This RPG epic will make you forget the summer slump

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 overview

• Playing time: approximately 50 hours for the main story
• Multiplayer: no
• Switch online capabilities: no
• Save data cloud: compatible
• amiibo support: yes

Is that still a niche or already Triple A?

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is set in the world of Aionios. Here the peoples of Keves and Agnus wage an unrelenting war against each other. In order to survive themselves, they must kill other people and collect their life force. They use it to charge so-called flame clocks in their colonies, which ensure their existence. The people of Aionios only live ten years. They live to fight. Very few reach the end of time.

Through a fateful event, a group of Keves (Noah, Lance, and Junie) and Agnus (Mio, Taion, and Sena) are brought together and chosen by the Ouroboros power. This frees them from the constraints of the Flame Clock, but also makes them the enemy of the whole world. The group embarks on a long journey to uncover the background of this unfair world. Before that, however, the former adversaries must learn to get along with each other.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 tells an exciting story about the meaning of life. The tone remains serious and melancholic to match the world. The main story is conveyed in high-quality cutscenes that add up to a total of over ten hours. The staging is what really stands out here. You will be shown brilliant battles and great choreographed fights. But the developers also get a lot of emotions out of the anime faces that are otherwise so rigid in video games. At least in the Nintendo cosmos, this staged effort is unique. If Xenoblade Chronicles still belongs to the niche, Monolith Soft’s work deserves more attention with this offshoot at the latest.

A big game world… sometimes too big for the Switch

If you just follow the plot, the many cutscenes could annoy you at some point. That’s why you should always take a break from the main path and explore the beautiful game world. Aionios is divided into areas and does not offer a coherent open game world, but the individual areas are huge. Unfortunately, even on quiet exploration tours it can happen that that the switch kneels and simple camera movements jerk powerfully.

You always have to uncover the cards yourself first and for discovering new places you are always rewarded with experience points. You can find secret places, fight legendary monsters and loot numerous containers. However, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has a problem with the economy, which is why the treasure hunt will eventually seem superfluous to you. At least we ended our playthrough with a million gold and couldn’t find a useful purpose for it.

What is by no means superfluous are the hero and side missions that you can tackle. Heroic Missions are lengthy quests that are staged similarly to the main story and add to the overall picture. You often free colonies from their flame clock and unlock their commanders as heroes for your troops. After that, you can complete more side missions in the colonies to improve your harmony and unlock bonuses for exploration (e.g. run faster or higher chance of rare monsters) with increasing commitment.

All residents and their relationships are recorded on the Harmony Diagram. Over time, you can also ensure that relationships between colonies improve to unlock even more quests. If you play thoroughly, you can at least double the playing time without getting bored.

“Relationships” is a good keyword, because they are also a great strength of the game in relation to your group. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 focuses heavily on its characters and their development. There are some cutscenes that don’t advance the plot, just show the characters talking around the campfire for minutes. It is also worth mentioning that in all constellations there are one-on-one conversations and not only the main characters Noah and Mio are the focus.

part of a trilogy?

As Nintendo previously announced, the events of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 are the result of the first two parts. You can see the references to the predecessors in the game world, hear them in the music (the soundtrack is outstanding), but also experience them in the combat system.

The fights take place in real time and your characters attack automatically. In the course of the fight, your techniques, which you carry out using the assigned keys or the control pad, will load up. Kevesi class techniques have a cooldown and recharge over time (like in Xenoblade Chronicles). Characters from Agnus, on the other hand, must charge their techniques by dealing standard attacks (like in Xenoblade Chronicles 2).

Once you master techniques from one class, you can equip them to other classes and even fuse Kevesian and Agnic techniques in combat. There are over a dozen different classes that you unlock through the heroes you recruit throughout your adventure. The game encourages you to change classes regularly to get new talents and techniques. But there is also a problem with this. When you change a character’s role, you must also change their equipment, techniques, and talents. If you do this constantly for all six characters, the management will eventually get on your nerves. You will then tend to let the gear set itself automatically. This in turn ensures that you cannot always understand the group dynamics in combat.

In addition, you can switch to Ouroboros form to give yourself an advantage. Not only are you stronger this way, you also don’t take any damage. This is a good strategic tool to get through tricky situations. As if that weren’t enough, there are also attack chains, which are actually the most important element and cause the highest damage by far. You already notice: The combat system offers many facets. Once understood, it all fits together nicely, but for some players this could still be a major barrier to entry.

JRPGs: Milestones in Japanese role-playing games

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It’s rare that a game can live up to the high expectations of anticipation. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is such a case for me. I got everything I wanted. A gripping story, interesting characters, a complex combat system, a catchy soundtrack and a beautiful, comprehensible world with many tasks. The only thing I can complain about is the Switch’s decrepit technology. The stuttering bothered me at first. It then subsided, but I can’t say at all whether it became less or whether I just got used to it.

Otherwise, I would like Monolith Soft to do more work on the reward and equipment system for the next part. There is nothing worthwhile to spend my money on. Hundreds of pieces of equipment accumulate in my inventory. They are not there to increase stats, but have very different effects. At some point I gave up fighting my way through it.

Barring a few more surprises, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 should at least end up in my top 5 by the end of the year. If, like me, you’ve played the predecessors, you’ll be able to get even more out of the game because of the context. However, it is by no means only a game for fans, new players will also experience a wonderful adventure.