Nintendo Xenoblade 3 [July 29 2022] - reviews from OpenCritic posted

[Keyser_Soze]

 

A vast world awaits in Xenoblade Chronicles 3, the next game in the acclaimed RPG series from developer MONOLITHSOFT. Players will step into the roles of protagonists Noah and Mio amid turmoil between the hostile nations of Keves and Agnus. Six characters hailing from those nations will take part in a grand tale with “life” as its central theme. Explore a new world that will connect the futures of both Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, launching for Nintendo Switch in September 2022.

[crispy4000]

In.

[Xbob42]

Well, this gives me the motivation I needed to actually play through and beat 2... hope it's worth it!

But honestly I want a Chronicles X 2 more than this. That game ended on a helluva cliffhanger that would've been fun to explore further.

[Ghost_MH]

29 minutes ago, Xbob42 said:

Well, this gives me the motivation I needed to actually play through and beat 2... hope it's worth it!

But honestly I want a Chronicles X 2 more than this. That game ended on a helluva cliffhanger that would've been fun to explore further.

 

Hey, someone else giving Chronicles X some dues. I feel that game is unfairly ignored. I really liked what they were going for and I wish subsequent games kept the world scale and brought in some more refined mecha combat.

[Keyser_Soze]

 

[crispy4000]

39 minutes ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Hey, someone else giving Chronicles X some dues. I feel that game is unfairly ignored. I really liked what they were going for and I wish subsequent games kept the world scale and brought in some more refined mecha combat.

 

It made one of the worst parts of the first game (bad sidequests with no payoff) the crux of its progression.  For that reason alone, I think it's the sort of game you can skip.  But the world is definitely cool, and the tech is stellar for the platform.

[Ghost_MH]

6 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

It made one of the worst parts of the first game (bad sidequests with no payoff) the crux of its progression.  For that reason alone, I think it's the sort of game you can skip.  But the world is definitely cool, and the tech is stellar for the platform.

 

Yeah, I mentioned how shitty the side quests were in the Direct thread. That said, it's crazy to me that they threw everything away. The game's only major flaw has nothing to do with its core gameplay mechanics.

[Zaku3]

1 hour ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Hey, someone else giving Chronicles X some dues. I feel that game is unfairly ignored. I really liked what they were going for and I wish subsequent games kept the world scale and brought in some more refined mecha combat.

 

Negative of being a Wii U title.

[Ghost_MH]

3 minutes ago, Zaku3 said:

Negative of being a Wii U title.

 

That's why it deserves a re-release on the Switch. That and Start Fox Zero are the games that really deserve a second chance. Just tweak the rewards for side missions in X to make that bit of the game less grindy and dump the motion controls in Zero.

[Zaku3]

Just watched the trailer. Ya I am gonna need to buy this and emulate it in the future. No way this is gonna run well on the Switch.

[Brick]

4 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

Well, this gives me the motivation I needed to actually play through and beat 2... hope it's worth it!

But honestly I want a Chronicles X 2 more than this. That game ended on a helluva cliffhanger that would've been fun to explore further.

 

Yeah that ending demands a continuation. 

[Fizzzzle]

Looks cool. I probably won't play it. I didn't really like the combat of 1 and 2, so I'm assuming this one won't be for me.

[XxEvil AshxX]

Cant wait to play this in 480p at 15fps 

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

Cant wait to play this in 480p at 15fps 

I’m hopeful that it won’t be that bad.  They’ve had a lot of time since Xenoblade 2 to work on their tech, and performance in their Switch games have improved since.

[Best]

6 hours ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

Cant wait to play this in 480p at 15fps 

 

Yea, really. Way to ambitious for the Switch.

[imthesoldier]

Maybe I should play XC2...

 

The original Xenoblade is my #2 GOAT, and XCX was a ton of fun, so it's clear Xenoblade scratches that particular JRPG itch I look for these days. I am stoked for XC3. Given the Sept. release, this could give me plenty of time to play XC2 + Torna. 

 

6 hours ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

Cant wait to play this in 480p at 15fps 

 

Truthfully, I think this'll run a bit better than XC2, and probably even XCDE (I have played some of DE, and honestly it looks, and plays fine). Perhaps this'll be the swan song for the Nintendo Switch, and have it be that last hurrah before Monolith Soft move onto a different IP. 

[Ghost_MH]

42 minutes ago, imthesoldier said:

Maybe I should play XC2...

 

The original Xenoblade is my #2 GOAT, and XCX was a ton of fun, so it's clear Xenoblade scratches that particular JRPG itch I look for these days. I am stoked for XC3. Given the Sept. release, this could give me plenty of time to play XC2 + Torna. 

 

 

Truthfully, I think this'll run a bit better than XC2, and probably even XCDE (I have played some of DE, and honestly it looks, and plays fine). Perhaps this'll be the swan song for the Nintendo Switch, and have it be that last hurrah before Monolith Soft move onto a different IP. 

 

They've been making Xeno games for like 25 years now. I don't see them stopping.

[BloodyHell]

1 hour ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

They've been making Xeno games for like 25 years now. I don't see them stopping.

I know it's owned by SE, but god i would love a new remaster of xenogears. I know we'll never get a remake (one that fixed disc 2 would be awesome), but a straight remaster would be awesome with me!

[Ghost_MH]

12 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

I know it's owned by SE, but god i would love a new remaster of xenogears. I know we'll never get a remake (one that fixed disc 2 would be awesome), but a straight remaster would be awesome with me!

 

Xenogears is in one of those weird places where SE likely is never going to do anything with it, but also has no desire to just give it away while Nintendo likely has zero desire to spend any money on acquiring the franchise. 

[crispy4000]

2 hours ago, imthesoldier said:

Maybe I should play XC2...

 

The original Xenoblade is my #2 GOAT, and XCX was a ton of fun, so it's clear Xenoblade scratches that particular JRPG itch I look for these days. I am stoked for XC3. Given the Sept. release, this could give me plenty of time to play XC2 + Torna. 

 

 

Xenoblade 2 is great if you can forgive its shortcomings and see it through.  If you enjoyed the original, the final hours deliver some serious payoff.

[imthesoldier]

2 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

They've been making Xeno games for like 25 years now. I don't see them stopping.

 

Well, I was referring to the XenoBLADE games. They've already done Xenogears, and Xenosaga, hence why it might be time to move to another Xeno game. Though, I still want a follow-up to Chronicles X, plus a Switch port. There's so much untapped potential in the world of Mira. 

 

38 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

 

Xenoblade 2 is great if you can forgive its shortcomings and see it through.  If you enjoyed the original, the final hours deliver some serious payoff.

 

Good to know. I have heard from some folks that the battle system can be convoluted with the Blades, and Drivers, but then I recall some gameplay elements were simplified from the previous two games, so two steps forward, one step back type of deal? 

 

There's also the Waifu's, which doesn't quite fit into the Xenoblade design imo, but they did hire Hentai artists for XC2, so I guess I can't blame them since that's their specialty. 

[crispy4000]

19 minutes ago, imthesoldier said:

Good to know. I have heard from some folks that the battle system can be convoluted with the Blades, and Drivers, but then I recall some gameplay elements were simplified from the previous two games, so two steps forward, one step back type of deal? 

 

There's also the Waifu's, which doesn't quite fit into the Xenoblade design imo, but they did hire Hentai artists for XC2, so I guess I can't blame them since that's their specialty. 

The battle system is almost all for the better.  It’s got a ton of layers, probably more than it needed.  But it all clicks together, and fun to break if you go there.

 

The bad has to do with micromanagement outside of battles.  The random element isn’t as bad as people tend to say, but the way you have to babysit things with timers is.

 

The ugly is the character designs and cutesy/‘fan service’ anime tropes.  Not enough to spoil the overall game, but I’m glad they’re dialing it down.

 

[Brick]

2 hours ago, imthesoldier said:

they did hire Hentai artists for XC2

 

They did what now? 

[BloodyHell]

4 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Xenogears is in one of those weird places where SE likely is never going to do anything with it, but also has no desire to just give it away while Nintendo likely has zero desire to spend any money on acquiring the franchise. 

Agreed, but I don't know why. Game has a ton of fans who love it.

[Ghost_MH]

40 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

Agreed, but I don't know why. Game has a ton of fans who love it.

 

That part is easy. Square shat on the Xenogears team leading them all to leave and form Monolithsoft who then went on to develop Xenosaga under Namco and now Xenoblade under Nintendo. They had plans for more Xenogears entries, but Square straight didn't care. I don't know if the team at Monolithsoft cares enough to go back in time and revisit what could have been or if the execs at SE have any interesting in righting past wrongs when there's no money in it for them. Meanwhile, Xenoblade is a bigger hit than Xenogears or Xenosaga ever was so there's no incentive for Nintendo to either share profit with SE on a new Xenogears or spend any executive time negotiating for free rights to the franchise.

[Keyser_Soze]

3 hours ago, Brick said:

They did what now? 

 

They had a bunch of guest atists come in, like Nogami Takeshi, because the reasoning was they wanted the Monolith Soft developers to get used to working with different types of art styles which is why the character designs are all over the place.

 

But hentai artists have done art for plenty of video games before. Urushihara Satoshi for instance did the art for Langrisser and Growlanser

[Ghost_MH]

19 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

They had a bunch of guest atists come in, like Nogami Takeshi, because the reasoning was they wanted the Monolith Soft developers to get used to working with different types of art styles which is why the character designs are all over the place.

 

But hentai artists have done art for plenty of video games before. Urushihara Satoshi for instance did the art for Langrisser and Growlanser

 

And Yuji Himukai had done work for Intelligent Systems' Fire Emblem Heroes along with past work on stuff like Persona and Shin Megami Tensei.

 

Hentai artists go legit all the time. The most popular artist along those lines today is probably Boichi. He went from hentai to Sun-Ken Rock and is now working on the Shonen Jump series Dr Stone. There's also all time greats like Masamune Shirow of Ghost in the Shell fame... though I'm not sure you could ever say he stopped making hentai. One of the top romantic comedy manga series in Japan right now is Don't Bully Me Nagatoro by Nanashi. It's his first not hentai manga series...and he even managed to get it adapted into a quite successful anime, so good for him.

[BloodyHell]

3 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

That part is easy. Square shat on the Xenogears team leading them all to leave and form Monolithsoft who then went on to develop Xenosaga under Namco and now Xenoblade under Nintendo. They had plans for more Xenogears entries, but Square straight didn't care. I don't know if the team at Monolithsoft cares enough to go back in time and revisit what could have been or if the execs at SE have any interesting in righting past wrongs when there's no money in it for them. Meanwhile, Xenoblade is a bigger hit than Xenogears or Xenosaga ever was so there's no incentive for Nintendo to either share profit with SE on a new Xenogears or spend any executive time negotiating for free rights to the franchise.

Im pretty sure SE has exclusive rights to xenogears. I know the story behind the development, ut I don't think SE needs to negotiate anything, gears is there property, afaik.

[Ghost_MH]

30 minutes ago, BloodyHell said:

Im pretty sure SE has exclusive rights to xenogears. I know the story behind the development, ut I don't think SE needs to negotiate anything, gears is there property, afaik.

 

Oh, that's what you meant. Yeah, there's no way they'd revive that franchise. Square wasn't wrong when they chose to dump money into fully 3D Final Fantasy over 2.5D Xenogears, even if it's deeply frustrating for the team. Reviving Xenogears would mean less focus on Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and that makes see zero sense for a franchise with no champion within the company. They could spin up a new team to work on it, but if you're SE and wanted to dump money into 90s franchise it makes zero sense to choose Xenogears over like Chrono? Even without Chrono, it would make more sense to put the money into an actually new Mana game or even Ogre Battle.

[crispy4000]

I've never played Xenogears, but there's a heavy-handed nod to it at the end of Xenoblade 2 as well.  Also backed up further by data mining.

[EternallDarkness]

On 2/9/2022 at 11:07 PM, Xbob42 said:

Well, this gives me the motivation I needed to actually play through and beat 2... hope it's worth it!

But honestly I want a Chronicles X 2 more than this. That game ended on a helluva cliffhanger that would've been fun to explore further.

 

 

that would be nice..I'd also like to have X on the switch 

[BloodyHell]

3 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Oh, that's what you meant. Yeah, there's no way they'd revive that franchise. Square wasn't wrong when they chose to dump money into fully 3D Final Fantasy over 2.5D Xenogears, even if it's deeply frustrating for the team. Reviving Xenogears would mean less focus on Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest and that makes see zero sense for a franchise with no champion within the company. They could spin up a new team to work on it, but if you're SE and wanted to dump money into 90s franchise it makes zero sense to choose Xenogears over like Chrono? Even without Chrono, it would make more sense to put the money into an actually new Mana game or even Ogre Battle.

I mean, I do think you're overestimating the work w remaster would take. Im not asking for a remake a la FF7, while I would love that. But a 1 to 1 remaster could be done by a small team wnd would garner tons of good will. SE is big enough that nothing would be made worse because of it.

 

At the same time, I know they won't, but it's still their best game of the ps1/ps2 era, imo. 

[BloodyHell]

3 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

I've never played Xenogears, but there's a heavy-handed nod to it at the end of Xenoblade 2 as well.  Also backed up further by data mining.

It has what is probably my favorite story in a game, and some of my favorite characters.

[XxEvil AshxX]

I wonder if there's ever any hope that with MS and Nintendo playing nice that we'll get to see games like Bayonetta 2/3 and the Xenoblade series ported to Xbox in exchange for ActiveLizzard stuff.

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

I wonder if there's ever any hope that with MS and Nintendo playing nice that we'll get to see games like Bayonetta 2/3 and the Xenoblade series ported to Xbox in exchange for ActiveLizzard stuff.

 

Bayonetta 2/3 is a remote possibility if Nintendo's publishing deal expires.  Xenoblade, we'll see it ported to Xbox when Mario, Zelda and Metroid go there.  Monolith is a 1st party Nintendo studio.