Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Review

I feel obligated to talk about this one, as I’ve reviewed every other game so far. I think this might be my least favorite of the bunch, though. I can’t tell if the game is objectively not as good or that I’m just getting bored with the formula. XC3 doesn’t really “fix” anything, nor does it do anything substantially new. I guess the main selling point is that you’re getting a new story? Unfortunately, I’ve lost all patience with XC’s cutscenes. There is an interesting story buried in here, but each cutscene is sooooo long and takes forever to get to anything of substance. I wish you could fast-forward through the pointless banter, but alas, your only option is to skip the cutscene altogether. And if there were multiple cutscenes back-to-back? Oops, you just skipped all of them. I also hate how the cutscene that follows a battle almost always shows that the enemy you just defeated in real-time did not, in fact, get defeated. Hey, video game designers: stop doing this!

By now, you are probably already angrily typing, “Why do you even play these games, bro?!” For me, Xenoblade Chronicles has always been about fighting monsters and exploring huge territories. And I still got plenty of enjoyment out of both of those aspects. I have mixed feelings about the battle system, though. It’s a little too easy to over-level yourself. The game practically encourages you to do this with its ever-tempting “bonus XP” system. And so I reached a point in the game where battles stopped being a challenge, where I could just steamroll over most story-related bosses. Bumping the game up to Hard made it a little too hard, though, so I was kind of at a loss how to bring back the excitement of those first few chapters where I felt like my team had to be perfectly balanced to win. From Chapter 4 onward, it basically didn’t matter what my team looked like anymore.

To be fair, it’s my own fault for getting over-leveled. By Chapter 4, the game world has opened up enough that there are plenty of side quests to distract you from the main story. And you know me, I am a sucker for side quests. The game has a feature that will show you the fastest route to any given quest marker, but I had a lot more fun trying to navigate the world based on the map alone. So many markers have very roundabout ways to get to them and, like the bonus XP, you have to make a conscious effort not to let the game do the work for you. Side quests are fun to track down, though, because many of them result in getting access to a new hero and character class. I really liked experimenting with the different classes and juggling which character should learn which class next. I could do that for hours—and I totally did—so I still had fun in the end, despite my other complaints.

Reviewer

Clark
I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.

Published by

Clark

I love gaming so much, I wrote a book about it.