Monolith Soft sees out its loosely connected trilogy with a JRPG masterpiece. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 - the Eurogamer review
Upon its release in 2010 the first Xenoblade Chronicles met its brief and then some; coming six months after the high-budget hobble of Final Fantasy 13, Takahashi's game restated and refined the elements that helped make JRPGs so beloved in their heyday. Monolith Soft created a seemingly boundless fantasy world whose impossible horizons stretched on for miles . Here was a JRPG infused with an infectious sense of adventure matched by some exquisite systems.
It helps that this is the most approachable in the series to date; indeed, it seems tooled towards an audience who've never played a Xenoblade game before, or maybe even one that's not touched a JRPG before. That number in the title seems off-putting and perhaps even a tad unwise; Xenoblade Chronicles 3 works effectively as a standalone entry, the deeper links to the preceding games not coming until well into this epic adventure .
It's a bleak backdrop that provides Xenoblade Chronicles 3 with melancholic foundations that inform its every beat - a boon if, like me, you love your JRPGs served up with a side order of sadness.
Combat can descend into chaos - with six characters in play, plus their Ouroboros formations and with chain attacks popping off it can feel a bit like a fruit machine at times. Like so many other elements of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 you're free to engage with these colonies as much as you'd like - or you could simply carry on. Pause in the camps and you might overhear conversations that lead to a questline, or maybe just something to chat over the next time all six of you sit down to rest.
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