(spoiler-free review)

Yeah...gonna be blunt here, I'm disappointed.

I'll start with the positives. First off, the character writing is really fucking good. Everyone has their own defined personalities and backgrounds, and nobody ends up feeling like absolute cardboard, a major problem I had with XC1's writing. The world design is solid, taking bits and pieces from XC1, while keeping the digestible and focused design from XC2. As expected from a Xenoblade game, the soundtrack absolutely slaps, mixing the iconic hard rock from XC1 and XC2 with flute melodies, and somehow making it work fairly well. Side quests are on par with XC2's side quests, having actual substance in how they're written and how they play out, and sometimes entire story sequences to go along with them.

And unfortunately, that's where my praise for the game ends.

The gameplay...yeah, they snuffed that up really badly. While it does have solid concepts, and works fine enough for the duration of the main story, past that is where the positives end. The battle system is both overly simplified, lacking the depth and strategy of XC2 that drew me towards that game; and incredibly unbalanced, having enemies either act as mere pushovers, or trample you under their overleveled feet. Battles are far less engaging with the addition of seven-person parties, as I've found you can merely sit back and have the AI win the fight for you. Party customization is far too simplistic in this game as well, removing almost all equipment options from past games in favor of the Gem system, which grants minor bonuses and not much more. Safe to say, if you find yourself losing against one of the game's poorly balanced bosses, you'll have no choice but to grind levels, rather than looking at your equipment and seeing if you can bump yourself up a notch.

Moving on from the gameplay, while the writing is serviceable, that's merely it. With one or two exceptions, most of the story plays it rather safe, barely changing from what you're shown in the first three hours. The main villain of the game, a group of seemingly extraterrestrial beings known as Moebius, parallels the Mechon of XC1, with each Moebius specimen having no defined character other than simply being "the evil guy that haves fun watching the world burn". Even the big ham behind them shares this same mindset; this lack of an interesting villain leads to a rather bland and uninteresting story. The only parts of the story I truly enjoyed were one specific, short-lived arc late into the main story, as well as a side quest unlocked at the same point that was written quite well.

This very much isn't a bad game. I enjoyed my time with it, and I did see it through to the end and past that. I just wish Monolithsoft didn't play it incredibly safe this time, going back to XC1's bland writing and overly simplified gameplay. I wouldn't recommend the game unless the combat system's balancing issues are fixed, unfortunately.