Spoiler I just finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and I need to talk about it (FULL GAME SPOILERS INSIDE)

[Nautilus]

Ok, so I just finished it, and I have to say its a fantastic game.

However, I feel confident saying that its the weaker of the three, if only because of the story(because combat-wise, its probably the best)

If I had to rank them with scores, I would say XC 2 is a 10, XC 1 is a 9.9, while XC 3 is closer to a 9.3.

So lets start with the positives:

- The combat is fantastic. I would say the game needed to be harder(I played on hard), because most of the time after 50% through the game, I was blowing past most enemies, especially the ones in the main story. But overall, it was really fun the class system. It made it so that you always had something to look forward to, so the combat and its progression was never boring.

- The vistas/graphics were also phenominal. While they lacked a big WOW moment that XC 1 and XC 2 had with its titans, it was stronger overall.

- Honestly, everything was excellent, even the story that I am about to criticize.

So the negative would lie with the story. But let me start by saying that the story is very good. It was VERY clear that the focus was on the carachters. XC 1 and XC 2 always had strong charachters and the story built them perfectly when they wanted to, but it was clear on those games that the split between plot and carachter drama was 60/40(so plot being more important). While in XC 3 the carachters and their dramas are WAY more important, like its 70% of the story focus.

And while normally that wouldn't be an issue, its a problem here because the plot doesn't quite delivers. I have left... somewhat dissapointed once the game ended. Why?There were sooooo many questions left unanswered. What are the motes of light that comes off... everything(people, things, the mud puppetss)? The game keeps contantly teasing the player about its importance, but the game never... says anything. Nothing concrete anyway. You can theorize that the motes of light are information that turn into light, which feeds back into Origin, but nothing is ever said. Same with Riku. Who REALLY is he? Again, the game teases you like 3 times about who he really is, and the best you get is a wink wink moment between him and Melia, possibly hinting that he is maybe Riki? But again, nothing remotely concrete. Same with Noah, Mio, N and M. Who are they? Why did they split up(the game says that they split up because N became the regret embodiment and Noah the hope embodiment(same for Mio) of their own person, but that's crap ,as even the game doesn;t quite settle on that)? Is there a bigger connection as to why Noah in particular has the Sword of the End, and why he could better stand Z's control? There are those and so many more smaller question(as where is the rest of XC 1 and XC2 cast? Poppi was fucking hiding in the Cloudkeep. Why did she, Nia and Melia appear in Aionios, and not the rest?And if they are anywhere, where are they? Inside Origin, but they weren't spawned? Or somehow outside of Ainious, where time is frozen? But then the game kind of tells you that at that moment, everything was cancelled by the universes colliding, and only Origin and its "simulation"(Aionios) is what existed)

So as you can see, there were too many questions unanswered, or that were answered poorly. And what's more infuriating is that probably a lot of those questions will be answered in the DLC. So in that scenario, they left key plot details outside of the main game to sell you the expansion, and that fucking sucks.

And even then, some of the revelations were underwhelming. Moebious is just... emotions? The negative emotions of people, like fear of the unknown, that took hold of Origin? Really? Maybe it was my fault, but considering this was the 3 game, and they constantly teased XC 3 uniting everything, I was expecting the game to connect all games far more, and to have more awesome twists, like the one at the end of XC 2. I was even expecting Z to actually be Zanza somehow, as all Moebious had a letter that came from their original names. But no, he is just an emotion that took form. Ugh.

Again, the story was still good(especially how well they kept the mysteries), and the carachters and their interactions ARE the best from the Xeno games bar none. But damn, the plot did dissapoint, mostly by not answering the own questions it made. And by the villains being just emotions. Still salty about that.

But yeah, rants over.

And yeah, Rex just owns. He has THREE WIFES!!!rEX FOR THE WIN. Harem ending confirmed lol

 

[nenned]

I think the reason for N is that he is one of the many incarnations of Noah that keeps trying and failing to take out Z. Z takes a liking to him and offers him immortal life and the resurrection of Mio (as M) if he joins him, which Noah does. I guess the Noah-clone making machine creates another "Noah" thereby resulting in both Noah and N.

 

[JazzPotatoes]

However, I feel confident saying that its the weaker of the three, if only because of the story(because combat-wise, its probably the best)

If I had to rank them with scores, I would say XC 2 is a 10, XC 1 is a 9.9, while XC 3 is closer to a 9.3.

This erasure of Xenoblade X will not stand.

 

[Nautilus]

I think the reason for N is that he is one of the many incarnations of Noah that keeps trying and failing to take out Z. Z takes a liking to him and offers him immortal life and the resurrection of Mio (as M) if he joins him, which Noah does. I guess the Noah-clone making machine creates another "Noah" thereby resulting in both Noah and N.

I think the oficial explanation would be that, since Mobious are emotions that took form and life, the moment that N decides to becomes mobious(and thus M also), their negative and positive emotions splitted. The negative, the regrets, became N and M, and the positives(the hope) became Noah and Mio.

But its still a shitty explanation, and the game never explains how emotions can take such forms(outside of Origin being the one giving it life). Plus, even that explanation doesn't ecplain how there are two Lucky Sevens/Swords of the End. Are they simply a sword created that taps into Origins power, that Melia created, and thus can be duplicated? We don't know.

And that's what infuriate me most: Presenting questions and mysteries and not answering them. I don't like the fact that X, Y and Z was just emotions, but not presenting the actual solutions to the mysteries that were brought forward is what infuriates me.

 

[Nautilus]

This erasure of Xenoblade X will not stand.

If you have to know, I still think XC 3 is better than X lol.

In that score scale I made in my OP, I would probably give X a 8.3.

 

[NeoPancho]

I think the answer of where are the other Xeno and Xeno 2 characters is implied, they have been long dead as Melia and Nia lives way longer than humans (and Blades in Xeno 2 only live as long as their master and then turn back to core crystal).
Melia (half High Entia), Nia (Flesh Eater) and Poppy (a mechanical Blade, a robot which doesn't really need a master or has any core crystal) are the only main characters that could live for hundreds of years. I guess Tyrea and Dromarch could be around too.

 

[Deleted member 2]

I have a hard time talking about this game. I had something long typed out, but instead of conversing about it, I just want to say that the ending of the story soured me on the whole thing and I have a hard time picking it up again.

I was so deep in it for the first 70% of the game. But my fall off in the latter 30% was drastic. I'm hoping that an eventual NG+ will help me see it in a new light.

 

[Nautilus]

I think the answer of where are the other Xeno and Xeno 2 characters is implied, they have been long dead as Melia and Nia lives way longer than humans (and Blades in Xeno 2 only live as long as their master and then turn back to core crystal).
Melia (half High Entia), Nia (Flesh Eater) and Poppy (a mechanical Blade, a robot which doesn't really need a master or has any core crystal) are the only main characters that could live for hundreds of years. I guess Tyrea and Dromarch could be around too.

Time froze when the convergence happened, and before that all of the "souls" of XC 1 XC2 worlds inhabitants were recorded inside Origin. Considering that its implied that, through Nia's photo and what she says, that some years have passed but not nearly enough to kill anyone of old age, the gang is still alive. They just didn't appear in the game for... reasons.

 

[Nautilus]

I have a hard time talking about this game. I had something long typed out, but instead of conversing about it, I just want to say that the ending of the story soured me on the whole thing and I have a hard time picking it up again.

I was so deep in it for the first 70% of the game. But my fall off in the latter 30% was drastic. I'm hoping that an eventual NG+ will help me see it in a new light.

Yeah, its extremely frustrating at how they refused to reunite everyone in this game, just straight up not answer alot of mysteries, and the Mobious being emotions crap.

Its still an excellent game, and I hope it is the best selling game of the franchise, but they did drop the ball by the end

 

[Síriocaz]

Kind of sucks liking a game and seeing the impressions on it souring by the minute. At least 2 and X were polarizing from day 1.

 

[Warlord]

I have a hard time talking about this game. I had something long typed out, but instead of conversing about it, I just want to say that the ending of the story soured me on the whole thing and I have a hard time picking it up again.

I was so deep in it for the first 70% of the game. But my fall off in the latter 30% was drastic. I'm hoping that an eventual NG+ will help me see it in a new light.

This is where I'm at. I was greatly enjoying it until the last 2 chapters that soured everything, then I start tinking back at the rest of the game and started seeing more negatives.

 

[Deleted member 2]

The problem is with the premise of the game itself. Unfortunately every question's answer threads back to a flawed and conflicting premise.

Don't get me wrong, the game is 100% worth playing, for Chapter 5/6 alone. Peak Xenoblade.

But as a whole I was severely disappointed by it, which hurts to say.

 

[Deleted member 2]

Kind of sucks liking a game and seeing the impressions on it souring by the minute.

It sucks to feel it too

 

[Paxie]

It feels like they ran into dev troubles at the end, with the release being pushed up not helping at all, and had to choose between properly exploring the plot's functions/details or its themes. They clearly chose the latter and I personally think it was the correct decision, but as an avid enjoyer of Takahashi's Wild Ride I understand the frustration of those who wanted the former. If they were magically granted an infinite budget and deadline, imo it would've been best to:

1. Keep chapter 5 as-is
2. Expand Captocorn a lot and make chapter 6 solely about the journey to the Cloudkeep, the ending remains
3. Chapter 7 is revamped to purely be the Triforce Origin Metal hunt, with all of the pieces coincidentally tying in to all of the main cast's Side Stories. You can do them in any order aside from Mio first and Noah last (also Eunie's would need some minor rewriting to make the team's reactions to colony ranks less nonsensical). The bombshell plot drop is the true identity of Moebius while giving that idea proper development. Explain just what the fuck is Riku/Lucky Seven's deal while we're at it.
4. Chapter 8 is the finale. Honestly Origin needs to be totally revamped to be good. XC1's final dungeon is a good template for that. Also please remove the whole "the entire party thoroughly explains the themes of the game to the player" shit in the final cutscenes.

EDIT: forgot some points

 

[Nmanic]

If you have to know, I still think XC 3 is better than X lol.

In that score scale I made in my OP, I would probably give X a 8.3.

I agreed with your OP almost entirely, but this is blasphemy!!!!


Lol I jk. X is actually my favorite Xenoblade because it's the only one that lets me fly the awesome giant robots. I also think the world design is just fantastic and the side quests/world building were strong. Main story I could sorta take or leave

Anyway, I feel your issues basically exactly with XBC3. There's definitely tons of interesting things, but I sort of wish they didn't bill it as the conclusion of the Klaus saga, cause I wanted more concrete connections to the overall story... Instead, it's more just the ramifications of the Klaus saga, focused on a group of very lovable characters. I think I got a little fatigued with the volume of dramatic character moments at one point, though overall I found the writing very strong.

Gigachad rex is the funniest shit to me in the world honestly. I don't even see why people would be upset with it, cause it was set up fairly well in XBC2. But, something about the most shit-on Xenoblade character getting a glow up and three chill as fuck sword-girlfriends was just endlessly hilarious to me.

Anyway, XBC3 rocks. It's also my least favorite of the trilogy. I think it has the fewest flaws of basically any monolith game, but it didn't have any of the monumental highs I've come to expect from them either (with the exception of the sequence ending chapter 5 and beginning chapter 6-- I thought that whole thing was just astonishingly well done)

 

[SpaceGodzilla]

Don't we already have a spoiler thread for this?

 

[EtherPenguin]

It feels like they ran into dev troubles at the end, with the release being pushed up not helping at all, and had to choose between properly exploring the plot's functions/details or its themes.

The game had to have already been content complete when the decision to move dates was made. I'd say the more obvious culprit of development issues and why there seems to be some cut content (like young Mio in the art book) has way more to do with developing a game through the start of the pandemic.

I think the reason for N is that he is one of the many incarnations of Noah that keeps trying and failing to take out Z. Z takes a liking to him and offers him immortal life and the resurrection of Mio (as M) if he joins him, which Noah does. I guess the Noah-clone making machine creates another "Noah" thereby resulting in both Noah and N.

Becoming Moebius is supposed to remove a person from the cycle of rebirth. The fact the cradles make a new Noah and Mio 1000 years after N and M became Moebius is an anomaly and I believe it's meant to be seen as something of a miracle.

Also, what SpaceGodzilla said lol

 

[Paxie]

The game had to have already been content complete when the decision to move dates was made. I'd say the more obvious culprit of development issues and why there seems to be some cut content (like young Mio in the art book) has way more to do with developing a game through the start of the pandemic.

Ooh, cut content in the art book? Do you have a link?

 

[EtherPenguin]

Ooh, cut content in the art book? Do you have a link?

I don't believe it's out, but the page from the art book shown off has a young Mio leading many to speculate that there was meant to be an Agnus side version of the opening/pos-credits. It's purely speculative. Though from datamining it's also been found Joran and Nimue were meant to be heroes at one point.

Young Mio on the right:

And The Cutting Room Floor has the icons for Joran and Nimue's weapons as job icons:

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - The Cutting Room Floor

tcrf.net

 

[DrizztDo]

I really loved it from the first until the last minute. Would have loved another three or so chapters, as the last two passed by very quickly.
Storywise xc1 is still my favorite, content wise xcx. Xc3 mechanics are top notch, and outshine the main storyline (as its over too soon). After 218h now, im still grinding and have 2 ascension quests to do, so the side content is much more engaging and entertaining that xc1 and xc2.
Xcx is still unmatched in ters of it, as it is Side content: the game

 

[Thunder84]

Opinion hasn’t really changed. Ending was weak, but outside of that the game is a slam dunk in pretty much every department.

 

[Nautilus]

I agreed with your OP almost entirely, but this is blasphemy!!!!


Lol I jk. X is actually my favorite Xenoblade because it's the only one that lets me fly the awesome giant robots. I also think the world design is just fantastic and the side quests/world building were strong. Main story I could sorta take or leave

Anyway, I feel your issues basically exactly with XBC3. There's definitely tons of interesting things, but I sort of wish they didn't bill it as the conclusion of the Klaus saga, cause I wanted more concrete connections to the overall story... Instead, it's more just the ramifications of the Klaus saga, focused on a group of very lovable characters. I think I got a little fatigued with the volume of dramatic character moments at one point, though overall I found the writing very strong.

Gigachad rex is the funniest shit to me in the world honestly. I don't even see why people would be upset with it, cause it was set up fairly well in XBC2. But, something about the most shit-on Xenoblade character getting a glow up and three chill as fuck sword-girlfriends was just endlessly hilarious to me.

Anyway, XBC3 rocks. It's also my least favorite of the trilogy. I think it has the fewest flaws of basically any monolith game, but it didn't have any of the monumental highs I've come to expect from them either (with the exception of the sequence ending chapter 5 and beginning chapter 6-- I thought that whole thing was just astonishingly well done)

About Gigachad Rex, for me it just came out of left field. I 100% expected that Rex would marry/date/whatever both Pyra and Mythra, as it would make too much sense given given everything they went through in XC 2. But then Nia just came bursting out of the door with a baby in hand lol. I was like "WTFFFFFF" lol. It took the air out of my lungs when I saw it at the ending, but now I'm actually... fine with it. It actually strangely makes some sense now, given how everyone acted on XC 2. And you know, its not 100% confirmed that Rex is the sole... providor, even if it strongly hints at it.

About X, the only problem I have with it is story, and much like MGS, 70% of the appeal of a Xenoblade game comes from the story. And X's story and carachters are.... ok at best. The game has some great twist in fact. I feel like if X is ever brought over, is through a remake, as I feel like Takahachi would like to redo all the carachters artstyle AND rewrite the plot and carachters to make the story, which has a lot of potential, far more compeling(while still maintaining the same plot beats).

But yeah, XC 3 is still an excellent game, even if I think its the weakest of the three mainline ones. XC 3 is like, better than 90% of all games I have played in my opinion. So I'm still VERY satisfied regardless. Now I'll just pray for the game to break all previous sales records, which famitsu and NPD seems to indicate, so that we can keep getting XC games FOREVER!!!

 

[MeatheadSamus]

Ending of Xc3 was certainly odd, but the game was such a 10/10 everywhere else that I didn't care. XC2 I had to force myself through some parts due to how tedious it got, XC1 was the most boring and I'm shocked it is rated as high as it is, but maybe it was the shock factor of it being on Wii then. I still beat it and LOVED the ending, but that took the most patience of all. 3 I just never stopped. Gameplay is so good.

 

[Jencks]

It's a good game but it wasn't as fulfilling as I would have liked. Felt like they wrote themselves into a corner at the climax and didn't know where to go.

 

[Jbone916]

Kind of sucks liking a game and seeing the impressions on it souring by the minute. At least 2 and X were polarizing from day 1.

Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinions on the game, but I do suspect that the seeming prevalence of “souring impressions” of XC3 is partially a result of people who had a more negative experience with the game being much more vocal on the internet than those who simply enjoyed the game and then moved on. I suspect that the general reception of this game is more positive overall than forums/Reddit/etc make it seem - the critical consensus certainly supports this hypothesis in any case.

 

[Phendrift]

Kind of sucks liking a game and seeing the impressions on it souring by the minute. At least 2 and X were polarizing from day 1.

Eh it’s not souring by the minute

It’s just people who are getting to the ending and not liking it

Plenty of us who do

 

[Nautilus]

Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinions on the game, but I do suspect that the seeming prevalence of “souring impressions” of XC3 is partially a result of people who had a more negative experience with the game being much more vocal on the internet than those who simply enjoyed the game and then moved on. I suspect that the general reception of this game is more positive overall than forums/Reddit/etc make it seem - the critical consensus certainly supports this hypothesis in any case.

I mean, most of these "souring impressions" of XC 3 are still overly positive, and the negatives me and others do comes from a place of love.

Looking through the internet, it does feel that XC 3 is at least as loved as the first. Either way, everything points into XC 3 being the best selling game in the franchise, by far.

 

[Síriocaz]

I mean, most of these "souring impressions" of XC 3 are still overly positive, and the negatives me and others do comes from a place of love.

Looking through the internet, it does feel that XC 3 is at least as loved as the first. Either way, everything points into XC 3 being the best selling game in the franchise, by far.

Oh, alright. Guess I'm just spending too much time in a certain site, then.

 

[Mr.Fletcher]

I said it a month or so ago now - how you feel about this game will probably depend on what kind of fan you are and what your expectations were going in.

Are you a Gears fan? A Saga fan? A Blade fan? All of the above? A JRPG fan? A non-JRPG fan? None of the above?

There’s overlap in these groups yes, but different people go in with different wants.

XC3 is the most mainstream, frictionless game in the franchise, so it’s no surprise critics enjoy it. Of course, that’s not the only reason but it helps.

On the other hand, I think most people would concede the game loses some steam towards the end and puts it‘s weakest foot forward at the wrong time.

The way in which some fans are disappointed, mainstream reviewers and more casual fans won’t quite understand - and that’s fine.

I‘ve played the game a lot. I’ve battled through my own disappointment to carry on playing and there is a wonderful game there.

It shines very brightly at its best and you can tell it was a labour of love for the team.

If XC is, for me, a game better than the sum of its parts, XC3 is the opposite, the parts are top class, but don’t quite come together as well.

 

[linkwashere]

I played for 140h and still has some things to do, but I realised I have a lot of issues with the game; from the gameplay loop, the world design, the story and mostly the combat.

I am surprised at how positive the reaction to the combat is by most people. I must admit that I reached one point where my only motivation with it was how big a chain attack number could I get. Because everything else fell pretty much flat.

Combat it's the less reactive of the series and the most monotonous and streamlined one with difference. At high level bosses and superbosses everything is limited to stay alive through the first moments of the fight so you can build aggro until you can get a break on the enemy and from there is automatically going into topple, launch and Chain Attack. And the fight is over, because Chain Attacks are extremely OP in this game and you can pull consistently ridiculous big numbers which melt the enemy health bar even before getting into the Ouroboross finish.

Problem with it is that launching an enemy and destroying it in the Chain Attack it's so much better than anything else that it makes other strategies totally irrelevant (except for farming materials).

Even realising how unbalanced and basic it is at the end, other problems with it are how some layers of the combat are totally irrelevant or just don't work at all. Debuffs just don't work at all on bosses due to their extremelty high resistence to them which leaves some classes, powers and arts total useless. Ouroborros level 3 Chain Attacks are useless also, since they are way less powerful than a regular chain attack.

However, one of the biggest issues with the combat is how not reactive at all the system is. Even the first game has some kind of reactiveness to it with the vision mechanics and the Monado arts. You would get a vision of a friend dying and you had to go and support them with a shield art, a health support even getting close to them so you can warn them. At the end, all of this was the reason the developers went for a RPG style with free movement. In Xenoblade 3 it feels they could have gone for an Auto Battle style and it wouldn't have barely mattered.

You could argue also that the antagonists selection for this game don't make any favours to the whole combat experience, since fighting a ridiculous number of moebius that look and feel the same in combat is whatever. Yeah, one of them stopped time and froze me in place. Other one blocked my arts for a time. Cool on paper, but did it change how I approached the fight or had to react to it? Not at all, it barely was an annoyance for a moment until the debuff stopped working, because everything else in the fight follows the same pattern: build aggro and evasion with your defenders and look for a break so you can build a chain attack and fight is over.

On other things not combat related, the gameplay loop really soured me after chapter three when I realised I wasn't going to find the "unexpected". The sense of wonder of discovering new and unexpected places was never here if not for the City. You just knew that your next point of interest would be another collony that would feel mostly the same as the previous one, that you would meet a new hero there and that you would be fighting a consul so you could break their clock and free them. Then, to the next one. Then, repeat that 8 times and you can see why the sense of wonder of other games was totally missing here. This is criminal for me and goes totally against the DNA of Xenoblade.

Story conclusion not only was weak but the end fight was extremely disappointing. I hate endgame fights that change the rules of the all the previous fights in the game for story reasons. The end game fight should be a test of all you learned through the game. Splatoon does this amazingly well, but here you have a fight against a face in a wall served in pieces between story cinematics that splits you party in two because different universes and just goes on for too long without anything interesting happening on it.

Yeah, for me was the weakest one in the series. Not the one with the lowest of lows of the saga but for sure without any of the highest highs of it (except for the cast, where Eunie and Lanz are by far the best duo in the game and basically save Sena and Taion as their Ouroboros partners). At the end, the less memorable one and with the flawest combat system, the weakest story, the worst pacing and the one in which I was less invested in its world. Even then, a good game but doesn't reach the high standards of the first two game for me.

 

[YoboD]

Eh it’s not souring by the minute

It’s just people who are getting to the ending and not liking it

Plenty of us who do

Yeah, don’t get me wrong it’s certainly interesting reading what people didn’t like about the ending and what it was that didn’t work for them, but as someone who really liked it I don’t think I’ve got much to add beyond ‘well I disagree, I thought it was good’, which really doesn’t add anything to the discussion so what’s the point?

 

[Donnie]

Hey folks, absolutely nothing wrong with the conversation going on in this thread but we do have a post game/spoiler discussion thread and with the game still being pretty recent and VERY long lol it feels like a better idea to keep as much of that contained in there where possible since there are likely folks still working on it, so please head on over there to continue the discussion zero issue if folks want to repost their thoughts or have any of their posts moved over since there's some high quality stuff here, just hit me up if necessary - Donnie, hologram, Red Monster

The Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Post Game Discussion Thread