Christi Junior on Nostr: 3/3 Those minor worries aside, the game still looked incredible – and by now the ...
3/3
Those minor worries aside, the game still looked incredible – and by now the official Xenoblade Twitter account was also beginning to share updates about the game on a semi-regular basis. Two months later, we even got a dedicated Xenoblade 3 Direct, which obviously was the motherload in terms of Xenoblade 3 info – opening with an extended look at the game’s surprisingly huge rogues gallery, this Direct greatly fleshed out Xenoblade 3’s setting (the world of Aionios, which is a fucking terrible place to live btw, more on that in the Chapter 1 writeup) and characters, as well as an extensive looks at the game’s features and mechanics. It was a fantastic Direct which made me even more excited about Xenoblade 3, and alleviated a number of the concerns I had, primarily regarding the combat system – the freshly revealed ability to switch characters MID-BATTLE was a real breakthrough for the series, and the new Class-system (new Classes being learned from these previously hinted-at extra party characters, called Heroes) introduced just the kind of extensive customization and team building options that I had been looking for.
Between the Direct and the Twitter updates, a particular picture was emerging, which made me hyped beyond reason: It was more than this being an extremely ambitious JRPG that boasted a colossal, well-designed and visually stunning world to explore, an epic, tragic story that was nonetheless filled with soul and cute, charming moments, great characters, sensational cutscenes and production values for a Nintendo game, deep and well-thought out mechanics, excellent quality of life features, a brilliant battle system, a Godlike soundtrack – I mean, all of those were just par for the course when dealing with a Xenoblade game! What was becoming clear was that this game was combining all sorts of ideas and mechanics from Xenoblade 1 and 2, and delivering the best of both worlds. You have Xenoblade 1’s epic war story AND Xenoblade 2’s intimate, touching character moments. You have great Xenoblade 1 mechanics like an affinity chart and items orbs returning, while ALSO keeping various Xenoblade 2 improvements like Unique Monster tombs. And of course, you have brand new ideas like the Class system, new overworld mechanics like monsters battling each other, and fucking mid-battle character switching! It was almost becoming hard to imagine how this game WOULDN’T be the best Xenoblade game ever. And seeing how Xenoblade 1 was my favorite game of all time, while Xenoblade 2 is 4th on that list…
That said, I did try to keep my expectations somewhat in check – I’ve been a gamer for a long time now, and have witnessed potentially GOATed games like Zelda: Twilight Princess and Xenoblade X get tripped up in all sorts of unexpected ways. And there were SOME news about and aspects of Xenoblade 3 that didn’t seem all the encouraging. One Twitter update indicated that one of the Hero characters would be “nonbinary” (not the character you think!), a nasty, unwelcome intrusion of gender ideology that on its own could seriously sour the experience. Meanwhile, the fanservice seemed minimal. And on the note of eye-candy, while the areas shown off so far all looked great, I had yet to see a single location to rival the likes of Eryth Sea or Uraya in terms of colorful, gorgeous vistas or truly imaginative, otherworldly sci-fi fantasy designs.
Oh, and Nintendo fucked up their handling of the Xenoblade 3 Collector’s Edition like you wouldn’t believe, because Nintendo has always got to screw over Xenoblade in SOME way. When a superfan like me doesn’t own the Collector’s Edition for the most hyped Xenoblade game yet, you know things were handled badly.
Still, I was incredibly excited for the actual game, and in fairness, I also got to commend Nintendo for actually doing a great job promoting Xenoblade 3, unlike with Xenoblade 2. I’d argue that Xenoblade 2 didn’t receive a single great English-language trailer (Nintendo apparently thought that Rex’s infamous racecar screams deserved great prominence), and the Xenoblade 2 Direct was at best merely preaching to the converted. Meanwhile, a month before its release Xenoblade 3 had already received 3 superb trailers, and its Direct was also extremely successful. Additionally, the JewTube view counts for Xenoblade 3 content showed a dramatic uptick in interest compared to Xenoblade 2’s hype cycle. Along with Persona, Xenoblade has been the rising star of the JRPG genre these past 10 years, and Xenoblade 3 looked set to become another milestone for the series.
The last few weeks before the game released, I finally began avoiding videos and info about the game. I did note the game receiving better reviews than Xenoblade 2, but worse than Xenoblade 1, becoming one of many Switch games with a 88/89 Metacritic score that easily deserved a 90+, something that would have been a sure bet if Nintendo bribed reviewers half as aggressively as Sony does. However, game journo reviews are worthless anyway – Xenoblade 2 itself had proved that. I was intending to fully immerse myself in this game, and both excited beyond words and slightly awed, I began my Xenoblade 3 journey July 29th, 2022.
Those minor worries aside, the game still looked incredible – and by now the official Xenoblade Twitter account was also beginning to share updates about the game on a semi-regular basis. Two months later, we even got a dedicated Xenoblade 3 Direct, which obviously was the motherload in terms of Xenoblade 3 info – opening with an extended look at the game’s surprisingly huge rogues gallery, this Direct greatly fleshed out Xenoblade 3’s setting (the world of Aionios, which is a fucking terrible place to live btw, more on that in the Chapter 1 writeup) and characters, as well as an extensive looks at the game’s features and mechanics. It was a fantastic Direct which made me even more excited about Xenoblade 3, and alleviated a number of the concerns I had, primarily regarding the combat system – the freshly revealed ability to switch characters MID-BATTLE was a real breakthrough for the series, and the new Class-system (new Classes being learned from these previously hinted-at extra party characters, called Heroes) introduced just the kind of extensive customization and team building options that I had been looking for.
Between the Direct and the Twitter updates, a particular picture was emerging, which made me hyped beyond reason: It was more than this being an extremely ambitious JRPG that boasted a colossal, well-designed and visually stunning world to explore, an epic, tragic story that was nonetheless filled with soul and cute, charming moments, great characters, sensational cutscenes and production values for a Nintendo game, deep and well-thought out mechanics, excellent quality of life features, a brilliant battle system, a Godlike soundtrack – I mean, all of those were just par for the course when dealing with a Xenoblade game! What was becoming clear was that this game was combining all sorts of ideas and mechanics from Xenoblade 1 and 2, and delivering the best of both worlds. You have Xenoblade 1’s epic war story AND Xenoblade 2’s intimate, touching character moments. You have great Xenoblade 1 mechanics like an affinity chart and items orbs returning, while ALSO keeping various Xenoblade 2 improvements like Unique Monster tombs. And of course, you have brand new ideas like the Class system, new overworld mechanics like monsters battling each other, and fucking mid-battle character switching! It was almost becoming hard to imagine how this game WOULDN’T be the best Xenoblade game ever. And seeing how Xenoblade 1 was my favorite game of all time, while Xenoblade 2 is 4th on that list…
That said, I did try to keep my expectations somewhat in check – I’ve been a gamer for a long time now, and have witnessed potentially GOATed games like Zelda: Twilight Princess and Xenoblade X get tripped up in all sorts of unexpected ways. And there were SOME news about and aspects of Xenoblade 3 that didn’t seem all the encouraging. One Twitter update indicated that one of the Hero characters would be “nonbinary” (not the character you think!), a nasty, unwelcome intrusion of gender ideology that on its own could seriously sour the experience. Meanwhile, the fanservice seemed minimal. And on the note of eye-candy, while the areas shown off so far all looked great, I had yet to see a single location to rival the likes of Eryth Sea or Uraya in terms of colorful, gorgeous vistas or truly imaginative, otherworldly sci-fi fantasy designs.
Oh, and Nintendo fucked up their handling of the Xenoblade 3 Collector’s Edition like you wouldn’t believe, because Nintendo has always got to screw over Xenoblade in SOME way. When a superfan like me doesn’t own the Collector’s Edition for the most hyped Xenoblade game yet, you know things were handled badly.
Still, I was incredibly excited for the actual game, and in fairness, I also got to commend Nintendo for actually doing a great job promoting Xenoblade 3, unlike with Xenoblade 2. I’d argue that Xenoblade 2 didn’t receive a single great English-language trailer (Nintendo apparently thought that Rex’s infamous racecar screams deserved great prominence), and the Xenoblade 2 Direct was at best merely preaching to the converted. Meanwhile, a month before its release Xenoblade 3 had already received 3 superb trailers, and its Direct was also extremely successful. Additionally, the JewTube view counts for Xenoblade 3 content showed a dramatic uptick in interest compared to Xenoblade 2’s hype cycle. Along with Persona, Xenoblade has been the rising star of the JRPG genre these past 10 years, and Xenoblade 3 looked set to become another milestone for the series.
The last few weeks before the game released, I finally began avoiding videos and info about the game. I did note the game receiving better reviews than Xenoblade 2, but worse than Xenoblade 1, becoming one of many Switch games with a 88/89 Metacritic score that easily deserved a 90+, something that would have been a sure bet if Nintendo bribed reviewers half as aggressively as Sony does. However, game journo reviews are worthless anyway – Xenoblade 2 itself had proved that. I was intending to fully immerse myself in this game, and both excited beyond words and slightly awed, I began my Xenoblade 3 journey July 29th, 2022.