These soldiers carry around special flutes to play at the end of big battles, as a send-off to those who died prematurely and couldn’t make it to their Homecomings. Our special anime boy protagonist this time around is Noah, a ponytailed swordsman who has an unusual role in his army as an Off-Seer. It’s not exactly uplifting stuff, but a great cast of characters helps keep you invested in such a depressing world. People who are functionally teenagers have existential dread about what kinds of legacies they’ll leave behind after their lives are artificially cut short.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s central narrative touches on far heavier subjects than your average Nintendo game: The role war plays in keeping a population in check, the process of unlearning propaganda, finding the humanity in those you’ve been conditioned to see as the other, and seeking joy in a world that worships (or, more accurately, fetishizes) death. Oh, and observant fans will notice landmarks and locations from the worlds of the first two Xenoblade Chronicles games littered around Aionios, which is certainly strange and, of course, factors into the story later on. One early scene makes it clear that none of these characters have any idea what an old person is, while another establishes that sexual and romantic desire simply don't exist in Keves and Agnus. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 seems like a somewhat normal war story up front, but you'll notice - and, if you're game, quickly get hooked on - a steady trickle of world-building weirdness throughout the first 10 hours. From day one, they’re instructed in the art of combat, with only one incentive to keep going: If they make it to the end of their 10th term, they get sent to the afterlife in a special "Homecoming" ceremony by their respective kingdom’s queen. Each citizen of these kingdoms comes out of a birthing chamber as a preteen and lives a maximum of 10 years (called "terms" instead) as nothing but fodder for the war effort. The new sequel's setting is Aionios, a world in which the nearly identical kingdoms of Keves and Agnus are locked in an eternal war. What I’m saying is these games revel in just how cool they are, and Chronicles 3 doesn’t change that. A multi-dimensional world at warĮvery Xenoblade stands out right from the initial sales pitch, which is always some version of "What if everyone lived in a really weird world?" The first game took place entirely on two continent-sized mechs that laid dormant after simultaneously killing each other, for example. If you need one Switch game to keep you occupied through the rest of 2022, make it this one.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is Nintendo’s most unsung recent franchise at its finest, with the series’ most mature story to date, richly varied combat that rewards any and all levels of investment, and a thorough love and appreciation for its own world. I’m here to tell you that avoiding these games is a mistake. if not for a 2011 fan campaign called Operation Rainfall that helped convince Nintendo to release the first game here.
#World for two game review series
Each Xenoblade, from the series’ 2010 debut on the Wii to this latest Switch-exclusive installment, gives players immense game worlds to explore, intensely deep (and often confounding) systems to play with, and some of the wildest stories you’ll see in any RPG.īut despite relatively strong sales over time, the series has still been stuck in "cult favorite" territory for years. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is, if nothing else, a testament to the power of trust and persistence.įor more than a decade, Nintendo has been throwing seemingly infinite amounts of time and money at developer Monolith Soft to make some of the biggest and most ambitious RPGs of the era.
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