Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Oh man, thanks for the early impressions!! My son and I marathoned 1 and 2 on the Switch and have been waiting forever for this one to come out. We aren’t going to be able to start it until November so please post any updated impressions you have as you go through the game!

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If memory serves, didn't 2 have the same issue on release and then they patched it to up the res? Or maybe I'm thinking of something else.

Thanks for the info though OP. I have only played 2 and never beat it. I'd like to get thru 1 and 2 before 3, so may be a while before I get to it. Sounds like most people are enjoying it a lot.

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It did. I just think it's worse here

That said, I played Xenoblade 2 a few years after release so it's possible there were some patches that cleaned up the visuals, at least in handheld mode.

Can't wait to play.

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These are like, 100% Blades right? Like, It's super obvious that all of these are Blades being used in some kind of experiment (maybe to fill the world with land, since that's what Blades are used for, so they are speeding up the process by making them fight in perpetuity?), it's almost too on the nose to not be, and I'll be happily surprised when they aren't

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They are not. Well, there are characters who look like blades that very well could be.

In Xenoblade 3, and this is partially a spoiler, the worlds of 1 and 2 have merged back together again.

There are characters from 1 and 2 who pop up in 3.

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BulldogXero

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I don't know what it is... but I'm just not feeling this game like the other 2. Hopefully it gets better, but I'm really just kinda bored with the gameplay and the story so far... who knows

ETA: It also doesn't help that I now want to buy an xbox one s and get game pass and go to town on a bunch of new games

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I don't know what it is... but I'm just not feeling this game like the other 2. Hopefully it gets better, but I'm really just kinda bored with the gameplay and the story so far... who knows

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The gameplay might be the best in the series, although it does have some quirks. The gem crafting system should be removed. The ability of characters to perform better in their role (tank, healer, DPS) should not be tied to random loot drops. I'm on chapter 6 and am at least 5 levels over pretty much every enemy in the chapter thus far and yet, there's items I need to craft certain gems to make my tank hold aggro better that I have no clue where it comes from, and the game is so now that there aren't a lot of guides out yet showing where the loot drops.

Having 8 party members is cool; however, the flip side of that is, at least on normal difficultly, it feels like it makes the ability to switch classes kind of pointless, and the classes don't feel all that distinct to actually play. You're still just standing next to a mob and hitting buttons off cooldown. The buttons may do different things based on your class (ie, heal, increase aggro, crit from behind, etc), but the actual mechanics of playing each class essential feels no different.

Then, I don't understand the point of locking class ranks to 10 for such a huge portion of the game. Unless I have missed something, I am on chapter 6 and just unlocked the ability to go past rank 10 for Mio's Zephyr class, only this is completely useless to me as I use Mio as a healer and not a tank

I seemingly unlocked it randomly after completing a Hero Quest. I have no idea if there's any way that I can see the criteria regarding how to unlock additional class ranks for the other classes in-game, if they will unlock naturally (why at the tail end of the game?) or if I will need to visit additional resources outside of the game.

Lastly, I think there's a good story here, but the way it's told is really bad. The premise sounds interesting on paper, but in practice, it makes the game world so damn boring. There's nothing in the way of actual towns (with one exception that I won't go into) or world building. It's pretty much barren landscape with a few tiny military outposts here and there.

Long stretches of the game are spent traveling from point A to B stopping at camp sites where the characters just sit and ruminate about life as child soldiers, and it feels like they have almost the exact same conversations every single time. There are flashback sequences that I suppose are there to make you care about the characters, but I just don't.

I think probably only Xenoblade X has worse main characters. These characters are all pretty much the same throughout the entire game. They are vessels for which you can swap in and out of specific classes. They have no actual character development or character arc to really speak of.

Any actual development of the story is incredibly backloaded.

At the end of chapter 5, I literally fought 3 boss battles, watched a cutscene for a solid hour, then fought 2 more boss battles at the beginning of chapter 6.

I do like the game. I think it's better than 2 from a mechanics standpoint, but if you gave Xenoblade 2 this game's combat system, I feel like 2 would be superior in every way.

Xenoblade 1 is still my favorite. X is kind of its own thing. A lot of the criticism I have for 2 also applies to X but magnified in specific ways.

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X to me is the best, then 1 and a good bit after that 2.

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Monolithsoft has developers who think the sign of a good game is the sheer number of poorly explained, overly complicated mechanics that exist for no good reason. I would say X is quite possibly the worst example of this.

That carried over into 2 with the field skills, the combat system, and the entire concept of the blade system.

This game has plenty of unnecessary mechanics as well, but nothing really that cockblocks you from progression like X and 2.

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I guess my issue so far with XC3 has actually been the thing you guys are praising it for... with 6 characters on the field it almost feels like I'm managing a fighting team instead of actually having much of an impact. It's so chaotic and I'm only really controlling 1/6 of the fighters. Hopefully it gets better, but who knows at this point.

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I wouldn't say I'm praising it for the seven character party. I think when you have so many active party members it lessens the fun of experimenting with all the different classes.

I wouldn't say combat feels chaotic though. It could have been an absolute mess, but it actually seems to work very well for the amount of characters on screen. The characters don't shout all over each other during combat like they do in 2 either.

Yeah it’s annoying, kicking their asses and then the cutscenes act like it was a close battle the whole time. For sure overdone towards the end.

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Every character is level 10 in all the main characters’ classes, and I’ve been maxing a few other ones as well.

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Yeah I think the level 10 cap is dumb. You kind of just have to go on the internet or complete random quests to unlock the cap across all the classes.