Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 3

Just don't have conversations with yourself and it'll all be good.

For what it's worth, I've also got an old abandoned account on here that I'd probably have reused if it were possible to recover the password, but that wasn't the case.

I'm almost at the end. It can't be anymore than 3-4 hours. It's been such a ride too. Many twists and turns, but for me, it still doesn't hold up to XC:DE. It's VERY close, but I still love 1 the most. Then 3, then 2. Still need to play X though.

So I think I finished all the side quests in the game! I've got every colony to 5-star affinity now.

I know I asked a little while back how many side quests were in the game and a few people said 183. However, I don't think that's the correct number because I counted how much I did twice, and I've counted 191 total. (Although I haven't finished upgrading everyone's weapons with the origin shards; I'm not sure if that counts or not.) It would be nice if there was a notification that pops up once you finish all the quests so that way you can know for certain that you've done them all😅

So since I've done just about all the quests, I'm now trying to fill out the map for each area. I completed the Aetia Region unintentionally which has never happened before lol. I didn't even realize I finished it until I opened the map and Taion actually said that we've seen everything the area has to offer.

I decided to try and fill out the Cadensia region next because it seemed like it would be the biggest pain to do. But it turns out I was quite close to completing that one as well! The only thing I had left to find was one secret area. I guess the quests do a great job of taking you all over the map!

Random note but I think Malevolent Hollow is definitely one of the best places to level classes in the post-game. There are so many high-level enemies there! It reminds me of certain points in Tephra Cave!

@Vortexeo I need to go back and check out Malevolent Hollow. I pretty much high-tailed it out of there the moment I saw a mess of lvl 99 enemies walking around.

@Ralizah It was quite a fun area to explore! I think it restricts your ability to interlink; it's kind of similar to the spirit crucible from XC2 in that regard. I really wasn't expecting some of these islands and caves to have so much to them lol.

I'm over 110 hours in and still only on Chapter 6. Just completed the Hero Quest that adds Segiri to your team. I think I have all the Heroes now.

I beat the game!

Wow, what a magnificent masterpiece. Games like this just don't come around often.

The ending was fantastic. It left some questions unanswered, and wasn't afraid to go bittersweet, unlike the last entry (which was my one major complaint against it).

Now, where to rank it... I think the highs weren't quite as high as previous XC games, but the lows weren't as low either. It was more consistently a high quality experience throughout. It also had better and more relatable characters, and a better ending. And it definitely had the best combat. And for that reason, I think this is my new favorite in the series. Though XCX comes very close, as it still has the best exploration in the series, and the skell combat and traversal is unmatched by any other game I've played. If that game was remastered with quality of life features to rival XC3, it might even be my favorite.

XC3 > XCX > XC1 > XC2

But even XC2, which I have ranked last, it still a VERY good game. It's just that, when ranking, something has to come first and something has to come last. It's an ordinal scale, not quantitative. I'd put XC3 and XCX pretty much side by side, with XCX just a smidge lower, and XC1 and XC2 side by side, with XC2 just a smidge lower.

I'm just about there. The last area is littered with tons of high level enemies and it's been taking some time to get through them all. I have to be walking into the last battle next. It's been building up for a while now so I'm not sure what else they can throw at ya at this point. Thankfully I've done enough grinding that I'm still a handful of levels over the avg. Should be right around the same level by the time I get to the big bad, I assume.

@NintendoByNature I don't think I battled anyone not mandatory on the last dungeon. There are too many of them and they all aggro... But to be fair I was like level 93

@Balta666 I pretty much fought everything I saw. Some were branched off with two pathways ahead of you, but I decided to take both pathways just for the exp. So Some you can walk right past, but I chose to fight instead. Woah, lvl 93! I'm sitting pretty at lvl 76 right now. But I'm going to stop by a rest spot and level up before heading back into the final battle. Just played a bit on my lunch and after work I'll head for the last battle. I just checked IGN to see where I am with the final battle and I'm about to walk in. Wish me luck!

@NintendoByNature With level 76 you should be good, enjoy the end of the ride then.

Finished chapter 5 last night. Holy smokes, that was amazing.

@Takoda just rolled the credits. Beautiful ending, that hit me in the feels a bit. Damn near perfect game that, after the ending, is just about up there with XC:DE for me as my favorite. Looked up IGNs explanation of the ending. Ties some holes together for me. I might actually buy the expansion pass which I never do in games.

@JaxonH While XC2 is very high up on my list, and I think its last couple chapters are much better executed than XC3's overall, I agree that the game pulling back on that last gut punch in its final moments lessened the impact of the ending tremendously.

@KryptoniteKrunch Ch. 5 is legitimately probably the single best chapter in the entire series.

It begins with a twist that massively recontextualizes the central conflict of the game, introduces a massive new town/hub area to explore, gives the player a new way to explore what is probably the game's most memorable region, introduces some of the best Heroes in the game, features a really cool prison break sequence, and ends with the most painful gut punch I've seen in the series to date.

10/10 chapter.

biding my time on progressing the game b/c I feel like I'm going to approach the final stretch and I don't feel quite ready end it off, plus there's a few heroes I'm missing too

I'd suggest hitting the final area once you're about level 70.

It's not a point-of-no-return thing, even if the game makes it look a bit like that. You can fast travel in and out right up until the fight with the final boss where your target level should be around 75.

Don't feel like you've got to recruit every hero, ascend them, upgrade your weapons and get all the best accessories and gems either. There'd be a lot of extra work in that and you'd only end up so OP that your level practically wouldn't even matter.

Most of that can be left until the post-game, as with the previous Xenoblade games. In that respect it's very much living up to the standards set by XC2, with plenty of great content hidden away at the fringes of maps. I've now spent more time playing after the ending than before it and haven't been short of things to do.

that's a fair assessment, I'm just kind of the type to put off finishing games I'm enjoying to artificially make them last longer, but considering how dense this game is, it's probably not necessary

I did the same w/ the first Xenoblade, though that time I was madly in love w/ it and didn't want the journey to end

Is it just me or is Riku some kind of god? Overall the place of the Nopon in this universe is very ambiguous. They do not seem to fit in at all with how the world operates.

I wonder if Riku will somehow be involved with the DLC as that nod close to the end is very suspicious.

yeah I was wondering about that too, like are these nopon artificial too? we never see any nopon families or anything and the incubators only ever had everyone else who are humanoids

@Varkster Yeah, it's left pretty open and I assume the dlc will explain some more perhaps, but it was all rather deus-ex-machina so far, with Riku having lucky seven and knowing exactly who to give it to apparently, just altogether very mysterious and knowledgeable, even though I didn't mind too much since I like the character. Nopon also don't have an iris so they're not traceable by moebius like everyone else is, dunno how that plays into things either.