story is fun enough, but kinda convaluted. main appeal is seeing the old protagonists be old, and it definitely delivers on that, so I would consider myself satisfied. matthew sucks, i hate him, but the rex and shulk stuff with their children rules, and is thankfully kinda the focus of the game.

they made a weird descision to make the combat objectively worse. remember transforming into an awesome robot from the base game? well thats gone completely. now there are cut and paste team up attacks that do 5 damage. also class switching is gone which means once your two healers die you just have to sit there wasting away and there's nothing you could've done. it just feels extremely rushed. some nice changes to incentivising exploration but they kinda suck when the game is so short as they feel like they only pan out in a longer rpg.

music and visuals are on par with the base game; they're great. low key the main reason you play these games.

this is a fun enough send off to the series. i hope xenoblade is done for now. let monolith make something new.