Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is the definition of the word perfect

This game does everything it could have done right it did right and went beyond that. From the opening cutscene to the last frame of the credits this game is just a constant emotional ride.

The story and cast of this game are the best i've seen in a game. There is so much to be said about both the story and characters but i know someone else will do that and they will do it better than me so i will not go into it.

The gameplay is one of the big standouts from 3 aswell. I was worried for some aspects of it prelaunch but after actually playing the game it turned out to be perfectly smooth in all ways it could have been.

The open world of this game is brilliant too with it basically always having something for you to find and mostly not feeling padded out at all. All the quests you can find around the world genuienly feel like they were made with care and passion unlike the very repetitive sidequests of the previous games in the series.

This game really felt like the game Takahashi always wanted to make and which is why i believe there's probably never going to be a game like this one

Man this game just did everything right.

it managed to bring amazing closure to the Crossbell and Cold Steel arcs while simultaneously having its own amazing story that manages to make its 3 already amazing protagonists and a ton of members of its cast so much better.

The 3 routes are all amazing (even if C and Rean have slower starts than Lloyd) but its just an amazing experience from the magnificent prologue all the way up to the Finale which just surpasses everything else the series did before it

Only real issue i have with the game is the postgame TRC but it lead to the amazing true final boss and gave episodes which were absolutely brilliant so its fully fine

Genuine love letter to Trails as a whole

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.

Fate/extra record is from a series I'm genuinely not that familiar with. beside playing fate/extella on the nintedo swtich 2 years ago. Having played a few hours of Fate/Extra on the PSP and having watched like 7 episodes of Fate/extra last encore 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 fate/extra record pretty late actually the game was revealed in a stream in 2020. I accidentally stumbled upon the game in march 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 SFX of Nero her heel the silent build up and the narrator to the strong fantasy athmosphere but with a striking distinct visual style. It reminded so much of every favourite Fantasy 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 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 the future on this when I play it.

My GOTY in this year filled to the brim with the best games of all time. I say this about a lot of things but god genuinely there wasnt a single minute of this game where I didnt think that it wasnt a pure work of genius.

I went through their backcatalog VERY fast but never have I trusted a developer/writer combo more than Remedy and Sam Lake.

Also as a Finnish person i just outright cannot state just how fucking amazing was it to see a work of fiction of this scope celebrate being Finnish as brazenly as Alan Wake 2. The entire game was filled with a bunch of scenery, jokes and memoribilia that could have been taken right from a small Finnish town with a major cabin population.

This game is just a pure masterpiece of wonder that's worth playing every single game that lead up to it.

Kondo's trick proves to once again be unbeatable with what's probably Falcom's most polished game to date.

Every single second of this game is the most insane fast paced fun. All the other times they reinvented the gameplay system the first entry felt very weak to me but X busted through the door with full power and full fun. Only real issue gameplaywise i had was boss healthbars felt a bit too inflated at times.

The exploration in this game is probably the best part about it. Just cruising through areas with the hoverboard or using the hook for swinging simply filled me with unmeasurable joy.

The story is also very great for what it tries to do. There wasnt a time where I felt bored or thought it was meaningless and there was a good amount of great moments for all of the main characters sprinkled into it. The "cast of misfits" that you collect during your adventure wasnt as unique as IX's but it was still a fun ensemble nonetheless especially with the main group.

The side content is basically the exactly same as VIII and IX so I dont have much to comment on that.

The presentation for the game is very good for the limits that it got burdened by from being on the Switch aswell. None of the areas looked ugly. The music was also very good for being a modern Falcom OST. Every single area and event theme was basically perfect with the few weaker tracks being mainly boss ones.

TLDR: I absolutely loved this game and i cant wait to see where they go next with Ys or whatever other non Kiseki title they are working on

Fate/Samurai Remnant is overall a very great game with a couple of pretty glaring flaws.

The story of this game was a very fun return to the "proper" Holy Grail War format that the franchise had not really used (Excluding FGO's Paper Moon chapter from earlier in the year) in ages. The way the game splits into a couple of different “routes” near the end also felt very reminiscent of Stay Night which was the best thing it could have been. Some parts of the story were unfortunately seemingly left open for DLC, but the package that's there is easily compelling enough to play the game without waiting for those.

The characters are all really great. Iori and Saber are just an incredibly charismatic duo to follow through the game and the way the NG+ exclusive ending caps off their story felt very cathartic. All of the other masters were also very endearing and I’m glad the game managed to show their side as well.

My biggest issue with the game though is its gameplay. The boss “break bars” are far too annoying to deal with and every single fight feels like a drag. The normal enemies and the more “musoulike” gameplay was very fun but most story bosses lost some of their oomph due to the super long time to beat them. It also did not help that the game required another playthrough to reach the 2 endings you didn't achieve on your first playthrough.

Perfect start to a new arc in the series. Takes all the setup to it given across the previous games and uses it perfectly while expanding on the world and lore in exactly the way it should have

The new cast is genuinely already amazing from just a single game with Van and Aaron already being some of the best in the series for me. And this is even excluding all the care and love that clearly went into the returning characters who all got something from this game.

The plot of the game is also fucking amazing with it having some of the best twists in the series so far combined with some of the most hype and emotional moments too

Overall amazing game that showed that Trails is absolutely going in the right direction and I can't wait to see what the rest of the Calvard Arc has to show