Too Many Mechanics? Or Nah? Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Quick Review (Spoiler Free) 

I was just looking for a review of xenoblade3 to decide if I wanted to bug it then you uploaded

Welp..you did reveal some kind of spoiler - about how many chapters are there >.> Now I'm sad I'm only a chapter away :'(

The 0 class point thing isn't a glitch if the ennemie you bit is lower in level than you you get almost nothing, and nothing nothing if its level is more than 4 level underleveld, I thought it was a bug too :/

Thank you for being such a lightning-fast Captain; Proz has my other string, so swing with that regardless of how perfect it may already look please

Holy cow thank you so much, this explains everything

OHHHHHHHH my god. i was desperately trying to get yumsmith unlocked for the last 2 who didnt have it for forever and i just gave up 😭😭 was this explained anywhere in game?

MY GOOD GOSH THANK YOU AAAAAAAAAAA

Wow, and here I was being completely clueless as to what happened to his game. That's very stupid from Monolith to add, as in no part of the game is this even said. I think the idea is to always battle at your level and not punch down, but EXP and Regular class Points are unaffected...

The ability to level down definitely should have been something that they had in base game and not locked away until post game like in DE.

When I was playing the game, I was thinking the devs saw Captain Astronaut’s vid and took all his criticisms lol

Well that's what happens when xc2 leaves u on a sour note.

Literally I loved the party, I loved the character designs, I loved the world, I got invested in the story because of just how great the characters were, the English voice acting is *chefs kiss*, and most of all THE NOPON ARE ACTUALLY GREAT CHARACTERS ON THIS GAME, like almost all of them, don't think I've been annoyed by any of them so far (Manana is probably my least liked but that is miles above Tatsu or maid robot creator)

@@gemain609 - Completely agreed with everything you said. While I still prefer Riki, I can totally see why some people prefer Riku. He’s a great character.

Exactly my thoughts! Compared to this one, XC2 almost feels like it was designed as a testing ground to try out new ideas for the series. It simply didn't work for most people. Did it do a good job at selling and grabbing people's attention? Sure it did! Waifus sell of course and Pyra/Mythra were obviously made to be marketable waifu characters based on their design alone. However the game itself suffers from alot of issues. I still have a soft spot for that game but it clearly wasn't what the series needed. XC3 however felt a lot more similar to the first game and it even took some of the positives from XC2 and improved on them. XC3 feels like it was made to be the rightful succesor of XC1 and I'm happy with the results we got.

i personally want the breath of the wild costume but valid

Does it come with seven seats?!

Completely agreed. It has a lot of them, but it introduces them pretty well.

@@jerryborjon except chain attacks I guess, cuz most people don't understand why a lot of stuff is happening. I see a lot of people wondering why healers cap at 99

imo I don’t think complexity’s a bad thing in a JRPG that’s 60-100 hours long. it’s fine to not get a combat mechanic at first and learn it over time, I’m 70 hours in and only just now realized how to make the most of chain attacks lmao. every single new mechanic you get the hang of or improvement you make to your team feels great

I thought there was a decently large amount of mechanics but the combat itself is enjoyable to me. I definetly prefer it over 2’s whole combat system.

@@dugtrioramen that's on them then. Since there is a tutorial for it and it is quite self explanatory.

Me too

Yeah, to be honest it seems like he didn't pay enough attention, none of this is hard to understand or figure out the reason why something was happening...

I'm kinda sad about the not using bonus exp part.....bonus exp is rewarded to players if they do well. Then in order to unlock more game you need to....not use the rewards?

@@cyncynshop bonus exp exists so you can do sidequests without getting too overleveled. It isn't a reward for doing well per say.

@@cyncynshop my theory is Monolith was worried about the player needing to grind too much in 3. Never felt like a problem in this series but I could see complaints for that in 2. Honestly, I don’t mind. I stopped using bonus XP early on and it’s nice not having to kill every monster in my way.

Bonus Exp is honestly a trap in this game it's not even funny. Thankfully I never used it outside of the time the game forces you to do it and I've been having a blast leveling up classes as I explore (in chapter 6 now and doing the hero missions that unlock the lvl 20 cap and god damn the versatility when you really start getting these skills is SOOOO nice). As a means of keeping you from over leveling from side quests, it's genius

Mwamba one shot all the superbosses for me. 10/10 would recommend.

Mwamba best Hero in the game, no cap

@@GamingFreakShow1991 His chain order "It's Mwambin' Time" is so overpowered it deals adds a 10 Mwambillion damage multiplier to the chain attack and gives the entire party the buff "Mwamba Charge", which is like Power Charge but multiplies their damage by Ten Mwambillion.

@@asprinjuice8877 if you edit a save make him playable he actually has a chain attack orderz but it has no name and the animation is half done

As someone who hasn't played the game yet, what he was describing about being massively overleveled during normal mode for most of the game seems pretty lame. I play most games including Xenoblade games at normal difficulty usually, do you think it is worth playing in hard mode instead for this one?

@@tristanneal9552 Not going to lie, hard mode is incredibly difficult and downright frustrating at times when lower leveled enemies one- shot your entire party, and you will likely face some serious difficulty with many of the boss fights. I have not yet gotten completely stuck, but have had moments when I had to put the game down and take a break because I was struggling so much. That said, I do find it incredibly satisfying to beat the enemies when it is so difficult, and I have not yet used any bonus XP to level up a single time, so it is possible to make it a bit easier on yourself than I am. Don't be surprised if you can't beat a single unique monster at around your own level for the first few dozens of hours however. Hard mode generally forces you to both have a fairly good party setup, memorize more of the different attacks of all the different enemies, have some pretty good reaction time, and to do some more side content to level up your party and get better items, skills and classes. It can definitely be worth it if you like a good challenge, but can also feel a little unfair at times.

@@tristanneal9552 I'll offer a totally different take: hard mode has been a breeze outside of one or two side bosses, and fighting any tyrant that was within five levels of me. Depending on the tyrant, I can take it on >5 levels up, on even levels, or still struggle when up 10+ levels. This is largely because I have gone out of my way to spend as little time on a maxed class, probably less than an hour total. I am constantly switching my party members' classes, and go out of my way to get heroes when I'm running out of classes, then grind a couple over leveled enemies to instantly unlock the class for everyone. This is the secret to unlocking classes hella fast, btw; specifically hunt down a few (yes, really, a few) enemies 3-5 levels over you, and you will have the new class or classes almost immediately, especially if multiple people have them equipped. On hard, I've been able to turn my brain off (and turn auto battle on) for a lot of grinder activities (hunting mats for gems), while still having to pay attention for most bosses. But, I really haven't struggled outside of a small handful of fights, and all of them were side quests or optional, and corresponded with me having terrible team comps (after a certain point, at least for me, I had to abandon ever having a tank, or a healer, because there are few defender heroes and a TON of DPS ones). Even still, some creative problem solving and the new build options item wise they included saw me through. You WILL out level all content story wise, but there will ALWAYS be higher level enemies to kill to unlock your new classes. And killing tyrants is worth it for the accessories they drop. I say all of this, to set up my real point: the difficulty in these games ALWAYS comes post game. There are many ultra high level tyrants that will be very, very difficult to beat even with a sound strategy and a well rounded party. They all require mastery of the games many, many systems, and an optimized party comp. And it feels great when you take one down. If you are really concerned about over leveling on Normal or Hard, my best advice would be to completely forgo any and all use of bonus XP. This is the one thing you can control.

I made the mistake of starting my first playthrough in Hard mode. Because i thought i was good at the game (i was not) I beat all the previous XC games, so how different could it be? (very) I totally wasnt super overconfident (i was) And i totally didnt pay the price as it took me what felt like 5 hours to beat the first two bosses in the game.

@@WH40KHero Definitely would say that my comment still holds true, but I have also somewhat shifted perspective. The first 20-50 hours in the game are definitely *very* hard on hard mode, and I really struggled with many of the battles, especialy against he first fight between the Keves and Agnus members of the main party, the consuls and some of the heroes. This can be a really fun, but also unforgiving challenge for players not proficcient at the game's combat, even if they are really good with the combat in the previous games. After I started unlocking arts cancelling for ouroboros however, exploiting their invincibility and high damage & aggro generation, the game went from being really hard to being only somewhat hard during some of the strongest bosses. The main thing I dislike about the game's difficulty, is that it doesn't allow you to level down until postgame, which means even in hard mode, you are likely to become overleveled and start noticing a significant drop in difficulty at some point (for me this happened once I was past midgame at lvl. 50).

You are welcome Koramora, glad I could help 🙏🏿

I think my issue with the accessory screen in particular is being unable to sort it at all, you’re just stuck with the “order obtained” sorting which sucks if things like the Seven accessories are obtained a distance apart from each other because of unique monster cheese or exploration issues

They had a great accessory-sorter system in Xenoblade 2, not sure why they forgot about it in Xenoblade 3.

You can sort the inventory. You have to select what accessory you want to replace first, press -, and it'll allow you to sort it by chronological, category, recommended, or favorites (rarity might also be an option, but I don't feel like grabbing my Switch from the other room to double-check)

I love everything about chain attacks beside the fact they override any music playing. I really wish they had a toggle feature for that

For the next game just hire Enel to do the tutorials

We ain’t ever gonna get Elma now 😭

@@flameheadshero I feel your pain. At least we have Taion.

@@flameheadshero I also share that pain she would be really cool with her play style.

Xenoblade 1 is ass

Same tbh, it felt like a massive missed opportunity to not be able to pilot the Ouroboros forms outside of combat especially with how fluid their animation are. Being able to skate around with Mio's Ouroboros would've been amazing. A suggestion I'd give would be to beeline upgrading to art-canceling with Ouroboros forms, its a godsend. Eunie's Ouroboros went from maybe 3 to 4 arts in one transformation to 5 to 6 arts and constant aoe and healing. I wish art canceling wasn't behind an upgrade but it makes their forms much stronger

Level 0 Ouroboros is so useless lol Spoilers for beginning of Chap 6: when the game started the battle with the party in ouroboros against the agnian queen, I was like "ooh" and then it was Level 0 so I was like... okay... I guess I'll cancel...

idk, the forms felt pretty cool to me. I mean yeah they're slow, but so is your normal form and nobody minds that. Level 3 is actually really good and I think the mechanic was handled beautifully. You have to use your fusion arts to actually make it good, because otherwise it's just gonna be another win button (*plot armour blade cough cough*)

Chapter 5 had me in tears had to take a small break cause god damn was it masterfully handled (also Cadensia was a fantastic zone, less so if you're the type that likes manually filling out the map)

Xeno 2s tutorials were trash lol so dw about it the game was ugly garbagely trash at explaining its mechanics lmao. 😂

Is 3 as polarizing as 2 though?

@@skylandersfan6954 as polarizing is different than polarizing between the two, I was saying the jump from 2 to 3 is polarizing because of the complete tonal shift

@@cyurle3940 Not really, late game Xenoblade 2 and Torna are very in line with 3's depressing tone especially the endings of both chapter 9 & 10

@@skylandersfan6954 yeah doesn't really match up if only an 8th of your game matches the other two games tonally. Like Xeno 1 and 3 are wrought with depressing tones from start to finish, and I'd argue Torna isn't depressing so much as KH 358 is, we only know it's sad because we know what happens at the end

@@cyurle3940 Its more than an 8th though, the game takes itself seriously when it needs to. The entire point is that the game progressively gets more dark as it goes along, complaining that it doesn't take itself seriously and being edgy 100% of the time is really odd

Honestly I got sick of it in the early game cause you don't have a lot to meaningfully counter the high damage and high evasiveness of the UM's. With where I'm at now in the game (chapter 6) with multiple classes lvl 10 or higher and the ability to use accessories and adapt to UM encounters could see myself enjoying it a lot more.

Or he made designs that fit the tone of the story?

I don’t think they emphasized swapping party members enough because doing that means you won’t really have to be waiting for arts to recharge and if you do it correctly you control your whole party and damn, it can be satisfying

Soon! But not too soon lol

@@CaptainAstronaut good enough for me :3, love your commentary. I'm on the fence about Splatoon 3, I hope to hear about your opinions on that one.

Maybe taking time to understand the combat a little more would help, the player is always able to be smarter than the CPU’s, especially as a healer or DPS since they may hold off on using certain skills even when you NEED them. ~~Fucking Eunie with Group Heal active letting everyone die because I didn’t swap to her~~

@@raisylvaine8398 on the contrary, I put on auto battle once or twice and each time I saw that the AI was doing better at the whole Playing The Game Thing than me lol I even saw mechanics used in ways I didn't know you could >.> In a game like this, it's absolutely able to be played by an AI, it's not honestly that difficult

If you learn how to properly do damage as a character you'll out damage a CPU doing anything by a large amount. CPU won't cancel arts into arts and also pretty rarely cancels autos into arts.

Are you playing on Hard Mode? You can notice the differences you're making in combat much more easily there. Normal Mode can kinda just be mashed through.

I mean it was going to be a way better than XC2. It’s widely known barely anyone worked on XC2.

@@mrbubbles6468 and it’s still much better than a lot of other games in recent years. Just goes to show what a little soul and live for your work can do for a team of creatives.

@@raisylvaine8398 You could say this about any moderately above average game in any time period of gaming ever Every generation has had shovelware and content funneled out without much effort, even from AAA companies including Nintendo on the contrary there's a fucking buttload of good games with soul from 2017+ that makes me feel Joy

@@internetguy7319 thank you for affirming the point

Why does it?

I kinda feel like the story is unfinished. It's the least mind blowing xeno plot, and a bunch of questions went unanswered. I also wish the writing stayed as good and as somber as the first 5 chapters, cuz the last 2 chapters were really lacking

@@dugtrioramen I feel like the characters as a group had more development this time around though. In Xenoblade 1 the characters with the most development were Shulk and Melia. Dunban and Sharla aren’t that far behind but Reyn, Riki and Seven really don’t have much to do. In this group, it feels like everyone is equally important as they all drive the story together, meanwhile Reyn could probably be taken out of the story past the Ether Mine in XC1 and you wouldn’t lose too much in the grand scheme of things story wise. Basically, they did good but it’s all of to personal preference, yeah?

I haven’t completely finished the game yet but I have to agree that the characters are amazing. 1’s characters felt somewhat boring to me when I played through it and 2’s characters and character design were amazing but the gameplay wasn’t really fun. Personally, 3 is the perfect mix of an actually fun combat system and has characters that are interesting and work somewhat well together. The story is a lot shorter then other xenoblade games since 1 had 12 chapters and 2 had 10. They probably are going to answer more questions in part 4 of the paid dlc but who knows when that’s going to come out.

This game has a problem of having too many villains and never focusing on any of them other than N, I would have preferred D and J, N, X, Y and Z to be the main antagonists that keep reappearing and having less generic consul fights just to get us to hate them a little more. In the case of X she literally only appears in Eunie's side story which is optional, meaning that you can literally kill her in a very underwhelming fight only for her to show up alive again if you decide to do that side story afterwards.

@@justaguy3983 In my opinion that's the other way around. I really love the first game's characters whilst not being as fond of 2's, but love the second game's combat way more to the first.

also I popped on hard mode very early on and died A LOT, (Spark!) and had to start really usin' ye olde brain to get through some of the big setpiece boss fights. was super fun!

Best mio cosplayer

Why?

@@skylandersfan6954 Because it’s disgusting.

@@josh6453 A polycule is disgusting?

Thanks, Jaycan!!

The weird thing about the ending is that it looks a lot like an ‘it was all a dream’ ending, but it also isn’t? Since everything that goes down in the game did really happen, but from the perspective of the worlds that existed before and after Aionios, it feels like only a second has passed. It’s actually kinda like the JRPG version of Link’s Awakening. The ultimate goal is to break out of the static world because it’s a crapsack shithole of a place to live that’s also a gross perversion of the natural order, but doing so also wipes away all of the growth one’s experiences in said world have catalyzed within themselves. Of course, I’d think this game’s interpretation of that kind of plot also comes with a better outcome than that of Link’s Awakening because there is the distinct implication that the actions taken within Aionios have left behind distinct impressions that will stick with the characters as they experience the lives they were meant to lead, if the game doesn’t outright hint that the party members will all reunite someday. One can only wonder exactly what events the DLC story will cover, considering there is just as much valid material for a prequel as there is an epilogue…

In my opinion the ending was fine, we already knew that the two worlds had combined and that Aionios is the consequence for trying to stop things from changing out of the fear of it going wrong. It's not a dream at all as everything happening within the world is real, but time is simply just allowed to move forward again

However with over leveling you run the risk of maybe never unlocking classes or leveling them up. Risk vs reward is definitely something they grasped with this game I’d say

@@raisylvaine8398 yes but also once you have a certain thing i can't talk about because spoilers and you just farm over lvled normal enemies you can unlock any classes you are missing in about 1 hour or so with the stupid effect it can do because at that point you can just earn 80-100 cp per enemy even with d ranked classes if you have the accessory equipped

Are you fucking kidding right now

How the hell

Yea I know what u mean wth is Xenoblade answer a stupid harem anime.

Really? Because it honestly feels more similar to 2 than it does to 1, just with less fanservice

Putting Tatsu on the same level of Tora is an insult to Tatsu. Tatsu doesn't make me lose hope in humanity every time I see him. He's at least *only* lame, not downright offensive.