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

[GameDadGrant]

4 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

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. 

Oh man I just imagined a “2D HD” remaster of Xenogears. 

[crispy4000]

An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi - Nintendo - Official Site

WWW.NINTENDO.COM

 

[XxEvil AshxX]

1 hour ago, crispy4000 said:

 

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.

 

Just like Activision would be to MS. Thats why i was saying...

 

It might be a first party studio but its not a staple Nintendo IP like Mario or Zelda.

[crispy4000]

55 minutes ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

 

Just like Activision would be to MS. Thats why i was saying...

 

You'd do better to make a comparison to Bethesda's properties, and Microsoft's decision to keep them off Playstation platforms.  That's what Nintendo did when they bought Monolith from Namco.
 

55 minutes ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

It might be a first party studio but its not a staple Nintendo IP like Mario or Zelda.

We're more likely to see a Xenoblade game on mobile than ported to a competitor's console.  It's the furthest Nintendo has been willing to go with their 1st party studios.

Either way, the Xenoblade series has become a modern-era Nintendo staple.  It's slowly and steadily become a bigger property for them.  I'd expect XB3 to be in the ballpark of a Metroid or Paper Mario in terms of sales potential.

[imthesoldier]

13 hours 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

 

13 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

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.

 

Wasn't expecting a Friday morning lesson on Hentai Artists going legit in the video game industry. Sounds like a spin-off of the movie Get Shorty with John Travolta. 

[Ghost_MH]

1 hour ago, imthesoldier said:

Wasn't expecting a Friday morning lesson on Hentai Artists going legit in the video game industry. Sounds like a spin-off of the movie Get Shorty with John Travolta. 

 

Ha, yeah, it happens quite a lot. There are a couple of ways to come up in the manga industry. Find another artist you can work under or just make some bootleg hentai stuff starring Naruto or One Piece characters. Maybe your stuff gets popular enough people will buy your original hentai works. Maybe that gets popular enough you can literally add it to your portfolio when trying to go legit.

 

I mean, Yuji Himukai went from doing loli hentai to designing...

 

Himukai Yuji - Fire Emblem Heroes Wiki

FEHEROES.FANDOM.COM

---

Chad: Lycian WildcatFae: Childlike DragonFae: Divine DragonFae: Holiday DearLucina: Future Witness (Resplendent Attire)Lugh: Anima ChildMamori: Microwavin' IdolRaigh: Dark Child

 

...children characters for Fire Emblem. Yeah, I can see why fans found that problematic when it was first announced.

[Keyser_Soze]

I mean realistically if you're an artist you've got to be able to draw someone naked first, so if you draw good looking naked characters you can draw anything else well too.

[Ghost_MH]

5 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

I mean realistically if you're an artist you've got to be able to draw someone naked first, so if you draw good looking naked characters you can draw anything else well too.

 

I mean, yes. Boichi is right there with many of the best manga artists on the planet. It might not be super obvious in a weekly Shonen Jump series like Dr Stone, but his work on Sun-Ken Rock was out of this world.

 

[BloodyHell]

9 hours ago, GameDadGrant said:

Oh man I just imagined a “2D HD” remaster of Xenogears. 

Problem with that was the game was full of 3d assets.

[GameDadGrant]

16 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

Problem with that was the game was full of 3d assets.

 

A minor inconvenience!  

 

Just make the rest of the game 3D, but all the sprites in the HD-2D or whatever. I don't care if it's difficult and/or impossible. Let me dream! 

 

Come to think of it, it has actually been a really long time since I've played through Xenogears. I still have my original PSOne discs...maybe I should do another play through? (says the guy that hasn't even played through Xenoblade even once)

[Xbob42]

So I've been playing this game quite a bit over the last week in an effort to get it all finished up long before XC3 hits.

 

Since the game has 12,000 menus but they didn't even consider putting any of the fucking one-time tutorials in there, I had to watch some Youtube videos specifically to refresh myself on the combat as well as an imgur repository of all the tutorials in the game. Good lord how fucking stupid.

 

Once you're 100% back into it, it's pretty fun. I think the default difficulty kind of sucks though. I picked up the expansion pass and tried Bringer of Chaos, but it seems like a weird masochism mode where everything that lets you actually engage in combat (building up party gauge, specials, time to continue combos, etc) is tuned to where all the fun is removed in exchange for excessively long fights.

 

Luckily there's also the customize mode. I liked a lot of Bringer of Chaos but I didn't like the completely unnecessary nerfs to party gauge building. So I looked up what settings BoC uses and replicated those for things like enemy attack frequency, HP, etc, but then cranked my special/gauge builders to about 25% more than on Normal. Now enemies are far more deadly, attack more often, have a ton of HP, and are generally more interesting to fight. But I also have access to all my toolkit far more often than BoC and slightly more often than normal, meaning I actually have enough time and health to finish combos and use chain attacks to break them sweet, sweet damage orbs. For me personally, this makes the entire game far more fun. Normal is too easy so and enemies die too quickly so you rarely get to engage with these systems outside of boss fights, and BoC is a hyperslog, so glad there's a middle-ground.

 

All that said Jesus Christ is it me or does the game seem to literally run in slow motion in combat at times? I don't just mean your ridiculously nerfed movement speed, I mean some of the animations seem to play out at 50% speed like the game is dying... but the frame rate seems, well, not good but the same as always. It's really bizarre and distracting.

 

As a final aside, if anyone else is coming back to this after falling off ages ago, the expansion pass unlocks a bunch of side quests and a ton of money/rare+legendary cores as well as some unique cores from quests. So I'd recommend buying it sooner rather than later. It's nowhere near enough to break the game, but it does give you some breathing room if you're low on resources or just want some less shitty blades.

[BloodyHell]

On 2/13/2022 at 8:57 PM, Xbob42 said:

So I've been playing this game quite a bit over the last week in an effort to get it all finished up long before XC3 hits.

 

Since the game has 12,000 menus but they didn't even consider putting any of the fucking one-time tutorials in there, I had to watch some Youtube videos specifically to refresh myself on the combat as well as an imgur repository of all the tutorials in the game. Good lord how fucking stupid.

 

Once you're 100% back into it, it's pretty fun. I think the default difficulty kind of sucks though. I picked up the expansion pass and tried Bringer of Chaos, but it seems like a weird masochism mode where everything that lets you actually engage in combat (building up party gauge, specials, time to continue combos, etc) is tuned to where all the fun is removed in exchange for excessively long fights.

 

Luckily there's also the customize mode. I liked a lot of Bringer of Chaos but I didn't like the completely unnecessary nerfs to party gauge building. So I looked up what settings BoC uses and replicated those for things like enemy attack frequency, HP, etc, but then cranked my special/gauge builders to about 25% more than on Normal. Now enemies are far more deadly, attack more often, have a ton of HP, and are generally more interesting to fight. But I also have access to all my toolkit far more often than BoC and slightly more often than normal, meaning I actually have enough time and health to finish combos and use chain attacks to break them sweet, sweet damage orbs. For me personally, this makes the entire game far more fun. Normal is too easy so and enemies die too quickly so you rarely get to engage with these systems outside of boss fights, and BoC is a hyperslog, so glad there's a middle-ground.

 

All that said Jesus Christ is it me or does the game seem to literally run in slow motion in combat at times? I don't just mean your ridiculously nerfed movement speed, I mean some of the animations seem to play out at 50% speed like the game is dying... but the frame rate seems, well, not good but the same as always. It's really bizarre and distracting.

 

As a final aside, if anyone else is coming back to this after falling off ages ago, the expansion pass unlocks a bunch of side quests and a ton of money/rare+legendary cores as well as some unique cores from quests. So I'd recommend buying it sooner rather than later. It's nowhere near enough to break the game, but it does give you some breathing room if you're low on resources or just want some less shitty blades.

Yeah, xbc2 definitely had some very noticeable problems. When I beat it, I remember getting very frustrated with it. Imo, its a good game, but not nearly as good as the original. 

 

I need to replay both, starting this spring when the launches slow down. I still haven't played the Switch Definitive Edition, and it'll be my first replay since release, so im very much looking forward to it. Its definitely my favorite JRPG of that era. Although Ni No Kuni is up there too (which im currently replaying, though its been put on hold to get through this crazy set of releases)

[GameDadGrant]

@BloodyHell

 

Have you played Xenoblade Chronicles X? What did you think of that one, if you have played it?

[BloodyHell]

21 hours ago, GameDadGrant said:

@BloodyHell

 

Have you played Xenoblade Chronicles X? What did you think of that one, if you have played it?

Yeah, I own it. I loved it, I think it was one of their best games. I hoped we'd get a sequel, but apparently there is licensing issues? 

 

Im hyped for XBC3, but I'd be even more excited about a sequel to X, or even a switch port of the original! Honestly, I had kind of forgotten about it until you mentioned it. My copy is still on my shelf, I definitely need to replay it sometime.

 

Id say its the best game on WiiU. But unfortunately it's on WiiU.

[crispy4000]

X is so much more flawed than XB2 IMO.  The latter's problems hit you in the face, but don't make you question why you spent dozens of hours playing it. 

I don't know if I could take another game like X unless they made big changes to its progression, mech combat, and storytelling.  It really is the most MMO-ish of the bunch, in a bad way.

World and technical aspects of that game are amazing though.

[GameDadGrant]

9 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

Id say its the best game on WiiU. But unfortunately it's on WiiU.

Always a tragic tale for any game that came out on that dumb platform.

[Xbob42]

So I finally finished up XC2. It was fine but it never really resonated with me, and the ending kind of just felt like a sort of rehash (sort of) of XC1. I then did the expansion, which was instantly far better than the main game. They revamped the combat system to be fun and active instead of passive and boring. It basically felt like one big chapter of the main game, but better. And even though you knew the outcome of the DLC from playing the main game, it still managed to hit home and be a great experience. I went out of my way to do every side quest I could in the DLC, which I did not do in any of the main games, and I think that makes the ending work even better.

 

Chronologically speaking, following that DLC, we got XC1 DE. So I picked up a cheap copy as I'm not going to pay full price for a game where I'm only playing the DLC. I played XC1 far too recently to play through it again with PS3-quality graphics instead of PS2-quality graphics.

 

Anyway, I start up Future Connected and the second I get into combat I'm reminded why it took me so damn long to force myself (against my own advice of not beating games I don't like) to beat the first game: the combat is fucking traaaaaaash. Going from Torna to Future Connected highlights how far Monolith has come in terms of "real-time"ish combat design. Future Connected seems to improve upon the base game's combat, but you're still slowly selecting icons from an MMO-style hotbar using the D-Pad. You know, like Final Fantasy XIV 1.0, which was widely lauded as one of the greatest pieces of shit to ever exist.

 

Every second I'm in XC1's combat system I am in agony. It's like it was designed by someone who hated the concept of fun and wanted humanity to suffer. Even outside of combat, while the Xenoblade games have never had much in the way of abilities to aid in exploration (you can run, you can jump) even those feel bad here. The jump is so floaty and bad. Even targeting enemies sucks. No rewards feel good because they're all combat-related and unless one deletes all the combat from the game I don't want it. I almost want to just Youtube the story but I came this far and paid for the damn thing. It's so hard to get back into.

To try to get a bit of cathartic release I clicked an interesting video entitled "Xenoblade Chronicles Critique - Of Gods and Homs" assuming that critique would mean critique. A 4+ hour video. Instead it opens with the guy saying it's the best game ever and how the story and gameplay come together perfectly and how good the gameplay is and I nearly vomited. Don't smoke crack, kids.

 

Anyway, Elden Ring is out today, so maybe I'll take a break from this and try again later. I really hope the BotW team is able to lend Monolith some help with XC3 in terms of gameplay design. The possibilities of the world are so much greater in BotW than anything in any XC game. Monolith is great at creating big expansive worlds that are full of interesting sights, but are otherwise devoid of anything interesting to do besides run, jump or fight enemies. The jump is always floaty and bad so they can't even add basic things like platforming challenges because it would be hellish. While I don't think a Xenoblade game needs quite the suite of world interactions and physics possibilities as BotW... I sure wouldn't be complaining about it. A pretty world only goes so far if all I can do is run around in it and occasionally fight monsters.

[crispy4000]

23 hours ago, Xbob42 said:

So I finally finished up XC2. It was fine but it never really resonated with me, and the ending kind of just felt like a sort of rehash (sort of) of XC1. I then did the expansion, which was instantly far better than the main game. They revamped the combat system to be fun and active instead of passive and boring. It basically felt like one big chapter of the main game, but better. And even though you knew the outcome of the DLC from playing the main game, it still managed to hit home and be a great experience. I went out of my way to do every side quest I could in the DLC, which I did not do in any of the main games, and I think that makes the ending work even better.

That’s good to hear.  Meaning to get to Torna, and as someone who liked XB2 a lot, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it even more.  Kinda want to get back into 2 and further ‘break’ it at some point, check out some of the other DLC bonuses too.

 

I wouldn’t call the ending of XB2 a rehash of the first.  It’s much more tactful than that, since it treads similar ground for a reason, and fleshes out both games. My main issues were in the ending credit sequence, specifically not just letting certain characters die.  But up until that, they set up a mystery for the end of the game from the onset, and delivered on it in an unexpected, multilayered way.  That’s a really tough thing to pull off.  I think they did, which is why the unearned aspects of the credit sequence felt so dumb and out of place to me.

 

I really wish I could buy Future Connected as something standalone.  Don’t think I could play through the first game again with how long it was, and how much I disliked the crafting by the end.

[Xbob42]

Well as it so happens, I didn't really mind the post credits bit...

 

Spoiler

Since they kind of spring the Beanstalk collapsing because of losing Aion's power out of nowhere, and then the "only" solution being Pyra to pilot said Aion to blow it all up out of nowhere as well. It didn't feel satisfying or foreshadowed or anything, it just interrupted the flow of the game after beating Mallos.

 

They could've simply let the disappearance of the Conduit kill off Pyra as explained prior to this point rather than some bizarre self sacrifice to blow up the Beanstalk, since when do buildings need energy sources to simply exist?? Even when properly explained it's still distracting and jarring in a bad way, so I was totally fine with them coming back because the way they left was disappointing. 

 

Also it'd be kinda shitty to kill them like 2 weeks after they finally stop wanting to die. 

 

[crispy4000]

The setup was disappointing, as you said.  The unexplained ‘they’re back’ thing at the end was jarring in a similar way that FF7R was for a minor character there.  But even FF7R didn’t go to the same lengths to please, and XB2 ends all the more absurd for it.
 

If I can ignore that bit… the ending wasn’t too bad.  XB1 set a higher bar though.  As much as I love XB2 overall, and the last hours especially, it can really bring the anime suck at inopportune moments.

[Keyser_Soze]

 

[Brian]

 

[crispy4000]

Woah!  First time I can recall a major release being pushed this far ahead.

I think there's still time for me to start & finish Torna.  Just beat Death's Door, perfect timing to start something new.

[Keyser_Soze]

3 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

Woah!  First time I can recall a major release being pushed this far ahead.

 

I heard it has been rated for a while so Nintendo was sitting on it. Summer must be looking dry for them so they probably bumped it up.

[crispy4000]

9 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

I heard it has been rated for a while so Nintendo was sitting on it. Summer must be looking dry for them so they probably bumped it up.

 

Which makes Monolith Soft's productivity look even more insane.

Xenoblade 1 - 2010
Xenoblade X - 2015

Xenoblade 2 - 2017

Xenoblade Torna, stand-alone expansion - 2018
Xenoblade 1 remaster & new chapter - 2020

Xenoblade 3 - 2022

They're the Insomniac Games of 80+ hour RPGs.  Imagine if we got new Final Fantasy's or Dragon Quests on this timeline.

[Keyser_Soze]

1 minute ago, crispy4000 said:

Which makes Monolith Soft's productivity even more insane.

 

And no crunch!

[Zaku3]

Gonna get the cart and just dump it for emulation. Only way to avoid 360p and 15FPS.

[imthesoldier]

2 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

Woah!  First time I can recall a major release being pushed this far ahead.

I think there's still time for me to start & finish Torna.  Just beat Death's Door, perfect timing to start something new.

 

I'm replaying the first game now with XCDE, and would still love to get through XC2+Torna before tackling XC3, but that'll be a tall order. I'm only at Gaur Plains for DE, so I have all of the game to play really.

 

But this trailer has me really feeling it.

 

 

1 hour ago, Zaku3 said:

Gonna get the cart and just dump it for emulation. Only way to avoid 360p and 15FPS.

 

Seriously, I think the game has a very clean look, and who knows, maybe they're using AMD's FSR like they are in Switch Sports. I'm hoping for a solid 30fps, and a good 720p/900p, but we'll see. Like I said, I'm playing through XCDE, and despite its technical quirks, doesn't distract from the experience for me. XBC on Wii is my #2 GOAT, so I'm having a blast regardless.

[Keyser_Soze]

1 hour ago, Zaku3 said:

Gonna get the cart and just dump it for emulation. Only way to avoid 360p and 15FPS.

 

But look you can have 7 party members at once! Performance will be immaculate!

[Zaku3]

13 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

 

But look you can have 7 party members at once! Performance will be immaculate!

 

Lol I might want to wait for RDNA3.

[crispy4000]

Started up Torna today.  It takes me back, in a good way.  I've beat several big JRPGs since Xenoblade 2, including DQXI and FFIX, but Torna immediately made me feel right at home as if I never left.  It also wastes no time, unlike XB2's tutorials.

 

I've been playing lots of stressful games before this, so it's also nice to have something relaxing and cathartic to play.  Resolution does seem to be a little better than I remember XB2.  Other than some dithering an anti-aliasing artifacts, it looks decent on my 4k set.  If XB3 is like this, I can deal.  Much better than whatever Hyrule Warriors went for, blegh.

[Keyser_Soze]

The art books for these games are actually really nice

 

 

[HardAct]

   I've had XBC3 pre-ordered from Best Buy for along time. Now that I finally upgraded to my new SanDisk Ultra 1Tb micro SD card I'm good to go! All along I thought I had a 512Gig SD card in there but it was actually a 128Gig so I'll have enough room now forever Literally. Game transfer was much easier than I had previously thought too, painless! Only took about 35 minutes each way {Card to PC and PC to new card} over 800Gigs free wooohooo

[Keyser_Soze]

So they fucked up the preorder. Very Nintendo

 

 

[Keyser_Soze]