver Art into another Driver Art, both increase the gauge by 1/2 of a level. The gauge can also be built up over time using pouch items (chiefly instruments). Some Battle Skills (e.g. 's ) also have Special-gauge-filling effects. The above methods only apply when the Special gauge is built up to level. To build to level from there, the active Driver and Blade must be at maximum  (with a golden thread connecting the two), during which the Special gauge builds up to level  over time (at a rate dependent upon the Blade). This pauses during Driver Arts. If the golden thread between Driver and Blade breaks, either due to physical distance or due to loss of Affinity, the Special gauge resets back to level (regardless of whether the gauge was built fully or only partially up to level ). Only the player-controlled Driver or Team can build Specials up to level.

The gauge fully depletes after a Special is performed, unless the Special's button challenge was fully or partially completed (see below), in which case it remains filled part of the way to level. The extent to which it is filled depends upon how successfully the button challenge was completed; at best with an 'Excellent', it is filled halfway to level. Aside from using a Special, the only way for the Special gauge to decrease below level is for the Driver and Blade to drop to 0 affinity. At 0 affinity, the Special gauge resets to nothing and cannot be built up until a certain minimum threshold for Affinity is reached. The gauge does not decrease upon a Blade Switch or Vanguard Switch, unless the gauge was built up past the threshold for level, in which case it drops back to level.

Button challenges
During a Special, the icons in the bottom-right of the UI (representing Driver Arts and the Special gauge) and the bottom-left of the UI (representing available Blades/Team members) disappear. In the centre of the screen appear 'button challenges': these either take the form of an icon of the B button, indicating that the B button must be pressed a certain number of times within a given time limit (e.g. 10 times within 1.5 seconds), or of the B button surrounded by 2 concentric circles (forming an annulus) and a third brighter concentric circle of decreasing radius. In the latter case, the player must press the B button when the bright circle's radius is between that of the other two (ideal) or lower than the smaller of the two (not perfect but still a success). Pressing the B button when the bright circle's radius is greater than the larger of the other two, or not pressing it at all, results in a failure. Many Specials have more than one of these challenges (level Specials always have multiple); the exact set, as well as the timings for each, depends on the Special. Successfully or partially completing these challenges will cause 'COOL!', 'GOOD!', 'GREAT!', or 'EXCELLENT!' to flash on screen (and be uttered by the ), with 'EXCELLENT!' being reserved for if all button challenges were completed perfectly. Doing so slightly increases the damage dealt by the Special, and (as mentioned above) results in the Special gauge being slightly built up above 0 afterwards.

AI party member Specials
As mentioned above, party members controlled by the AI will not perform Specials on their own, instead doing so when ZL or ZR is pressed. This only works if doing so will continue the current Blade Combo (or start one if one is not active). The Special currently available to AI party members are indicated via tags on the left of the screen (for the second Driver/Team) and the right (for the third): the colour of the tag indicates the element, and their current Special gauge level is indicated by white orbs circling their portrait on the tag (one orb for level built up, two orbs for level, three orbs for level ). When an AI-controlled party member is able to continue a Blade Combo (and therefore the player may use their Special), a ZL or ZR icon appears on the tag. A similar tag appears at the bottom screen if the player-controlled party member is able to continue the Blade Combo. (In Torna ~ The Golden Country, any Blade Combo will allow AI-controlled party members' Specials to be used, not only critical routes.) Button challenges (see above) do not appear for AI party member Specials.

Additional effects
Every Special has some sort of additional effect (except for a small number of level Specials and those of Drivers in Torna ~ The Golden Country). What this effect tends to be depends upon the type of Blade. For ATK Blades, most Specials include a situational damage increase: examples are 's Termination Blast, which deals additional damage if Wulfric's Driver is at or below 30%, and 's Death Wing, which deals additional damage to aerial enemies. HLR Blades tend to have Specials that heal the Driver or party on hit, or ones that drop HP potions. TNK Blades may have Specials that increase or damage-increasing effects. A few Specials have very different effects that do not fit into any of the above categories, such as 's Lacerna Noctis which has a chance of removing an enemy's. The Poppi forms' Special additional effects are customisable and can be changed via Poppiswap.

The Specials of each Blade from level to level  appear on a Blade's. They can be levelled up like Battle Skills and Field Skills can; the conditions for levelling Specials up usually either entail performing the Special a certain number of times in combat or defeating a certain number of a specific enemy. Levelling up a Special causes it to do more damage and increases the potency of its additional effect.

Interaction with other gameplay elements
Unlike Driver Arts, Specials can be initiated at any point during the animation of an auto-attack or Driver Art, and doing so will cancel the rest of the animation of said attack as the Special immediately starts. This is not a 'cancel' in the regular sense of cancelling an auto-attack into a Driver Art (no blue ring appears) unless the Special was initiated during the auto-attack's or Driver Art's usual animation-cancel window, in which case a blue ring does appear. Cancelling an animation into a Special during the animation-cancel window does not increase damage as with Driver Arts; however, it does slightly increase the.

Specials cannot be initiated when the active character is inflicted with a reaction, if they are suffering from Shackle Driver or Shackle Blade, or if the Driver is so far away from the Blade that the affinity link does not appear. (An already-initiated Special will not be halted by these.) increases to 100% throughout the animation. In Xenoblade Chronicles 2, during the animation of a (non-level-) Special, the Driver's movement speed increases to their out-of-battle movement speed, and running far away from their Blade will not incur a loss of Affinity. It is therefore recommended to use this period to collect HP potions and reposition (especially since this is the only period when repositioning does not waste time otherwise spent attacking). In Torna ~ The Golden Country, movement is not possible during Specials.

In Chain Attacks
Specials are used in Chain Attacks in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna ~ The Golden Country. When a Chain Attack is initiated, the player chooses a Blade on the player-controlled Driver (in XC2) or any member of the player-controlled Team (in TTGC), and the selected character executes their level Special. This is repeated with the 2nd and 3rd Driver/Team in that order (unless they are incapacitated or fewer than 3 Drivers/Teams are in the active party).

If one or more elemental orbs were burst by the Specials, the Chain Attack is extended for another round, with every Driver/Team executing Specials in turn again. This repeats until an entire round passes without any elemental orbs being burst or until the Full Burst gauge fills. At the start of each round after the first one, a button challenge appears (see above). If this is successfully completed, everyone will use Specials of one level higher than the previous round (up to a maximum of level ); otherwise, everyone will use Specials of one level lower than the previous round (or of level if the previous round also used level  Specials).

In a Full Burst, as well as a Driver Art, every active Driver/Team uses a Special simultaneously. Which Special is used depends on if the Driver/Team was the one who burst the last elemental orb or not. If they were not, they use a level Special (the Blade/Team member who uses the Special is the same as the one who last used a Special for that Driver/Team). If they were, they use the level Special of the most recently used Blade (in both XC2 and TTGC). Only the button challenge for the level Special appears.

Exceptions
Specials cannot be used by characters without Blades (the Special gauge will not increase). This applies to in chapter 1 (before  joins the party) and to Jin when he is in the party during the Ancient Ship and Land of Morytha sections of the story (as well as the  battle Titan Battleship Assault).

cannot use her level Special except for on  files — the Special Gauge will not increase past level, and she uses her level  Special during Full Bursts.

cannot use her level Special indoors. The Special gauge may still rise to and display the numeral, but if A is then pressed, the Special will not initiate and the gauge will drop back to level.

The maximum level of Specials is limited in the Spirit Crucible Elpys for all Blades except for Poppi. This makes performing Blade Combos, and with that also Fusion Combos and Chain Attacks, much more difficult.