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Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Review: The Best of Both Worlds

Monolith Soft knows a lot about ambition. From their early days as a game developer, they’ve always strived for more. With ambition however, there’s often compromise. For co-founder Testuya Takahashi, his vision has often been unfulfilled despite his best efforts. From Xenogears’ infamous second disc, to Xenosaga being cancelled partway through the six planned entries, and even with Nintendo’s own Xenoblade franchise there have been issues that held the games back. Xenoblade Chronicles wasn’t initially localized outside of Japan, Xenoblade Chronicles X was both on the ill-fated Wii U, but also had re-writes that severely impacted the story, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was made with a skeleton crew, as Monolith Soft was also assisting with two major Nintendo games (Breath of the Wild and Splatoon 2) that would launch in the same year. Despite all the hardship, Xenoblade has become a bona-fide franchise and with the latest release, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, we might be getting a look at Monolith Soft when the shackles can finally release and they can complete their vision without compromise.

FIGHT TO LIVE, LIVE TO FIGHT

Something to address right away: it is perfectly OK to play Xenoblade Chronicles 3 without having played any prior game. While connections exist, the focus is on the world and characters introduced in this game, and while having extra context is nice and you might notice some references to past entries, it is far from required reading. With that said….

In the world of Aionios, there is nothing but war. Two factions, Keves and Agnus, are locked in an eternal struggle. They don’t fight for resources or politics; they fight and kill because it is the only way they can stay alive. These factions find themselves at the mercy of the Flame Clock, a measurement of their remaining life force. Though they must also eat and sleep, they too must take the lives of the enemy faction to keep their own Flame Clock filled. The people of Aionios learn to fight from the moment they are born, and have frighteningly short life spans, or “terms,” of roughly ten years. Should they make it to their tenth term, they are taken before their queen for a Homecoming ceremony, returned to her and laid to rest. A life of nothing but fighting, no one questions the natural order…until one faithful day.

Six soldiers, three from Keves and three from Agnus, find themselves on an unorthodox mission and end up meeting a man named Guernica, who is far older than anyone they have ever seen before. He tells them of a “true enemy” and that the world was once different, though it isn’t long before the group is attacked by this enemy: Moebius. Though fatally wounded in the battle, Guernica bestows a strange power to the six youths, enabling them to fight back against Moebius and give the world a fighting chance to set things right. With both factions branding them as traitors and Moebius also working to hunt them down, it is up to an unlikely ensemble to shatter the nightmarish status quo and find out what it really means to live.

Xenoblade 3 at times is the darkest entry in the franchise to date. A somber atmosphere, the game doesn’t shy away from the horrors of war. The fact that most characters in the game are basically child soldiers is merely the tip of the iceberg. Each of the main cast have experienced trauma from the constant fighting, from the people they’ve lost and what they’ve had to do just to survive in the nightmare of Moebius’ creation. Noah and Mio, our main leads, are off-seers, tasked with sending off those that die in battle, so they are both the closest to death among the main cast but also the ones who are quickest to set aside their differences in an effort to set the world to rights. Noah is a lot more philosophical about life and death throughout the game; despite being against fighting if he sees another option, he’ll still take up arms if he sees no other choice. Mio meanwhile is fairly restrained and kindhearted, but is constantly weighed down by the knowledge that she is on her final term, with roughly three months left to live at the game’s start, giving her a sense of urgency to complete the group’s mission before it is too late. That’s not to say the game can’t have more light-hearted moments though; though not to the extent of Xenoblade 2 there are often characters and missions with a more laidback, comedic bent which serve to mostly balance out the otherwise bleak setting, and leave us with memorable secondary characters. Despite the dark setting, there is a sense of optimism that shines through and keeps the game from being too exhaustingly bleak. On top of that, it might just have the best main cast in the series.

A goal for the development team was to flesh out the main cast, to not have any one “main character” that took up the bulk of screen time and development, which is definitely something the other Xenoblade games have been guilty of in the past. While Noah and Mio are given a bit more focus in the core plot, the rest of the group aren’t far behind and have their own effects on the narrative at various points. Lanz, easy to write-off as the hotheaded idiot of the team, works through his own trauma throughout the game and has to come to grips with letting go of his past if he wants to walk forward. Eunie, a brash if well-meaning friend of Noah and Lanz, struggles with strange visions that haunt her and give some eerie implications into the greater setting. She also has some of the funniest lines in the whole game. Taion, who I feared would quickly fall into a route “smarmy know-it-all” archetype displays a fair amount of depth early on. Despite being among the least-pleased with working with his former enemy, he’s smart enough to rein it in and at least attempt to get along with everyone. Despite taking a lot of pride in his strategic prowess and at times coming across as stoic, his more emotional moments lead to both some of the more touching parts of the game, and also some of the funniest. Sena, at least initially, came across as a bit lacking. She’s the plucky girl who seems to be Mio’s personal cheerleader; however her development is more subtle. Despite being driven and powerful in her own right, she lacks confidence in herself and is constantly seeking validation. She sees herself reflected in other characters throughout the game, and eventually learns of her own self-worth, though I do feel that quests ostensibly meant to be focused on her aren’t always keeping her in the forefront, so it isn’t perfect.

While the main cast feels more fleshed out than any previous Xenoblade game, I do feel that the antagonists are a tad undercooked as a result. Moebius are billed as hedonistic monsters who orchestrate the eternal war behind the scenes mostly out of boredom. They pointedly refer to this all as a game, and have no real respect for any life but their own. While easily detestable, I do feel that the vast majority of Moebius lack depth, coming across more so as Monster of the Week styled obstacles than real characters. Coming off of the villains of Xenoblade 2, in my eyes the strongest antagonists in the franchise, this is definitely disappointing. Then again, seeing as Torna in Xenoblade 2 was a tight-knit group of five, it was far easier to flesh them out compared to Moebius’ 25 members. They went with quantity over quality, but even with the “main” members that received larger focus, I do feel that the game fumbles a bit at giving us villains that are all that memorable. While I want to avoid outright spoilers, I do have to mention I find the ending also loses a bit of steam. The game has a real emotional and narrative high point and…kind of runs on fumes after a while; though I think the ending is strong enough. I do feel there are more unanswered questions with this game when the credits roll, and some moments that don’t make much sense if you stop to think about them. Xenoblade 3 at points seems to be going for a more thematic, symbolic story than an overtly logical one, so I can let a few things slide. Seeing as there is story DLC coming next year though, it is possible the closure and explanations I yearn for are a ways off.

On the whole though, I think Xenoblade 3’s story is very well done. An interesting hook at the start, a steady supply of new developments that push things forward, with a large variety of interesting characters and the best main cast in the series yet, even with the ending stumbling a bit. Monolith Soft seems to have taken a lot of the criticisms of the English dub of Xenoblade 2 to heart here as well, as the English performances are excellent across the board. Lip synching also applies to either the Japanese or English audio tracks, so we no longer have the more awkward moments from Xenoblade 2 where things didn’t even remotely match up. As far as other aspects of the presentation go, Xenoblade 3 continues to push what should be possible on hardware as old as the Switch. Vast landscapes filled with things to see and do never fail to impress, while the overall character models are expressive and detailed. The main cast can even get dirty when out exploring, with a dedicated option to wash clothes when at camp. What the game might lack in high-fidelity textures it often makes up for in its strong art direction and expressive anime cel-shaded style on characters, making this one of the Switch’s most technically impressive games. Also worth noting, there has been more focus on making the game look good in handheld mode as well, which was often seen as an afterthought for previous Xenoblade games on Switch. Coupled with a targeted 30 FPS frame rate the game is about as smooth as one could hope for, considering the console specs and sheer scope of the game. I also feel I should point out how seamless the game is when switching from cutscenes to gameplay. Previous entries in the series would have to fade to black to quickly load in boss fights but in 3 the game instead has a more stylish zoom out straight into gameplay out of the cutscene. While there is a definite difference in quality for the pre-rendered cinematics versus the in-game cinematics, the transitions between the two are a lot smoother, and coupled with voice work even in many of these in-game moments, the overall presentation is a good deal higher than past entries in the series.

To go this far without mentioning the game’s music is a crime unto itself, but to be honest here, when it comes to Monolith Soft, I simply just expect great music by default. Thankfully, Xenoblade 3 delivers here. From a beautiful piano piece that serves as the main menu theme, to several fantastic battle and field themes, there’s almost too much to parse when picking favorites. Compared to the previous games, Xenoblade 3 has a heavy emphasis on flutes, tying in with Noah and Mio’s instruments when working as off-seers, and giving the game its own distinctive sound. It can be hard to name favorites but I’ll try anyway. The Moebius battle theme itself includes ominous chanting, which ties in with the player tackling higher beings with god-like power, and at points the song even sounds like it is laughing at you, emphasizing that Moebius sees this all as entertainment over anything else. “A Step Away” is one of only two vocal tracks in the game, playing at the game’s emotionally draining darkest hour and may or may not have caused tears to be shed. For my money though, “The Weight of Life” has to be my favorite, despite how little it plays in the game. A climactic song that amplifies the cutscenes it appears in, it showcases just how hard the team has to work to overcome overwhelming odds and has moments of intensity that give me chills every time I hear it. Appearing at the end of the game’s second official trailer, I couldn’t get it out of my head then and still can’t. As always, Monolith never disappoints when it comes to music. Well…except for the fact that using a Chain Attack completely overrides whatever theme is playing, which means you can miss out on the more dynamic boss themes. So that could be better. That said, we still have an actual game to describe here, so I’d best move on.

BATTLE WITH CLASS

To anyone that has played any of the games in the series up until this point, Xenoblade 3 will be easy enough to get into, but for those that might be new to the series, here is a quick run-down of the basics before we get into what this game does differently. Speaking broadly, all Xenoblade games play out very similarly to MMO-styled combat. Players are free to move around in control of one character while the rest of the party is controlled by AI. When in range, you’ll attack automatically, though these attacks are often weak. The real damage comes from using Arts, special attacks with a wide range of uses and effects, which undergo cooldowns after use. Some Arts require you to hit opponents from a specific position, like Noah’s Edge Thrust, which does more damage from behind. Depending on which faction they belong to, Art cooldowns differ slightly in this game. Kevesi characters like Noah, Lanz and Eunie, have to simply wait for the cooldown to expire similar to Xenoblade 1. Agnian characters (Mio, Taion and Sena) instead recharge their Arts with auto-attacks similar to Xenoblade 2. Many Arts also are used in status combos, with the party using specific Arts in sequence to force a given status onto the enemy. Noah might inflict Break on opponents to stagger them, and Lanz can follow up with an Art that inflicts Topple, making the enemy defenseless for a time, as an example. While the AI generally follows along with what you want to do, this game also allows you to swap control to any main party member during battle, and even outside of that you can give some orders to allies to make them do specific things if need be. For the most part as long as you do your thing, you can let the rest of the party handle things on their own, but having the option is certainly nice.

This game really emphasizes proper team composition and everyone acting according to one of three roles: attacker, healer or defender, which should be fairly self-explanatory. New to this game is a wide variety of classes characters can obtain, all of which fall under one of these three roles. While Noah and company all have their own starting classes, throughout the game players can recruit extra party members, known as Heroes, and unlock the Heroes’ classes for the rest of the party. As a class is used, it levels up separately from the character and after certain milestones players will gain skills and Arts that can be used regardless of class, which is where some real interesting customization happens. You could have characters learn some healing Arts so they can help out regardless of class, or just give characters more offensive options in general. Given enough time it becomes easier to do various status combos or inflict some big damage, but the game still has plenty of other systems at play to make you even stronger.

Following the inciting incident in the game, the core party gain the ability to Interlink into powerful forms known as Ouroboros, which they can freely use in combat a bit later on to great effect. While active, the Ouroboros has powerful Arts unique to them and they take no damage from attacks, though the form has its drawbacks. The Interlink will eventually overheat if not cancelled early, locking out the form for some time, and early on before the forms can be properly leveled up you won’t last long and be able to do as much. On top of that, characters have specific Interlink partners; Noah with Mio, Eunie with Taion and Lanz with Sena. If one of the pair is defeated in battle or hit by certain statuses, the Interlink cannot be performed. There’s also the problem of being down a character. If your healer Interlinks your party loses out on any heals, so you better make them count. While not an instant-win button, with practice the Ouroboros forms can help turn the tide of harder battles, but for situations that require even more power, there’s always the series staple in the Chain Attack. Once the Chain Attack gauge is filled, players can activate it at any time. Time stops and players can go all in on one enemy with the ability to use any Art on any party member. Without getting into the intricacies, the player is given an assortment of “orders” at the start of each “round” of the Chain Attack, which all have different effects if completed. Noah’s order has attacks potentially bypass an enemy’s defense, for example. The goal of each round is to use Arts to build up Tension Points. Once you reach 100 Tension, the order is executed. Rinse and repeat until you either run out of party members or the Chain Attack gauge empties. Heroes have their own orders that can be incredibly powerful; Valdi adds more Tension to his Arts if fighting a machine-type enemy, for one. And later on, Ouroboros orders can be used if certain conditions are met for even more damage. It takes a bit of luck and coordination but this game’s iteration of Chain Attacks might be the best yet in the series…perhaps even too good.

The series has quite the reputation for being difficult to get into and having quite complicated combat, though 3 aims to streamline things a great deal and ease players into things. From an honest to God training mode, to the slow but steady introduction of major mechanics with dedicated tutorials, Xenoblade 3 is perhaps the most straightforward game in the series, even if the beginning of the game somewhat goes too far with handholding and forcing players to do something as simple as, say, equip a piece of gear onto a character step by step. I’d rather the game teach me at all than flash a tutorial prompt on screen that can never be revisited though, so it’s a massive improvement from Xenoblade 2! Navigating menus is also made easier, with shortcuts that let me get right to where I want from the main game, like letting me open up the area map or party customization screen instantly, and those shortcuts can even be customized. There’s lots of smaller accessibility features in the options as well to make things flow smoother, like letting your AI allies Interlink on their own or leaving it to your explicit order. These quality-of-life updates really start to add up over time.

Throughout the series, Monolith Soft has streamlined combat and with 3 they’ve landed on a really solid series of systems. The combat is faster and snappier than in 2, though retains that game’s improvements from 1’s combat, such as attack cancelling and the more streamlined UI. That said, an issue this game shares with all but Xenoblade Chronicles X is the inability to jump and run in combat, which can get awkward in the often bumpy terrain battles take place on. Getting launched by an enemy attack can cause you to get stuck on a small hill and be unable to get back to fighting unless you holster your weapon, at which point you’re a sitting duck. While the UI is streamlined and the game generally does a MUCH better job of teaching you, some fights are still a cluttered mess. I’m not sure it was really worth it to have the entire party (plus one Hero) active at once. Against larger, single targets like bosses it is mostly fine, but when fighting multiple enemies at once it becomes sensory overload, it being a legitimate problem trying to find who you’re locked onto and knowing what’s even going on. Those issues are fairly minor though, and the end result is some of the most engaging combat the series has ever had. Other aspects like equipment are further de-emphasized as was the case in 2; you can equip some basic accessories and gems to your character, as well as fiddle with the skills and arts you obtain by mastering classes, but that’s about it as far as “builds” go. As someone who dislikes having to constantly buy new armor and weapons for huge RPG parties, I’m not all that upset to see things simplified down like this and find the class system engaging enough when trying to optimize characters, so I think it balances out. While fighting is a huge part of the game, let’s not forget there’s other aspects to this gameplay experience too!

SATING MY WANDERLUST

As a series, Xenoblade really excels at sating my wanderlust, boasting vast landscapes filled with things to see and do that are often quite striking. In some respects, 3 makes some great improvements from the previous entry, though I’m still left wanting more. Aionios, according to the developers, is roughly five times bigger in terms of walking distance compared to Xenoblade 2’s Alrest, though I find the ways to navigate this world aren’t scaled up to match. Your run speed and jump height and distance aren’t much different than in either Xenoblade 1 or 2, despite the world being so much bigger and it just doesn’t cut it. Often the jumping is mostly to get over the small bumps in the road that you should logically be able to already walk over but can’t for whatever reason, and it’s otherwise useless for any amount of platforming, and while I made frequent use of the fast travel system to get around there’s still large stretches where I would turn auto-run on and put my controller down to do something else as the group crossed large expanses. The most infuriating thing about all of this though is that Monolith Soft already solved these types of issues with Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Wii U. That game was also massive, bigger than Breath of the Wild in fact, and was a seamless, open world to boot. And to match that players not only could run FAR faster than in any other game, they could jump far higher and farther to make navigating the vast world of Mira fun in its own right. And later still you would gain access to a giant robot, the Skell, to cross even larger expanses faster and eventually unlock the flight module to make the world your oyster. While I’m not asking for 3 to add in a giant robot to fly around in (I mean I wouldn’t say no either) at the very least I wish this game took the running and jumping from X. Later in the game you do gain access to a boat to cross a large aquatic region…but its controls both leave something to be desired and the sheer scale of this ocean means the boat only makes moving from point A to B SLIGHTLY less tedious.

To the game’s credit though, it does improve on one of my least favorite aspects of Xenoblade 2’s navigation. In the latter, you would frequently need to unlock paths forward with field skills and constantly open up menus to swap around Blades to get the appropriate skills in order, but it was a real mess and pace breaker. In 3 field skills are taught to the party after meeting certain Heroes, and just have them permanently active from that point onwards. The game even teases you a bit at the beginning by showing you tightropes you won’t be able to use until a ways later into the story. That said, there’s only four field skills in the entire game and two are completely optional, and even in those cases I can count the times you DO need to use them on one hand. Expecting every Hero to have their own field skill would have been overkill for sure, and in this specific case I’m glad Monolith Soft didn’t go for quantity over quality. Sadly, the game couldn’t improve on 2’s map at all, as it still makes it difficult to judge differences in elevation. Certain symbols only show up on the minimap but not the full map, and you’re limited to just one pin you can put on the map per areas, which simply isn’t enough. Seeing as so many people from Monolith Soft worked on Breath of the Wild, which had detailed maps that showed off things well, as well as multiple pins and such to work with, this is a pretty disappointing step down. Far from unusable but there’s more that could have been done here.

Thankfully, the game does improve on one aspect the series has always been a bit iffy on: the quests.

HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO (QUEST)

Xenoblade has often had a LOT of quests, but very few were really worth doing outside of the experience or money they’d give you. The first game went a little too hard on MMO-styled quests that just amounted to killing a given number of enemies or gathering a given amount of items. Some quests had more worthwhile rewards and little storylines associated with the NPCs giving them out but it really wasn’t worth having to trudge through all of the basic ones to get to them. Xenoblade Chronicles X was a fair bit better with more engaging quest lines throughout the game with more tangible rewards. Watching your city slowly accept more alien citizens into it was really neat, among other things. But that game also had strange requirements to even take on quests and often limited who could or could not be in your party to even accept them which held it back. The vast majority of quests in Xenoblade 2 were kind of unremarkable to be honest, though the Blade quests were often higher quality…a shame most Blades were only obtainable through in-game gacha that took TONS of luck and grinding to even get. So really, the bar was pretty low for Xenoblade 3’s quests and they still raised it so much higher that it’ll be very hard to top.

Side quests in 3 come in two flavors: basic quests and Hero quests. Basic quests can vary but often concern themselves with NPCs and tend to have their own minor storyline connected to the colony they hail from, while Hero quests are for both recruiting and later strengthening the Heroes you can add to your party. Hero quests come with voice acting and even some extensive cinematics at times, so the presentation really makes them stand out. While some Hero quests are actually required to complete the story, the vast majorities are optional…but if you take nothing else from this section, know that it is within your best interests to do them if you can, because they contain some of the game’s best moments. Be it character development, gags, or some really great rewards in the form of power-ups or party members, I was almost never disappointed with the Hero quests. Some are so good I’m shocked Monolith Soft didn’t make them required, especially since they often tie up loose ends to the core story or some characters’ personal arcs.

Something I came to enjoy about all of these quests is how they would often feed into each other and in some cases build off of one another. Take the quests found in Colony 9. The colony is rather run down at the game’s start and the new commander, Zeon, isn’t well respected by the rest of his subordinates. His initial Hero quest is about learning to trust Noah and the others, but subsequent quests around the colony are about him earning the trust of his peers and eventually getting the colony to start growing their own crops to sustain themselves. This requires the help of Colony Tau, which you encounter much later on, but serves to strengthen relations between the two. Most of the colonies in the game end up being paired off with a colony from the opposite faction, further emphasizing the game’s core themes of looking past initial differences or prejudices and working together for a common goal. Some basic quests can have some unexpected payoff. One questline has you attacked at random points by strange robotic soldiers, which eventually leads to a late-game Hero quest, and that hero teaches you a field skill that enables you to tackle another Hero’s ascension quest as you go off in search of a mythical hot spring. It made me feel validated in scraping every inch of the map and doing every quest when I could. Often times I was torn between continuing the core story and doing as much side content as possible, which is about the highest praise I can think of for an RPG. Things aren’t perfect, of course.

While I would say most missions are at least somewhat interesting for delving into NPCs or occasionally shaking things up, the game does repeat certain quest types a bit too much. Virtually every “follow the tracks” mission is the same, but the tracks themselves sometimes seem to wig out and spontaneously pop into existence. Not bad, but also not very engaging. Any time you have to follow an NPC that walks as slow as possible also kills the pacing of the game. I’m begging you here, Monolith Soft, please never do this again. There’s even two separate quest lines about making it rain that either requires random waiting around or dropping a ton of money on an NPC to make it rain instead. But really, the biggest issue I have with a lot of the quests in the game is how you get them.

Sometimes you’ll just be given a quest straight away, while others will be displayed on the map with a big glowing question mark. But often times you have to gather information on a quest before actually being assigned it. Wander over to NPCs with neon yellow speech bubbles and just eavesdrop for a few seconds and BAM, you have some quest info. But some quests require multiple pieces of information to even accept and even then, you have to go back to camp and specifically discuss the info to gain the quest. Some quests require you to have specific Heroes in your line up OR be discussed at a very specific camp just to give you more hoops to jump through. This does nothing but really add extra steps to the process and I don’t find it adds anything of note but maybe some minor flavor text. I can tolerate it for the most part at least, except for the handful of cases where the information you need to gather can only be obtained at VERY specific times of day. I wasn’t able to even START a few quests near the end of the game because I would have to go to a specific part of the map at a specific part of the day for the CHANCE the conversation would be there to overhear. Granted, you can change the time of day in-game manually but it was still an annoying obstacle that didn’t have to be there.

That said, I did everything in the game, which isn’t something I could say for ANY other Xenoblade until now, as there was always something that would burn me out of the process. Maybe there were just too many quests, or weird requirements to even start them, but Xenoblade 3 is the first game in the series I’ve 100% completed, so that should speak to the sheer quality of most of the side content in addition to the core story. For the most part the game is very keen on making it easy to keep tabs on your progress through quests, or making it easy to see where to go next. Some quests which required you to grab specific items would sometimes mark themselves on your map, and some areas would spawn a large amount of items in said area to make gathering take no time at all. That said, this wasn’t universal and there are still some really tedious questlines involving gathering items that I had to look up to cut down on time. All told though, I never felt the need to just drop a quest and enjoyed having so many things to do throughout the game. Monolith Soft has come far when it comes to their side content, though there are still some pitfalls with the greater balance of the game with all that in mind.

AN UNENVIABLE BALANCING ACT

Balancing a game is hard, especially an RPG with tons of systems layered over one another. Past Xenoblade games have been a bit hit or miss with balance, and going into Xenoblade 3 I was curious how well they’d balance a game where your entire party is battling at once. I think for the most part the game’s intended balance curve when focusing on the story is mostly fine. And it does take steps to keep players from growing too strong too fast and breaking the game over its knee but…well, let’s just say there are some issues with their approach to things.

Most regular encounters are generally fine so long as you are within a few levels of your enemy, and as long as you single out some stronger enemies and don’t attract a group you’ll do fine. Same old Xenoblade. As in past games though, there are varying types of enemies that can rapidly change things, namely the Elite and Unique enemies. Unique enemies are a series staple, basically bosses in disguise and are often far stronger than their level would imply, with Elite enemies a slight step down from that. These two enemy types are a LOT bulkier than standard enemies, and as I found throughout the game, most storyline bosses qualify as these types of enemies as far as health and defense goes. On the one hand, this meant that even in situations where I was quite over leveled, these bosses still put up a fight, but it also kind of makes most fights a drag….unless you use Chain Attacks.

Which leads to my next point: Chain Attacks are kind of broken. They are SO good, you’d be foolish NOT to abuse them, but by using them battles can get kind of samey, all that unique music is drowned out by the Chain Attack theme, and it also makes it easy to over level without even trying. See, similar to Xenoblade 2, if you kill an enemy during a Chain Attack but keep going for as long as possible you end up getting an “overkill” modifier to your experience. Depending on when and where you do the Chain Attack, you could end up getting upwards of 1000 times the normal experience. Add to this that Elite enemies also have a separate modifier for experience you gain from taking them out, as well as the fact that one of the perks to doing more side quests is upping the chances of seeing more Elite enemies…and it means you are DROWNING in experience before you even get to the experience gained from quests and exploration.

Now, in Xenoblade 2 Monolith Soft implemented a system where you would have any non-battle experience stored separately that you could access at an inn to bolster your levels if you needed a boost, or ignore it if you didn’t want to over level. This carries over into Xenoblade 3; however it lacks the ability to level down, which was added to the Switch port of Xenoblade 1, at least until the post-game. So you have a game where it is extremely easy to over level, even if you aren’t trying to optimize it, and that leads to another problem.

Whenever you complete a Hero Quest in this game, a given party member will “inherit” that Hero’s class. So, when you beat Valdi’s quest and add him to your party, Lanz gets the ability to be a War Medic immediately. For everyone else, they have to unlock it slowly by fighting alongside Valdi and/or Lanz in that class, as an example. What the game fails to tell you though is that if you are more than four levels higher than an enemy, characters gain NO progress towards unlocking these classes. Despite the fact you still gain experience and Class Points (to rank up the classes), they saw fit to freeze your progress. In a game where it’s criminally easy to accidentally over level, which pushes you to fight stronger and stronger enemies to actually unlock the classes the game is clearly built around. Which will just over level you even more. It’s a problem that starts small, barely noticeable, but by endgame I was left with a ton of classes I couldn’t really pass on to anybody, which really limited my options.

To be fair here, this isn’t an issue every player is likely to really run into. Not everyone’s going to do every quest in the game, or use all their stored experience. The game is perfectly playable and beatable without getting every class on every character. As I said before, going from story beat to story beat, the game offers pretty decent challenge, and if you don’t abuse certain things like the experience modifiers, you likely strike a good balance with the game. I also only played on the default difficulty so maybe the harder difficulty would have been a better idea. I’ve definitely seen strategies and set-ups that break the game in half and trivialize it even at the higher difficulties but that’s so far removed from an average experience with the game I can overlook it. Monolith Soft likes to put a lot of things into their games and striking a perfect balance between rewarding players for doing it versus not punishing players who don’t engage with every facet is impossible. For the most part, the game works fine as intended and for those that enjoy exploiting and optimizing things out, Xenoblade 3 can be a lot of fun. I just hope in the future they can try to limit punishing players that stray off the beaten path and gorge themselves on all this wonderful optional content. They’re getting better in some ways, but there’s still a lot more that can be done.

BRINGING AND END TO THE ENDLESS NOW

I’ve had a lot to say here regarding Xenoblade Chronicles 3. If you couldn’t tell, I quite enjoyed it and took great delight in devouring it over the course of about 170 hours. As it stands, this game is likely my Game of the Year, or at the very least in the running for it. Monolith Soft has become one of my favorite developers over the course of the Xenoblade series. From their support work on major first-party Nintendo games, to this series, I’ve seen tremendous growth from them. They learn from their mistakes and shoot ever higher, with each original title from them demonstrating that they are some of the best in the business. I said before that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is Monolith Soft more or less at their best in many regards, and shows a glimpse at their true potential, with their ambitions fully realized.

While I am a bit mixed on certain endgame elements of the story, it was an extremely engaging, emotional title that excelled at giving me a main cast I really cared about. I love Shulk, I…tolerate Rex, but the rest of their party members were hit-or-miss By contrast, I love the entirety of the Ouroboros gang here. Demonstrating surprising depth and story relevancy, at no point did they fade into the background. While the setting definitely takes elements from past titles and longtime fans have a lot to dissect and mull over, making this game mostly a standalone experience allowed the cast to shine, no fear of being upstaged or made to play second-fiddle to returning characters. For anyone joining this series with this installment, I’ll say again that you don’t miss out on too terribly much and the core experience will still hit hard.

This is easily my favorite Xenoblade when it comes to the combat, making for a smooth experience that I easily lost several hours in without even noticing. The ease of swapping between side quests, the main story and exploring the corners of Aionios cannot be overstated here. For as long as the game was, it was hard to put down until I saw the ending through. Despite some bumps in the road, Monolith delivered not just a good story, but a good game built around it. It was a journey that seemed endless, and at times I didn’t want it to end.

For as bleak as the game could get, there was always an optimistic streak that kept it from being too much. For as nightmarish as the world was, the heroes moved forward. Xenoblade 3 is a game all about moving forward; it is about accepting loss, celebrating the good times along with the bad, and cherishing the time you have while you can. As tempting as it may be to live in a stable status quo, that leads to stagnation and ultimately destruction. The future is uncertain, there are doubtless struggles ahead, but despite that fear of the unknown, moving forward is the only way we can go on living. The past few years have weighed pretty hard on me, as I’m sure it has for many others out there, and it has put a lot of things in perspective. I found myself frozen, afraid to move forward or back. Trapped in my own “endless now,” I’m glad to have found hope again. This might be “just a game,” but it was a game I felt I really needed to play at this specific moment in time. It means a lot to me, and I’m glad I was able to share my thoughts on it. A triumph of the genre, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 stands out to me more so than perhaps any other game this year, and I can’t recommend it enough.

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