So, probably my favorite current JRPG series is a tossup between The Legend of Heroes: Trails series, and the Xenoblade series. And the 4th Xenoblade game just came out at the end of last month, conveniently titled Xenoblade Chronicles 3, just to make sure no one is confused.
Anyway, I've been following the Xeno series since its first entry, Xenogears, back in the late '90s, which went on to Xenosaga in the early 2000s, and then Xenoblade in the 2010s. The gameplay and graphics haven't always been great, but the stories and the characters have been. The series takes very complex philosophical and religious arguments, and applies then to everyday people, then lets you watch them suffer, grow, and eventually overcome. It's always been a series that's not afraid to go very, very dark, and treat its players as adults, which is one of the things I absolutely love about it. There are, of course, light hearted, comedic, and child friendly parts tossed in for levity, but the core stories and struggles of the characters has always been very dark, complex, and oftentimes hopeless, which makes moments of triumph hit a bit harder.
Anyway, my top videogames of all time list fluctuates pretty regularly as I play new games, or revisit old favorites, but nearly all of the Xeno games, especially the Xenoblade games, are usually near the top of that list, with the previous game, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, holding the top spot since I first played it 5-6 years ago. I absolutely LOVED that game, and nothing has come along since to knock it off the hill for me. So, I was pretty excited for this new entry in the series.
Unfortunately, it had a very, very, very, very tough act to follow, and it really suffered from the comparison for me. Xenoblade 3 is, by no means, a bad game. It's actually an extremely good one, with a decent story, mostly great characters, a mind-blowingly HUGE world to explore, and great gameplay. It's just not Xenoblade 2 good, and I found myself mildly disappointed by it. Don't get me wrong. It is a great game. It's just not as good as the previous game in the series, and that had me constantly thinking, "the last one was better" throughout the entire game.
Okay, so, what it did better than previous games. The character models are much, much better in this game. Xenoblade 1 had blurry, pixelly characters. Xenoblade 2, they didn't have a character designer on staff, so they went with the lowest bidder, who happened to be a porn artist, so all of the characters are scantily clad women with enormous boobs. But here, the characters look great. They have a sort of subdued, anime style that's more on the realistic, rather than stylized end of the spectrum of anime characters. The world is bigger than that of Xenoblade 1, 2, and X combined. The combat is the best the series has ever seen, including Saga and Gears. The class system was a lot of fun to mix and match with. Most of the characters are great, with really well fleshed out back stories, deep trauma from a life of neverending war, and hope for a better future. The English voice acting is great. And it is genuinely fun to play and explore.
There are a few things that I didn't really like about the game too. First is the music. The music in Xeno games has always been S tier amazing. I own every single soundtrack from every previous game going all the way back to Gears. The music in this game is really bland, mostly forgettable, and just kind of generic sounding. There's one or two good tracks, but most of it just sort of blends into the background, rather than standing out. Some of the characters are somewhat less well developed than others. It's clear that the writers had their favorites. Each character has their own side story that focuses just on them dealing with something from their past. But, for one of your main party members, her side story isn't even about here. She's just there as a background character in her own freaking story that's supposed to develop her character more fully. The game has this enormous open world to explore THAT IT KEEPS BLOCKING YOU FROM FREELY EXPLORING. I can't tell you how annoyed I was to constantly have my characters running into invisible walls out in the world with text boxes saying "Oh, we shouldn't go that way yet". That was NEVER a thing in previous games. The only thing that kept you from exploring was the level of the monsters in areas beyond where the story wants you to go. It was annoying. Frustrating. And really made this huge world begging to be explored feel smaller and more cramped. The boat controls leave much to be desired. That stupid boat is so frustrating to try and steer. The difficulty of this game is very low. I rarely play games on hard mode, because I'm there to relax, not stress out more. But this game is so easy that I actually cranked up the difficulty to hard because normal was so easy. Heck, even hard was too easy near the end of the game once I'd hit the level cap (which is extremely easy to do well before hitting the end of the game) and loading out the best classes with the best abilities. I praised the character models earlier, but I do have to take issue with the villain character models. They were red and white armor with elaborate, often silly looking helmets, and they just look so out of place in the game.
One last thing that kind of held the game down for me was the villain. Nowhere in this 100+ hour story is his motivation EVER given. In fact, by the end, you still don't even know what it is he's even doing, how it helps him achieve his goals, or what those goals even are. Like, how could you forget to put in what the villain is doing and why? That's like basic level writing right there. Because of this, a lot of aspects of the story and the worldbuilding just kind of flat out make no sense at the end. You're never really told WHY any of this is all happening, and toward what end. It's all just happening because reasons. I did a lot of the side content in this game, and it's not even explained there, or if it is, it was in some obscure sidequest I never bothered to pick up and complete. The end of the game is clearly meant to be an emotional gutpunch, but all I could think of was how confused I was by the villain's lack of motive, and it kind of ruined the impact for me. In the end, there's just way too much mystery for the sake of being mysterious, and not enough resolution to go around. Sure, some of this may be cleared up in the story expansion set to be released next summer, but that's a long time after the end of the game to wait to find out what the villain is even doing and why.
So, at the end of the day, it was a good game, but it wasn't a great one. I liked it. I had fun playing it. I'll probably play through a new game + sometime in the vague future. But there are other games in the series that are much better than this one. In a series of god tier amazing games, a game that is just merely good kind of stands out in all the wrong ways.
My rankings for the Xenoblade series is:
1.) Xenoblade Chronicles 2
2.) Xenoblade Chronicles 1
3.) Xenoblade Chronicles 3
4.) Xenoblade Chronicles X
For the Xeno series as a whole:
1.) Xenoblade Chronicles 2
2.) Xenosaga 3
3.) Xenoblade Chronicles 1
4.) Xenosaga 2
5.) Xenogears
6.) Xenoblade Chronicles 3
7.) Xenosaga 1
8.) Xenoblade Chronicles X (sorry X, you're kind of the black sheep here)
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