Xenoblade Chronicles 3 review – the pinnacle of the series

When you get a review of a narrative JRPG, you automatically assume that you have dozens of hours of gameplay, maybe even a hundred or more. Since you don’t know for sure (unlike the term embargo), you usually hesitate to play the game “to the limit”, that is, in such a way that you literally explore every corner of every map, every building in every city, every turn in every cave and Complete all side quests. But that’s exactly what happened to me while playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3. After the first few hours, I fell in love with the game, its characters, its world, and the gameplay itself so much that I caught every little thing and practiced the next one. carefully go through the game “to the limit”. I haven’t enjoyed a game in years with the same focus and attention as this absolutely extraordinary thing.

• Platform: Switch
• Publication date: 07/29/2022
• Producer: Monolith Soft (Japan)
• Genre: japanese role playing game
• Czech localization: Not
• Multiplayer: Not
• Data to download: 15 GB
• Game time: 70+ hours
• Price: 1449 CZK (Nintendo)

Searching for the meaning of life

Some of the more interesting JRPGs focus on philosophical themes, and Monolith Soft’s games are quite famous for their references to Nietzsche. As I wrote in my first impressions of playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3, I still thought their original 1998 Xenogears was unbeatable, but that has finally changed. The central plot here is so interesting, the characters and their dialogue are so humanly written, and the thoughts about war or raising children are so strong that I hit the bottom of my emotions during the game (okay, maybe the undesirable parallel of the game’s plot with current events helped a little in Ukraine ). In addition to the excellent dubbing, this is also supported by the absolutely top-notch work of the filmmakers, as the cinematic sequences in this game are among the best – whether it’s big battle scenes or characters talking by the fireplace.

Although the game has a three in the title and it’s not hard for insiders to find links to previous games, the story takes place in a new world and with a new group of characters. So you can easily go straight to this game without playing any of the previous ones. A military drama of the world called Aionios will open before you, where two hostile peoples are at war with each other. Both sides use limited-life clones as soldiers. But what if these clones decide to dedicate their short limited lives to something other than killing each other? What if they decide to ally with the enemy side for this purpose? What truth will they find in their rulers’ castles about why their peoples were actually at war with each other? The story progresses brilliantly, not only as it unfolds those answers, but as the characters in your group gradually shift their perspectives and motivations, revealing more about themselves and each other and learning to enjoy the fleeting moments of their existence.

The story develops, revealing the answers and changing the motivations of the characters.

Of course, all this is wrapped in the “anime” styling inherent in these games – if you like it, then a certain amount of theatricality and exaggeration will be filtered out without any problems, or even consider it one of the pluses. But what you will still find as a plus is the stunning landscapes, offering, among other things, even more extensive and beautiful views than in the previous parts of the series – often they are truly breathtaking. At the same time, the game puts seven playable characters (you can manually switch between them at will or play as one) on the battlefield at once with many enemies of all sizes, and also does tricks such as seamless transitions between exploration, combat and cinematic sequences. In some places, it seemed to me that the developers literally brag about the “visibility” of their engine, where you can see each other from separate maps at absurd distances. This beautiful world is a pleasure to explore and, among other things, very nice how it draws/writes a map of where you have already set foot. The atmosphere is enhanced by beautiful music, which in terms of melody and majesty cannot compete with the most famous movie soundtracks.

Final form of gameplay

In the previous parts, the creators have already offered a really fun cocktail of gameplay, led by a partially automated, but at the same time, a multi-level and very entertaining combat system. However, this time around, they’ve taken it to absolute perfection, where they constantly add new layers and nuances as the game progresses, keeping your attention while tweaking character abilities and equipment, but especially on the battlefield itself. Over the course of seventy hours, my characters have learned new attack combinations, and fights with more outstanding bosses become more fun the longer they last – because you have the ability to “store” your attacks and energy to release them later through a much more destructive (and completely unique) special combo form. There’s no point in trying to explain it in detail here in a few paragraphs, but I can guarantee you that this is one of the most fun and elaborate JRPG combat systems in years. In addition, all this is surrounded by perfectly tuned systems, such as setting the aggression of monsters according to your mutual level or the database of relationships between characters and factions and, in fact, the entire user interface.

For the vast majority of games, I was in complete gaming ecstasy, the proverbial “flow” arrived in perfect shape. Unfortunately, I ran into some shortcomings in the second half of the game and especially in its final. The first thing you’ll notice is the excruciatingly long loading times. The game successfully masks this for the first dozen hours as you play through it in a more or less linear fashion, and the designers have clearly put a lot of effort into making the individual pieces fit together as seamlessly as possible. But once you get to the stage of the game where you have almost the entire “overworld” open and you travel from place to place doing side quests, etc., you will see a black loading screen more often than you play. Having a cell phone handy at times like this is your only chance to keep your sanity. Unfortunately, the game’s second weakness is its ending, especially when compared to the previous two installments in the series. It feels like the creators ran out of time, and some things are unintentionally left out (for example, there is no cutscene or dialogue after defeating an absolutely important enemy). But when I look back at the game as a whole, the extremely strong story and gameplay moments more than make up for this weaker ending.