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

[crispy4000]

2 hours ago, thedarkstark said:

I'm torn. I could go for a good ARPG right now but I thought the first game sucked (combat was crazy boring imho).

2 was really good until about 3/4 of the way through, then it really were out its welcome because you use the same "strategy" for every boss.

 

If this were something I could pick up for $30 a year from now that would be an easy choice but obviously that's not going to happen 

 

I’ve stayed dark on most of the new mechanics, but I really liked Torna’s combat.  Hopeful that XB3 hits that high.

 

There’s some kind of class/job system now, right?

[BloodyHell]

On 7/27/2022 at 1:15 AM, HardAct said:

Yea IGN is a Like/Hate site, especially in the last 5 or so years. I HEAR YA! . There are so many more reputable video game reviews options out there. A game like XBC3 though deserves an HONEST fan of the series, like the Digital Foundry review.

No, reviews shouldn't be from fans. Reviews should be done without bias. Thats why id never trust someone like greg miller for a review of something like a wrestling game, or a FromSoft game from tamoor hussein.

[crispy4000]

It’s only a problem if the reviewer doesn’t enjoy the genre to begin with, or worse, has a bias against it.

Sometimes you need a super fan to actually be critical enough.  Take reviews of Smash Bros Brawl.  None of them even mentioned tripping.  Or the input lag in Ultimate for that matter.

[BloodyHell]

2 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

It’s only a problem if the reviewer doesn’t enjoy the genre to begin with, or worse, has a bias against it.

Sometimes you need a super fan to actually be critical enough.  Take reviews of Smash Bros Brawl.  None of them even mentioned tripping.  Or the input lag in Ultimate for that matter.

I really do have problems with games "journalists". Its sad that Gamergate had to become a harassment campaign, because some groups really did have very valid points in regards to the problems with games journalism. Its every bit as bad as the incestuous access journalism that is a blight on politics, except obviously less important. Like Blizzard and Riot. Every journalist knew what was going on, but they shut up because they were scared of losing access to all of the devs under their umbrella. 

 

And If they didnt know, they don't deserve to call themselves journalists, because it would be obvious they weren't doing their jobs. Also, journalists shouldn't be friends with devs whose work they critique, and it happens way too often.

 

 

[Biggie]

Any impressions?

[EternallDarkness]

been a hell of a day but I did find time to swing into BB and grab a copy and played the first hour. Honestly way to early to have any serious impressions other than I want to the characters to STFU!!!! in regards to their battle dialogue more specifically some of the post battle chatter. 

[Ghost_MH]

Two hours in, so I can't say too much other than this game it's SO much cleaner than XC2. IQ is wildly better and the frame rate is pretty rock solid so far. Yeah, it's mostly locked to 30fps and I'm still pretty much in intro chapter, but XC2 was already struggling at this point in the game.

 

Also, they've finally got some great character designs going. XC2 was a step up from XCX, but that's not really dating much. Elma was the only character I actually liked in that game. I didn't even like the player character and that game had a character creator.

[Paperclyp]

20 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

I really do have problems with games "journalists". Its sad that Gamergate had to become a harassment campaign, because some groups really did have very valid points in regards to the problems with games journalism. Its every bit as bad as the incestuous access journalism that is a blight on politics, except obviously less important. Like Blizzard and Riot. Every journalist knew what was going on, but they shut up because they were scared of losing access to all of the devs under their umbrella. 

 

And If they didnt know, they don't deserve to call themselves journalists, because it would be obvious they weren't doing their jobs. Also, journalists shouldn't be friends with devs whose work they critique, and it happens way too often.

 

 

I don't know man. Gamergate didn't give a shit about any of those issues lol. In fact, if you would have had any review mention some wrong doing at Blizzard and have the score adjusted to reflect that (or probably even just mentioning it is enough), the gamergate mob would have been like get this woke shit out of my fucking games, or whatever the vernacular was at the time. 

 

I agree with @crispy4000's point to a certain degree - many mainstream reviewers don't have the deep knowledge of, say, a fighting game to really apply any meaningful critique of a new fighting game's mechanics, systems, and the balance of the game, for instance. 

 

But here's the thing: that doesn't really matter? It's very easy to seek out people who have that knowledge who view the game through a critical lens. So a person who has a lesser understanding of the game can still review a game, and it's a valid critique in their own right. Maybe it's not what you're personally looking for, but it's not some word of god. Take it for what it is and look for the thousands of other views on the game if you don't think you agree with it. 

 

But yeah those gamergate folks are the same guys who go after Jason Schreier whenever he posts a new story about abuse at a company. They don't give a shit about that, they just want to gate keep the industry for their own very specific (and bad) preferences. 

[crispy4000]

1 hour ago, Paperclyp said:

I agree with @crispy4000's point to a certain degree - many mainstream reviewers don't have the deep knowledge of, say, a fighting game to really apply any meaningful critique of a new fighting game's mechanics, systems, and the balance of the game, for instance. 

 

But here's the thing: that doesn't really matter? It's very easy to seek out people who have that knowledge who view the game through a critical lens. So a person who has a lesser understanding of the game can still review a game, and it's a valid critique in their own right. Maybe it's not what you're personally looking for, but it's not some word of god. Take it for what it is and look for the thousands of other views on the game if you don't think you agree with it. 

You shouldn’t need to be some super in-depth fan of the genre to notice many of these things though.  That’s when I get annoyed.

 

Even if you just looked at Brawl as a simple arcade game, it’s as straIghtforward as testing if the game is responsive to your inputs.  Any action game is owed that due diligence.  Otherwise, it’s akin to reviewing RDR2 and not talking about the input lag.  (another case in point)

 

It’s a reviewers job to play a game with a critical lens, no matter the experience level they come from.  If they can’t bring themselves to do that, they shouldn’t be reviewing it.

[Paperclyp]

16 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

You shouldn’t need to be some super in-depth fan of the genre to notice many of these things though.  That’s when I get annoyed.

 

Even if you just looked at Brawl as a simple arcade game, it’s as straIghtforward as seeing if the game is responsive to your inputs.  Any action game is owed that due diligence.  Otherwise, it’s akin to reviewing RDR2 and not talking about the input lag.  (another case in point)

 

It’s a reviewers job to play a game with a critical lens, no matter the experience level they come from.  If they can’t bring themselves to do that, they shouldn’t be reviewing it.

 

If your argument is simply that there are many reviewers who are bad at their jobs, you'll get no argument from me. But A) I don't think that points to some kind of ethics issue (not saying you think it is), B) I think that there are hard working, well meaning reviewers who either don't have the time allotted to do as thorough of a job that you think they should AND even if they did still wouldn't be able to do as good a job as avid fans of the genre think they should. 

 

I don't care how smart and thorough you are, a 23 year old gal reviewing Street Fighter 6 who does the work to understand how the new systems work and what they do and if she thinks they're good is just not going to have the context and experience to view the game in the same way that Maximillian can. And while she might do a good enough job to satisfy @crispy4000, there's going to be thousands of other people who think she doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about. 

[crispy4000]

I think many if not most reviewers are bad at their jobs, yes.  I differ on this idea that reviewers good at their jobs would miss obvious control issues because they lack the time.  Not systems level depth.  Basic ‘does it play well’ things. 

 

There’s been many games with flawed controls I have enjoyed.  I think many reviewers today have trouble thinking critically about how it plays when they do. 

[Paperclyp]

25 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

I think many if not most reviewers are bad at their jobs, yes.  I differ on this idea that reviewers good at their jobs would miss obvious control issues because they lack the time.  Not systems level depth.  Basic ‘does it play well’ things. 

 

There’s been many games with flawed controls I have enjoyed.  I think many reviewers today have trouble thinking critically about the what it plays when they do. 

 

I'm not talking about obvious control issues. If they miss basics then yes that is poor work on their part. 

 

I'm saying they can understand the basics of games that that hours to actually truly understand how the game works, and no matter how thorough they are at their job they will not have the same ability to critique a game as someone who has a long history of understanding not only a particular series but a particular genre. So fans of that genre will mostly never be satisfied with the review that someone from a mainstream publication puts out. 

[crispy4000]

Back on topic here, the Xenoblade game are only complex in a depth way if you go after super bosses and the like.  There’s tons of systems to tweak and engage with, but you don’t need to be a super fan to understand them as needed, to finish.

 

People opposed to playing a linear JRPG with lots of exploration and MMO-ish combat probably shouldn’t review it.  But I don’t see why you’d need to be a fan, other than to make comparisons to prior entries.

 

Unrelated note, but Xenobalde 2 had some pretty nutty ways to break it in the post-game.

[Kal-El814]

23 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

Its sad that Gamergate had to become a harassment campaign,

 

Gamergate was always, 100% about harassment. It was never about ethics in journalism.

[Ghost_MH]

5 hours ago, crispy4000 said:

I think many if not most reviewers are bad at their jobs, yes.  I differ on this idea that reviewers good at their jobs would miss obvious control issues because they lack the time.  Not systems level depth.  Basic ‘does it play well’ things. 

 

There’s been many games with flawed controls I have enjoyed.  I think many reviewers today have trouble thinking critically about how it plays when they do. 

 

You're missing an important piece of the puzzle here. Reviewers are often times reviewing pre-release copies of games. These forums are named after the day one patch a lot of games get to fix some broken bits devs couldn't get to before review copies and out. Low man on the totem pole twenty years ago, but even during my IGN DVD days I'd get pre-release DVDs with sometimes faulty menus or audio/video glitches. If it seemed easy enough to fix, I'd rather the concern with the publisher and then ignore them for the reviews under the assumption they'd be fixed by the time they'd go gold. It's easy enough to imagine someone playing a pre-release copy of like Smash Bros Ultimate ignoring any perceived input lag because they'd assume that would be something fixed by the time the game went gold.

 

Game reviews should be open-ended. Kirby Star Allies wasn't even a great launch, but reviews for that game should be updated to reflect that it's actually a pretty great game and amazing value at this point.

[Biggie]

HoW iS tHe GaMe?

[Ghost_MH]

5 minutes ago, Biggie said:

HoW iS tHe GaMe?

 

Three hours in and it's quite good. That's said, I'm still in the first chapter, it's still the intro phase, and the open world hasn't exactly opened up yet. I miss the blades of XC2, but the gameplay, itself, is still better. Everything, so far, is better than XC2. The gameplay is tighter, the graphics are a clear step up, the image quality is far better even in portable, the frame rate is fairly solid, the character designs are great, and the music is as good as this series had ever been.

 

I have zero complaints right now, but I'm still only three hours in.

[crispy4000]

2 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

You're missing an important piece of the puzzle here. Reviewers are often times reviewing pre-release copies of games. These forums are named after the day one patch a lot of games get to fix some broken bits devs couldn't get to before review copies and out. Low man on the totem pole twenty years ago, but even during my IGN DVD days I'd get pre-release DVDs with sometimes faulty menus or audio/video glitches. If it seemed easy enough to fix, I'd rather the concern with the publisher and then ignore them for the reviews under the assumption they'd be fixed by the time they'd go gold. It's easy enough to imagine someone playing a pre-release copy of like Smash Bros Ultimate ignoring any perceived input lag because they'd assume that would be something fixed by the time the game went gold.

 

Game reviews should be open-ended. Kirby Star Allies wasn't even a great launch, but reviews for that game should be updated to reflect that it's actually a pretty great game and amazing value at this point.

There is that part of it, but if the publisher sends off that code to be reviewed, it’s on them for it to be reviewable.

 

Usually games aren’t patched to improve the controls after an early access period regardless.

 

[crispy4000]

2 hours ago, Ghost_MH said:

 

Three hours in and it's quite good. That's said, I'm still in the first chapter, it's still the intro phase, and the open world hasn't exactly opened up yet. I miss the blades of XC2, but the gameplay, itself, is still better. Everything, so far, is better than XC2. The gameplay is tighter, the graphics are a clear step up, the image quality is far better even in portable, the frame rate is fairly solid, the character designs are great, and the music is as good as this series had ever been.

 

I have zero complaints right now, but I'm still only three hours in.

I played about that long today too on a car trip.  My first impression was that the music is just sublime, even for this series, and the plot set up (which I went in mostly blind on) is awesome.  Like an anime Ender’s Game.

 

I only wish you could still cancel auto attacks with control stick movements.

[Ghost_MH]

36 minutes ago, crispy4000 said:

I played about that long today too on a car trip.  My first impression was that the music is just sublime, even for this series, and the plot set up (which I went in mostly blind on) is awesome.  Like an anime Ender’s Game.

 

I only wish you could still cancel auto attacks with control stick movements.

 

Yasunori Mitsuda and the rest of the team working on these sound tracks is amazing. This game is particularly great. I don't know how Monolith Soft just knocks it out with every single entry.

 

The main plot is great, though. I think this is my favorite setup since the first Xenoblade Chronicles, but with an even better first chapter. I hope they manage to keep it up.

[Ghost_MH]

You can have large parties in this game? Thank God. One of the most obnoxious tropes in JRPGs is that your have, say, 6 members of your party but can only have 4 out at a time for gameplay reasons even if it would make all the plot sense in the world for everyone to be traveling together and helping out.

[EternallDarkness]

1 hour ago, Ghost_MH said:

You can have large parties in this game? Thank God. One of the most obnoxious tropes in JRPGs is that your have, say, 6 members of your party but can only have 4 out at a time for gameplay reasons even if it would make all the plot sense in the world for everyone to be traveling together and helping out.

 

I'm a little less than 4 hours in but and so far my party has only been 4 characters and I swear in Nintendo direct about the game they said you'll have I think 8 character, but only 4 were playable at a time. EDIT: looks like I am wrong on this part! Cool!

 

the in battle/post battle comments are still driving me crazy...I want to scream every time the girl says Lance wants something meatier. Or the guy says that's a rare doo-dah!

[Biggie]

Are there difficulty settings? And if so, what are y’all playing on?

[EternallDarkness]

3 minutes ago, Biggie said:

Are there difficulty settings? And if so, what are y’all playing on?

 

there are three, easy, reg, hard....playing on reg. 

[Keyser_Soze]

It's not like Xenoblade 2? You could even get more granular with the settings there beyond 3 difficulty settings.

[Ghost_MH]

11 minutes ago, Keyser_Soze said:

It's not like Xenoblade 2? You could even get more granular with the settings there beyond 3 difficulty settings.

 

Unfortunately, those super granular options from XC2 are gone for XC3. I'm guessing it wasn't too popular to mess around with, but that's really unfortunate. It certainly made the game a lot more accessible.

[BloodyHell]

21 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

I don't know man. Gamergate didn't give a shit about any of those issues lol. In fact, if you would have had any review mention some wrong doing at Blizzard and have the score adjusted to reflect that (or probably even just mentioning it is enough), the gamergate mob would have been like get this woke shit out of my fucking games, or whatever the vernacular was at the time. 

 

I agree with @crispy4000's point to a certain degree - many mainstream reviewers don't have the deep knowledge of, say, a fighting game to really apply any meaningful critique of a new fighting game's mechanics, systems, and the balance of the game, for instance. 

 

But here's the thing: that doesn't really matter? It's very easy to seek out people who have that knowledge who view the game through a critical lens. So a person who has a lesser understanding of the game can still review a game, and it's a valid critique in their own right. Maybe it's not what you're personally looking for, but it's not some word of god. Take it for what it is and look for the thousands of other views on the game if you don't think you agree with it. 

 

But yeah those gamergate folks are the same guys who go after Jason Schreier whenever he posts a new story about abuse at a company. They don't give a shit about that, they just want to gate keep the industry for their own very specific (and bad) preferences. 

Oh, absolutely,  thats why I said they turned a valid problem (access journalism) into a harassment campaign. Maybe you misunderstood what I wrote, but I was saying that its too bad it went that way, because no matter how you look at it, there are major problems in games journalism. 

 

Again, I was never saying it wasn't a harassment campaign, I was saying its sad that it had to become that. And its not just reviews, thats the least important part, its everything else going on that they refuse to report on, like Console makers using Uighur slave labor, low pay in the industry while companies make record profits, abuse of devs (which they only report when governmentgets involved), etc. 

 

On Topic: I played about 3 hours last night, and so far im enjoying myself. Perfect game for me right now, as I had knee surgery a few days ago, and have to spend a lot of time sitting with my leg up. Not being able to run in the morning is driving me a bit nuts though, hard to focus with all the excess energy. 

I plan on playing this all day today, but im considering dumping the game on to my Steamdeck now that I got the required bridge. Its sad that the OLED has such a great screen with such terrible hardware. 

 

This is a video for any deck owners who also own an original Switch. It's pretty easy, you just need to order the little bridge they show in this video. Unfortunately, only the earliest models work, im glad I kept mine when I got the OLED.

 

 

 

[BloodyHell]

19 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

Gamergate was always, 100% about harassment. It was never about ethics in journalism.

Nah. That wasn't how it started, and there absolutely people who had real problems with games journalism that got overshadowed by an angry group of hateful fools, but it started with very valid concerns. 

 

Of course, journalists used the hateful fools as a way to ignore the valid problems people have with them and their work, and to pretend nobody had real concerns about their connections to the industry. 

 

Hell, one girl, Sophia Narwits, reported on the E3 leak years back, and guys like Schreier harrassed her online forever. When apple put up a graphic showing the top gaming podcasts, and Sacred Symbols was at the top, journalists immediately took a fit and attacked Colin Moriarty because he's successful. Those same people used their Twitter minions to attack Gene Park for allowing Colin to interview him. Colins crime? A joke, and being a conservative (who very publicly left the party the same day Trump was nominated in 2016).  But hey, nobody seems to mind when it's their own side starting the pile on, I guess, so my sympathy for them is almost nothing.

 

 

This is an article about the leak that Schreier used to attack narwits, because I couldn't remember the specifics of the leak itself.

https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2019/08/03/e3-attendees-details-leaked/

 

[Paperclyp]

@BloodyHell

 

As we’re reminded every day, every grifter swindle relies on convincing people who actually more or less do have (at least what they think are) legitimate concerns and co-opting that group to fight for their insidious cause. Gamer Gate’s origins are like many things of that nature nebulous and starts more broad, but the drivers of the bus never had anything but ill intent. 
 

 

[Kal-El814]

1 hour ago, BloodyHell said:

Nah. That wasn't how it started, and there absolutely people who had real problems with games journalism that got overshadowed by an angry group of hateful fools, but it started with very valid concerns. 

 

Of course, journalists used the hateful fools as a way to ignore the valid problems people have with them and their work, and to pretend nobody had real concerns about their connections to the industry. 

 

Hell, one girl, Sophia Narwits, reported on the E3 leak years back, and guys like Schreier harrassed her online forever. When apple put up a graphic showing the top gaming podcasts, and Sacred Symbols was at the top, journalists immediately took a fit and attacked Colin Moriarty because he's successful. Those same people used their Twitter minions to attack Gene Park for allowing Colin to interview him. Colins crime? A joke, and being a conservative (who very publicly left the party the same day Trump was nominated in 2016).  But hey, nobody seems to mind when it's their own side starting the pile on, I guess, so my sympathy for them is almost nothing.

 

 

This is an article about the leak that Schreier used to attack narwits, because I couldn't remember the specifics of the leak itself.

https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2019/08/03/e3-attendees-details-leaked/

 

You don’t know what you’re talking about. 

[crispy4000]

4 hours ago, BloodyHell said:

 

I plan on playing this all day today, but im considering dumping the game on to my Steamdeck now that I got the required bridge. Its sad that the OLED has such a great screen with such terrible hardware. 

Emulators aren’t ready for this game at this point from what I’ve read.  It’s crash prone, even moreso on the deck. Stutters and poor framerate are issues as well.

[Ghost_MH]

I managed to put in a good few hours after the kids went to bed last night. Yeah, this game is pretty damn good. Did I also mention that I live the artwork in this game? This night be the first time since like Xenogears that this team managed to get their characters designs good the first time around. Not saying they aren't good in XC2, but even that game was a bit uneven across the entire cast.

 

They also keep throwing pieces into the gameplay. I like what they've done with the chain attacks. They feel sort of like a hybrid of the chain attacks from XC2 and...Tokyo Mirage Sessions, actually. I'm only in chapter 2, but I already know more is going to get thrown in the mix as I go along.

[BloodyHell]

This game is so fun so far. Qol is great, story is interesting, the cclass system seems deep. Game is incredible.

 

Also  the music is so good!

[BloodyHell]

2 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

You don’t know what you’re talking about. 

Nah, I do, some of you guys just like ignoring any side but yours. 

[Biggie]

I’ll be playing this tonight thanks to Best. He bought it for my birthday. He’s good people.