For the RPG fan who wants something a little bit meatier.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a Xenoblade game. This is a sentence I thought of many times while playing, so I'm writing it here.
They say that one plus two equals three, and only when playing this game did I truly understand what they meant by that. The world of Xenoblade 3, Aionios, is made up of parts of the worlds from the previous two games, which have been combined for some reason. Not to say this is a copy-paste job - it definitely isn't - more that the game has a big theme of combining parts from the first two games, and making them fight each other. If you've ever been wishing someone would take a "which of the first two Xenoblades is better" argument online and make a Xenoblade game with that as its story, then... well, that wouldn't really be this. But I thought the idea was funny.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a Xenoblade game. I said that already? I said that already. The huge worlds this series is known for are back and as big as they've ever been. While it's not properly an open world game, as there is gating between areas in the form of story events or unlockable movement techniques, each zone you're given access to is so huge that it feels like an open world game. There is no shortage of space to run around in, cool scenery to view, and level 80 gorillas to get owned by. Between the huge world and the large number of sidequests, many of which are quite good, there's plenty to keep you distracted from doing what the story wants you to be doing, should you wish to prolong your gaming experience.
The music is also godlike as usual, and it makes exploring these big areas all the more pleasurable. I want to give a special shout-out to Dannagh Desert, an entirely optional and quite large area with music I was really into:
The game lets you turn off the minimap while exploring, which I recommend doing. It really helps you take in all the sights, and the landmarking and world design are good enough that you still won't get lost. There are quest markers to show where you need to go as well - it's more fun when that's all you're given and you have to figure out how to get there on your own. I will say, however, that a compass alone would have been nice later on when you have a boat. (There is a compass but it is coupled with the minimap.)
The combat is pretty good for the most part. The general flow is about the same as in other Xenoblades - you control one person in your party, and you stand around the enemy and you automatically attack, and based on attacks/time your meters charge for arts you can use. The old break/topple/launch/smash style combo stuff is back too. Arts charge quickly enough that it doesn't often feel like you're just standing there doing nothing. And you can always switch which party member you're controlling with a button combo mid-battle in case you want to play as someone else. With all the shit going on during battle and things on the UI to look at, when at its most active, the game looks like a parody of games with too much shit going on.
The game has a couple more "special" mechanics going on too. There's the interlink, where two of your characters temporarily fuse into a giant mecha-looking thing for a little while. I enjoyed this mechanic quite a bit - it gives you a different set of moves to work with, and since you're invincible while interlinked, it's a surprisingly decent way to dodge attacks or keep a low HP character safe until things get quieter. These interlink forms also have their own skill trees you can develop over the course of the game, so there is a lot here if you're willing to work with it.
The other mechanic of mention is something of a returning mechanic from old Xenoblade games - chain attacks. The difference here is that they went absolutely HAM on them this time - all kind of new little mechanics, and even a chain attack theme that plays while you're doing one, which you can expect to hear once or twice per boss battle for the rest of the game once you unlock chain attacks. Chain attacks in this game are pretty enjoyable as a little puzzle where you need to figure out how to allocate different characters' skills and point totals. I don't really feel like describing it in detail, but trust me that it's satisfying to pull off a good chain attack and get the big numbers. Speaking of big numbers, I think chain attacks feel overpowered once you get good at them. Once you master chain attacks, don't be surprised if you delete 50% or more of a boss's life meter with a single chain attack. Enemies in this game have lots of HP, and it almost feels like they did that to offset the insane power available with chain attacks.
As far as character customization goes, it's definitely there. I thought this part of the game was a bit of a mess. There's a class system, which is something I'm usually a big fan of, but this game's implementation has some issues. You unlock classes when you get "Heroes" with those classes to join your party (more on them later), but only for a single party member. To unlock a class for your whole party, you need to have the character who originally got the class use it until other party members "pick it up" and unlock the class for themselves. This can take a while, and seems pretty random. This results in grinding not to level up a class, but to unlock it on the person you actually want to use it with. The game also has issues with balance regarding the Class Points (CP) it gives out - the amount of CP you gain scales relative to the level of enemies you fight, and enemies more than like 5 levels below you give no CP whatsoever. This affects class unlocks as well. In a game where it's easy to overlevel yourself, this means that grinding classes also requires searching the world for monsters in the right level range. They always exist, but you won't always remember where to find them.
There are also accessories you can buy... or find in chests. Way too many of these and half of them do stupid situational shit like "+30% damage while indoors". The UI for managing these is pretty barebones and it's not pleasant wading through the dozens of slightly different accessories to find what you want. I just used the auto-equip option for most of the game... it seemed to do a good enough job for the normal difficulty.
Other progression systems in this game all suffer from the same kinds of bloat. This sort of thing tends to plague open world (or open world-esque, in this case) games. Your inventory will be loaded with all kinds of enemy scraps, fruits and vegetables, rocks and minerals... it's a giant mess and not worth the hassle to engage with. It brings the whole character customization aspect of the game down to a level I just didn't want to bother with any more than necessary.
The story's pretty good - it's nothing mind boggling, but it's a solid execution of "two groups are endlessly fighting BUT WAIT it is because third group is making them fight for its own benefit". It has bad guys called "Moebius" which resembles that one classic internet meme from the good old days. Remember?
Where the game shines in this area is with the character interactions and some of the cutscenes, especially around the mid-to-late game. This game definitely has the best cast of any Xenoblade game in terms of interactions with one another. This game has loads of cutscenes of just a couple of your party members talking about what's on their mind. These are solid all around and some of the best moments of cutscenery the game has to offer. The story cutscenes at chapters 5-6 are also really good when shit goes down.
I also want to shout out the game's sidequests. Probably half of this game is optional content around freeing colonies from their assigned Moebius rulers, then helping the colonies get back to a "normal" life and interact with other colonies. These are generally well done self-contained stories with their own characters, backgrounds, and plot points. You also sometimes get a character to join your party as a seventh swappable "Hero" party member, along with their class for you to use on your characters. Some of these characters are quite likeable and they're fun to have around.
In case you're wondering, the game never tells you why Sena's hair is on fire. I think she's supposed to resemble (be?) a Blade from Xenoblade 2 - Brighid from that game had hair on fire as well. Every cutscene was made funnier when I imagined characters asking "why is your hair on fire" every time they turned to say something to Sena... like some sort of MST3K riffing. Try it out if you play this game.
Overall this was a great game and a good use of the 80-90 hours I spent on it. I definitely didn't force myself to do all the sidequests or any post-game content, but I did a lot of it, and the rest is there for those who want it. I wish the progression system had been less messy to encourage me to play with it more and really go deep into what the class system probably has to offer.
Pick this game up for sure if you like running around in big beautiful worlds with nice music and fairly chill (if hectic-looking) gameplay. Consider changing the difficulty to Easy if the enemy HP bloat seems to be too much - I did so toward the end of the game when I felt myself starting to burn out.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a Xenoblade game. This is a sentence I thought of many times while playing, so I'm writing it here.
They say that one plus two equals three, and only when playing this game did I truly understand what they meant by that. The world of Xenoblade 3, Aionios, is made up of parts of the worlds from the previous two games, which have been combined for some reason. Not to say this is a copy-paste job - it definitely isn't - more that the game has a big theme of combining parts from the first two games, and making them fight each other. If you've ever been wishing someone would take a "which of the first two Xenoblades is better" argument online and make a Xenoblade game with that as its story, then... well, that wouldn't really be this. But I thought the idea was funny.
Just like this, the worlds of Keves (Xenoblade 1) and Agnus (Xenoblade 2) have fused together.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a Xenoblade game. I said that already? I said that already. The huge worlds this series is known for are back and as big as they've ever been. While it's not properly an open world game, as there is gating between areas in the form of story events or unlockable movement techniques, each zone you're given access to is so huge that it feels like an open world game. There is no shortage of space to run around in, cool scenery to view, and level 80 gorillas to get owned by. Between the huge world and the large number of sidequests, many of which are quite good, there's plenty to keep you distracted from doing what the story wants you to be doing, should you wish to prolong your gaming experience.
The music is also godlike as usual, and it makes exploring these big areas all the more pleasurable. I want to give a special shout-out to Dannagh Desert, an entirely optional and quite large area with music I was really into:
The game lets you turn off the minimap while exploring, which I recommend doing. It really helps you take in all the sights, and the landmarking and world design are good enough that you still won't get lost. There are quest markers to show where you need to go as well - it's more fun when that's all you're given and you have to figure out how to get there on your own. I will say, however, that a compass alone would have been nice later on when you have a boat. (There is a compass but it is coupled with the minimap.)
Just a cool looking picture I had lying around.
The combat is pretty good for the most part. The general flow is about the same as in other Xenoblades - you control one person in your party, and you stand around the enemy and you automatically attack, and based on attacks/time your meters charge for arts you can use. The old break/topple/launch/smash style combo stuff is back too. Arts charge quickly enough that it doesn't often feel like you're just standing there doing nothing. And you can always switch which party member you're controlling with a button combo mid-battle in case you want to play as someone else. With all the shit going on during battle and things on the UI to look at, when at its most active, the game looks like a parody of games with too much shit going on.
The game has a couple more "special" mechanics going on too. There's the interlink, where two of your characters temporarily fuse into a giant mecha-looking thing for a little while. I enjoyed this mechanic quite a bit - it gives you a different set of moves to work with, and since you're invincible while interlinked, it's a surprisingly decent way to dodge attacks or keep a low HP character safe until things get quieter. These interlink forms also have their own skill trees you can develop over the course of the game, so there is a lot here if you're willing to work with it.
The other mechanic of mention is something of a returning mechanic from old Xenoblade games - chain attacks. The difference here is that they went absolutely HAM on them this time - all kind of new little mechanics, and even a chain attack theme that plays while you're doing one, which you can expect to hear once or twice per boss battle for the rest of the game once you unlock chain attacks. Chain attacks in this game are pretty enjoyable as a little puzzle where you need to figure out how to allocate different characters' skills and point totals. I don't really feel like describing it in detail, but trust me that it's satisfying to pull off a good chain attack and get the big numbers. Speaking of big numbers, I think chain attacks feel overpowered once you get good at them. Once you master chain attacks, don't be surprised if you delete 50% or more of a boss's life meter with a single chain attack. Enemies in this game have lots of HP, and it almost feels like they did that to offset the insane power available with chain attacks.
I like the touch of the silhouettes on the locked classes - makes you think of where you might get them.
As far as character customization goes, it's definitely there. I thought this part of the game was a bit of a mess. There's a class system, which is something I'm usually a big fan of, but this game's implementation has some issues. You unlock classes when you get "Heroes" with those classes to join your party (more on them later), but only for a single party member. To unlock a class for your whole party, you need to have the character who originally got the class use it until other party members "pick it up" and unlock the class for themselves. This can take a while, and seems pretty random. This results in grinding not to level up a class, but to unlock it on the person you actually want to use it with. The game also has issues with balance regarding the Class Points (CP) it gives out - the amount of CP you gain scales relative to the level of enemies you fight, and enemies more than like 5 levels below you give no CP whatsoever. This affects class unlocks as well. In a game where it's easy to overlevel yourself, this means that grinding classes also requires searching the world for monsters in the right level range. They always exist, but you won't always remember where to find them.
There are also accessories you can buy... or find in chests. Way too many of these and half of them do stupid situational shit like "+30% damage while indoors". The UI for managing these is pretty barebones and it's not pleasant wading through the dozens of slightly different accessories to find what you want. I just used the auto-equip option for most of the game... it seemed to do a good enough job for the normal difficulty.
Other progression systems in this game all suffer from the same kinds of bloat. This sort of thing tends to plague open world (or open world-esque, in this case) games. Your inventory will be loaded with all kinds of enemy scraps, fruits and vegetables, rocks and minerals... it's a giant mess and not worth the hassle to engage with. It brings the whole character customization aspect of the game down to a level I just didn't want to bother with any more than necessary.
Here's a random messy screenshot that I am using to represent this game's combat. The progression feels as messy as this picture looks.
And here's a funny monster. This game has great monster designs.
The story's pretty good - it's nothing mind boggling, but it's a solid execution of "two groups are endlessly fighting BUT WAIT it is because third group is making them fight for its own benefit". It has bad guys called "Moebius" which resembles that one classic internet meme from the good old days. Remember?
Where the game shines in this area is with the character interactions and some of the cutscenes, especially around the mid-to-late game. This game definitely has the best cast of any Xenoblade game in terms of interactions with one another. This game has loads of cutscenes of just a couple of your party members talking about what's on their mind. These are solid all around and some of the best moments of cutscenery the game has to offer. The story cutscenes at chapters 5-6 are also really good when shit goes down.
I felt like there should be a Eunie picture somewhere in here.
I also want to shout out the game's sidequests. Probably half of this game is optional content around freeing colonies from their assigned Moebius rulers, then helping the colonies get back to a "normal" life and interact with other colonies. These are generally well done self-contained stories with their own characters, backgrounds, and plot points. You also sometimes get a character to join your party as a seventh swappable "Hero" party member, along with their class for you to use on your characters. Some of these characters are quite likeable and they're fun to have around.
In case you're wondering, the game never tells you why Sena's hair is on fire. I think she's supposed to resemble (be?) a Blade from Xenoblade 2 - Brighid from that game had hair on fire as well. Every cutscene was made funnier when I imagined characters asking "why is your hair on fire" every time they turned to say something to Sena... like some sort of MST3K riffing. Try it out if you play this game.
Why aren't her hands burning? Most intriguing.
Overall this was a great game and a good use of the 80-90 hours I spent on it. I definitely didn't force myself to do all the sidequests or any post-game content, but I did a lot of it, and the rest is there for those who want it. I wish the progression system had been less messy to encourage me to play with it more and really go deep into what the class system probably has to offer.
Pick this game up for sure if you like running around in big beautiful worlds with nice music and fairly chill (if hectic-looking) gameplay. Consider changing the difficulty to Easy if the enemy HP bloat seems to be too much - I did so toward the end of the game when I felt myself starting to burn out.
The Nopon are Here.
