Experiencing "Tales of Aionios" (aka Xenoblade Chronicles 3): Should have been DLC.

UPDATE: DLC Wave 4, called Future Redeemed, is the Xenoblade experience you were originally told you would get.  It's not standalone, but it's excellent for fans of the SERIES who want a true sequel.

I would score Future Redeemed about A B+, it's really good.  Had to ding points because it doesn't have New Game Plus, but otherwise it's one of the best in the series.  Most likely will do a separate review on it.

Base game review below.

I waited until I beat the game, 80 hours later, before writing this.  Because I wanted to give it as much of a fair chance as possible.

You have to understand.

If a developer/publisher is going to put out a sequel to a game, it'd better do AS good or better than the game(s) before it - in terms of general fun factor.

**Xenoblade Chronicles 1 ** was not a good game.  It wasn't.

What happened was Sword Valley and everything after it which tanked the experience completely and turned it into a slog.  This wasn't fixed in the Definitive Edition.  People are sentimental about it because it was one of the select few RPGs on a console that seemed to not care about RPGs, brought back for a modern era.  This brought along a graphical change; no longer trying to look realistic and gritty and instead adopting an anime-ish look that frankly didn't fit the tone of the game.

But the Definitive Edition brought us Future Connected (which actually was referring to XBC3), and Future Connected was vastly superior to the base XBC1.  Especially the music.

Xenoblade Chronicles X has a cult following, mostly because it was stuck on a console that very few people played, but also because most people just want to bash things and don't care about plot or characters or deep stories, nor do they care about attraction.  X was basically "go here and do this" x100, and really only excelled in (A) freedom of exploration and (B) the main city, which was very well designed (other than that you clip into cars).

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 wasn't a perfect game, but was vastly superior to XBC1 and XBCX in one specific way: you cared about the characters and the overall story.  Things were told in a way that made you care about the people involved. Unfortunately, a very vocal minority that dislikes open sexuality, anime, and flirting, complained.

Torna: The Golden Country is released as a DLC for XBC2, and it improved nearly everything about XBC2, including the combat, but also toned down some of this sexuality to try and calm people's nerves.  Arguably, Torna is the best of the series, seriously.

So, one would expect that Monolithsoft would see that Torna was done so well, received so well, with XBC2 selling major units, and simply follow this model to create 3 and bridge things together, yes?

No.

What I Liked

✅ Graphics.  Although the color pallette is extremely lacking in some maps, the graphical details are generally superior to every other game in the series except maybe XBCX.  You don't have the same severe drop to 360p seen in XBC2 and you don't see weird effects like in XBC1.  It's just generally a good-looking game.

✅ Music. The tracks are not as memorable as Future Connected or Torna, or even XBC1.  But they're good for what they are.

✅ Cutscenes. There are a LOT of them, fully voiced.  It feels like there are significantly more here than any other game in the series, and longer to boot.  Which is impressive given the console we're dealing with here.

✅ Chain Attacks. Making their return, these are significantly improved over XBC2 (but not Torna) in the sense that you have greater control over the level of destruction with this model vs. the orbs.  Here, you'll master the fine art of choosing your TP wisely and building up your damage percentage to do greater damage and extend the chain without having to worry about elements or some weird enemy that eats the orbs and heals (Torna).  Torna's chain attack engine was good only because of the limited number of characters and blades you needed to think about.

✅ Class System.  New to the series is the ability to change classes (but see negatives below) and experiment with different styles.  Monolithsoft made sure that certain characters weren't just typecast into singular roles, i.e. Eunie doesn't have to be a Healer, Taion doesn't have to be a Strategist, and in fact, Taion is quite a good Attacker and Eunie is quite a good Defender, for example.

What I Didn't Like

👎 Characters.  By which I mean, character development and general character appeal. Pairings feel forced and undeveloped, relationships form without any real genesis, and certain characters are simply boring and not appealing; it frequently feels like nobody really matters except Noah and to a lesser degree Mio.  Women don't act like women (except Sena) until the final cutscene of the game.  Also, there are certain implied feuds that have no real development, especially with Eunie and one of the Consuls - again, feels forced rather than organic.  In this regard, it's similar to XBCX, and that's a significant step back.  Even XBC1 had some decent character development.

👎 Story.  Without spoiling things, good storytelling always starts with a general idea of what the book is about.  In XBC1, you at least understood that the Bionis and Mechonis were against each other, just not why.  In Future Connected you were told that the remaining High Entia were evicted from their home and needed to figure out what was going on.  In XBC2 you were committed to reaching Elysium but knew that something was wrong with the way Blades were being treated.  In Torna you knew you had to stop Malos, but just didn't fully understand what he was capable of yet.

These things were known from the very first hour or two of each game.

In XBC3?  I don't exaggerate when I tell you: you don't learn exactly why you're doing what you're doing until the VERY LAST scene of the game.  The result is that it frequently feels like you're just going through the motions, like puppets on a string - and that's because that's what they want you to feel.  Unfortunately...

👎 Sidequests.  One of the complaints of Torna was from people that didn't like being "forced" to do the quests, despite the game specifically telling you that your whole point-of-being is to see to the well being of Tornan citizens, which means to build a connection with them and gain their trust through these quests.  As I mentioned before, some people don't care about storybuilding and just want the generic fighting; thus the complaints.

Well, while the majority of quests in XBC3 aren't required, they might as well be, because Heroes, which are NPCs that join you in combat, increase in skill and quality the more of them you obtain, and at least half of them are locked behind quests.  You also must complete quests to make you and them stronger; but the quests to do these things are tedious and uninteresting.

👎 Maps.  All but two maps are basically twisty tunnels despite appearing like outdoor wide open spaces.  Think Final Fantasy XIII.  Some of them are really that bad.

👎 The final dungeon.  So, I called out Sword Valley from XBC1 because it marks the beginning of the slog; that area itself is bad, but so is Mechonis Field.  In XBC2, the only real "slog" arguably is the World Tree and even it is only so because it's just so dang long.  Well, the final area in this has got to be at least 3x longer, and if you don't use the route helper, it's quite easier to get lost in this one compared to others.  Along the way, you're constantly attacked by enemies, making it certainly feel longer than it really is, but it's just poorly designed.

👎 Outfits/Uniforms.  You might think this a small thing, but given what XBC1 added in the Definitive Edition and what XBC2 had in the DLC, it was disappointing to see very little customizability here.  For example, Mio will always wear a skirt no matter what outfit you put on her while Eunie will always wear tight yoga pants and shoes (except for the one outfit that makes her look like Melia).  Why can't I put Eunie in a skirt regardless?  Why can't I put Mio in yoga pants?  Just limiting.

👎 Bad Business Practices.  By which I mean: the ability to level down is gated behind New Game+.  Problem with that is, if you overlevel using bonus XP, you'll find it increasingly difficult to unlock classes and/or master them.  Now to be fair, XBC2 did the same thing - but in XBC2, you had no classes to care about.

👎 Fake Hype.  This is the idea where you hype up a thing to the N'th degree...only for it to fizzle out and/or be a 'popcorn fart' disappointment.  That happens a LOT in this game - it feels like something big is about to happen...and then it doesn't or the game pulls its punches.  Like it doesn't want to offend someone with what it could have done.

👎 "Kingdom Hearts" Syndrome.  There's a saying: "Nobody dies in Kingdom Hearts".  Well...people die in this game, I won't say who...but...I will say this game suffers a little bit from this syndrome, and leave it at that.

👎 Unfinished Threads/Threads Gated Behind Tedious Quests.  For example, there's a Hero that you find and appears interesting, only to lose said Hero...but then not lose them, and they are "reborn" but you can't use them as a Hero...except you might be able to, but you're forced into tedious quests to find out.  If the quests weren't so tedious it wouldn't be so bad, but they are.  And frankly, this particular Hero, the way this is all done is disjointed and doesn't do enough to make you really feel or empathize with what's going on; it's just going through the motions.  Which lessens the impact of what happens to them as your party completely shrugs it off.

👎 Plot Holes.  Not a lot of them, but the ones identified were big enough to be annoying.  There's one in particular with Eunie, and the thing is, it's only a plot hole because of the way it happens.  There's ONE LINE in the VERY FIRST cutscene of the game that explains a thing, then Eunie makes a discovery that should tie to that line but doesn't because it happens so far after the fact you don't remember that line; then later you learn something about everyone, including Eunie, that should explain her discovery better; but it's not dived into.  Another character acts annoyed that she didn't mention it sooner and then...poof - never mentioned again.  There are also cutscenes with Noah and Mio that try to open up new threads, but they're never explored.

Summary

Some people commented that it felt like Xenogears to them - great.

I've said, and others have too, that it feels like Tales of Arise.  That's because there are too many things that are identical to that game, including the last area and what you're having to do plus the blandness of the characters and the forced pairings.

The ending - which quite a few people were upset about - didn't bother me nearly as much because at least it finally explained what was going on, even if it ultimately didn't make any half sense.

So...not to say that it isn't a good game.  If it weren't called "Xenoblade" something, it'd probably be a decent (not great) game.  "Tales of Aionios" would have been a fine name and well fitting.  Or (I never bothered with Xenogears) if one wanted to call it "Xenogears Evolved" surely that would piqued the interest of fans of that game because apparently it has some similarities I'm not aware of.

It's just not a good Xenoblade game. At all.

It's like...the "Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness" of the series.