Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 3

@Sdelintwouters That would be awesome! Yeah, XC2 definitely wasn't the most accessible as far as combat goes. Seeing how they toned down the character designs though, I'm sure they'll also do better this time around with the combat system (at least I hope they do lol).

As long as the combat in 3 lets me move around at a fast pace in fights like 1 and X, while auto attacking, then I’m excited.

We can make a few guesses about combat. The fact that there are 6 key characters with no avatar implies that each character will have there own unique art set like in XC1, as there is no blade system (though a couple of party members may be blades themselves), and there are too few characters for X’s class system (which was bad anyway).
Additionally, it seems to be parties of 4 active combatants, like in X, rather than 3 like in 1 and 2.

I would love this because I have issues getting into that hoodie that cat girl wears, it seems so flat in comparison to the outfits of characters from 2.

Totally. (^人^)

It was so pointless, I would much rather have this idea get discontinued rather than brought back. I never understood it. o(≧口≦)o

I always had issues getting into games where you just walk on foot cause I never got the idea of "Wow, you really just made a 7 hour journey of just running and walking around the world?". With that said I still play games that are like that, I mean I played Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2 and thought they were great even though they had this style of traversal. I just hope that there is more than what's shown in the trailer. What I enjoyed in XBX was the different ways you could explore aside from just foot.

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@Munchlax I also know that people keep pointing out clocks in the game. Those giant circles on absolutely everything, with some sort of gauge that changes phases. Perhaps that'll end up being some sort of overdrive mechanic? A powerful attack that needs to be built up by killing enemies to use? In some of the art work, it appears to have the appearance of Ouroboros as well, and Melia mentions Ouroboros at the end of the trailer.

@Vortexeo Yeah, I just want to experience the areas from the original game in a new light, without the trailers spoiling absolutely everything for me. I don't want to know how open the world is in comparison to the others, or much else in terms of the story itself. These games have a way of making mind-blowing stories, and I get the feeling that this one will probably be the best of the three.. at least hopefully.

I just hope I can hold out. While I'm curious about the battle system for the game, I probably will wait until I have the game in my hands to see how that turns out.

Thinking about it, this game is probably a large part of why they made a full remaster of XC1 rather than porting XCX.

I really hope no one tries to play through both games to try to get to this game at launch day. I was exhausted by 2 alone, doing both games back to back would've been way too much.

@kkslider5552000 I'm just playing through Torna and the rest of Future Connected, just in the case that they end up being important to 3. I feel like Future Connected is probably the one that'll end up being drastically important.

Any chance they will change the combat to be realtume instead of auto attack?

ew no, never

@Ninja84 Nope. These games will always have an auto-attack type system, with different mechanics based around those.

@Ninja84
No.

But it is real time inasmuch as the auto attacks are just time fillers between your manually activated attacks. All the strategy and brunt of damage is from the attacks you manually trigger. Auto attacks just keep the action flowing between the cooldowns so it isn’t boring to look at. You’ll have half a dozen moves on cooldowns though so you’re activating a new move every couple seconds. It’s very involved.

@VoidofLight Doubtful that either are important for the experience of 3. Even if there are some loose connections Monolith tend to have a completely new theme for every game they make with their own substantial plots and characters with some relation to the games that came before.

Yes, we see what seem to be returning characters in the trailer but I believe they mostly serve a purpose for the people who are looking for them. In reality Xeno 3 will likely be good on its own in a vacuum.

I doubt they'd change Xenoblades combat to straight up action. For me personally one reason why I love Xenoblade is because of its gameplay. There's many games out there with Devil May Cry, Souls, or Zelda inspired combat. I know it might not be for everyone but I can't say I've come across anything with a similar combat system to XCX or XC2. (FF12 gets brought up a lot but it's still quite different.) I feel like if you gave Xenoblade a straight up action combat system it would just turn into an Ys game.

@Varkster Eh, I guess. It'll probably be a case where it's good on it's own, but so much better for those who've played all of the Xenoblade games.

@VoidofLight I'd agree but personally playing Xenoblade 2 after playing the first one added very little to my enjoyment of 2. The world and the concepts were so much different from the first game that it only gave me a brief "oh yeah, I remember that" moment at the end but didn't punch my gut or anything.

Obviously 1 and 2 are slightly different cases because I believe Xeno 1 was supposed to be a one off game and from Xeno X they decided to make it a franchise with Nintendo's approval.

Here we are looking at a game that is very clearly a sequel to 1 and 2 as has been planned from the start of 2's development.

I would compare it to Arceus in that Arceus has countless references to Diamond and Pearl but it doesn't at all detract from anyone's experience if they didn't play the prior games like myself. They're just there for fanservice.

Also, Monolith seem to love experimenting and finding sweet spots within the playerbase. From what I see they love listening to fans' feedback which is why 3 seems to be a combination of artstyle with all 3 games.

1 and 2 and X were very different from each other, 3 looks about the same but with very similar character designs (game theorists going nuts rn). It does seem to be about a nice mix of 1 and 2 from the perspective of the art style and world building. Gameplay has remained the same and I don't think it will ever go away, to me it's what makes Xenoblade Xenoblade. When it comes to if people will enjoy this game better if they played the previous titles? Can't say, maybe? I mean, in my opinion, we didn't see enough to begin answering this question but with a case like 2 it didn't really impact my enjoyment any further, it was just cool but nothing drastic. I think even if you didn't play the previous title you would still enjoy that moment cause it was done in a way where newcomers could still understand the importance without having played the former game. The thing is, that is 2, in 3 they could change it up and make it be more of a proper sequel rather than a pseudo-sequel, I can't tell you. We'll have to see more but for now it's up for theorizing which, speaking of which, I have been making a theory of my own that this game's second arc may be insane from just the info we were given.

@Varkster I just feel like 2 is a different case to 3, given 2 is largely separate from 1 until the end, while 3 legit combines both worlds together, so there’s probably going to be so much more that flies over people’s heads if they didn’t play the other two. The environments of the game also seem to depend on knowledge of the first two in order to have the desired effect, given that they mashed both worlds together. It’ll probably be one that anyone could jump into, but a game that those who played the first two and future connected will get the most out of.

I'd think it's more similar to XC2 and Torna. They're two games that we knew from the outset shared a setting and some characters. However, they used a lengthy time period and calamitous events to reshape everything so that two distinct stories could be told.

The difference with XC3 is that, rather than having to turn it around in a year and reusing a lot of assets through necessity, they're going to have a full development cycle so everything can be fresh bar the elements that they wanted to reuse. I've every confidence that they can pull it off.