Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Favorite game of 2022! :D

Playtime: 138.5 Hours

I'm pretty sure I've done almost everything in the base game + the first couple of smaller DLCs. Finished the story (obviously) with main party at level 91, and most heroes in the high-80s to mid-90s range. All heroes recruited and all ascension conditions achieved, all sidequests completed that I am aware of, all colony and faction affinities are maxed, all 6 ultimate weapons forged, all of the Legend of the Seven rings collected in the Erthys Sea, and each character has at least their base class completely maxed at level 20. Recruited heroes include Nia and Melia in postgame, as well as Ino from the DLC. Ascension conditions have also been finished for these characters too.

Notable exceptions from the semi-completionist first playthrough: Party isn't maxed, main characters don't all have all classes maxed (which will take forever). I've only killed a number of high level uniques, none of them above Lv100 so technically not true superbosses. I also haven't touched on customization for Ino very much, and Soulhacker skill and abilities are mostly still locked since I can't bother finding all of the unique enemies. Lastly, I haven't touched the challenge arena since I don't feel like dedicating the time for that.

At this point, I'm waiting for the rest of the expansions to come out to play more of the game - especially whatever the scenario XPAC is that they have in development. I don't really plan to do any more grinding in the game for now; I think I've had enough for this playthrough, I just want to see how the rest of expansions play out. Given how much I enjoy this game, though - I won't rule out the possibility in the distant future that I'll come back to this eventually to slowly start a 100% completionist NG+ run on a harder difficulty, potentially with a no fast-travel clause to force me to explore more of the world... or maybe a simpler challenge - but I intend to come back to this again in some way eventually.

Future Redeemed Playtime: 22.4 Hours

Did a single playthrough on Normal difficulty, leveled up to around 56 by the time I stopped - though I had enough bonus EXP to grab a few more if I wanted to. I originally wanted to do a near-100% run, but I started the endgame sequence on accident and was given no option to abort (plus the bosses were long, so I didn't want to reload). Kind of lost my motivation afterwards for cleaning up the rest of the stuff in the game... The vast majority of the map is complete, except a couple of Fog Rifts in the Black Mountains and a number of collectibles from the high-level Ragmos Desolation area. I've got most character stuff unlocked (minus a few affinity unlocks for Lv3 arts), almost all unity books, weapons upgraded to around Lv6 or so. I think I'm missing a few of the high level quests, about a third of the Community bonds, one collectible (?), a decent chunk of the enemypaedia, but I got all the affinity scenes at least! Given the superbosses scale up to Lv100 and there is no way to naturally reach that level without grinding, I really don't give a shit about completion anymore. This was an entertaining experience but I expected better, and don't think I like it quite enough to go back to it in the future even if I play through XC3 base again. I don't think I even care enough to upload any new screenshots of it here.

Putting it plainly, this game is incredible. It's definitely my favorite of 2022 (not that it had much competition) and probably supplants Xenoblade 2 as my favorite game on the Switch, though XC2 is still fantastic. It's certainly not perfect by any means; there are a number of narrative and gameplay design choices that I'm not quite satisfied with, and there were noticeable technical limitations visually as with any other Switch game, though they were handled remarkably well as expected by Monolithsoft. I'll go more into my thoughts on each aspect in the sections below.

To start, the story is excellent overall and generally has a much darker theme than Xenoblade 2. The frequent lighthearted moments of Xenoblade 2 aren't necessarily an issue or an indication of bad writing, but Xenoblade 3 generally does a much better job of making the plot more compelling, and the cause more urgent than before. It's also very character focused, with most of the major plot points in each chapter dedicated to the dynamics between the Ouroboros group. The pacing was overall very good; maybe a little slow in the beginning, with a phenomenal climax at the end of chapter 5, but it does speed up a little bit too quickly at the end of the game, which is where I started to notice some of the attention to detail wearing off. The last couple of chapters generally have shorter and less impactful scenes with the exception of the final boss, and a lot of character storylines built up slowly throughout the earlier parts of the game are cut off in ways that are less than satisfying. At least the final ending scenes of the game are still great, and the final boss (even with its mechanical issues) felt like it had every ounce of gravitas that I wanted it to have.

As I mentioned above, Xenoblade 3 is extremely heavily focused on the dynamic of the core group of playable characters, who essentially join at the same time (if you don't count the 30-45 minute intro sequence). The way that their relationships build up over time, as untrusting former enemies turned close allies, acts as a microcosm of the way that the world evolves as a whole. Even though there were still some of the archetypal anime moments expected from every JRPG (unfortunately), the dynamic felt very natural and dialogue flowed smoothly, without any translation jank or stilted writing. The buildup for each of the romances/friendships was obvious from the start - and the game didn't try to hide it - but I enjoyed pretty much every step of the development along the way, seeing how each pair of characters would slowly build up chemistry between their interactions over time for even the most subtle things. This goes double for Noah and Mio; all of their scenes together near the end of Chapter 5 played perfectly into the climax of the story. I appreciate that they didn't just leave it to the major scenes; throughout the game, even things like new dialogue lines and resting/camping animations would appear to highlight their bonds. Lastly, unrelated to the other characters, I'm immensely happy that this game finally managed to introduce a number of Nopon characters that I actually like, most particularly Riku, the "common variety Nopon".

Just like Xenoblade 2, XC3 also has a large cast of additional side characters, which are integrated properly into the world this time as 'heroes', compared to the horrible gacha mechanics of 2. Almost all of them are seen in leadership positions of some kind; though given that many of them have very eccentric personalities, I kind of wish that there was a greater variety of rank & importance in the side character cast. Most of them were handled decently, though only a few of them truly got the degree of development I was hoping for; it's hard to create truly compelling characters with only a few major scenes to distinguish them - recruitment, ascension, and maybe a couple of other minor scenes in between. My favorites (in no particular order) were probably Ethel, Zeon, Riku & Manana (they're pretty much main characters though), Juniper, Ashera, and Triton; Ashera is probably my #1 with Ethel & Zeon trailing closely. Other than Triton, most of these characters had lots of screentime to develop a strong sense of character and attachment. I only wish that the same attention was paid to the other characters, especially Cammuravi, who drew the shortest possible straw of the bunch. His pre-resurrection arc is a total of maybe 1-2 minutes long, and does not explain how he was captured or much of his backstory, even though he is frequently touted as a legend among Agnus forces. Post-resurrection, his recruitment occurs in the span of a few dialogue scenes, and he shares the most underwhelming ascension with Ethel, which involves simply taking both of them to a machine and a single dialogue scene. At least Ethel had a fantastic character arc in the early game to partially make up for it; Cammuravi mostly feels like an incredibly clear indication that the later parts of the game were extremely rushed.

I have to say I'm somewhat split on the villains in XC3 as well. The concept is quite neat - a group of near-immortal entities watching over this fused world, playing with it to their whims. A number of the early appearences were very climcactic as well, establishing them as a very scary threat. However, since they decided to commit to naming them after the entire alphabet, the early sense of fear is quickly replaced in the mid-game by an overwhelming villain-of-the-week vibe, since so many of them are essentially pointless outside of their wacky character designs. It gets to the point that even a number of the important ones, like L, X, and Y barely even register anymore. Personally, I think the sheer number of consuls wasn't the best idea.

That being said, some of the more major adversaries were truly fantastic. Meeting Consul K at the beginning of the game was a phenomenal sequence, and N & M were also great, since we get to see aspects of their development throughout the game, culminating in M's defection from Mobius and N's eventual revelation after his final defeat - scenes that were impactful, unlike most of the other Consuls. As far as Zed and the Mobius faction overall, I found it somewhat hard to care about them one way or another since they're completely faceless and directionless for so much of the game, outside of "need world to continue". With no clear reasoning for their motives, nor any visible activities of them striving for something (even if it's not revealed), they are set up completely as a generic big bad entity. In contrast, XC2's Torna faction directly interferes with the party constantly, clearly establishing their presence without making them seem as some random monolithic evil entity; clearly, they are striving for something that happens to be in conflict with the plans of Rex and friends. Ultimately, the ending battle with Zed, while climactic, didn't do anything to dispel this impression, leaning even further into the "evil cosmic entity that just wants to exist". Some more characterization of Zed would have been helpful throughout the story, particularly anything to add depth to his goals of maintaining the world in its current state.

The world of Xenoblade 3 continues to impress, as did every one of the other games in the series. They've found a way to combine the distinctive styles of Xenoblade 1 and 2, while integrating them in a way that fits together in the world of Xenoblade 3 without looking out of place. I also really like the layout of the world; there are very clear hints from both the previous entries, such as the Sword and Erthys Sea from Xenoblade 1, and Uraya and Gormott from Xenoblade 2. The different Levnis and Colony designs are really cool in general, too, and subtle details on the characters from each nation do a great job at showcasing the extent of the differences between the kinds of people. For example, the Agnian core crystals and blade features, or the Kevesi power frames that were needed to match the stronger Agnian forces. Also, in a more general sense, the aesthetic of the world is absolutely beautiful, just like the previous games.

Finally getting into some notes on the actual gameplay of XC3, starting with the general flow of the game outside of combat. Overall, the game feels significantly better to play, with menus that are much better designed and less laggy than XC2 in particular (which had some horrible load times). The main story quests for each chapter felt a little bit short in general; I feel like an optimized plot-only playthrough of the game in NG+ would only take a few hours, which would naturally ruin a lot of the pacing and relationship development. The way the game was designed definitely felt like it heavily encouraged players to extensively search for sidequests and new colonies at every opportunity. From that perspective, then, I might consider XC3 to not feel quite as epic in scale as XC2 or many other JRPGs, like FF7 for example. I'm also not that enthusiastic about how most sidequests are tied directly to colony affairs; this causes many of them to feel similar (gathering supplies or w/e), and also doesn't provide enough of a true perspective outside of the locked-in mindset of colony life. Only a few quests are dedicated to people outside of the colonies, and most of these still involve a specific hero for ascension quest purposes. This is an issue that I have with these in general, but it feels more significant in this game because of how laser-focused all the quests are on optimizing colony resources and stuff. Even the affinity links between colonies feel limited in scope; most of the time, they are nothing more than an after-effect of a quest, as flavor text without any mechanical purpose behind them. Exploration-wise, one of my bigger "problems" is how easy it is to simply fast travel everywhere and walk in a straight line to the next destination. Unlike some more open-world experiences like the average Bethesda RPG, there aren't enough interesting overworld diversions to distract you and make you want to explore other places. I think this is also tied in somewhat with sidequests being tied mostly to hubs (colonies). Still, more overworld puzzles or interesting locations would be appreciated, even if they served no specific story or quest purpose.

The combat in this game is a big step up from Xenoblade 2, in my opinion. With 6 characters taking the field at once, the diversity of combos that are accessible at any given time are far beyond what could be reasonably done in XC2, where you would be waiting for cooldowns half the time. The scale of customization is so much better; each character can (eventually) change into any class, offering extremely varied setups to approach a fight, and being able to select up to 3 off-class skills allows for seriously optimized combo vectors. The different cooldown types for Agnian and Keves classes offers more diversity in gameplay style, with Kevesi classes moving around more frequently and Agnian classes being able to spam skills when autoattacking consistently. All of this makes the game incredibly fun to control. While XC2 combat mostly relied on praying for teammates to push the right chain element forward (and simultaneously hoping for a combo), XC3 feels significantly more direct, responsive, and especially active. The Ouroboros modes also add an extra layer of mechanics for tactical choices (fuse away a tank to do damage?) or desperation (when you or your partner is at low HP with aggro), which is very fun to play with, especially with their interesting ability and innate passive effects. Finally, I really like the chain mode in this game - while XC2 capitalized on the limited nature of the orb system, and frequently devolved into a gamble to grab the correct orb burst, XC3 does a much better job of forcing you to think out your plan of attack, allowing you to do full combos while inflicting massive damage and stacking powerful chain effects. All in all, very satisfied with how fun the mechanics were, and how easy it was to get started - again, in comparison to XC2, which had a billion tutorials that didn't help my confusions at all until I played about 50 hours...

Visually, XC3 certainly isn't much of a contender for best looking game of all time even though its aesthetic is great, primarily because it's limited so heavily by the Switch hardware. However, within the Switch ecosystem, it's probably the best looking game ever released. It is absolutely beautiful for a game on a semi-mobile platform, putting the likes of Pokemon and even FE3H to shame. Additionally, it does this while also running with better performance than the others; I've personally noticed very few significant frame drops across all of my hours playing. They seem to only really happen during events with extremely heavy particle effects, but even then they aren't significant. When playing portably and not docked, the resolution does seem a little lower, but performance is still solid and the game looks fine enough to be playable, which is the best I can probably expect given how weak the Switch is.

Finally, a couple of closing remarks about the voices and music. I generally don't care too much one way or another about dubbing in different accents; I'm not particularly partial to everything being in Standard American or London English, nor do I want everything to be in French-English and Aussie accents. With that said, I think the continued trend of having Xenoblade characters voiced in varying European accents absolutely works, and adds distinct identities to different groups of characters befitting the fact that they come from different worlds. The voice work from the different characters if fantastic across the board; I don't have anything bad to say about any character that is even moderately significant. VAs for Riku, Ashera, Noah, Mio, Ethel, Lanz, and Triton are probably my standouts at the moment, but that isn't to discount the great work from everyone else. With voices out of the way, the music of the game was fantastic, just like all of the other Xenoblade games. I don't have too much to comment on about it, though - I think Xenoblade 2's soundtrack is a bit better overall. The use of the flutes during the homecoming scenes and in a number of the soundtracks adds a distinguishing signature which I really liked. Other than that, it'll be great ambient music that I'll definitely get when an official soundtrack release is announced.

Comments on Future Redeemed

I finally got around to playing through this, after first doing a full run of XC1 and Future Connected with the expectation that FR would tie things together at the end to close out the series. Frankly, I'm very disappointed in the experience I had with the expansion (mind, this has little to no bearing on my opinion of the base game which I still love). As I assumed would happen, this expansion makes absolutely no attempt to obscure the events of XC1 and XC2 - many scenes will either directly show or utilize information from their endgame events, and A is obviously an Alvis-lookalike. However, I don't think they actually ended up doing anything productive with these spoilers - which is ultimately my biggest point of contention with the game's direction. For whatever reason, Monolithsoft decided to choose probably the most uninteresting and ultimately meaningless timeframe to highlight in this expansion, choosing to focus on the aftermath of the city being destroyed the first time. I don't think that the expansion had any obligation to close off XC3 with a happy ending as a sort of "reunion" sequel, but the ordeals with the original City's destruction were already fully explored in the base game - there is little to no value in basically replicating that again. Not to mention that XC3 base already has a similar close call with Shania & the new flying city. Xenoblade 2 had great unexplored background lore concerning the existence of Lora, the betrayal of Jin, the mystery of Addam & Mythra, and the history behind Torna - all referred to frequently during the game (mostly as background lore), and relevant enough to build interest in the full story. Meanwhile, FR gives an answer of sorts to Ontos's whereabouts, which not only is completely irrelevant to XC3, but actually opens more questions as to Pneuma's and Logos's existence - while only managing to (barely) answer a question that was already resolved in the base game. Literally, the planning behind the expansion is so bad that it provides anti-closure. Where is Mythra's kid? Where is Logos, and why is Pneuma stuck in some gloves? And why, if they insisted on making the expansion a prologue to XC3 rather than a sequel, did they not focus on the actual point of interest: the initial merging of the worlds?

As I've already kind of mentioned, I can respect the decision to leave the ending of XC3 mostly ambiguous. The endings of XC1 and XC2 did much the same, though with a more hopeful tone of rebirth & possibilities compared to the more nihilistic ending of XC3. Still, the "future is uncertain" line holds true, and the plot of XC3 holds up well in any case. I think the problem when considering a sequel to XC3 would be the need to answer questions about characters that already exist, dragging the same old characters back into a new mess. To that end, the new characters of Matthew, Glimmer, and whatever Shulk's kid is named are fun enough. They aren't particularly good or bad characters, and the relationship of the children with their parents, while very limited, is interesting at least. On the other hand, this game decides to drag back Shulk and Rex for some reason, and the part they play in the expansion's story (especially in the ending), is entirely contrived. It also kind of ruins the potential reasoning of the writers not wanting to drag characters back into another game; after all, heroes randomly having to fight through world-ending crisis after crisis just doesn't feel natural in storytelling. From my view, it's extremely clear that Shulk & Rex are entirely there to drive marketing, as much as I like their designs and their new roles in this game (particularly Rex). It really makes this side story feel a bit like a farce; when playing the game, I'm not pondering about the fate of the Bionis & Alrest (in part because the developers refuse to provide any more details on those events), I'm trying to identify how the developers decided to randomly mash XC1 and XC2 maps & assets together to try playing on nostalgia. Once that barrier between the narratives within the game's world and the meta-narrative of the developers planning it has been breached (poor wording here, but w/e), there's no going back - the entire game ends up looking like a series of ways to randomly pander to players instead of a thoughtful end to a monumental series of stories. It's hard to emphasize how immeasurably disappointing that is as a player. Also, they brought back the 12-year old angsty child's pipe dream again, LOL. Who thought it would be a good idea to put N back in this game? He was already kind of a joke in the base XC3; they're trying so hard to make him something he's definitely not. I suppose when I reread this down the line that this could be kind of taken as a death knell for this experience. Of all the things to bring back from base XC3, hahahaha.

Gameplay is a bit of a mixed bag, but I lean positively overall. Just like Torna, I think FR does a great job at condensing a seemingly content-rich world with plenty of different things to do into a game that also has a very short runtime. The number of things that can be upgraded, collected, and completed in this game is quite astounding, and almost everything is tracked in different interfaces somehow. Meanwhile, I felt like the pacing and balance were very reasonable, so while the level-ups were fast, I always felt pretty well on par for new content & quests, and very rarely did I feel significant over- or under-leveled for story events & new areas. It's a nice feeling to always feel like I'm making forward progress when I'm playing JRPGs, which often have long periods of grinding or just generally slow progression; I'm perfectly aware that these are basically Ubisoft checklists stapled into a 20-30 hour mini adventure, but I think it's fun to have an experience like that once in a while. Also, in terms of combat - the unity combos and added skills are a cool change, but it took a while for me to adjust to the idea of Launch -> Blowdown (or Burst), which is new to the series. My only other major note is that the party composition is quite imbalanced, since Rex is far too good as a character to not use. I don't know who thought it was a good idea, but Rex's absurd crit scaling and an infinitely-usable art has his damage ramp up exponentially faster than the rest of the team in fights - he usually contributes well over 50% of the damage for any kill. He ends up drawing in far too much aggro after a few seconds because his average DPS is probably in the 10Ks range, which kind of makes the defender characters a bit obsolete. It was very fun to use him in this game (and to glimpse back at a very similar spin2win Rex in XC2), but the fact that he sidelines all other characters because of his sheer damage output makes me question the 6-member party aspect a bit.

Overall, my takeaway from this experience is one of profound sadness, mixed with a dash of faithlessness. For this to be the final sendoff of the Klaus arc, started in XC1 and carried through XC3 in a series of fantastic and heartfelt experiences, ending with such a wet fart is the greatest insult that this trilogy could have gotten. Again, I maintain that the series would have actually felt more complete with no expansion instead of whatever this was. While the gameplay was fun, it wasn't any evolution of XC3 base in the way Torna was to XC2 - so there is no lasting power here. I wonder if the developers themselves were truly happy with the way this ended, too. From what I remember, this was originally supposed to be released in late 2023 - but ended up getting released more than half a year early for some reason, which I theorize to be related to ToTK. This should have been delayed and reworked, no two ways about it. I'm honestly really surprised how quickly I soured to this game; it's been just less than a day since I beat it (and enjoyed it relatively well at the time), but even in short-term hindsight, it is far from an acceptable experience. I really don't know what to think about Monolithsoft's future works at this point, but chances are I'll be much more suspicious of the quality than I've ever been up until now.