Thoughts on Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Zheyno

Zheyno

Administrator
Staff member
Premise:

I recently 100%ed Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and I would like to share my thoughts on it.


Story:

-The Story was Amazingly written, definitely on the same par as the original Xenoblade Chronicles, for the most part.

-The only downside is towards the final act, when it’s mostly spectacle and little to no lore substance.

-I like how the story treated itself more seriously akin to Xenoblade 1, rather than the shameless parody that was Xenoblade 2.

-I’m surprised how loose they played with the fanservice, as I would’ve thought they would’ve been a bit more explicit especially in the last act.

-Chapter 3 to Chapter 6 is the high mark of the game.


Characters:

-The Main Cast including their traveling nopons were all interesting characters that all feel personally involved in the game’s struggle.

-Noah has a great voice, although some takes seem out of form.

-The explanation of how Noah’s swords worked felt rough and not that good of an explanation. The sword of origin and sword of the end could’ve been explained better too.

-Both Mio & Lanz have great character arcs that show maturity in their characters.

-Eunie and Taion felt more influential than Lanz and Sena, but lacked the sense of chemistry between the two of them.

-Sena feels the weakest out of the main six, as her struggle is not that well conveyed. She also felt cheated as her Ascension Quest was given to Ghondar.

-The heroes are far much more interesting than the Xenoblade 2 blades by a lot and I like how their stories actually interconnect with the game’s plot.

-Out of the heroes, Zeon and Alexandria have my favorite voices, Triton is my favorite comic relief, Valdi has my favorite character interactions, Gray has my favorite class, Ethel and Melia look the nicest, and Ashera has my favorite hero quests.

-Isurd has a strange voice.

-Miyabi seems like an odd choice for a hero, especially when other characters like Kite and Mwamba don’t have hero status despite having as much of a character. It really feels like she had a bigger role during development, but was restricted.

-Ghondor is a character I despise seeing on screen, as she is really unlikable. Her constant vulgarity, rudeness to everyone, and high pitched tone of entitlement make her unbearable to deal with. Not sure why the developers gave her a such a large role.

-The Consuls were a great idea of an antagonist group as they reminded me a lot of Soviet commissars that get attached military units to control them politically.


Gameplay:

Unlike Xenoblade 2, Xenoblade 3 actually feels like a Xenoblade game. The aesthetic of exploring wide areas with the type of music felt a spiritual successor to a nostalgic feeling I hold from Xenoblade 1.

-Definitely feels like the content was laid out well throughout the game, as there are plenty of side quests to complete between main story objectives.

-I say the pacing was really good and really feels like the game took over a course of about a year.

-The world map is the best in the series, as it’s really big and there plenty to explore, and since it’s a connected world rather than separate titans, traversal is optimized.


Setting:

-The Colonies were a great idea for smaller scaled settlements with each a different ideals.

-On the other side, The City has problems. For the only really non-outskirts hub to itself, it’s layout and aesthetic is mediocre. Having the big central city be postmodern and “normal” is contrary to why someone would escape into gaming. At least with the lore it makes sense for it to be a depraved environment due to its history and self-restraint, I would’ve like it have been a bit more colorful, aristocratic, and futuristic like the character “Masha”.
 
Zheyno

Zheyno

Administrator
Staff member
PSIUser658 said:
Fascinating.
And what do you think of the main villains, specifically N and Z?
Click to expand...

Major Spoilers for Xenoblade Chronicles 3

On N:

N is a good antagonist, although nothing new, just a mysterious character who turns out to be the evil doppelgänger of the hero, who turns out to be in love with the not so evil doppelgänger of the heroine, who is betrayed by that character, then later mopes around until he gives up living.

As just another Darth Vader kinda character, I least appreciate that he has a full character arc of slowly being corrupted over lifecycles to come to answer that he should simply join the undefeatable enemy, whilst the undefeatable enemy keeps him in check by holding his love interest hostage.

As humans are driven by the three centrals desires, “survival, status, and sex,” Z’s answer to N was something N couldn’t refute, and so N rationally became a villain because he saw it the only solution given with the circumstances of the world.

Even Noah says himself that if it wasn’t for seeing the end result that N became, that he was liable to reach the same answer, since one road was paved with never ending despair and the other was a chance to live perpetually in bliss.


On Z

Prior to playing Xenoblade 3, I thought the antagonists of the story were going to be related to Klaus’s time, specifically the group either known as the Saviorites that were name dropped in Xenoblade 2 as a loose end or the actual remnants of the world government who came back to power when the world had rejoined.

In reality, it doesn’t look like the antagonists of Xenoblade 3, Moebius, have anything to do with Klaus’s time or Z being another Zanza.

Instead, Moebius is rather just the metaphysical emotional representation of people’s desire to live forever in the now.

Not the best idea for an antagonist, as I would’ve preferred something a bit more ground to earth, but at least it was better than Xenoblade 2’s terrible antagonists who wanted death on the world because they saw themselves as abominations.

As the physical being, Z is definitively has a interesting character of how he spend his days watching the events of the world transpire, while letting his underlings carry out the war in perpetuity.

I wish his final boss involved a phase where you’re fighting Origin itself, but I suppose that would’ve been too big.


Other thoughts while I was playing:

-I thought they were going to do a twist, where thinking M being Mio would be too obvious, so M would actually turn out to be Miyabi.

-After it was revealed that the cast were caught in a perpetual cycle of rebirth, I was wondering if N actually Noah’s brother, since how else could they both exist at the same time.

-Mio becoming a Moebius felt lackluster in potential, although I really like her new matured long haired appearance.

-Z’s flashback ability to disintegrate others on a while, seems to be a false sense of promoting the omnipotence of the villain, when in the actual final battle the most he does is use X’s ability of locking the Ouroboros’s powers.

-Johan coming back as J seemed pretty obvious, but what caught me off guard is that the high entia kid that they were fighting in the flashback didn’t turn out to be Zeon, when I initially thought that was supposed to have been an earlier character development for him and his bond with Noah.

-M being alive for the final confrontation seems contradictory to her earlier death. Although if M is just an idea like Z, I suppose it’s possible for her to multiply.
 
PSIUser658

PSIUser658

The PSI Journey Creator and Writer
Staff member
I'm very happy you enjoyed the game.
I know you have mixed feelings in regards to the overarching lore of this series, but at least you have to apprecciate how each entry does feel like a standalone story where each entry don't affect each other in terms of the themes and characters each want to focus on.
 
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