‘Xenoblade Chronicles 3’ Review: The Mysterious World Of Aionios Beckons

Games ‘Xenoblade Chronicles 3’ Review: The Mysterious World Of Aionios Beckons Ollie Barder Contributor Forbes Games Reviews Contributor Group Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Jul 31, 2022, 05:17am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin ‘Xenoblade Chronicles 3’ has a lot to offer in terms of its complex story. Nintendo It has been a long journey for the Xenoblade Chronicles series.

Starting out on the Wii back in 2010, we are now graced with Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and the result of a decade long plan for a very ambitious narrative. More recently, the Switch has held host to the Xenoblade Chronicles games and thus breathing life into a series many assumed had already been passed over. While Xenoblade Chronicles 2 had various performance issues, it was still a good game.

Good enough to warrant the remaster of the original Wii game, in the form of Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition . Much of the performance failings from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 were addressed in the Definitive Edition , not to mention various quality of life improvements to the game itself. This means that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 should already be on a more stable footing, based on the lessons learned from the previous games over at Monolith Soft .

In short, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has managed to handle the ambitious game would of Aionios far better than it precursors would have done. Considering how the performance issues plagued Xenoblade Chronicles 2 , I am relieved to say that these are far less of an issue here. The music in ‘Xenoblade Chronicles 3’ is wonderfully done.

Nintendo MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry Yes, there are frame rate drops occasionally but this is an impressively made game for the Switch and that’s before we get to how it plays. Broadly speaking, if you have played a Xenoblade Chronicles games before, then you won’t be overly surprised by how the combat works. In essence, it looks and feels like an MMO would play (except being offline of course).

That means it’s as close as you can get to being an action role-playing game as possible, but still with a fair amount of automated commands. To explain, your group of characters each have an array of Arts. These are attacks, buffs or other commands and can be assigned in the menu system.

Once within range and an enemy spots you, you can initiate combat where all characters will attack the enemy or enemies on their own. However, there are Arts that you can initiate with their own cooldown. If you use certain Arts correctly, such as from the side or behind, these then charge up another larger combo attack.

Put simply, timing is key in the combat and using your attacks when an enemy has been stunned or knocked-over provides a sizable tactical aspect to the proceedings. You can also link characters into a stronger form, which again ups the ante in terms of the combat and how you handle it tactically. All of this also feeds into the backend management of your Arts, Skills and Accessories, which is a key part of tackling harder foes.

In that, reconfiguring your party with the right attacks and accessories makes a huge difference if handled well. The combat alone works very well and if you are looking for a pure role-playing game functional fix, then Xenoblade Chronicles 3 delivers that well. The world of Aionios is vast.

Nintendo The story is also wonderfully done but it is very circuitous and obviously initially misleads the player on what is happening. The game’s narrative does tie into previous games in the series, but to say any more would spoil that. While I am not overly fussed with spoilers, in this instance they do actually matter, especially as there has clearly been a long period of planning from Monolith Soft to get us to this point.

Following on from this, the voice acting is pretty much great throughout and continues the usage of mostly British actors for the series. Some of the script is a bit awkward but much of that is done intentionally due to an often bewilderingly mysterious lexicon of terms that are meant to obfuscate what’s actually going on. In Japan, this kind of “in the deep end” storytelling has a long history behind it but out of that linguistic context, it may seem strange to some.

The good news is that it all does become abundantly clear after playing through the game. One final point of note is the genuinely excellent musical score, with veteran game composer Yasunori Matsuda heading up the game’s aural soundscape. Overall, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is arguably the best game in the series and builds upon the prior entries in both a deft and quite magnificent way.

Much of the performance issues seen in prior games have been resolved and the game itself is very enjoyable to play. It may seem somewhat of an enormous undertaking but the world of Aionios has a lot to offer to curious and somewhat patient players. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Platform: Nintendo Switch Developer: Monolith Soft Publisher: Nintendo Released: July 29th 2022 Price: $59.

99 Score: 9/10 Disclosure: I was sent a copy of this game for the purposes of this review. Follow me on Twitter , Facebook and YouTube . I also manage Mecha Damashii and do toy reviews over at hobbylink.

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