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StarTopic Xenoblade 3 |ST| Σ Become One

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Phendrift said:
cross posted from era

Okay, I'll try to gather my ending/overall story thoughts.


And I'm gonna use this as a jumping off point. I completely agree. For me, after taking XC3 in, it feels a disservice to try and judge it based on the connections to previous games. But I can't even blame people who do, it was clearly marketed as a game that combines the two by Nintendo and Monolith. It's totally fair to feel it didn't live up to that expectation - that's on them for setting it.

And it's odd, because everything in XC3 shows me that it wants to be its own thing so bad. It's themes about life in general, feeling lost and without a purpose, trapped in a stasis with a fear of moving forward, the difficulty of rejecting what you've been taught your whole life, permeate through the entire game from the first cutscene through the last boss. Hell, even through the sidequests. You meet characters that interpret these themes in different ways all throughout Aionios, and the game is so unified in its message with the way it's world works and how it's characters develop.

I will say, I fully and wholly disagree with those here who didn't get Z. My theory (helped by some of yalls posts actually) is this. We take into account Nia's statement that Z "both is and isn't a man." Now let's look at Origin. Imagine a supercomputer able to house thousands or even millions of souls/consciousness, which is what we've been told it is as far as I'm aware. I'd imagine the overwhelming emotion of most, if not all, of those souls - is fear of the future, existential dread of what is coming. Their universes are about to collide, and unless this origin works, it's total annihilation.

Now, we're getting high concept, philosophical sci fi here, but from what we've been told, origin can take consciousness and inject it into a human form. THAT is what Z is. The immense existential fear that millions of people held, injected into human form. A bug in the system of Origin that wasn't foreseen. And I love that interpretation, why? There's your overall-meta sci fi twist that combines the three games right there. The villain of this game is the combined existential fear of the people of XC1 and 2's universes, turned into soul data and given human form. It’s a batshit crazy Xenoblade-level last minute sci-fi plot twist. And the best part? It works perfect thematically. Its born of humanity, it’s a giant sci-fi metaphor that’s relateable to our characters (“we all have a bit of Moebius in us”)

I'm mind boggled that people thought Z should've been Zanza V3. I thought this was much more poignant and brought the story around full circle thematically, as opposed to introducing a new villain with a ton of lore implications in the last couple hours. I think that would’ve diluted the message

It's just crazy to think how far our characters progressed. In the beginning of the game, trapped in an absolutely brutal cycle of life and death, hating their opposing nations, and by the Chapter 7 the veil is just lifted and the illusion is shattered. Takahashi is basically screaming the theme of the game to you. Getting a little personal here, but as someone in their early 20s and just out of college, who isn't depressed but is a bit lost, but doesn't really know what the future will hold, it really really hit for me. Like, I couldn't explain why, but a specific thing Nia said during the final battle to rally her troops about "I know how hard it is to take those first steps" felt like I was being personally addressed at that point lol.

Also the final boss itself was awesome, it felt like Monolith was really pushing themselves with the spectacle there. Hope there is a replay button patched in though because I can see it be ruined for people who die late in the fight and have to redo every phase.

As for greater overall lore connections, like I said, I'm okay we didn't get them for XC3. I think it helps the game stand on its own. But DLC? Sign me the hell up! I'm immensely excited for whatever they do with it.
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I think you're doing a ton of disservice to a majority of the criticism by characterizing it as being primarily about its connections to the previous games being perceived as tenuous.

A majority of the problems I've seen people express in this thread — including my own — have nothing to do with its connections to the previous games, and instead have everything to do with this game's narrative and its delivery.

I'll ask you one question, in order to underline the type of criticisms you seem to be dismissing:

How was Moebius / Z able to stop time?
 
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Guess I'm gonna be the odd one out hard disagreeing with people being down on the game, specifically the ending.

I feel like people are getting way too caught up on this being the "culmination" of the previous two games. This can partially be attributed to the way the game was initially revealed, but not entirely IMO. I've been watching people play through the game and do stuff like theorize on what returning character every possible Consul could be or what the queens are really planning and I feel like that's setting yourself up for disappointment. This is just like how 2 was to 1 (up until the final chapter at least): it's not a direct sequel: It is its own thing.

The other major pain point is this game's story leans way more into it's themes than the previous two games. After the bombshells in chapter 5/6 it really feels like it starts diving hard into this and I see this leaving a lot of people behind, especially those who were looking for continuation of the lore of the previous games. 3 wants to talk way more about the themes of life and how people react/fear/dread the future than anything going on in Aionios proper. Other things in the story take a backseat to this. And that's okay for me. Not every story has to end with the final chapter with a big exposition dump tying all the mysteries together. (That's one thing I've kind of soured on in 2 over time. The ending was great but you gotta admit that the first part of it is literally just a 30 minute exposition dump about the history of the world.)

As for the protagonists, I was feeling similar on them as people here, up until the reveal of who they really are. It made me shift my viewpoint of them as weird and wacky mustache-twirling villains to more of a force of nature that the heroes are fighting against. They're mostly single-note because they embody a single human desire: the fear of the future and the struggle to stay in the now. That said some are probably a bit too goofy and one-note, but they're all in side content so I can't dock too much from them.
 
Brewster123 said:
It depends entirely on your expectations and perspective going into the game. The less you followed the marketing, the better off you'll be I expect.
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I dipped out at the release date trailer. The only major disappointment I have so far is

Cammuravi having absolutely 0 presence in the plot before being fought a single time and then dying immediately after. Although, I did get spoiled on him being a Hero, so I guess they'll do something with him. In general it's seeming like Agnus got massively shafted in the main story.

Based on what the complaint and other spoilers I've seen said, the main issue is that the story is still spinning its wheels after the big event and plays its cards way too close to its chest. Which I guess won't bother me too much, as I've heard great things about the MCs' Ascension quests and I've loved their dynamics so far.
 
Toad King said:
Guess I'm gonna be the odd one out hard disagreeing with people being down on the game, specifically the ending.

I feel like people are getting way too caught up on this being the "culmination" of the previous two games. This can partially be attributed to the way the game was initially revealed, but not entirely IMO. I've been watching people play through the game and do stuff like theorize on what returning character every possible Consul could be or what the queens are really planning and I feel like that's setting yourself up for disappointment. This is just like how 2 was to 1 (up until the final chapter at least): it's not a direct sequel: It is its own thing.

The other major pain point is this game's story leans way more into it's themes than the previous two games. After the bombshells in chapter 5/6 it really feels like it starts diving hard into this and I see this leaving a lot of people behind, especially those who were looking for continuation of the lore of the previous games. 3 wants to talk way more about the themes of life and how people react/fear/dread the future than anything going on in Aionios proper. Other things in the story take a backseat to this. And that's okay for me. Not every story has to end with the final chapter with a big exposition dump tying all the mysteries together. (That's one thing I've kind of soured on in 2 over time. The ending was great but you gotta admit that the first part of it is literally just a 30 minute exposition dump about the history of the world.)

As for the protagonists, I was feeling similar on them as people here, up until the reveal of who they really are. It made me shift my viewpoint of them as weird and wacky mustache-twirling villains to more of a force of nature that the heroes are fighting against. They're mostly single-note because they embody a single human desire: the fear of the future and the struggle to stay in the now. That said some are probably a bit too goofy and one-note, but they're all in side content so I can't dock too much from them.
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This is the second time across two pages that someone is completely misinterpreting the criticism of this game's narrative as being about its connections to the previous games. A majority of people's complaints about this game has to do with the self-contained narrative and its delivery, not expectations of connections to previous games.

Please show me three comments in this thread where people are being too caught up in it connecting to 1 and 2, and I'll show you thirty comments that are criticizing the nature and explanations of Z, N, the Sword of Origin, Lucky Seven, Noah, and everything else to do with the ending of the game

There is a lot of very thoughtful and valid criticism that you're ignoring when you characterize it as being about connections to the previous games. People are criticizing this game on its own merits. If you dismiss this criticism as invalid because you don't see that, I suggest you reread the past 20 or so pages.

I'll leave you with my response I wrote to someone else:

bellydrum said:
I think you're doing a ton of disservice to a majority of the criticism by characterizing it as being primarily about its connections to the previous games being perceived as tenuous.

A majority of the problems I've seen people express in this thread — including my own — have nothing to do with its connections to the previous games, and instead have everything to do with this game's narrative and its delivery.

I'll ask you one question, in order to underline the type of criticisms you seem to be dismissing:

How was Moebius / Z able to stop time?
Click to expand...
 
bellydrum said:
This is the second time across two pages that someone is completely misinterpreting the criticism of this game's narrative as being about its connections to the previous games. A majority of people's complaints about this game has to do with the self-contained narrative and its delivery, not expectations of connections to previous games.

Please show me three comments in this thread where people are being too caught up in it connecting to 1 and 2, and I'll show you thirty comments that are criticizing the nature and explanations of Z, N, the Sword of Origin, Lucky Seven, Noah, and everything else to do with the ending of the game.

There is a lot of very thoughtful and valid criticism that you're ignoring when you characterize it as being about connections to the previous games. People are criticizing this game on its own merits. If you dismiss this criticism as invalid because you don't see that, I suggest you reread the past 20 or so pages.

I'll leave you with my response I wrote to someone else:
Click to expand...
You might wanna tag the phrase between N and Lucky Seven

EDIT: Further extended the spoiler tags in the quote and added tags to my post
 
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bellydrum said:
I think you're doing a ton of disservice to a majority of the criticism by characterizing it as being primarily about its connections to the previous games being perceived as tenuous.

A majority of the problems I've seen people express in this thread — including my own — have nothing to do with its connections to the previous games, and instead have everything to do with this game's narrative and its delivery.

I'll ask you one question, in order to underline the type of criticisms you seem to be dismissing:

How was Moebius / Z able to stop time?
Click to expand...
Oh there are absolutely unanswered questions like the one you mentioned separate from the connections, that is a different topic entirely for me and I didn’t mean to make it seem like those were the only complaints so sorry if it came off that way. I’m looking forward to getting into the nitty gritty with y’all now that I’m done

for instance in one of your above posts I don’t even know the difference between the three swords, it all came too fast for me lol.

I was mainly addressing many posts I had read about “how can you make someone like Z and NOT tie it to Zanza” “Z could’ve been a saviorite rebel,” which I think would’ve been wholly unnecessary. I don’t think it’s crazy to say that there have been lots of people’s who’s expectations for connections were dashed and that affected their perception of the ending. Just flip through the spoiler thread on era. And it’s fair! Nintendo and monolith set that expectation.

And Like I said, I do agree there is more ambiguity here, which is why I still think I do prefer 2’s ending. Despite being pretty positive on 3’s and it resonating way more thematically than 2’s did for me, 2’s was really amazing in wrapping everything up with a bow in terms of explaining it’s hard plot points.
 
carlosfilho said:
I still haven't finished the game, but as of right now it's my top game in the franchise, followed by XCDE and XC2 (unfortunately i've never played XCX). There are some aspects that could've been better, and i'll talk about them once i'm done with it - but i'm at the beginning of chapter 7 and enjoying it. Curious to see why the ending seems to be at least a bit controversial.
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If you're at the beginning of Chapter 7, you pretty much know everything there is to know about the game now.

Except for the detail that Moebius / Z is a concept, not a dude. But he's also a dude.

There is one major implication in a post-credits scene, although it is still left to interpretation.
 
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bellydrum said:
Please show me three comments in this thread where people are being too caught up in it connecting to 1 and 2, and I'll show you thirty comments that are criticizing the nature and explanations of Z, N, the Sword of Origin, Lucky Seven, Noah, and everything else to do with the ending of the game.
Click to expand...
To put it very bluntly: The game was not interested in answering those questions, so it didn't. It wanted to talk and ruminate about it's core themes, about the future and moving on instead. In the end, the story wasn't about the people of Aionios. It was a story about people as a whole. I appreciate that we got a story that wasn't afraid to go "You know what? Yeah, we're tricking you. We're luring you in with these mysterious macguffins but we're gonna pull a 180 in the last hours and talk about life instead."

I can see this being very divisive, and I'm not saying you're wrong to hate the way it went. But the game's story didn't just fall off a cliff and do nothing in the last chapters. It went on a completely different route than what probably most people were expecting instead.

EDIT: I actually see this getting a similar response that FFVII Remake did: The game promises one thing at the start (faithful remake of FFVII) but swerves into something different at the end.
 
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Guys, I think you should take this to the spoiler thread. There are people here (including me) who aren't even past the (typing this to make the spoiler not obvious) boat section yet.
 
As much as the narrative hooked me, I did find myself yearning for one particular question that was left hanging.

Full game spoilers

The whole thing about the two worlds uniting feels like it sort of got sidelined in favour of the more sappy character-focused ending we got. I was half expecting some kind of ending where the worlds collided and the existence would be reborn or something.
 
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Toad King said:
Guess I'm gonna be the odd one out hard disagreeing with people being down on the game, specifically the ending.

I feel like people are getting way too caught up on this being the "culmination" of the previous two games. This can partially be attributed to the way the game was initially revealed, but not entirely IMO. I've been watching people play through the game and do stuff like theorize on what returning character every possible Consul could be or what the queens are really planning and I feel like that's setting yourself up for disappointment. This is just like how 2 was to 1 (up until the final chapter at least): it's not a direct sequel: It is its own thing.

The other major pain point is this game's story leans way more into it's themes than the previous two games. After the bombshells in chapter 5/6 it really feels like it starts diving hard into this and I see this leaving a lot of people behind, especially those who were looking for continuation of the lore of the previous games. 3 wants to talk way more about the themes of life and how people react/fear/dread the future than anything going on in Aionios proper. Other things in the story take a backseat to this. And that's okay for me. Not every story has to end with the final chapter with a big exposition dump tying all the mysteries together. (That's one thing I've kind of soured on in 2 over time. The ending was great but you gotta admit that the first part of it is literally just a 30 minute exposition dump about the history of the world.)

As for the protagonists, I was feeling similar on them as people here, up until the reveal of who they really are. It made me shift my viewpoint of them as weird and wacky mustache-twirling villains to more of a force of nature that the heroes are fighting against. They're mostly single-note because they embody a single human desire: the fear of the future and the struggle to stay in the now. That said some are probably a bit too goofy and one-note, but they're all in side content so I can't dock too much from them.
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Yes I’m with you fully here and with your other post. for me* the core theme of the game was the main focus and I thought it was executed wonderfully from start to finish. I’m normally someone who loves having cool plot twists explained like XC2, but I found it not really detracting from the overall experience of the game at all that some stuff was left vague, though of course, I’m excited to continue to theorize and speculate on what it all means with y’all!

Anyways, there was absolutely an expectation that this was a conclusion of a trilogy. It was marketed as such, and kind of veered in the complete opposite direction.

There are criticisms in some vague plot points themselves, yes. And I get those. But many complaints being about how it didn’t live up to being the conclusion of a trilogy is absolutely a hill I will die on if we are going that route. Our very own Mr. Fletcher, who’s probably one of the most vocal dissenters of the game (this isn’t meant to be an insult), stated this much.

The game invoking imagery of 1 & 2, games people adore, and then not living up to that promise is a huge conversation that will definitely be had given how the game was marketed, I don’t really see how that’s debatable.
 
The more I think about it, the more the story reminds me of NieR Replicant. Both games sideline the actual explanations of the world itself in favor of character development, although I think NieR has a stronger finish while XC3 does a better job of explaining things, even if it doesn’t do so particularly well.
 
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Yeah can I be blunt for a second? Y'all need to do a LOT better on your spoiler tagging. In a vacuum some of these things might not be explicit spoilers, but people aren't stupid, they can piece things together across multiple posts and based on context/what they do already know in the story. Like I was able to basically surmise that
something would happen to Mio and that M would join you in some capacity, because of seemingly innocuous posts like "Oof hardest choice in the game..." and "Long hair supremacy". And it probably dampened the impact of those scenes for me.

And now all these endgame impressions? Let's just say you're giving away a lot more than you want to or realize. So please be more considerate.
 
Ooh, divisiveness about the ending makes me excited!

But anyway, finally got a decent way into Chapter 5

I finally made it to Babel Tower and climbed my way up to Shevat and explored/got all the lore :geek:

I've already teared up a bunch throughout the game, but the baby scene was one of the most wholesome things I've seen in a game. And Taion's reaction was just adorable.

I'm at the prison now after some Hero questing, and ready to break out.

So far the story/characters/music are the high points of the game. And those just keep getting better as the game goes on.

The story so far has been predictable, but that's ok. Part of the fun of Takahashi's games is seeing how he reuses the older games plot elements/themes.

And if it stays this predictable, I already have a broad idea of what's probably going to happen. Which I am also ok with
.

I already got Spoiled on a few things by random Twitter posts.

Like Mio getting long hair at some point.

- I'm assuming this is because she becomes one with M eventually. Either by dieing and awakening in M's body or M fusing with Mio. N is giving Major Lacan/Grahf vibes so I'm assuming Noah will end up with N eventually too.

I also know about the picture that shows during the credits. I didn't look at it, but have an idea of the contents.

- I am still waiting for the full context of the game before making any comments. Because I still don't understand how it exists with the way the world is now.

And I know Nia is a Hero, but don't know anymore than that.

With all that, my speculation is that the Aionios land mass plops back down into the sea below (which is Earth) after some Zohar/Conduit/Alvis/U-DO/Wave Existence/Imaginary Upper Domain fun and callbacks to what caused the rift and world's merge and everyone Iives happily until someone messes with the Conduit again or universes demise is closing in again
.

Battle system is also great, if a little much at times. I'm still kind of disappointed in the world because it still feels kind of empty and lacking in detail like previous games, but some things still really stand out, like the Cadensia region.
 
Toad King said:
To put it very bluntly: The game was not interested in answering those questions, so it didn't. It wanted to talk and ruminate about it's core themes, about the future and moving on instead. In the end, the story wasn't about the people of Aionios. It was a story about people as a whole. I appreciate that we got a story that wasn't afraid to go "You know what? Yeah, we're tricking you. We're luring you in with these mysterious macguffins but we're gonna pull a 180 in the last hours and talk about life instead."
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In theory, that's fine and quite appropriate, but it produces issues when a lot of what the game is using to explore its characters and themes would not exist without the world being the specific way it is, leading to answers to these questions feeling warranted. Some examples below:

- Why can there only be 6 Ouroboros? There's no clear reason, thematic or otherwise, for this to be the case. This is important because several characters very lives, most notably Shania's, would take very different pathes if they weren't excluded by this arbitrary threshold. N and M would have an easier time fighting Z, Shania and the Ouroboros canidates would no longer be cast aside, and the progression of the game would be very different

- What is the nature of the anihilation events? We never receive any answers as to why they happen, or more importantly, why they continue to happen in Z's eternal now. This is important because these events represent a fundamental flaw in Z's ideology. The problem with fearing change is that its always going to come anyway, in this case in the form of anhilation. Leaving it unmentioned makes the game's message feel less resonant and less well thought-out. Its an opportunity to bring the world and themes into harmony like how XC1 and XC2 did, but it goes untouched.

- (Related to the above) Why must these two worlds annihilate eachother when they merge? This is what drives the final emotional beat of the game, but it feels completely unecessary and only serves to run against its ongoing message of the positives of cultural exchange. What's the point of engaging with otuside cultures and ideas when, according to the game, that can only bring destruction?

- Where do Nopon fit in within the world? They lack irises, they seemingly age normally, and exist outside of the dichotomy of the two nations are wandering traders. This is important because this means that they, unlike every other sentient being in this world, can exist outside of Z's dominion. This even appears to be plot important, with Riku being the one who (judging by his look at Melia in Ch. 7) ferried Lucky 7 to Noah at Melia's behest. Why would Moebius let an entire race of beings that are quite independent from his system exist?

Ultimately, I think the game still does a very good job at its core focuses (Its characters and their interlinkages), but these ambiguities only serve to make the world feel contrived. Thus, when the characters face obstacles or can only succeed due to this contrived world, their own journeys start to feel contrived. I'm not expecting them to answer every question I may have about this world (even though they have done that in past games), but I would like them to explain enough to avoid situations that I personally felt cheapened the narrative at the very end.
 
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Toad King said:
To put it very bluntly: The game was not interested in answering those questions, so it didn't. It wanted to talk and ruminate about it's core themes, about the future and moving on instead. In the end, the story wasn't about the people of Aionios. It was a story about people as a whole. I appreciate that we got a story that wasn't afraid to go "You know what? Yeah, we're tricking you. We're luring you in with these mysterious macguffins but we're gonna pull a 180 in the last hours and talk about life instead."

I can see this being very divisive, and I'm not saying you're wrong to hate the way it went. But the game's story didn't just fall off a cliff and do nothing in the last chapters. It went on a completely different route than what probably most people were expecting instead.

EDIT: I actually see this getting a similar response that FFVII Remake did: The game promises one thing at the start (faithful remake of FFVII) but swerves into something different at the end.
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Again, I'll reiterate that this game is justifiably being criticized for its contrivances. It's fine if a game wants to pull a fast one, but if the fast one being pulled is "it turns out magic happened and stuff just happened because it did", especially when almost everything up to that point is grounded in logic and explained decently well, people are going to justifiably be disappointed. This is honestly like Lost all over again. So many people refused to accept criticism of the show's ending because "it was all about the characters the whole time, the mystery wasn't the point!"

The game is essentially making you ask these questions, many times, throughout the entire game, only to tell us that the answers don't matter, or that (TV Tropes warning) A Wizard Did It. I honestly don't really understand how you can't accept that people are justified in disliking it.
 
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Not going to quote what Azrael said because quotes don't hide spoilers, but yeah, everything he said.

In fact, it's probably best that any discussion of the game regarding the end of chapter 5 and onwards is banned from the thread, tagged or not. Someone slipping could spoil a lot.
 
That's entirely fair, a lot of this really should go into the spoiler thread. I apologize if I said anything out of line that impacted someone's enjoyment of the game.
 
Paxie said:
Not going to quote what Azrael said because quotes don't hide spoilers, but yeah, everything he said.

In fact, it's probably best that any discussion of the game regarding the end of chapter 5 and onwards is banned from the thread, tagged or not. Someone slipping could spoil a lot.
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I agree, I'll respond to any responses to what I've already posted here, but otherwise, I'll leave my ramblings for the spoiler thread. I advise those I've chatted with do the same. I hope everyone has a great time with the game!
 
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I'm behind most of you, I just got to chapter 7 last night. I was surprised that chapter 6 was fairly short, comparatively. I didn't think it was going to stop at the point I had reached. Granted, I guess it's hard to tell in a vacuum how long any of these chapters are considering how many side quests there are as well.
 
40 hours in… chapter 4.

Its funny to see that the castle is like Alcamoth and Mechonis fused together.

Story is interesting to say the least… with the queen being under the boot of the Consuls?
 
sulysulk11 said:
this game literally broke me my god
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I was reading too fast and read this as "this game literally broke my god" and I was like "yeah that's what JRPGs do"

So my Switch menu says I'm at 55 hours in this game.
My in-game clock shows 51:49.

Soooo over three hours spent with the game on in the background and me vibing to the music while doing other things, then.
hell, I'm doing right now while I post this
 
Paxie said:
Guys, I think you should take this to the spoiler thread. There are people here (including me) who aren't even past the (typing this to make the spoiler not obvious) boat section yet.
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Agreed. A lot of the circumscription gives way more away than is probably intended. Full-game spoiler talk should move to the spoiler thread, imo (linked in the OP right at the top). I personally feel a certain pressure to finish the main plot quickly to avoid accidentally getting something indirectly spoiled here, even if it's just inferring something based on how someone talked around something.

Either put it in the spoiler thread or just wrap the whole post in a full-game spoiler tag to talk freely, imo. Pretty please.
 
chocolate_supra said:
So I have some weird thoughts about XB3, which I am plopping here because I'm.. I think about halfway through and I have some semi-spicy takes at this point, but since Xeno games tend to have a big rug-pull moment in the back half I thought it'd be fun to lay out my uninformed reactions so far so I can revisit them later if this game ends up turning them inside out and making me feel like a dumb:

Xenoblade 1, X, and 2, all had what I've been calling a "Gaur Plains moment," the point where the first big, green, wide open place takes my breath away. The surreal topography and sheer vastness of the terrain popped my brain in all three of those games, at Gaur Plains, Primordia, and Gormott. I can kinda tell the point in 3 where it was supposed to happen I think: when the music changes for Kilmarris Highland. But for some reason (maybe how narrow the area is), I just didn't get that gut punch reaction of "holy cow this is majestic." It's gorgeous, don't get me wrong, but.. it didn't hit the same. For some reason.

The topography itself was another weird one. I've come to expect these impossible, imaginative terrain features from XB games, and as lovely as everywhere is here, it seems almost.. too grounded? If that makes sense? Not as surreal as before? It feels less like Xenoblade and more like Zelda. Which again, is not inherently bad (it's still a better game world than most games I've played) but it just caught me off guard how different it feels compared to my expectations. It's like all the "oh wow" moments that I am having with the terrain are not from the terrain design itself, but the references to the past games (the curved spires of Bionis' Leg, the hand of the Fallen Arm, etc). Like the individual areas don't seem to have their own personality to quite the same degree that places like Noctilum, Sylvalum, Uraya, or Leftheria did. And where's my bioluminescent forest, XB3?

So to be clear: it's absolutely amazing, gorgeous, well designed, but.. somehow different from what I expected. So it seems kinda strange even though it's incredible. Also different is how the area music hasn't been quite as memorable to me as the other entries. Instead it seems like they went for absolute broke on the battle and event themes, which is the inverse of the other games where I loved the area themes more.

And the gameplay, they nailed it. This is the first Xenoblade game where I feel like I almost understand the battle system, and am actually enjoying grinding. It's awesome.

XB3 is also hands-down by favorite cast of the entire series. By far. I'm also very much invested in the story, whereas in past Xenoblade games I was enamored with the lore and the world they built more than the actual step-by-step of the story and character beats.

So to summarize, and why this all feels weird to me, it's like they took my loves and expectations of the Xenoblade series thus far and inverted them. In past entries I loved the personality of the areas but found their size lacking, here I find the personality lacking but the scale absolutely amazing. In past entries I found the area music to be incredible and the battle themes to be okay, here I find the area themes to be okay but the battle themes are absolute bangers getting stuck in my head. In past entries I couldn't get into the battle system, but here I find myself grinding for fun. In past entries I found the world and lore more interesting than the characters, and here we have my favorite cast in all of Xeno.

It's crazy how consistently everything I expected has been turned upside down with this game. 😅 And I absolutely love it to pieces. What a blast this is. I can't wait to see what else they do with what they've set up.
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chocolate_supra said:
Already eating my words.
The Great Sword's Base and its accompanying remix of the Sword Valley theme are just 👌
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Eating my words once again.
I am completely enthralled by the Erythia Sea.

Also, as a Xenoblade 1 veteran, wish me luck:
2ZowHTi.jpg

🤣😂🤣😂😭😭😭
 
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chocolate_supra said:
Eating my words once again.
I am completely enthralled by the Erythia Sea.

Also, as a Xenoblade 1 veteran, wish me luck:
2ZowHTi.jpg

🤣😂🤣😂😭😭😭
Click to expand...

Yeah I immediately abandoned the idea upon seeing how tiny the mark left by Boundary is on the map...
 
I think I've done just about every sidequest I can up to this point.

The only standard quest I have incomplete is Teach's Teachers, but the board in Colony Gamma says I need to do Teach's Ascension Quest to finish that, which I don't have access to right now. The only hero quest I have incomplete is Invisible Bond, Segiri's Ascension Quest, which is a few levels above where I'm currently at. I have two question marks on the map, but neither is for a quest. One is for the Colony Mu Ranch, which doesn't seem to ever actually complete as far as I can tell. The other is for forging upgraded weapons in the City, but I've been leaving UMs for the post-game, so I only had enough shards to upgrade two. For Legacy of the Seven, I have the Iovis, Mercurii, and Martis Rings, not sure if I'll get the others before finishing.

I have all the Heroes and have done Ascension Quests for Valdi, Zeon, Riku & Manana, Gray, Juniper, and Fiona, plus all of the main six's side stories. Right now in the main plot I've just upgraded Bravery and am supposed to go to Farview Cape. Please pester me if I've overlooked something that I could've done at this point with some weird hidden condition. I feel like there's more I should be able to do at Iota or 15 but I don't see anything at either of those.
 
Sparks! How dumb do I feel now. Currently on chapter 4 reaching
Keves Castle
and with the cutscene I realized that
Consul N is Noah or releated to him, he even has the same voice actor

facepalm
 
Just reached Chapter 4.

I feel like the main plotline has yet to really take flight ( though there have been some interesting teases) but this is made up for by how excellent the interpersonal stuff between the main cast is, and the game's impressively mature contemplations on death and how people process it, which is well beyond anything I ever expected to see in a Nintendo game, and frankly one of the better takes on such subject matter I've seen in any game.
 
Yeah count me in with the people who think that if you’re going to post late or full game spoilers in this topic than you should be way more careful with tagging spoilers than what’s happening right now.
 
0
Damn Eunie really had a great moment towards the end of Chapter 4.

Her moment of absolute fear at seeing the Moebius who seemingly killed her once before, then turning it into rage to beat him
 
The theme of chapter 6 spoiler ==>
Agnus Castle [ /spoiler] is just so good.
 
0
A quick late game Ethel/Cammuravi question

I let LoliEthel grow up to MommyEthel and both her and Cammuravi "ascended" to level 20. I guess they don't have an ascension quest?
 
I accidentally picked a fight with a mob of four level 62 enemies including an elite while I was at level 53 and somehow won. Feeling very good right now.
 
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