My complicated relationship with the Xenoblade series continues in the 3rd installment. Despite my (many) complaints about this entry, it's easily the most consistent title of the 3, and the one I probably enjoyed the most in my time with it.

3 takes a much more mature angle with its themes, narrative, and character work, and that definitely contributed to my enjoyment of the story. No egregious cleavage or waifu bait (at least comparatively to 2), and while still "anime", the tropes are a bit more toned down in this one. The narrative highs were very high for me, Chapter 5 being the absolute standout in my experience.

Unfortunately, the lows were also very low. There were many moments throughout my time with the game that I considered dropping it for the sole reason of how BORED I was. There are far too many long stretches of game where it feels like absolutely nothing is happening. The main story quest includes so much filler, it feels like they were dragging each and every bit of the game to its absolute limit for the purpose of a longer runtime. Of course, these dragged out moments oftentimes led to incredible story beats, but even having enjoyed these quite a bit, it didn't feel like a rewarding enough payoff to justify the exhausting amount of time I spent completing whatever mindless fetch quest the game sent me on prior.

The combat builds on the styles of the previous 2 entries, but doesn't really capture the strategy of 1 or the enjoyment of 2. There are SO many buttons on the screen that you would think the combat comes with some amount of nuance or thought, but all of those buttons exist purely to be mashed as soon as they light up and not much else. The class concept is cool initially, but there are far too many overing too little, and the ability for each character to use any class regardless of type, background, etc. strips the party of any real combat identity. Combat pacing is also pretty terrible; chain attacks need to be done away with entirely in future titles. Disrupting the flow of combat by forcing you to watch the same drawn-out combat cutscenes repeatedly is not an engaging mechanic.

The story is entertaining enough, but the amount and length of cutscenes displays a blatant lack of respect for the players' time and critical thinking skills. There is NO reason a 1 hour gameplay loop should consist of 1) walking 10 steps 2) watching a 5 minute cutscene in which the characters stand around and vaguely discuss the same topics + ideas they've been discussing for the past several chapters 3) walk 10 more steps 4) repeat. It's exhausting, unfulfilling, and frankly pretty annoying. Xenoblade as a whole has been one of the worst offenders of this mechanic I've seen in pretty much any JRPG title I've played. And don't even get me started on the Chapter 7 fetch quests. (Great idea, let's dissolve literally every bit of tension and anticipation we've built up in this final reveal by sending the party on an obnoxiously long search for bullshit materials all over the massive and empty game world - genius!).

As frustrated as I am with so many aspects of the game, I did still enjoy (most of) my time with the game, and I'm glad I stuck through the series to the end and I will strongly consider playing another title if they released one.