writing a more detailed log on this since the more i think about this game the more i hate it.

this game is really bad! its an algorithmically generated heap of mediocrity designed to appeal to series/develop dickriders on twitter who are the only people on the planet to actually give a shit about the game awards. the story is utter dogshit that feels like a first draft and is written like an early 2010s anime for 12 year old girls to cry over.
almost everything about this game is worse than its predecessors by a mile. the world is mostly reused ideas from 1 and 2 so it feels incredibly stale, with a lack of original impressive locales. a good amount of the game is walking through empty space with nothing interesting going on. the scale is so big for no reason at all. its all shit i have seen before and it doesn't wow me, its boring. notable sections of the game are an uninteresting walking simulator that thinks its environments are far more interesting than they actually are.

moebius are terrible villains. J, Z and especially C are lazily written and feel like a parody. i almost forgot to mention S when writing this. Z's motive or lack there of is that he finds everything he does funny and the game just decides he's a "concept" instead of a character because the writers stopped caring. Z and S are strawman parodies of the bad writing you would expect from a persona game. this isn't the only instance of blatantly lazy writing either. the game uses riku to pass off lazy writing and a lack of worldbuilding as quirky and funny because a nopon has a legendary sword for no fucking reason.
C is the worst character in a jrpg that isn't called final fantasy 13. i could get into a review in itself about how horrible he is and how there was no reason to be here. being the conclusion to a fucking triforce quest is an insult to players. his dialogue with noah is utter nonsense, like a parody of 1 and 2's dialogue.
despite fandom hype, it does not actually resolve much of xenoblade 1 or 2. nia is the queen of alrest for reasons the writers didn't care enough to explain. its pointless fanservice and the first dlc character is a perfect example of this shit.
the games ending is fine on its own i guess, but the buildup feels nonexistent and it doesn't feel like a rewarding or satisfying ending as a result. by that point in the game i had stopped caring because the story was completely unsalvageable. i had no attachment to anything because the game had not earnt it.
the music is worse than the previous three games, though its still good. too bad you never hear a lot of it because the game handles its music very poorly. theres lots of instances that lead to the music being reset (eg fast travel resetting the clock. which you will be doing a lot), the pause music and the infamous chain attack theme that ensures you will never hear the unique boss themes all the way through.

the combat is almost as much of a shitshow as the story. 1 didn't have good combat either but at least it was simplistic. almost every boss is a final fantasy 7 remake-style damage sponge and it is a slog. you can tell the bosses are like this because the game is designed around six party members and spamming chain attacks with them. fusing is an annoying gimmick that isn't very fun past the initial novelty and the game devolves into chain attack spam at a certain point since the bosses are so bulky. i'm not sure why they didn't make a turn based rpg instead of this, would have probably worked out better than this mess.

on the positive side of things i can say i think N is a compelling antagonist. his decision is something i could see myself choosing in that situation and the delivery on his lines by the VA is superb. however, he also inherently makes noah less interesting since theres no room for noah to make the same mistakes as him.

xenoblade 3 is the most mediocre jrpg on the switch and to see it become the most highly received xenoblade game feels like a slap in the face when it is inferior to its predecessors in almost every way. soulless.