the internet lied to me.

Seriously though I can kind of understand most of the complaints this game gets but goddamn I genuinely think this may be my new favorite in the series so far. I really liked the orphanage stuff and I thought it was a nice way to develop the side characters really well (chapter 11 fucked me up HARD and so far has been one of the few moments in this series to make me emotional). Also the soundtrack is godlike. If the encounter rate was less annoying and combat wasn’t worse than Yakuza 2 then I could easily call this my favorite but for now I’ll have to think about it…

Edit: i platinumed the game now FUCK pool

While it sounds crazy enough to write a review about a game thats not even OUT LMAO. I why I can 100% confirm that this game will be my favourite game ever when it releases.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is from a series I'm genuinely not that familiar with. beside playing Xenosaga Freaks on the PS2 15 years ago. Having played a few hours of Xenoblade Chronicles X on the wii u and having watched like 7 episodes of Xenosaga : The Animation and then dropping it out of boredom. You would genuinely be insane from a series where your intertest was never fully captured nor grasped to have the latest entry be your FAVOURITE GAME EVER?! Well here I will try to concretely enough explain my "My insanity" or for some of you guys "Stupidity" I'm assuming.

I found out about Xenoblade Chronicles 3 pretty late actually the game was revealed at the Nintendo Direct in 2022. I accidentally stumbled upon the game in February pure on whim. I was watching videos about JRPGs and I saw the games Trailer in my recommendations. I didn't even wanna click on the trailer nor did I want it to play YouTube Autoplayed it for me when I went to the toilet lol... but when I came back I was like "fuck it why not" and pressed replay and my mind was blown away... to most it's a standard trailer nothing outstanding or experimental enough for someone to lose their shit over it but man... I WAS IN. From the VA of Noah the silent build up and the narrator to the big open athmosphere but with a striking distinct visual style. It reminded so much of every favourite open world jrpg series I love and it happens so rarely that I ever have such a strong sense of nostolgia from past of something in the present that I have no strong knowledge. But from the previously mentioned things and flashy gameplay and strong and striking character designs. I just knew it was the one. The open world fantasy genre is a VERY important genre to me because it helped me allot as a person throughout my life and I honestly watched allot of fantasy media but super rarely has this same feeling been matched before. I literally searched up every information about the game since and don't think I've ever been as hype for something as this game. The latest Info dump just made me even more confident in my feelings. I rewatched each trailer over 10x and watched the gameplay showcases over 10x. Did as much research as I can on the people working on it. Theorize heavy about future characters , environments and potential story beats. I genuinely have 100% trust in this game and don't think I can get dissapointed really.

So it really a case of pure feelings of nostolgia , charm and trust that makes me so sure. I know this seems goofy asf to write this but I know myself the best so I know best what my true feelings on the game will be.

( P.S I've done this before and know how my expectations work so I really cannot be dissapointed. also I will do a follow up in September on this when I play it.

I think it’s important to note before I really delve into this review is the fact that I used a guide for pretty much the entirety of this game. Hell, I wouldn’t have even attempted to finish it if I didn’t have a guide to use. I did the first couple of puzzles, didn’t like them at all, and didn’t want to go through potential hours of frustration throughout the whole game. I am glad I did that though however, because…

This is probably the best and worst game I have ever played. At least, that’s what I was told going into it. I had never heard of this game and barely knew anything about the Kill the Past series as a whole prior to Killer 7 until a couple of people I met on a discord server started to talk about it a lot. One of them was generous enough to gift me The Silver Case, 25th Ward, and Killer 7 all on steam and I’m very thankful for that because I don’t think I would have experienced this batshit insane game or series otherwise (Thanks, PSI!)

Anyways, about Flower, Sun, and Rain itself. I don’t want to discuss spoilers much as this is a game you need to play not knowing anything about it. Oh yeah, you also need to have played The Silver Case before it to even have a clue on what’s happening. Essentially, the plot revolves around the eccentric searcher named Sumio Mondo who is assigned to go to an island to defuse a bomb on a plane that is soon to leave with his briefcase named Catherine. Understood? Now what if it just so happened that Mr. Mondo went to a certain hotel that caused him to be stuck in a time loop and had to figure out why each night he saw a plane blew up in the sky? Doesn’t sound so simple then I suppose. Each day, Mr. Mondo follows his morning routine of being woken up to a phone call from the hotel manager Edo, falling out of bed, and then enjoying his morning cup of coffee. A time loop isn’t the most unique plot device, yet each day felt so distinct that it never got old. Honestly, I think one thing that makes me prefer this game over The Silver Case is how engaging everything was writing wise. The plot constantly managed to pull batshit insane twists yet it was all understandable. You could be constantly surprised yet you’d be able to put the connections together easily. One of my small complaints with The Silver Case is that I found it kinda boring at times when I couldn’t tell what was happening, but I didn’t really feel that way here.

HOWEVER…. there’s a reason why multiple people told me that this will also be the worst game I’ve ever played. And that’s because of the gameplay. Now I already mentioned how I used a guide to do all the puzzles as I didn’t want to bother with them, but that isn’t even the main gameplay element to this game. In Flower, Sun, and Rain, you…. walk! and walk! and walk… and w a l k… The whole game is essentially designed around walking from area to area constantly and as the game goes on, the walks get longer and longer. Request 14 was easily the worst, and imo it dragged on for way too long. And the thing is? I could hardly even care. This could be the Stockholm Syndrome talking from the fact that I’ve officially started taking the Suda51 pill, but I couldn’t even care how the gameplay was literally nothing happening. I thought going into it about how if a game is genuinely painful to play, then it probably isn’t worth it. But now I don’t know. This whole game completely contradicted my opinion on the value of good or at least tolerable gameplay and now I’m not sure. Could bad gameplay actually be good if it’s made with a purpose? Have my standards dropped so low that practically anything is good to me now? Ok, maybe not that, Mario Party 10 is still terrible.

That’s besides the point though. The point is that I was so entranced by Flower, Sun, and Rain and Suda51’s writing style as a whole that I genuinely could not care about what was happening from a gameplay stand point. So what does that mean for this review? Is FSR a flawed masterpiece? Is it a genuinely terrible game and I’m just trying to cope with the fact that I experienced the whole thing? Who knows! I think what matters the most at the end of the day is that I am glad I experienced Flower, Sun, and Rain. The dialogue, the characters, the fucking schizo-tier plot twists that managed to not fly over my tiny brain, hell I didn’t even talk about how the fantastic sound track complements the atmosphere so incredibly well. Nearly everything about it blends so well together that I managed to have fun almost the whole way through. It may be garbage, but it’s garbage that I’ll probably never get the pleasure to experience again.

Wait a minute. I feel something. I’m getting that DS feeling…

Absolutely god tier game with fun gameplay and some incredibly soulful moments. Could be biased just because I actually like Disney, but some of the worlds were an absolute joy to go through even if some of them could be a bit frustrating. I played on proud mode as well so I kinda got my ass beat a lot but it never really felt unfair to me and I had a lot of fun nearly the whole time. I had the all in one collection on my shelf for about a year now and played this on a whim just because of Sora getting announced for smash. Now I kinda wanna go ahead and play all of them asap lol.

p.s.: the cabal got to me