This is still one of my favorite games of all time, and is so great on a replay after knowing what’s coming. I really loved revisiting this game 2 years after launch.

Funny enough, this replay began back at the end of 2022, but I kept stopping early on. I played through all of Chapter 1 in 2022, a tiny bit of chapter 2 when the Pyra and Mythra amiibos dropped, then finished chapter 2 when the Noah and Mio amiibos dropped. Date noted as the start date is when I decided to fully focus on replaying the game from start to finish.

I will say though, NG+ has a few issues that does make the game a bit less fun. While it’s great having all of your heroes transfer immediately, I feel significantly less inclined to experiment when I already have a very consistent set up for chain attacks already.

Though on the other hand, Origin is a little bit of a slong, being 3ish hours long. In NG+, it was nice maxing out my characters and being able to just ignore all enemy encounters to make it go faster

Also, already mentioned above but the story still hits super hard for me. One scene in particular is one of my favorite scenes in any video game ever, and it got me to tear up watching it in game with full context again.

While typing this, I’m still watching the final cutscene and god what a perfect ending to this game. This game is a 10/10 and everyone should play it. GOD I WANT XENOBLADE 4 NOW

This game is so special to me. It feels like grand culmination of different elements from the xenoblade series while being its own unique experience. I love the fact that you have a pretty big core party with the option of guest members. This system makes the whole journey really engaging in its big and small moments. The core party is really endaring and i resonated a lot with them, especially Noah. With guest charactes you get to feel the vastness of human connections in this complex world and i love how every sidequest is connected to a bigger story with these people and the communities they inhabit. The world building feels so closely tied to the main themes and characters of the story that it feels alive. The story in general deals with some complex human emotions that really hit me and i love it for that. This is an experience i will not easily forget. (Music is also excellent).

Still one of the best things ever. My second playthrough of this was a breeze. I did all the hero quests and most side quests my first time, wanted to see how the game felt without going too much out of my way to finish side content; honestly surprised how beautifully balanced the game felt without the bonus EXP from side content. This is easily the best cast of characters in the trilogy and the pacing of the story is wonderful. There’s so many places you might never see in this world too which I love, it feels huge and open. I miss having more conventional towns outside of the city, but the way this world functions alludes that as a big problem. It’s not a JRPG where chilling and hanging out in towns is a priority, it’s a bleak and stressful world to be in at times, if often beautiful and quiet in the right moments. Visiting colonies still has a town-hopping charm to it, all due to the people within them. The game is littered with nice quests and dialogue to experience. The ability to obtain intel and discuss them at rest stops is such a brilliant mechanic that I want every RPG to have. The colonies may not be much in terms of level design, but as big checkpoints where you can catch up with your buds and gather some quests is such a brilliant substitute.

I love how insanely dramatic Xenoblade 3 is as well. Character dialogue is likely 50% motivational speeches and I love it. The game drowns in its concepts and ideas. Drowning might be a bad comparison, it really just dives in and gracefully swims through its concepts. I love Final Fantasy XIII, but I think Xenoblade 3 is a great contrast to it in which it gracefully introduced terminology, world building, language, and conflict in a coherent way that doesn’t require reading a wiki.

Xenoblade 3 is devastatingly beautiful. It’s hope, love, anxiety, fear, and any other important emotion anthropomorphized into a piece of narrative art. Not to mention it has one of the best combat systems in anything I’ve ever played. The whole series is a pure blast to play, but 3 is on another level of snappiness and customization. I can’t comprehend where a 4th game could go with its mechanics. Xenoblade combat pulls off a wonderful trick of feeling familiar in each game without sacrificing new ideas. On the surface all 3 games are completely different systems at their core, but they all retain the wonderful flow and problem solving of the first game.

It’s a masterpiece. It’s probably the best game on the Nintendo switch and it’s my personal favorite of the trilogy. I don’t need xenoblade to last forever, but I’ll follow Monolith Soft wherever they decide to go next.