Man... Takahashi really outdid himself this time. I'm honestly amazed how well this game came out and how much it drastically improves on all the problems its predecessors had, making what I believe is honestly the culmination of the Xeno franchise as a whole.

The gameplay is honestly better than it's ever been, and I can't believe how much QoL they put into it to make it the best of both worlds of Xenoblade 1 and 2. For starters, Field Skills are gone and you're back to easily picking up collectibles via just running across them on the ground or opening treasure chests! Targeting which enemy you want to fight with L and R before you attack them is so much less finnicky and smooth, the UI responsiveness is way better than 2's, it's more easy to see who is being targeted by enemies due to lines in battle, there are icons marking if equipment pieces matches the character's current class, being able to fight in water now, easy to tell updates to when NPCs have new dialogue, having multiple save slots this time around, and so much more! And that's just the more minor stuff too, not counting stuff like the cool new monster variations like Elite and Lucky to go long with Unique Monsters that give different EXP and item rewards! Honestly, I'd be here all day if I tried to list everything, so major kudos to Monolith for working so hard to improve everything. That said... there's so many gameplay mechanics shoved into this game that it kinda goes a bit overboard into the end of there's way too much to do, which can be overwhelming and a bit ridiculous, but it works well enough that I give it a pass.

Overall the combat feels like an even more improved rendition of Xenoblade 2's, without the trashy gacha system. The combat is so fun that I just had a blast fighting and fighting non stop, even if it's easy to overlevel in this game. That's where the game's toggleable difficulty really comes in to fix that. There were so many times I adjusted difficulty to fit what I wanted at the time, whether I wanted hard difficulty to offset my overleveling, or the difficulty to be set easier so I could beeline through the endgame without too much hassle and having to grind more once I stopped doing quests. Overall I was pleased with the combat of 3 thanks to these awesome QoL options.

The music is still pretty great as usual for Xeno. While the field themes aren't as striking as previous games, the battle themes and other impactful music in the cutscenes are still amazing with great callbacks to 1/2's tracks and making the story beats hit that much harder.

While I do really love how much Aionios plays off the idea of the world being a fused world of 1 and 2, and how it's so cool seeing all the old areas come back, it does sadly make the environments of 3 not stand out as much on their own. But given the themes of the story and how nice it is revisiting those old worlds many years later, I'm willing to accept that sacrifice and still enjoyed the locales enough.

As for the story, I don't plan to specify any heavy spoilers, but I'll go over broad strokes that can imply some stuff, so be warned.

I love how much this is a much more heavily character-driven narrative than a plot-driven one like most of Xeno, that departure did this game so many wonderful favors. Everyone in the world feels so real and like their lives and relevance aren't limited by whoever the chosen one of the world is this time. Even in just the main story alone, the main cast are so well fleshed out and given all their time to shine, and the side content is so insanely rich to the level of a Trails RPG that all the side cast get to shine just as brightly, and even the main cast get even MORE fleshing out there too. It's unreal.

I know the big complaint of 3's main plot is that a good amount of key lore stuff isn't explained the best compared to any other Xeno game (though people tend to forget both Gears and Saga did the exact same thing and needed lore books to explain everything the games couldn't explain fully either), but I don't really mind. I think enough was explained to make 3's story work and FR exists to expand more on other lore not touched upon here, plus it really works in the cast's favor to not restrain them as characters due to this, as previous Xeno games like Gears really suffer heavily from this which really holds back their casts from being more than plot devices on the whole.

The other big complaint is that 3's villain cast isn't as good as 2's, which is a fair critique. However, I personally think that's not a big deal. As long as a story has at least a few solid antagonists, the more important aspect to me is that the main cast is well written across the board, which this game excels in spades with. After all, if the villain cast is written better on the whole than the protag. cast, we're going to want to root for them than the heroes, which while that can work depending on the story, obviously isn't what a series like Xenoblade Chronicles is trying to go for, and I've seen many people hate 2's main cast and wanted the villains to kick their butts instead as a result.

Another thing I really appreciate is how this game feels like a more young adult story compared to 1 and 2's more shonen tones and story directions. It feels like Takahashi aged up the story to match the aged up audience who grew up during the 5 year time skip of Xenoblade 3 being released after 2. It also bridges the gap of the Blade series becoming closer to Gears and Saga's stories adult tone, which I also appreciate.

And lastly, I love how much 3 feels like a culimination of themes and messages of 1, 2, as well as Gears and Saga. The reason I didn't beat this game until almost 2 years after launch is because I went back to go watch Xenogears and Xenosaga's cutscenes so I could fully appreciate 3's story, and I'm glad I did. So many themes and plot points are redone here and fully realized in this game from those games as well as Blade 1 and 2, and it's done so well that it really made me appreciate this story so much more as a result. So many psychological sci-fi concepts wouldn't have landed nearly as well without the proper context, and it was very much worth the endeavor. This game just feels like the perfect love letter and climax to Xeno as a whole in so many ways, heck, even the final fight feels like the closest thing we'll ever get to Xenoblade Infinity War in a great way, and I'm super pleased with how things turned out. The only thing I find myself wanting is a more direct continuation and conclusion to the Xenoblade 1/2's casts stories, which it sounds like Future Redeemed does, so I'm excited to get around to that one very soon.

Overall, congratulations to Monolith for their incredible achievement with this gem of a game. It was worth every second to me, and I didn't even do all the side content. I definitely plan to go back and do all the quests little by little over time, though that'll definitely be a lot later. For now, I'm hyped to finish Blade with Future Redeemed very soon. Thanks again for the memories Monolith Soft.

Final Playtime: 90 hours, 33 minutes.

I played it with a friend and we realized how broken Bowser is in Bowser Mode, aka the main mode of this game. We tried going easier on each other to make it more fun, which helped, but if you want to you can make it so the non Bowser players have no chance to win at all if you really try. It is fun beating up the CPUs with Bowser to get some achievements though, but after I got all the Bowser-related achievements I kinda just stopped there. Was a nice small timewaster though as a big Bowser fan myself.

I didn't think Monolith could top their excellent work with the base game, but somehow they managed to make one of the best RPGs I've played that's been released in recent years. Then again, I think that's because this game champions the idea of "Less is more" in spades, and perfectly uses it's more limited runtime and scope coupled with the set up and leg works every previous game has done to make this game's scenario and setting work as effectively as possible.

Note, I will be spoiling the main story here unlike my base XB3 review since I have more to say, but I will give a warning before I do so.

Firstly, the gameplay is somehow even better here than the base game. One of my main complaints with base 3 is that I feel it's overwhelming with too much to see and do, and while it's nice to chip away at over time, if you're just trying to binge the main story while seeing a good amount of quests, it will take a long time and leave you at a loss for what to see and do for awhile, and just feel incredibly daunting, especially if you're an adult with limited free time and a job like me. This game completely nips that problem in the bud by having a good amount to do, but not be too insane in scope. I feel that shorter RPGs are very underrated these days in terms of respecting your time and being better at streamlining its mechanics, while also packing a meaningful experience into a succinct timeframe. As much as I enjoyed the base game, bigger isn't always better.

The exploration here is better than it's ever been, and that's because they learned from Xenoblade 2 Torna's DLC expansion's mistakes. While the Community Affinity system in that game was great, it's biggest problem was that it was required and not optional, and would gate you from literally beating the game for several hours of playtime, even if you worked to do quests ahead of time. Here, it's all optional, but you're subtly encouraged to do so by actually being rewarded for exploring the world via many rewards beyond just EXP and items. Growing stronger and fulfilling objectives like the returning Collectapedia from Xenoblade 1 was so satisfying and addicting. Not only that, the environments and setting being more directly connected returning ones from Xenoblade 1 was another genius way to incentivize the exploration and be good fanservice for fans, so it works doubly in the games favor.

Another great aspect of this progression system is how it's tied into the combat. Because the gameplay is more streamlined, we don't have an expansive class system with tons of options to choose from here, but that works in the combat's favor. Because everyone is limited to one class, the game goes hard on making the progression system in how they get stronger a lot more succinct and rewarding, and making the characters more broken in their roles in ways that couldn't really be done in base 3. My favorite aspect of this was the additional Accesory slot that changed up Chain Order bonuses and let you really mess around with what characters can do what effects to make Chain Attacks that much more engaging and fresh, and give you such a strong edge in racking up the damage in such cool fun ways. I got so incredibly addicted to this, far more than the base game where I felt pretty limited due to how most of the character's completion orders other than the Heroes tend to be pretty eh. Very nice improvement. I also appreciate having Break Arts that aren't solely dependent on positioning in a pinch compared to the base game, as well as having a much more convenient and reliable Smash option that wasn't hard to get like the base game. Both of these changes really helped me pull off more combos than I could in the base game and made the combat that much more enjoyable and strategic, but fair with your control over it this time around.

The music is even better here than in the base game, with generally more memorable tracks, both new and with old homages to Xenoblade 1 and 2 songs from the past in great ways, but it helps that there's less areas that you spend more time in overall in this game, which helps memorability.

Now here come the story spoilers, you have been warned.

While Xenoblade 3's main game was a pretty strong thematic sequel to Xenoblade 1's themes on the cyclical nature of war and revenge, Future Redeemed is very much a direct sequel to Xenoblade 1's narrative as a whole. FR takes full advantage of the fact that it has 3 full games (and an epilogue's) worth of build up for its story, and wastes no time just jumping into the meat of the plot from the get go, no slow burn beginning this time which I appreciate this deep into the series. We get Matthew and Na'el's backstories fed to us via flashback after the journey's already started, and the game capitilizes on addressing remaining questions left over from the base game, as well as resolving plot threads left untied from what happened after Xenoblade 1 and 2's respective endings, which was super satisfying to see finally answered. I know a lot of people think FR raises more questions than it answers, but I disagree. If you have full Xenoblade lore knowledge, FR gives more than enough in terms of overt answers and implied answers for you to piece together the full story of Xenoblade 3 as a whole and how it follows up 1 and 2. The only things left unanswered are the Xenosaga teases near the end, which is pretty clear set up for future Xenoblade games, so that's intentional and not a big deal for the moment in my opinion in terms of being "unanswered".

The cast is as strong as ever, which is great to see not toned down from the base game's quality of writing, and it helps that half the cast are returning characters who had their arcs completed and are more fleshed out as adults who've been through it all. Rex for example I think works a lot better as a character here after having seen him push through with his ideals even after losing his mentors, lovers, and children and still fight to make the world a better place as a more gruff adult. Shulk and Alvis are still as endearing as ever as well, and their bonds with the rest of the cast are so nice and truly enrich the story. Having heart to hearts be incorporated into Shulk, Rex and Alvis revisit old sights and such was a genius idea as well gameplay wise.

The themes of FR inverting the base game's while following up Xenoblade 1 and 2's themes of seizing the future and pushing through a cruel world with hope to rebuild the world better than before in the face of adversity hit so much harder now after seeing how the world has fallen into a worse state than they were in 1 or 2's scenarios. But it makes the triumph at the end all the more sweeter as a result too, and is definitely the pinnacle of Xenoblade's themes as a whole of working towards the future, endlessly. The characters and world of the series isn't stagnant, and doesn't live in an endless now of eternal peace, as that's just now how humanity is. There will always be problems, but we must work through them together for the entirety of our lives in pursuit of something better. That's how life is, and Xenoblade Chronicles as a whole captures that perfectly.

Overall, I'm incredibly impressed with this game, and I wish more episodic direct installments of shorter length were more viable in today's market sadly. Here's to hoping Monolith can do more of these going forward. Their future looks incredibly bright after this magnum opus of a work from them.

Final Playtime: 27 hours, 14 minutes.