Disclaimer 1: This review, like any review, will have a little bit of spoilers, so if you hate spoilers so much, skip the part about the story, but let’s be honest, you’re not gonna play it anyway.

Disclaimer 2: PLAY XENOBLADES 2&3; they’re the best games ever. Play Xenoblade 2 or 3, and you will rise above the rest. If you don’t play either game, you are a sad swine-dog, but that’s easily remedied. Play one Xenoblade, and you are automatically cool, but if you play both, you are a god, a gigachad, and the best that the human race has to offer.

Disclaimer 3: I have to repeat it: PLAY XENOBLADES 2&3. If you choose to ignore my begs and pleads, and don’t bother to play either game, well, I will break into your house, and carbonate all of your milk. 

Disclaimer 4: If you’re a Fortniter, go to google translate and translate this: 我希望每次你玩 Fortnite 时，你周围的氧气都会慢慢变厚。当你开始在空中窒息时，你意识到你永远不应该玩 Fortnite。当你绝望地咽下最后一口气时，我希望你意识到《堡垒之夜》对你做了这件事。在你最后的努力中，你吐出了这样的话，“我不应该玩 Fortnite ...... *死*” into English.

INTRODUCTION

Ah, yes, Xenoblade games. The pinnacle of Switch gaming. These games are a part of my life, and I’ll be reviewing one of them today. Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Yippee! On July 29, 2022, the world became a better place; Nintendo and Monolithsoft released Xenoblade 3. I got this game for Christmas and began to play it in February (I was busy with Pokemon Scarlet, which was not nearly as good). I beat the game on the last Monday before our Spring Break, and from then, I’ve been attempting to 100% the game.

GAMEPLAY

Gameplay feels like one of the most important things in a video game. If your story is very good, but the gameplay is terrible, the game is trash. You can’t experience the story without the enemies and bosses being fun to fight. In Xenoblade 3, the gameplay is pretty simple to learn and understand. When you’re not in a fight, you basically just use the Joy-Stick to walk or Run, the B button to jump, the R button to target an enemy, and the A button to either interact with the items laid out around the vast landscape, or draw your weapons so you can go into combat mode if you have an enemy targeted. Now, in combat mode, the buttons are slightly more complicated. You use your letter buttons to use your class arts, which are your different attacks that recharge either when you auto attack, or just over time (This has a story connection, and is also a reference to the previous games.) Your arrow buttons are used for talent arts, which recharge the other way, so if your normal arts recharge over time, your talent arts recharge from auto attacking. One of your arrow buttons will activate your Ouroboros form, which basically has you fuse with a specific other team member, depending on who you’re playing as, which makes you stronger and invisible until the form overheats, and you split again. When you hold down “ZR” and have a talent art and a normal art recharged in the same row, you can fuse them to do more damage and make your Ouroboros form stronger. Also, chain attacks: as you fight, your chain attack gauge will start to fill as you use arts. When it’s full, hit the plus button to trigger a chain attack. Every character in your party has a certain amount of Tactical Points (TP). At the start of your chain attack, you can pick from one of three orders. Every character has a different order, and when you complete one, the character whose order you just completed will also attack the enemy with a stronger attack. To finish an order, you must attack with various characters to get the TP gauge to 100%. Healers cannot complete orders unless they’re a hero that you unlocked later in the game. When you complete an order, you get a random character back. If you do the orders of two characters who can interlink (Turn into Ouroboros), you can do an Ouroboros order for more damage, albeit ending the chain attack. Man, the combat system is hard to explain.

STORY

WARNING: THIS PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE 1ST CHAPTER OF THE GAME. 

Now that all of the losers are gone, let’s talk about the story. There’s two nations, Keves and Agnus; they’re at war. Everyone except for Nopon, Monsters, and some other people discovered later in the game, but everyone else lives only for ten years, called Terms. At the end of their life, they get sent off by the Queen, but practically nobody makes it out alive. Also, there’s these people called off-seers, who send off the dead by (This is not a joke) playing the flute. 

Now, anyway, let’s start the actual story. You start the game as Noah, a Kevesi soldier and Off-Seer in his eighth term, and the rest of his squad, Eunie, who’s easily the funniest character in the game, Lanz, who I didn’t find all that interesting in the first few chapters,  Mwamba, who is practically irrelevant after chapter 1 (You’ll see why in a minute), and Riku, who’s like a little furry creature that has a really hilariously Chad voice. They kill a couple of Agnians, and then they’re basically told, “Welp, battle’s over, back to Colony 9.” But Noah wants to flute for the Agnians that he literally just killed, so they miss the Ferronis (Really big robot)  back home and have to walk. When they get back, a day later they’re basically told, “We found some weird thingy and we’re gonna go kill it.” When they go to the weird thingy, they realize that Agnus is after it too. Mwamba leaves to do something else there. They shoot down an invisible ship and it lands and an old guy steps out with a fancy rock; Noah’s crew goes to investigate, but they’re stopped by a couple of Agnians. Commence big fight. The Agnians, who were actually smart enough to wear their helmets; their helmets break, but they keep fighting. In the Agnian group, there’s Mio, who’s an Off-Seer like Noah, but 3 times more interesting, Taion, who is basically the only smart person in the group (In both the Kevesi and Agnian squads), and Sena, who’s role in Chapter One is basically comedic relief, and is the biggest meme in the whole game for saying “Yippee” in a funny way in chain attacks, and Manana, another Nopon, that is basically comedic relief for the whole game.  The fight continues until the old guy basically tackles Noah and Mio to try to make them stop fighting. He activates the magic rock, says a couple things and then, “Cause the face of your real enemy is…” Suddenly, a yellow saber thingy goes straight through his heart and suddenly a tall, humanoid monster steps out, holding Mwamba and the Agnians’ friend, and when the monster realizes that the Kevesi and Agnians have stopped fighting, it says, “What? Too scared about your buddies to fight?.” The monster lifts Mwamba and the Agnians’ friend up to its mouth, and the camera looks to the sky, but you can hear the monster biting them, and then everybody screaming. If it wasn’t obvious, he killed them. The camera looks back down and Noah and Mio are understandably upset about all this and go towards the monster, causing them to interlink into Ouroboros, basically a fused form. Then the monster gives a speech telling them that they’re Ouroboros and it’s Moebius and then they fight some more. The Moebius shines a symbol into the sky, and says “Now all the world will be your enemy.” and leaves. The old guy says that he’s sixty, that everyone deserves more than ten years, tells them to go to Swordmarch (Really huge sword in the Cadensia Region) and then dies. Both the Agnians and Kevesi go back to their respective colonies and then immediately get chased out of their colony and find each other and decide to team up and go to sword city (This is very oversimplified).

GRAPHICS

I got all the hard stuff out of the way, now into some easier stuff. The map of this game is supposedly 5 times bigger than the one in Xenoblade 2. Also, the graphics in this game are about 100 times better than the graphics in Pokemon Scarlet and still runs better. The landscapes in this game are amazing. All the beautiful islands in the Erythia sea, the Urayan mountains, all the high up places; this game is amazingly beautiful and still runs well.

MUSIC

This game has some of the best music in any video game. The Moebius theme is terrifying, and really makes you feel like you’re fighting a genocidal demon. The normal battle theme is also an absolute banger. The boss music is fantastic. Not gonna lie, video game music can vary greatly, but the music in Xenoblade games is always good, and this game keeps that up.

I beg of you, play this game!