Before I write, my experience with the game is limited to the first 20 hours of the game, and it’s more than possible the formula will change after a certain point. A good example of a game that changed drastically was Dragon Quest 9 that begins as a 40-50 hour relatively standard RPG, and then after transforms into an open world RPG with another 300-400 hours of content and some fundamental differences (the party members of the story part of the game are player created characters, like in DQ3, but in the open world part you can get established characters in your party). Anyway, I haven’t done research on the rest of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the following post is based on my initial 20 hours.
In short, the once cutting edge Wii game feels a little dated. They’ve upped the cosmetics, increases the size of the world (I believe this one’s about five times larger), and smoothed out the battle system - although I’m still not a fan of chain attacks, but they’re far less painful than in XC2. Now, with all the stuff Monolithsoft did well with this game, it doesn’t seem like they’d have a problem updating the formula.
What’s the formula I’m talking about? The railway style 3D RPG that I first saw in Quest 64, and first saw done well with Final Fantasy X over 20 years ago. Xenosaga was more egregiously a railway than FFX, and then Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii took the formula and improved it to make it feel more like a classic RPG.
Before I jump into my complaining, I do want to say I’m enjoying the game so far (at about 20 hours). Apart from what I’m about to jump into, my two other complaints would be long-winded dialogue (IMO) - it takes a long time to get to a relatively minor point. Second, the game uses too many story beats to introduce new mechanics. I’m a much bigger fan of the Breath of the Wild/Witcher 3/XCX style of just letting the player find all this stuff out for themselves and not shoehorning story into teaching me a mechanic. That said, I like the mechanics a lot, but early on in the game I was thinking “Why can’t I incorporate my Gears (called Oroboros in this game) into my chain attacks?” And then like 7 hours later they have a story beat to introduce that mechanic - I found that obnoxious; although it’s mostly my preference, many players love this spoon fed approach to learning the game.
What I like best about the game is the cast of characters and battle party - It’s a massive improvement over the second game. You have 7 characters on the field at once (your six mains plus one). It sounds like too much, but I find the battle system is smoother and easier to use than the 4 character battle parties of the original Xenoblade—the interface improvements really make this possible.
Now onto my point. I am tired of railroaded storylines - now that I’ve had a tastes of open world games where explore around and build my own sort of story out of short stories that all develop the main narrative in different ways, these railway stories feel narrow in focus. While it is true there are very well developed side quests in this game, they feel extraneous, unlike say Witcher 3, BotW (Breath of the Wild, or XCX (Xenoblade Chronicles X) that most of the time feel that whatever it is your doing, that’s the main thing you should be doing. And even the stuff that doesn’t (like Witcher quests) feel like an earned break, or a favour for the locals. It’s not like XC3 (or 1 and 2 for that matter) don’t develop the world, my problem is all of it feels like doing research on the side—like those books in Witcher 3 that feel like a chore to read unless you feel like sitting down and reading more about the world of Witcher 3. The thing about Witcher 3’s books is you don’t have to read them, their literal purpose is FOR people who want to read more on the side, like the Encyclopedia in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 (one of my favourite extra features in a game, ever).
Xenoblade Chronicles X still feels like the most advanced game Monolithsoft ever made, except it came out in 2015. A GTA Vice City sized city lands on an alien planet, you wake up about 2 months in. The city had developed 8 career paths to help the city, such as monster Hunter, resource hunter, explorer and that sort of thing. You can pick one of those and start the story by playing your part in helping it to survive.
Over time those roles fall away, and you’re kind of doing your own thing, inviting new alien species to live in the city, they integrate with the capitalistic culture of New LA, starting businesses and such. They deal with xenophobia from humans and other issues that occur when cities first become cosmopolitan. But during this time, it’s no longer about survival, but better integrating New LA into Planet Mira. Then the later part of the game is taking your integrated city and making it prosperous, you now have giant mechs to fly around and make things even easier. Mira more or less conquers the planet. And Mira is HUGE. Many times bigger than the world of Bionis in Xenoblade Chronicles. In fact, each of the five major continents are larger than all of Xenoblade Chroincles; the game itself is probably 7 or 8 times the total landmass, more if you include the ocean and floating islands and such.
BUT, rather than advancing Xenoblade Chronicles X, XC2 was more or less XC1 all over again. Although, this time with better towns, but none even close to the scale of New LA. I was like “whatever, most of the staff is working on Breath of the Wild, this is a stopgap game” - and it felt a bit like that, the game had a lot less love than the first, outside of the towns. Much of the mechanics felt over designed and clunky, rushed, unpolished. The big problem I had was how much of the world was something you walked through to get to the next area (like FFX, 13, and Xenosaga) it felt, in a way, behind XC1 in its design.
Unfortunately, XC3 (so far) feels a bit like it’s full of areas I’m walking through never to return. The world is massive in scale, but again segmented like XC1 and 2, not open like XCX or Breath of the Wild, or even Witcher 3. The story is once again “reach this really really far away place” rather than feeling like the immediate location was the important place to be.
Unfortunately, this sort of thing gets a lot of positive feedback, because Xenoblade Chronicles attracted a lot of new fans, and while many of the older Xeno fans seem open to change, and desire it, many of those that jumped onboard with XC1 on Wii just want Monolithsoft to make games like that over and over again. Unfortunately, they’re the loudest group. That said, I understand why they feel that way, the game I’d love them to make the most is a remake of Xenogears—literally 25 years old next year—but XCX is the one that impressed me the most since that game.
In short, the once cutting edge Wii game feels a little dated. They’ve upped the cosmetics, increases the size of the world (I believe this one’s about five times larger), and smoothed out the battle system - although I’m still not a fan of chain attacks, but they’re far less painful than in XC2. Now, with all the stuff Monolithsoft did well with this game, it doesn’t seem like they’d have a problem updating the formula.
What’s the formula I’m talking about? The railway style 3D RPG that I first saw in Quest 64, and first saw done well with Final Fantasy X over 20 years ago. Xenosaga was more egregiously a railway than FFX, and then Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii took the formula and improved it to make it feel more like a classic RPG.
Before I jump into my complaining, I do want to say I’m enjoying the game so far (at about 20 hours). Apart from what I’m about to jump into, my two other complaints would be long-winded dialogue (IMO) - it takes a long time to get to a relatively minor point. Second, the game uses too many story beats to introduce new mechanics. I’m a much bigger fan of the Breath of the Wild/Witcher 3/XCX style of just letting the player find all this stuff out for themselves and not shoehorning story into teaching me a mechanic. That said, I like the mechanics a lot, but early on in the game I was thinking “Why can’t I incorporate my Gears (called Oroboros in this game) into my chain attacks?” And then like 7 hours later they have a story beat to introduce that mechanic - I found that obnoxious; although it’s mostly my preference, many players love this spoon fed approach to learning the game.
What I like best about the game is the cast of characters and battle party - It’s a massive improvement over the second game. You have 7 characters on the field at once (your six mains plus one). It sounds like too much, but I find the battle system is smoother and easier to use than the 4 character battle parties of the original Xenoblade—the interface improvements really make this possible.
Now onto my point. I am tired of railroaded storylines - now that I’ve had a tastes of open world games where explore around and build my own sort of story out of short stories that all develop the main narrative in different ways, these railway stories feel narrow in focus. While it is true there are very well developed side quests in this game, they feel extraneous, unlike say Witcher 3, BotW (Breath of the Wild, or XCX (Xenoblade Chronicles X) that most of the time feel that whatever it is your doing, that’s the main thing you should be doing. And even the stuff that doesn’t (like Witcher quests) feel like an earned break, or a favour for the locals. It’s not like XC3 (or 1 and 2 for that matter) don’t develop the world, my problem is all of it feels like doing research on the side—like those books in Witcher 3 that feel like a chore to read unless you feel like sitting down and reading more about the world of Witcher 3. The thing about Witcher 3’s books is you don’t have to read them, their literal purpose is FOR people who want to read more on the side, like the Encyclopedia in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 (one of my favourite extra features in a game, ever).
Xenoblade Chronicles X still feels like the most advanced game Monolithsoft ever made, except it came out in 2015. A GTA Vice City sized city lands on an alien planet, you wake up about 2 months in. The city had developed 8 career paths to help the city, such as monster Hunter, resource hunter, explorer and that sort of thing. You can pick one of those and start the story by playing your part in helping it to survive.
Over time those roles fall away, and you’re kind of doing your own thing, inviting new alien species to live in the city, they integrate with the capitalistic culture of New LA, starting businesses and such. They deal with xenophobia from humans and other issues that occur when cities first become cosmopolitan. But during this time, it’s no longer about survival, but better integrating New LA into Planet Mira. Then the later part of the game is taking your integrated city and making it prosperous, you now have giant mechs to fly around and make things even easier. Mira more or less conquers the planet. And Mira is HUGE. Many times bigger than the world of Bionis in Xenoblade Chronicles. In fact, each of the five major continents are larger than all of Xenoblade Chroincles; the game itself is probably 7 or 8 times the total landmass, more if you include the ocean and floating islands and such.
BUT, rather than advancing Xenoblade Chronicles X, XC2 was more or less XC1 all over again. Although, this time with better towns, but none even close to the scale of New LA. I was like “whatever, most of the staff is working on Breath of the Wild, this is a stopgap game” - and it felt a bit like that, the game had a lot less love than the first, outside of the towns. Much of the mechanics felt over designed and clunky, rushed, unpolished. The big problem I had was how much of the world was something you walked through to get to the next area (like FFX, 13, and Xenosaga) it felt, in a way, behind XC1 in its design.
Unfortunately, XC3 (so far) feels a bit like it’s full of areas I’m walking through never to return. The world is massive in scale, but again segmented like XC1 and 2, not open like XCX or Breath of the Wild, or even Witcher 3. The story is once again “reach this really really far away place” rather than feeling like the immediate location was the important place to be.
Unfortunately, this sort of thing gets a lot of positive feedback, because Xenoblade Chronicles attracted a lot of new fans, and while many of the older Xeno fans seem open to change, and desire it, many of those that jumped onboard with XC1 on Wii just want Monolithsoft to make games like that over and over again. Unfortunately, they’re the loudest group. That said, I understand why they feel that way, the game I’d love them to make the most is a remake of Xenogears—literally 25 years old next year—but XCX is the one that impressed me the most since that game.
