It's been a long time coming, but I finally gave in and checked out the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise. Going into Xenoblade Chronicles 3, I knew very little about the franchise even though I owned all the games at one point or another. A long time ago, I bought Xenoblade Chronicles 2 because I heard a lot of good things about it and thought it looked cool but I traded it in before I even had a chance to play it. Then when Definitive Edition came out, I bought that and another copy of 2. But the price for 2 kept going up so I ended up selling my copy again before I could even open it.

The same thing happened with Definitive Edition, never got around to play it. Then when 3 came out, I ended up buying it the day after it was released and it still took my a few months to even put the cartridge in for the first time. It would have been easy to start off with the first game in the trilogy but I heard so many amazing things about 3 and I didn't really want to bother with having to buy another copy of 2 and spend 200 to 300 hours playing before I even made it to 3. Plus I heard a few bad things about 2 when it came to combat and I wanted my first experience with the game to be amazing so that I'd want to go back and play more.

I also knew that just playing Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a massive undertaking with how big the game is, which is an aspect that I really like and something that I haven't been able to experience in a game since I played Fire Emblem Three Houses for the first time a year and a half ago. Overall, I'm pretty happy that I did get into the game because it's a pretty wild experience with lots to do.

GAMEPLAY

At first I didn't like the gameplay, and even now I don't really love it. I just find the concept of auto attacking to be pretty boring. I didn't really get a hang of the combat until all the skills and mechanics were unlocked and until after a few hours have already passed. Even after that, many battles revolved around waiting for the timer to fill up so that you can use a specific attack. On the other hand, I thought the world was amazing.

There was always a ton of enemies everywhere and a million items scattered around the map which made exploring and looting a lot of fun. If the combat was more like the average ARPG, I would have had a lot more fun with the combat but the gameplay just didn't really agree with me. This ended up being one of the worst games that I've played when it comes to gameplay and combat.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND

Beyond the gameplay, I thought that everything else about XC3 was fantastic with the visuals, music, and story each being one of the best that I've seen in 2022. When it came to graphics, the game looked amazing, especially with cutscenes, which there were a ton of. The first hour or so of the game was filled with cutscenes taking up like 95% of the time and they all looked great. The people and creatures all had good designs and the world itself looked really good and was full of detail. The battles looked really cool too with so much going on at once on screen.

As for the sounds, I didn't really like them as much as the graphics but it's still a very strong aspect. For starters the music is fantastic. I already knew how good the soundtrack was because even before I started playing, I had listened to some of the older songs on Spotify and really liked them. As for the soundtrack as a whole, there were so many good tracks and the soundtrack itself is massive.

My only concern with the sound is from the voice acting. Each actor did an amazing job with their roles, especially with cutscenes. But when you're just running around the world or battling, the dialogue can get extremely repetitive and annoying and I started hating it after a while.

STORY

The story is another aspect that I think is brilliant. There's a ton of stuff that I missed from not playing the previous games but right out of the gate, XC3 starts off with some insane themes and concepts. The story is also really long and full of emotion. While the story itself is amazing, I think it's the characters that really made it strong. There are fewer characters than what you would normally get out of a JRPG, which isn't something that I like, but this allowed each character to have far more significance and a ton of depth and development. When it comes to the entire package of story, characters, and emotion, I think XC3 was one of the very best of 2022.

ADDICTIVENESS

I would t really call the game addicting if you're like me and don't care too much for the auto battling. It can get boring pretty quickly if you're used to, and love, your standard JRPG gameplay. Beyond that, there are other good machanics, the world is fun, and the story is phenomenal. I was constantly finding myself wanting to push forward just to experience what comes next. I personally don't care about wanting to play the game a second time but there was more than enough to make me want to put in more than 100 hours during the initial playthrough.

DEPTH

For me, the two biggest driving factors when it came to depth was the world and the characters. The world is big and there's a lot of ground to cover and things to explore. I was shocked by the sheer amount of itself that were just lying on the ground waiting to be collected. As for the characters, there's just so much going on with each person. There's also a lot to do in terms of story content and post game stuff, and the expansion pass is going to add a lot of extra content. It's easy to spend more than 100 hours in XC3 and I think you might even be able to push 200 hours once all the content from the expansion pass is out.

DIFFICULTY

XC3 at times can be very difficult or very time consuming. When I first started, I tried putting the game on the highest difficulty setting because I wanted the challenge but I had to start over within like an hour. It wasn't really hard but I hated how long it took to kill an enemy near the start. The amount of HP and DEF that enemies had combined with the auto battle mechanic made many battles very long and boring.

Even on an easier setting, battles were still long and I died a lot near the start of the game too. The game isn't hard but even if you're on an easy setting, you need to be extremely patient with the game until you start leveling up and become significantly stronger.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is overall an amazing game and is definitely one of the best games of 2022. The game has some amazing visuals and music along with a fantastic story. I just didn't have too much fun with the gameplay and combat and was constantly impatient with battles. But I thought everything else was amazing and my overall grade for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a 9.2 out of 10.

GAMEPLAY: 7/10
GRAPHICS: 10/10
SOUND: 9/10
ADDICTIVENESS: 8/10
STORY: 10/10
DEPTH: 10/10
DIFFICULTY: 6
OVERALL: 9.2/10