On Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed
The Switch Xenoblade X remaster is due out in March, and I had picked the XB3 DLC up a while ago and just been sitting on it for a while. So I gave it a shot. Surprise, I liked it a lot (this wasn't actually a surprise).
General
It definitely bears its lower budget on its face, but it deploys its resources efficiently. Voice acting, music, general vibes - all are immaculate. There's not a lot of custom animation and often even in relatively 'cinematic' cutscenes you get a very distinct feeling of moving through canned animations. But it's like a book, or a VN, or perhaps more accurately like a JRPG of old: you use your imagination a bit. What's there is enough to spark your mind.
I was honestly surprised at how packed with content it was. I beat it in about 20 hours, give or take, but if I had been going for everything it would have probably gone for another 10 maybe.
Generally it sort of fit a very comfy mould in my life; I usually had a half hour or hour spare at the end of a busy work day to just zone out to this and go through the mechanical motions and maybe watch a few cutscenes, etc. Very chill. It's so nice to not be playing these games on a deadline.
It is very cool how systemically cool everything is, by which I mean most of the systems lock together and feed into each other in a satisfying way. I think it's great that you level up abilities not just with XP but by doing side quests, doing exploration stuff, killing X rats, collecting stuff etc. I'm a little less enthused about unlock slots being tied to getting shiny widgets out in the world (especially from a narrative justification aspect - it doesn't even really bother) but I can give it a pass here.
Aesthetic stuff
music: incredible, but that was a given. aesthetics, as usual they make the hardware limitations work for them. no particularly amazing vistas and environments this time around (i presume they were mostly reusing assets) except for near the endgame.
for the love of god please put a limiter on repeated lines when you do stuff in menus. And stop the music restarting to the menu music whenever you pop in just to check the map or whatever! Longer fade-in or something!!!
Combat
I've thought this for a while but i think XB is a series that is very much about the preparation for a battle, rather than the battle itself. With the buttons and the char switching and stuff it presents rather like an active time battle action-y sort of game but in my experience I tended towards a basic break->topple->launch->combo ender loop that worked for pretty much the entire game. Maybe if I had set it to a harder difficulty it might have pressed me more, but I couldn't really be bothered.
probably one of the places where the budget hit the most; there wasn't a lot of battles that demanded a lot from me that I couldn't go and just gear up or out level a bit. But that's fine too, I don't know that I have the patience for really complicated stuff anyway. With the lower scope of the DLC I think it was probably for the best they lock you into classes so you can't go too crazy, but it still did sort of flatten the possibility space.
It's unfortunate that a lot of the help files are incomplete. There's a pretty good basic grounding (enough for me to quickly re-acquire my skills again) but for the nitty gritty of what status effects did, the difference between blowdown/smash/burst etc I had to consult external websites.
Story
I loved it but I had to look up a recap eventually because there was a lot of hoping you remembered what had happened in XB3 (and XB2 and 1) and I, alas, did not
The characters are a little flat (especially the non-focus new ones) but they coast on the nostalgia factor really effectively. XB3 actually is a game I found deployed its nostalgia fairly well and this continues that trend. That said I think it might narrowly be one of those games it's more interesting to read about later than experience because in the moment it often comes off as complete jargony nonsense.
In terms of performance there's a very slight weirdness to the dub that I'm not sure whether I love for the narmy charm or kinda dislike. I don't know if that's inherent or not to the game, or even just to JRPGs in general.
Wrap
Great game and glad I played it and extra glad I played it before diving into another xenoblade in march, because i'm going to do that
the expected chorus of end-game revelations in particular i hugely enjoyed in this game