Quick Disclaimer after finishing but this review has massive spoilers for every nook and cranny of Xenoblade 3, and my ramblings are assuming that you have played the game before and understand what I am talking about, as I don’t explain what is going on at all times because this already took so long as is.
It's my first review and this game took me 160+ hours so I'm going to go very into detail with my adventure during the game. For reference, my experience with this series prior to X3 is being 95% finished with the 3DS port of X1. To start off I like the concept of everyone being born from the queen and returning to said queen every 10 years. It’s a cool concept and makes for a good reason why every major character is a pretty dude or woman in their 20's, and it has the nice side effect of having every human character you see (like Gray and Guernica) have an air of mystery to them. There isn't much else to talk about in chapter 1 besides the combat. It's very slow early on. Probably just a hard mode issue but wow it made the first couple hours a slog. Also, there's bonus exp to go over. I liked it at first but with how much side questing I did I practically couldn't use it at all past chapter 2 without being insanely over leveled. I wish you could lower levels at rest areas in the main game instead of it being unlocked after credits. I like how chapter 1 ends with the whole world basically being against you and you can't go back to the starting town. It isn't super unique but I'm happy to see it regardless. Next thing that’s worth talking about is the class system. It's pretty good. Mostly. I think half the classes are fun to use and the other half are defenders and healers... Yeah, the class balance isn't very great. On hard mode you'll probably want at least 1 defender and 2 healers for boss fights just to survive as even being over leveled, evasion isn't a huge thing for attackers so their hp will melt. The problem with defenders and healers is simply that they hit like wet noodles. I'm cool with there being support classes who don't take the spotlight but that just kinda sucks with how offense oriented Xenoblade is. There are multiple "offensive" classes for defenders and healers, but they don't get useful combat abilities like daze or topple arts for example, so they are usually bad excluding Ashera's class in my experience. The class system is fine on its own, but I miss every character having a unique kit like in 1. The epitome of this to me is trying out Melia's class for 5 minutes and it not working like it did in 1 (my talent gauge was never usable which was like the whole point of it in the original...).
The desert area is frankly kinda boring but its fine. The chapter 2 cutscenes don't do much for me either. Ethel isn't particularly interesting, but I like her oomfie Bolearis. The lucky 7 show off is cool but that’s mostly because it makes players question whether it’s the Monado for the whole game until eventually the inevitable is revealed. Chapter 3 goes CRAZY though. The world really opens up here and makes the exploration of X1 seem bad in comparison. From the get-go I believe you get tipped off that you can do thing at Colony 9 because that’s the first thing I did. And what do you know it opens with a banger hero quest. It’s quite a shame that the optional hero quests vastly overshadow the mandatory hero quests. While there is something lost with colony 9 not hating your guts for super long, I think it’s worth the tradeoff for having Zeon and the rest of the quests open early. Zeon is awesome btw. In a way that could only happen in a video game, I grew a bond with him after exploring the whole Dannagh Desert with him being my only available hero. It was a hard pill to swallow when I got better heroes and learned he was garbage, but he will still forever be the goat for being the only one there for me at that crucial time. I also peaked my head where I shouldn't, and I stealthed my way through the area surrounding Colony Iota, giving me a future goal to accomplish in defeating Alexandria’s associates and then herself in single combat. I also eventually found Teach and his hero quest was great. Unfortunately the next hero quest was garbage; ass even.
Valdi is probably my least favorite hero overall and his quest is pretty bad. It’s a very boring quest where you have to follow a levnis around if I remember right. It might not seem that bad with how I explain it, but to put it simply, in a chapter that reached the peak of highs in exploration in any game I've ever played, this was a low. If this wasn't my favorite chapter in the game, I feel like there was a good chance I would stop playing and not pick up the game for months on end during this quest. With this quest you basically unlock an hm in Pokémon. You can now climb leaves which unlocks Gray's hero quest, but it also doesn't really make traveling any different. Grays hero quest while not being super remarkable on its own, is incredible because it again adds another old human character into this world full of 20-year-olds, contributing to the mystery. Moving back to the main story we get some good development for Taion and Eunie which is awesome. I haven't mentioned characters at all yet because this was the first instance that the story made me interesting in any one of them in a meaningful way. I appreciate how the devs made special effort to make Taion have unique relationships with all the Keves characters, I'd say he’s probably the only character I remember having meaningful relationships with every cast member. Not much else happens in this area, and then you basically get to this game’s version of the ether mine which sucks ass.
Xenoblade almost always has horrible dungeons. It's always jarring going from the best areas of a Xeno game directly to a dungeon in a cave with barely any meaningful choices in where to go. Anyways you meet Isurd and his colony who are hostile, but it turns out it’s an illusion? Weird, I didn't super care about this point in the game. I also reaaaaaaaally don't care for Joran's inclusion as Moebius. He's too cartoonishly evil in his mannerisms for me and I don't think there’s a meaningful payoff with him. You beat him in a fight (that’s kinda bs cause burn is stupidly broken) and then Isurd's cool with you. I like Isurd he’s neat :). You then must go into the Wildwood but before that you have to fight a dragon that's just chilling around. WHAT THE FUCK??? I still don't know why it was up there or if there’s a reason for it to be up there at all. VERY strange enemy. Before I talk about Juniper, I want to say that I love Xenoblade environments. I think they pull off having a world consumed by nature but also being tech savy at the same time very well. The huge building next to the forest made me realize when I saw it. Anyways I kinda love what they do with Juniper and a lot of colonies, they all have their own different world views, so each colony develops a culture which really helps with how small they are in game. This colony goes by the mindset that they’ve all come to terms with dying because it will be them returning to which they came; the earth, and that sets them all at peace.
A cool detail about Colony Tau that isn’t pointed out is how Juniper is the youngest in the colony at term 7, meaning there’s no new blood for the colony, which shows that the colony is well and truly abandoned. A similar thing goes on later in Colony Mu except all the characters are 5 terms or younger showing how inexperienced and ill prepared the colony is for survival. Back to Juniper, it’s cool how they have a elevator to hell (aka the deepwood) like all nb people do, but wow they suck as a hero and their class stinks. Oh well they can’t all be winners but damn that sucks. After the Colony Tau stuff there’s an event in the forest where your food gets stolen, and you have to find the creature that takes It and its insanely boring? Like, why is this even in the game lol. Next scene is a good one between Noah and Mio, I don’t have much to say other than its good and its nice seeing Mio be a bit angrier with her circumstances, with dying so soon and all. Next scene might be a favorite for other people, but it didn’t do much for me at the time and it really loses a lot of value to me with additional context from later on. I never really cared for Ethel and especially Kammuravi, he does nothing at all until he dies but he does the coolest thing ever and pulls his eye out in his final moments. Biggest tragedy is that it’s wasted on a nothing burger character. The part where Mio goes off on the Moebius is great, again it’s nice to see her being angrier. I was a little disappointed since I have seen a bit of this scene before out of context in a meme before so I thought she would be talking down a more important character but it’s all fine and good. Great scene for Mio.
What’s good though is that it’s all peak from here on out for a long while. Its chapter 4 baby. The cast moves into an area that MUST be sword valley from X1 which made me fanboy hard. Immediately I run into Ashera which also made me fanboy hard because she’s the girl that uses Dunbans move, how can you not love her. I will say though, for a big portion of my playtime I was not a fan of her and her colony. The ideology of the colony is that they want to fight as much as possible basically so they kind of come off as meat heads. I thought they laid it on too thick and while I stand by that still, Ashera skyrockets in my personal rankings once her ascension quest finishes. Back to the area though, it’s kind of a bore getting through since the map traversal skill you acquire from Juniper is very slow when covering far distances. There isn’t too much to explore in this area, but I don’t think it’s that much of a detriment. It does the best it can to guide players directly into the meat of the chapter; infiltrating Keves castle. The inside of the castle is very reminiscent of Galahad Fortress from X1 which makes sense with the outside area resembling Sword Valley. This area (and the outside perimeter) makes the choice to make all enemies aggro on you despite levels. While this makes sense for existing because you are an unwanted guest in the castle, it’s so fucking bad fighting all these level 40 goons when you’re 45 or higher. You get crap for exp and fights still take forever on HM. The puzzle isn’t very fun or interesting either. From what I remember it just made you walk around a lot but it’s a super easy puzzle.
Eventually you get to the top and have to fight some Moebius who are trying to destroy colony 4 with an annihilator (oops I forgot to talk about that lol). I love what they do with Eunie here where they set up her seeing her husk and its Taion who calms her down and comforts her then, and when now confronted with the one who killed that husk, she struggles at first but it’s with Taion’s support she is able find a way to outsmart him to save the day. I’m so glad that while Taion provided the support Eunie needed, its clearly her who the shining moment goes to. This scene cemented Eunie as a character I liked beyond just her funny lines in extra dialogue. With this they defeat the Moebius dudes, but they escape and colony 4 is saved! All they must do now is escape but it’s not that simple. They are at the heart of Keves and are curious as to why the world works the way it does, so of course they want to look around. And then they meet the totally real queen which is cool. The fight was fun for me, and I actually really enjoyed the cutscene where the gang tries to destroy the queens’ barriers until she self-destructs. I forget if it was before or after, but they reveal the queens name for the first time here. It’s a cool idea but in practice I feel like the mystery only works for such a small amount of people. You’d have to be familiar enough with the series to get a reaction out of hearing the name Melia, but then if you know about Melia then you’ve probably known since the first time the game even showed her with how clearly it must be her. She even keeps wearing a mask dude! Maybe I’m stupid but I feel like you’ve either known it was Melia since the first couple hours of the game or you are just new to the series and don’t really know who she is.
To get a little ahead of myself, I love the end f chapter 4. Another reveal for the Lost Numbers is great and it’s all just so intense. It’s a great way of keeping players interested after a crappy dungeon and before what everything has led up to at the sword. The next thing that happens is weird though. After you get out of the castle drain and head off to Swordmarch, the game has a cutscene where Lanz sees into Sena’s past and how lonely she is and is like really worried for her, and as the player it’s the first time we see this side of her. I think it’s a great idea to explore her dependency on Mio and her trouble with making friendships with the rest of the group, but I must ask, why now? This is at least halfway through the game and Sena has existed and been in the party for most of it. This just feels a little too late and sudden. You’re coming off the most intense cutscene in the game so far and NOW they want to take a deep look into Sena for the first time. Her whole arc feels too crammed up in the second half of the game I’d say, as all the other characters have clear starts to their character arcs earlier in the game I feel. I could be missing some key context, or I could just even be forgetting something that happens early on that foreshadows a lot but from what I understand currently I think Senas arc got undercooked. Back to the exploration, you finish off the rest of Sword Valley and enter Swordmarch and walk around a bit until you get spotted by the Lost Numbers again. You meet Guernica’s daughter Monica, and Shania-oomfie. They give you these awesome looking eyepatches which are awesome, and then they take you inside the Great Sword, which eventually leads you to the City.
The City is really freaking awesome. In the back of my mind when I was playing, I couldn’t help but think throughout the game that the X1 towns were simply way better. I thought of X3 having a quantity over quality approach with the towns because while they had more towns, I just couldn’t get over how empty they felt. Spend 5 minutes exploring any town and there would be nothing left to see unless you were scanning for side quest speech bubbles. The City is the polar opposite of your average Colony. The City is huge and brimming with space, there are so many npcs to talk to, and there are multiple sights to look at. There are parks, monuments, grave sites, freaking buildings. There’s so much to do in the City that my initial exploration took close to half an hour. But one thing annoyed me. There was a large amount of space that just didn’t seem to have any gameplay purpose. Remove it as a traversable tile and your gameplay experience would not change. Then I had an epiphany. Of course, there’s space that doesn’t seem to have a purpose, not every square inch of the City is optimized to be as optimal as possible for something, it’s a place for people to live and enjoy life. That’s also why the colonies are the way they are, they are optimized for warfare and not real living. They have the bare minimum to do their purpose and nothing more. There’s no reason for a park to exist, therefor it doesn’t. To summarize this whole paragraph into one sentence, The City recontextualized everything that came before it and I love it.
There’s probably more to go over but the main things that happen in the City is that the gang learns about babies and are given their new mission of saving Ghondor from a prison camp because she holds that which will free the Agnus queen. While a scene showing a newborn baby and their mother is a huge sitcom cliché, I think it works well here. It gives the same vibe to me as somebody who adamantly doesn’t want children, but when their niece or nephew is born, they are now their whole world. It’s just all adorable and gives the crew a piece of what they are missing with the injustices of the world. Before we set off to the prison camp, Lanz and Mio get a nice scene together which I though was worth mentioning. But whoo boy this next area is so fucking good, its actually just the greatest Xenoblade area to ever do it I think. Erythia Sea baby I love boats. There is so much going on over here. The game requires you to go to a couple areas to unlock the prison camp but that doesn’t even scratch the surface. There are 2 whole colonies to get heroes from, dozens of unique monsters, several islands, and even a super boss! And for once I can say with full confidence that the music is great here, especially when on the boat. You see I really like the music in this game, I vibe with the area themes, and the battle themes are fantastic. Especially the chain attack theme its unironically the best track in the game. But I saw somebody on discord say they really dropped the ball with the music this game and I had to think about that. With that I had a revelation that I would never play an area theme from this game on my own time. Who is listening to Alfedo valley music outside of the game. This isn’t a detriment to me though. While I think 1’s themes are superior, I still have my favorite parts of each area theme that I remember each time it loops, so I have to say that Xenoblade 3’s music is just very good.
To start, I think the boat controls are kind of janky, but it works well enough. It’s probably only a real issue for me because I was trying to fill in the whole map for some reason. My progress here is super scrambled but in short, I did a lot of side quests available in the colonies and I also did the two hero quests. Fiona is absolutely cracked in combat which is a fantastic addition to the healer roster. Her ability to just duplicate field effects is so good; it makes all the other healer classes better because those classes typically get the field effects. I think the circumstances surrounding her colony are cool, and the moebius being an imposter among them is cool, but the other characters in the colony aren’t very interesting. Her colony is probably on the lower end of my list but its still good. Next on the list is Triton who is awesome. While you’d think him being moebius would be more plot important, it’s mostly played for laughs. He’s so goofy and yet the City and colony Mu view him as a top-level threat because of his moebius status. He’s just a silly pirate whose colony is just a bunch of college student partiers and it’s a great dynamic. Eventually the colony 15 guys can move into the City because of them getting involved with their affairs, and it opens a lot of cool possibilities. The game remarks about them being trailblazers for being the first outsiders to live in the City and that’s very rad. Unfortunately, I never got Tritons ascension quest, mostly because his class is hot garbage. It’s an attacker class that functions as this game’s blue mage from more standard jrpgs. He unlocks arts from defeating unique monsters. Sounds cool until you realize that any monster you defeated previously does not count, making it an insane grind to get the class going. So, if you make Lanz a soul hacker to actually obtain the skills, he is complete dead weight ass his attacks hit like wet tissue paper, which is especially a death sentence in chain attacks. This class is basically a NG+/postgame class because its so garbage in standard play.
Since I haven’t had a good chance to bring up Alexandria again, I completed her hero quest a while back and wow her class is busted. It’s a crit machine which has proven in the past to be insane. It’s so good in fact, that if I was struggling with a boss, I would just change all my attackers to Incursors and boom I suddenly do insanely better. As a character she’s great too. Her deal is that as the one who got the collectopedia cards implemented, she can see information on both Agnus and Keves and deduces that the war is at a stalemate because both sides have equal resources. This leads her to put doubt in the Consuls words, which I think leads to her philosophy in the game. The idea is that rules are closely entangled with those who made them, and she wants to see what’s out there past the confines the rules put her in. She’s pretty cool and she’s high up in my favorites. Her colony is one of my favorites too’ just behind Zeons. Speaking of, Zeons ascension quest is very dialogue focused but I just love the idea of him being totally obsessed with farming, and its pretty sweet how him and Juniper become friends.
Back to the main story, the prison camp section is pretty cool, it has a different vibe to the rest of the game so even if it doesn’t last long, its very rememberable. It also has a small gameplay quirk that doesn’t let you use the ouroboros powers while there. Makes perfect sense and its kind of a shame its only for this part of the game. With the prison break, it leads to the peak of the game in my opinion. The game traps you in a boss rush spanning up to 5 bosses in a row that you just cannot stop in-between because you absolutely must see how it all resolves. The day I finished it all, I stayed up until 4:30 AM, it’s one of THOSE experiences. You fight fake Mio twice and then fake Noah once before you inevitably lose in a cutscene. All hope is lost and now your gang is actually in prison until the day of Mio’s homecoming, where its implied the rest are to be executed after. The stakes are high. They’re all in a hopeless situation. As Mio’s homecoming is underway one of my favorite scenes in the game happens. N gives Noah his flute and tells him to see her off. The worst possible thing he could ever say, torture at its most evil form. It’s incredible frankly. The way the gang gets out of this is by having M and Mio switch bodies which makes enough sense in context because of the previous boss fights. With this it all comes together that the one sent off was M. As N tried to inflict infinite despair just moments earlier, he suffers it himself. He goes mad with rage and disbelief, and you fight him again. Amazing stuff. We fight the fake Agnus queen also, who cares. The events at the castle end with N being shattered and emotionally inoperable for most of what’s left in the game and our crew having a newfound resolve with M’s sacrifice.
We learn about N’s past and reasons from Noah and Mio this chapter and it cements him as my favorite character in the game. He was stuck in the endless loop that Zed put him through, and with every life, another tragedy ending in the same way. His Mio and him were in love but all his timelines end with him outliving her after she dies tragically, and he dies with infinite regrets. After all this he is then offered an impossible choice by he who torments him, Zed. The choice to become Moebius and enforce this cruel cycle that has oppressed him so long, so he could have Mio again, or to suffer the same fate that has broken him countless times. Of course, as the player who is a third party, most probably think he chose wrong for obvious reasons, and while I would agree, I sympathize with his actions a lot. There truly was no “good” choice. On the flipside, M is now living a life she does not want, being a bystander to each atrocity Moebius commits. Its all just chefs kiss so good. Unfortunately, chapter 6 of the game sucks so badly. It has so many things that make me angry with it that it’s the reason the game isn’t rated 5 stars.
We learn through Mio’s new Moebius powers that Miyabi is still alive… Who is that? The girl that died in Mio’s story that she brought up once? Why does the player care about her? We just finished the peak of the story and are now thrusted into this chapter with the mission to save a character we hardly care about, if we even remembered her. We’re off to a bad start but maybe the chapter gets better? With hindsight I know that Miyabi is an enjoyable character so it can’t be all bad right? WRONG. So wrong. This game has put everything we know about its world and how it functions at jeopardy with what they do next. They revive Kammuravi who died earlier. HIS EYE INJURIES AREN’T EVEN CONSISTENT. They revive Mwamba who died in chapter 1 who was so clearly death fodder. THEY REVIVE EVEN HACKT. Who wanted this. How does this even work. The whole rebirth cycle has been a secret I thought, because it was a big revelation that we learn from the city. Its where Eunie learned about why she could see her husk from Monica. This was all under wraps and was not public information. So why are Mwamba and Kammuravi just able to move around freely. Its just a whole big mess. The worst part is that half the main characters ascension quests have this same problem. Garvel is back in Lanz’s quest for no truly important reason, which really confused me when playing, as I saw this all before the events with Miyabi. Mio’s is the Miaybi event I just mentioned, and the absolute worst offender is Taions quest. It is revealed that Nimue is from some stranded village detached from the world and Isurd says there’s a good chance that Nimue will be reborn there. He is correct and when we get there, there is a 3-term old Nimue. What the fuck. So, this village just has the birthing pods as a starter which is strange but you’re telling me that the current chief has lived long enough to see the old Nimue be reborn, meaning they are aware of the secrets of the universe practically. I just cannot understand why the game is so loosey goosey with this info. It actively detracts from other cool characters and their stories. Like Ashera for example. We learn that she has a scar on her neck where she got executed in a previous life and as she gets older in each life the injury gets worse and worse, and she also starts to remember what happened, so she effectively puts together the secrets of the universe over the course of all her lifetimes. Its so cool and recontextualized everything we know about Ashera and is a super interesting way to tie her into the main conflict. Why couldn’t they do this more? Instead, we get Nimue who serves no purpose after Taions quest, her whole hidden colony doesn’t have any relevance whatsoever, and it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Whatever, the characters ascension quests are all iffy for one reason or another but have some good parts to most of them. We finish chapter 6 by freeing the queen after beating Joran and his buddy. We get Joran to be good again but I don’t care really care unfortunately. We meet the queen and its Nia omg that’s crazy, I totally wasn’t spoiled on this! I haven’t played X2 so this doesn’t do much for me sadly but it’s a nice cameo. Our next goal is to free Melia I believe? We kill Crys at some point, I don’t remember when and I don’t care why honestly, he’s not even worth the time it took me to write this sentence. Crys is just like Miyabi to me where I don’t understand why he is brought back from the dead.
Some Spring cleaning is left to do, mainly discussing what I thought of the remainder of the hero quests. Alexandria’s is funny because she Is a huge Valdi hater which is funny because he does not understand her actions as hostile. The actual story is interesting though because we learn that Alexandria killed her previous commander with poison because of his misuse of the colony’s resources. Despite this news, the team decides to place their trust in Alexandria, and they fight the moebius together. Eventually they get in a situation where Alexandria’s life is in danger and the second when Noah is able to, it seems that he slashed the moebius with the lucky 7 sword, as he dies instantly. This is huge to me as I don’t recall Noah ever using it on a normal enemy at all in the plot. It really goes to show how much trust they are putting In her. With all that goes on, Alexandria is able to see what bond the group has nurtured, and I think she yearns to have that same relationship with the other relationships in her life. She’s never been able to be as vulnerable as she was now, because she doesn’t think others will accept her, which leads to her having trouble trusting others around her and it’s just a vicious cycle. The great thing about this hero quest is that it gets closure through colony Iota quests. Eventually as the last Iota quest, (I believe) Alexandria comes clean with her colony and tells them all her real age and birthday, her first steps to being a more truthful person. I might not be explaining this all the best, but I adore this character and I love her growth and how strong she is.
Moving on to Juniper I like how the Consul made all the traditions and basically set the seeds for the present-day state of Colony Tau. It’s a neat idea that those who set trends for traditions might not have people’s best interests at heard. To add on what I said before, I think the implications of the Consul is that they wanted everyone in Colony Tau to bite the bullet, leaving her little “Junebug” all alone in desperation. Dark stuff huh. Anyways that doesn’t happen because we kill the Consul, but even after being told the traditions were made to kill the residents, the lieutenant still insists on going through with them, partly due to pride, but I also thing its due to obligation. It’s a tradition after all. After saving Raine from his death, the colony decides that they can’t continue with the old traditions, but instead they can make new traditions. I’m oversimplifying it but it’s a sweet message. Tau is definitely a favorite of mine.
Isurd’s quest is funny, you see all the men in a hot spring 10/10. I also love how Isurd is the palest character in the game due to him being a workaholic. Ghondors quest is funny, I like the big turkin its rad. I’m sad we never really get a reason as to why she hates her name, her and her moms quest dropped the ball in some respects. Miyabi’s quest is peak comedy because Monica makes fucking Moni-curry. Valdis quest is really generic, and it doesn’t help that I don’t think I fully finished his colonies quests. The Nopons quest is middling to me but I grown more attached to Riku as the game went on, so it was alright. I like Tempapa, the bit of him being a good chef because he forges cooking tools is a fun idea. Monica’s quest starts to focus on her deceased husband but by the end of it you have the dudes brother tell her he loves her? Ew gross. Kammuravi and Ethels quest is a blight on this game and I refuse to talk about it. Grays quest is kind of missed potential to me, there was so much allure to him being a geezer and it’s just disappointing what we got imo. Him being married is so fucked up btw, it should’ve been me not her. Fiona’s quest reminds me of Alexandria where she must reveal a big secret of hers to the rest of the colony and its difficult for different reasons. If I were a bigger Fiona fan I would’ve loved this one probably but currently it stands at being pretty good. The Teach quest is good, I’m glad we get lore reasons as to why his name is fucking Teach of all things because clearly that wasn’t his true name. Kind of lame to me that we don’t get any more information about Oleg other then a glint of dialogue between him and Ashera.
To close the heroes’ section off, I have to mention that I obtained both the queens but did not do their ascension quests. Same thing for Triton and Segiri. Segiri is cute and oomfie and there’s potential for her quest to be really good so I’m looking forward to seeing that when I eventually do them. And before the final section I want to talk about Shania. I like her inclusion and I think it’s a great contrast to N. N seeked the endless now so he could escape his troubles while Shania put all her cards on the table so she could get a do-over. Both sacrificed the City for their goals which is a funny parallel between the two. A problem I had with Shania in the past was that it made no sense to me why she became a Moebius. She sought a do-over, yet she’s stuck in the endless now. I pondered it at work one day and in the end concluded that she deserved her fate. She doesn’t deserve to have a retry at life with all the harm she inflicted on others, she doesn’t deserve to take the easy way out. While I still think her becoming a Moebius seems odd, I think her conclusion just works. She deserved to die after finally coming to a understanding with Ghondor, and promptly being erased from the universe for her sins. This was Sena’s quest btw, this game is so ass with main party ones lol.

Last stretch of the game and lmao there’s a fetch quest to repair the boat to get to the final area. This is so fucking lame. On a funny note though, I got the artifact near Alexandria’s colony first try which is epic. The new boat is cool and the cutscene where you infiltrate Origin is awesome. Unfortunately, the dungeon is whatever by normal jrpg standards. The puzzle is lame and basic but its probably the best dungeon in the game regardless. Not long after getting there, you have a final showdown with N and it makes me forget about chapter 6 being ass because the game is peak again babyyyy. I don’t think there is much I can add to this scene because the scene is perfect as is and explains everything itself. Its so beautiful I got teary eyed just watching it again to write this. Noah and N fuse and that does something, I think. I don’t remember it’s been a couple weeks. You fight X and Y right before Zed because wow that’s really funny idk how they thought of that. I don’t care for this final boss fight, its too long. I couldn’t defeat Y at my current level and then I accidently used all my bonus experience by accident so I was level 90 for the final boss and I’m glad I was because I would have been pissed over a likely reset. I’m fine with a couple phases but this damn boss had half a dozen at least. I don’t really understand it honestly, there’s probably some deeper meaning or lore I’m missing out on. You beat Zed and you get the final cutscenes in the game. It’s fucking sad dude. I still don’t fully understand why it is the way it is, but it was a gut punch to learn that Agnus and Keves could no longer coexist. My buddies got separated :((((( What gets me is that the whole reason the endless now exists was to prepare the worlds colliding with each other, yet when moebius is defeated the worlds separate. I am definitely missing something but that’s fine, I still like the ending. Also, the stupid image with Rex and the 3 girls isn’t as bad as it was hyped up, I thought it was the final image the game ended on but no its just a little something in Nia’s room. The game plays the opening cutscene again but with a little bit extra to include Mio’s music which is cute. I really like the opening cutscene because I thought about it randomly at work once and it hit me that there’s no way this is what actually happens in canon because the characters don’t get a normal childhood, they were child soldiers. Just a cool thing to think about.
Closing thoughts but this game is fantastic. It is a huge upgrade from 1 in terms of graphics and area design, and most features shared between games feels like a natural progression between going from 1 to 3. My biggest complaints about 3 is that it takes a good while to get going, and the fumble that is chapter 6, but all in all I understand how this could be a lot of peoples favorite Xenoblade game, and even their favorite game in general. It is truly fantastic and I’m so glad I played it. Thanks for reading all of this if you did btw, I didn’t intend for this to be around 6800 words total, but I had a lot to say.