I'd love to get Xenoblade 3 in August but Im still in the beginning of Xenoblade 2. Im a slow gamer when it comes to sci fi rpg games like Xenoblade or a Star Ocean game
XC2 is a weird game. Flaws (most of them tiny, but those add up) in almost every aspect of its design, but with the best music, combat, story, setting, and cast in the entire series. I was enchanted by it at the start, slowly grew irritated with its flaws as the game progressed, but came back to a much more positive place in the last half. A true roller-coaster of an experience.
The aspect of it I'm actually most torn on is how it utilized its environmental space. XC2's environments were very... dense, compared to the flat and sparsely populated stretches of land in the original. Sometimes too much, insofar as the geographical terrain sometimes ended up being difficult to navigate because there was too much complexity on display.
The upside of this was that landscapes felt creative and fantastical in design, and population centers actually felt huge and lived in. If there's one thing I'm not glad returned in XC3, it's these tiny colonies. I really miss the bustling towns and cities from XC2.
And, to be honest, I feel like the navigational issues would've been solved if they'd thought to integrate the navigational tool from XC3 that shows you how to most efficiently reach a location needed for a quest or side-quest. It's seriously a god-send.
On the other hand, XC2 attempted to counteract the original's lack of stuff to unlock or do in the environments by including more interactivity. Some of this is great (I love the increase in NPCs, chests, etc. to find in the environments), but the field skill system ended up being one of the title's biggest flaws, since it frequently stymied side-quest completion until the player had sufficiently cultivated a stable of unique blades with different skills.
XC3 so far feels like the game I wish XC1 had been in the first place. The story progression is more focused, and, unlike the original, the characters all feel integral to the experience. The "mature" tone of the story actually works much better with this sort of nightmarish forever war setting than with whatever the original game was going for... which, as far as I can tell, is: "What if Attack on Titan featured humans fighting over-the-top, cockney-speaking robots?" This extends to the music as well, which is somewhat 'heavier' than you'd expect from a Xenoblade game.
They're all worth playing, though. Especially if you want to see how MS improved aspects of their design and presentation from game to game. Characters are so expressive and well-animated in this latest game. It's genuinely pretty impressive.
@CJD87 yes, you can. I bet only very late game the story will be connected to the previous games in a meaningfull way. I played XC2 first and did not feel I missed much and had the connection revealed on the first instead
@seaboyluca@Balta666 - I think I'm going to jump aboard the hype-wagon, as soon as I've polished off RE3Make! Thanks for confirming XC2 isn't a mandatory pre-play, appreciated
So I'm pretty far into chapter 3 now and last night I just went through the Urayan tunnels.
I know you technically don't need to play through XC2 for this since it isn't really plot related but I think it's so cool to see how the area has aged over time. I actually recognize so many parts of the map. Initially, I didn't know where I was until I saw the remains of the big staircase, and then it hit me. Looking forward to more realizations like this lol
Recently started on Chapter 2, and most recently completed the Chain Attack tutorial against that big snake, then watched a cutscene regarding the history of Noah's Blade & how he supposedly has that Nopon Katana inside of it.
Combat feels good, but I'm not sure how I feel about class swapping. I tend to prefer characters having a set role & this is really pushing the idea that you need to swap classes as soon as you learn one (that, and the characters look dumb with each other's jackets copy pasted onto each other).
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
@RR529
You can change the outfit regardless of which class your character is. This option becomes available a tiny bit later in the game than where you are right now.
As for class swapping: it's possible to negate that by levelling them with silver Nopon coins. Though you'll have to farm a lot of them if you want every character maxed out with every class.
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Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles 3
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