I said in my other review for this game that I already knew this was gonna be kino, and after finishing this game more than a month after starting it, I’m glad I was right. This game is an absolute masterpiece and I think it’s even on the same level as 1 as well.

Let’s start with the gameplay first. The gameplay for this game is quite possibly the best in the whole entire series. You have 6-7 party members in a fight all the time while in 1 and 2, you only have 1-3 party members in a fight and you can use 6 arts with a single character in a fight. To make things even more interesting, you can go and use these arts called fusion arts that combine the effects of two arts together. This system, along with the class system, basically creates an endless amount of fusion art combos you can use in battle. Speaking of the class system, this is also the first game in the series where you can change a character’s class for battles, like Final Fantasy games. Each class has a completely unique art and skill set from each other and you can also equip said arts and skills on your characters even when they aren’t equipped with the class that has those arts and skills. You can unlock more classes to equip on your characters by unlocking heroes and I also like how the specific hero and their class on the main six sometimes have different arts and skills from each other, making both of them feel more unique from each other.

The story isn’t as good as Xenoblade 1’s story, especially because of chapter 7, but it’s still incredible nonetheless. The game’s premise is really interesting, soldiers who can only live for up to 10 years from two different sides being forced to continue on fighting each other all so that they can keep their flame clocks filled up and keep on living, with 6 soldiers, 3 from each side, gaining the ability to turn into Ouroboros and having to work together in order to defeat Moebius and bring peace to the world. There are some incredible moments in the game like Noah and Mio managing to destroy a Flame Clock for the first time with the Sword of the End, Ethel and Cammuravi’s death, and of course, the whole entire sequence at the end of chapter 5 and beginning of chapter 6. Chapter 7 disappointed me a little, but the story’s still great though, especially with how it handles themes of the present and the future.

The characters are all really great here as well. There’s Noah, the main character and the off-seer of the Keves side of the main cast who I think got some really interesting character development during the end of chapter 5 and beginning of chapter 6, Mio, who’s the off-seer of the Agnus side of the main cast and has considerably less time to keep on living than the other characters in the main cast, Eunie, the healer of the Keves side of the main cast who I found to be really funny, Taion, the smart guy in the main cast, Lanz, the tough but goofy guy, kinda like Reyn, and Sena, a tough girl who really loves exercising and was pretty lonely until she met Noah, Eunie, and Lanz. All six of these characters get a lot of character development during the entire story and as it progresses, we get to learn more and more about who these characters actually are as well and they get even more character development and background revealed for them during their side stories (except Sena, I don’t know why her own side story felt more like an ascension quest for Ghondor than an actual side story for her). On top of the main six, we also have the heroes as well, special characters who you can have as an extra 7th party member on your team in a battle. We get to learn about who these heroes are as characters during their hero quests where you get them to join your team and they get even more character development and background revealed for them during their ascension quests. Some of my favorite heroes include Fiona, Ashera, Triton, Gray, Teach, and Segiri. Melia and Nia also make a return in this game as well and they are even better than ever. I won’t go into a lot of detail for these two since I haven’t done their ascension quests yet, so just know that Xenoblade 3’s version of these two are really great as characters. The villains are pretty disappointing though. Almost all of them are really generic and bland and have the same personality of “I love killing people and making them suffer because I’m really evil lol”. I can’t even remember who’s supposed to be who out of all the consuls at all besides the really obvious ones like Joran, D, Crys, N, M, X, Y, and Z. There are some villains I liked like N, M, and Joran, but overall, the villains feel not that great compared to the villains of 1 and 2.

The music felt pretty underwhelming here, and that’s disappointing since that’s one of the things Xenoblade is the most consistently amazing at. There’s some themes I liked in this game like the Chain Attack theme and the Moebius theme, but the music overall still felt underwhelming compared to the music of the first two games.

Just like in the first two games, the areas all look absolutely gorgeous. The areas in this game all look amazing and unique from each other and I honestly have to admire how much effort Monolith Soft put into making each and every area look absolutely fantastic.

So yeah, overall, this game is a complete masterpiece and absolutely blew my expectations away even when they were set really, REALLY high. There’s still some issues I have with it, but overall, it was an amazing experience that I would definitely recommend to anybody, especially those that have played and love the first two games like me. Anyways, thank you for reading this review and I hope you have a good day.