Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a 2022 action role-playing game developed by Monolith Soft and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch. It is an installment in the open-world Xenoblade Chronicles series, itself a part of the larger Xeno franchise. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 depicts the futures of the worlds featured in Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and concludes the trilogy's narrative.
The development team wanted to develop a story-driven game in the style of the first two entries in the series, while featuring content and combat from previous Xeno entries. The gameplay and world combines elements from the first and second entries. Like the first two entries, the game was localized by Nintendo of Europe, utilizing a cast of primarily British voice actors.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes place in Aionios, where two warring nations, Keves and Agnus, engage in perpetual war fought by soldiers with ten-year lifespans. The story follows Noah and his two childhood friends, Eunie and Lanz, who are from Keves, and Mio and her two fellow servicemen, Taion and Sena, who are from Agnus. The six gain the power to fuse together in pairs, known as Ouroboros, and decide to cooperate to uncover the mystery behind the perpetual war and the true nature of their world.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was received positively by critics, who praised its story, themes, gameplay, music, characters, and scale, but criticized its technical and graphical issues at launch. The game had sold 1.86 million copies by March 2023. A downloadable content expansion taking place before the events of the game, Future Redeemed, was released in April 2023.
Gameplay
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is an action role-playing game with a large open world. Unlike previous Xenoblade games, the game allows for up to seven party members to participate in battles at once, including the main party of six controllable characters plus an additional character known as a "Hero". Up to 19 Heroes are available in the base game, each with different skills and abilities, and can be recruited to the party through story events or sidequests. In addition, four heroes were added in the DLC. Party members also have the ability to change their character class, granting them access to different abilities; raising a Hero's affinity with the party will unlock their class for use. Like the previous entries, the game has an open world design, with a day-and-night time cycle that affects in-game events, such as the availability of quests and items. The game takes place in a continuous open world that is the largest map featured in the series to date. It also features a fast travel option for quicker traversal, as well as the option to activate navigation to assist in quests.Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has an action-based battle system, where the player controls the current lead character in real-time, and party members "auto-attack" when enemies enter their attack radius. Unlike past entries, players have the ability to swap between all six main party characters during combat. Party members use abilities called "Arts", which can deal bonus damage or inflict status ailments depending on a character's position in relation to the enemy.
Each character has a starting moveset based on a Class, which consist of different styles of fighting and abilities, but all fall under one of three main roles: "Defenders", who draw enemy aggro towards them and tank attacks by blocking or evading them; "Attackers", who deal damage and utilize positional Arts to deal increased damage or trigger certain effects, such as combos or status effects; and "Healers", who support the party with heals, buffs and debuffs. By performing actions that correspond to a character's class, the Talent Gauge will fill up and allow the character to unleash a Talent Art when full. Talent Arts are special moves unique to a class that amplifies their class' potency, such as dealing massive area-of-effect damage, forcing all enemies to target the user, or fully healing the party. In addition to experience points gained by defeating enemies, characters also gain Class Points, which increase their class' Mastery level. Reaching a certain Mastery level unlocks Master Arts that can be used on other classes of opposing factions. The player can also fuse Master Arts and Class Arts into Fusion Arts, which combine the properties of both Arts into one.
The defining battle feature added in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is the Interlink system. Early on in the game, specific pairs of characters—Noah and Mio; Eunie and Taion; and Lanz and Sena—gain the ability to fuse into Ouroboros, larger forms that are invincible and have stronger Arts. Ouroboros forms are limited by the Heat Gauge, which fills up as the form is used. When the Gauge is full, the Interlink is canceled and the pair cannot Interlink again until the Heat Gauge empties. Heat Gauge consumption is reduced with higher Interlink Levels, which increase by using Fusion Arts up to Level 3. Certain Arts only have their effects active when the Interlink Level is at 3, which encourages the player to hold off Interlinking until then.
Similar to previous Xenoblade Chronicles games, the game features the "Chain Attack" mechanic. The Gauge slowly fills as party members attack, and increases further with the use of Master Arts. Filling it allows the player to chain multiple attacks together for extra damage. The Chain Attack consists of several rounds; at the start of each round, the player chooses one of three randomly available "Chain Orders". Each character's Chain Order applies a specific effect upon its completion, such as Taion's Chain Order lowering the target's physical defense. After a player selects an Order, the round begins. The goal of each round is to get over 99 TP, which is rewarded on each move used during the round and increases based on certain factors, such as the current Class the character has equipped and how many times the character has been used during the Chain Attack. By achieving over 99 TP during the turn, the attack ends for that round, which applies the selected Chain Order's effects for each round after the current round. There are three different ratings that can be obtained after crossing 99 TP. These are "Amazing", "Bravo", and "Cool". The ratings determine how many selected characters are "reactivated" and available to be used in the next round and also increases the damage multiplier. The attack goes on until the Party Gauge is empty.
Plot
Setting and characters
Set at least 300 years after the events of Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 takes place in Aionios, a world made up of merged locations from the Bionis and Mechonis, the world of Xenoblade Chronicles, and Alrest, the world of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, where the nations of Keves and Agnus are at constant war. The world is divided into Colonies, each with their own giant mecha called a Ferronis, fueled by the life force of fallen enemy soldiers trapped in a Flame Clock. Each Colony is home to engineered soldiers with artificially limited lifespans of only ten years, referred to as Terms. They fight to fuel their Colony's Flame Clock and survive to the end of their tenth Term in hopes of receiving a Homecoming ceremony. Among both forces are "off-seers", soldiers who play flutes in rituals to send off the dead. The game features six main characters who have the power of Ouroboros, including two protagonists: Noah, a Kevesi off-seer accompanied by his siblings Lanz and Eunie; and Mio, an Agnian off-seer accompanied by her fellow soldiers Sena and Taion. The two groups are joined by their Nopon support members: Kevesi mechanic Riku and Agnian chef Manana. Other major characters include the Vandham family, who lead a faction called the Lost Numbers that consists of Guernica, his daughter Monica, and granddaughter Ghondor; Melia Antiqua from Xenoblade Chronicles and Nia from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, who are the queens of Keves and Agnus; and Moebius, an organization led by Z that manipulates the war between Keves and Agnus and is made up of powerful beings called Moebius that oversee the colonies.The downloadable story expansion Future Redeemed is set centuries before the main game's story and takes place in the Cent-Omnia region, an area of Aionios not explored in the main game. It follows a previous group of Ouroboros that was formed after Consul N destroyed the original City. Like the main game, Future Redeemed features six party members: Matthew Vandham, a City resident searching for his sister Na'el; A, a mysterious being who travels with Matthew; Shulk and Rex, the respective protagonists of Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 who now lead the Liberators to oppose Moebius; and Nikol and Glimmer, the respective children of Shulk and Rex, who are unaware of their parentage and fight for Keves and Agnus respectively. Other major characters include Panacea and Linka, Shulk's and Rex's respective protégés; and Alpha, a being born from Alvis from Xenoblade Chronicles.
Story
Kevesi soldiers Noah, Lanz, and Eunie, as well as the Nopon Riku, are tasked with intercepting a mysterious airship and destroying its cargo. Upon reaching the target area, they encounter an Agnian squad consisting of Mio, Sena, Taion, and the Nopon Manana. A fight breaks out between the two groups, but then Guernica Vandham, the airship's sole survivor, intervenes to stop the fighting and claims he knows their "real enemy". However, when Consul D attacks him and the two groups, it forces him to activate the Ouroboros Stone he was smuggling and imbue Noah and Mio's teams with its power. D is forced to retreat, and a mortally wounded Guernica instructs the teams to head for the City at Swordmarch to find answers.With the Consuls having ordered Keves and Agnus to hunt them down, Noah and Mio's teams band together to reach Swordmarch, liberating Colonies along the way by destroying their Flame Clocks. The Queen of Keves attacks the party with a weapon of mass destruction called the Annihilator and threatens to destroy the liberated Colonies with it. This forces the party to detour to Keves Castle, where they destroy the Annihilator and discover that the soldiers of Keves and Agnus are clones created to fight each other. They are then confronted by the Queen and Consul N, a man physically identical to Noah. The party defeats the Queen, who is revealed to be a robotic imposter.
After escaping, the party encounters the Lost Numbers, a group led by Guernica's daughter Monica. She leads them to the City, whose population consists of humans with regular lifespans who also oppose Moebius. Monica explains that Moebius orchestrated the war to harvest life energy in an endless cycle, and that the true Queens created the power of Ouroboros to oppose them before going into hiding. Monica tasks the party with infiltrating the prison underneath Agnus Castle to rescue her daughter Ghondor, who knows the Queens' location. The group stages a prison break, but is betrayed by Shania of the Lost Numbers and ambushed by N and his partner Consul M, a woman physically identical to Mio. The party is captured and taken to Agnus Castle for execution, and only Ghondor escapes. There, Noah lives through N's memories and learns that N and M lived countless lives trying and failing to stop Moebius. When his Mio died, it led N to accept a Faustian bargain with Moebius' leader Z to revive M and spend eternity with her in exchange for both of them becoming Moebius; in the process, he killed the people of the previous City. Noah and Mio are reincarnations of N and M, who split off from them and embody their hope.
On the day of the execution, it is revealed that M used her psychic powers to switch bodies with Mio and die in her place. The party drives off N, destroys the false Queen of Agnus, and awakens the true Queen of Agnus, Nia. D ambushes them and wounds Nia, but the party kills him in battle. Nia explains that in the past, the world was split into the parallel worlds of Bionis and Alrest, which would inevitably merge back together in an event called the Intersection and destroy all life in the process. Melia, Nia, and the inhabitants of both worlds established communication and collaborated to create Origin: an ark to store both worlds' data and memories and their inhabitants' souls and reboot them once they merged. However, Z captured Melia and hijacked Origin for his own ends, creating Aionios. The party storms Origin, defeating N and freeing Melia. They confront Z, who is a manifestation of humanity's fear of the future and desire to stay in the 'endless now'. N and M, whose spirits remained inside Noah and Mio, sacrifice themselves to permanently destroy Z.
With Origin reactivated, the reconstruction process for both worlds proceeds, requiring the people of Keves and Agnus to be separated and returned to their respective worlds. The party members part ways and Noah and Mio share a kiss before the worlds separate, promising to reunite one day. Everyone is restored in the new world at the moment Bionis and Alrest merged, with no memories of their experiences within Aionios. As he heads for a fireworks show, Noah hears the sound of Mio's flute playing and decides to follow the music, disappearing into the crowd.