“Late” I got this game in September/October because it was released in the summer period. What does it have to do with it you will say? Which, as I had foreseen, I would have enjoyed it less because in the summer I tend to go out more, instead in the winter period it was better, in my opinion.

Also because I had read articles that said that a limited edition would be released in Europe for that period, but then… it never existed, oh well.

It’s the first time I’ve written a review on one of the chapters of the series, which ended on January 1, 2023, (so you’ve taken me a long time, as usually happens with this type of game).

In reality, however, it has been several years now, indeed, more, that I have known the series and played the various chapters.

In fact, the first was in 2011, the first of Xenoblade, and this time too we have a double figure: 11 and 22.

The plot is long and complicated, I will mention it I may SPOILER, but towards the end.

The game mechanics are very similar to the previous chapters, albeit with interesting and beautiful variations.

In the previous chapters we had 3 characters in the team who divided the tasks: attacker-defender-healer.

The defender with is said in gamer jargon: he is the “tank”, he attracts the enemy and takes the blows. The attacker is stronger on offense and deals damage or weakens the enemy while the enemy is “distracted”, the healer… well, it goes without saying.

Here too it is more or less the same in truth but the characters are not 3 but 6, and while in the previous chapters (at least I) I was comfortable using only or above all the attacker, here I wanted to vary between the various roles also for ” simple” reasons.

The most interesting novelty was undoubtedly the ability to change characters at any time, i.e. both when you’re walking and in combat, instead of having to go to the menu as in the previous ones (I think) every time. (Maybe I remember wrong and it could have been done in 2 as well, IDK).

Secondly, I found the characters of 3 much more interesting, both in terms of character and personality and also with their skills and fighting style, perhaps making things easier and more fun even for those who, like me, are not fond of defenders or healers. I prefer to be forward.

Which the “change character whenever you want” system makes it a lot easier because healers are the only ones who can revive other characters so if the attacker is defeated, just switch to a healer immediately, revive yourself and resume the previous character immediately.

Often, however, there is no need to use this system since the other character comes (almost always) immediately to revive the others automatically.

Dulcis in fundo, all six characters always unite, man and woman, creating the Uroboros, a very powerful being, with a monstrous, almost divine or alien appearance.

The player can temporarily transform into these mighty beings and each of which has different technical powers, this encourages getting to know all the characters and their techniques better.

Of course, there are many things to memorize because in addition to techniques you have to manage passive skills, and more…

But it’s easier for me to memorize or study these things than different combos, I’m a bit “lazy” from that point of view.

The Uroboros contrast the Moebius, human beings who transform into much more demonic monsters, with horns and evil eyes, our opponents.

Xenoblades are games in which I never find it particularly difficult, maybe I’m good at it, but it often happens that I beat enemies with relative ease.

Indeed, I tell you that this time I didn’t want to fall into the “trap” of the subquests to be able to face the last boss at his level, which I managed, on the contrary: by facing some enemies before him in the final phase, I had more difficulty against of them than against him.

He who? The Moebius boss: Z.

And nothing, it wasn’t difficult but it wasn’t easy either, but if one learns the combinations perfectly, in the end, that’s how he wins.

At least that’s my point of view.

So I don’t know if I can criticize the game for that, increasing the difficulty made it a little too difficult, but this game exists because of the plot, the story and the way it makes you feel and think.

Now I’m going to tell you about the plot, so watch out for spoilers.

We are in an unidentified world, whoever has played the previous chapters will have known that the worlds of the various games are connected to each other, so at the beginning we don’t know where we are.

Due to the fact that there were characters from previous chapters. at one point (Nia and Melia) I imagined we were in the future. Since in some points of the game it happened to meet characters who were, well, dead, or who reappeared as younger ones, I imagined that there was time travel and instead…

And instead the game has a very deep plot for us, we deal with issues such as: the present, the past, the future, death.

  The Moebius have created an eternal present, people are practically every ten years they reincarnate. But people are not born: they are brought back to life from their (I guess) childhood.

I guess 10-11-12 years up to about 20.

(This thing is not specified, they do not measure time in years but in “periods”). In this way they avoid dying, they reincarnate as themselves, and the memory of their previous life is erased.

A loop, an eternal present, in which human beings who live there fight for who knows how long, against others, an eternal war, made for unknown reasons, in which the same people die, several times.

There are small variations but all existences are similar, each person makes the same choices.

For example, a friend of the protagonist, indeed, his mentor Crys, decides to be the hander in every life of him (so we are made to understand, without being didactic).

In reality they are not manipulated by the Moebius, but it seems that they make this choice spontaneously every time.

There are philosophical connections, in my opinion. Does that mean, then, that even if we started over, we would still make the same decisions in our lives, even though we lived slightly different lives?

It must be said that the characters in the game, however, live in a very small world, they are quite… ignorant.

They don’t know the history, they don’t know why that war exists, they don’t know what happened before.

They are used as pawns, like puppets who fight without question.

They have no parents, they don’t grow up in any way except to learn to fight. They don’t know love, sex. They don’t know what it means to be “born”, to have family relationships, little culture and little information, to be able to be manipulated better.

There are no books other than combat manuals, science, history… they are geography, basically.

This concerns all the young people who, in fact, end their existence around the age of twenty, but not the inhabitants of the city, where Guernica tells us to go to the beginning, where there are the only humans free from this cycle, who can be born and die , but time stands still, cyclical in those ten years, anyway.

You don’t go forward over the years, over the centuries, of course.

How would we exist without parents? Love, I’ve always thought it came spontaneously, but deep down it must always be taught to us by someone.

I think that the first people to teach love are parents, guiding us through certain moral and sentimental principles.

If this does not come about, we may be doing it in a distorted way of doing it, causing harm to others and ourselves or otherwise being taught by someone who is not a parental figure, even if not blood related.

In this world these figures are completely absent, the characters know nothing. I wonder if it would be like this for us too, after all.

These things are pure instinct but they are also induced by the society in which we live… the conception of love is constantly changed and (nowadays) too much manipulated by people who seem more interested in imposing their point of view than the rest.

Imagine being right without,

freedom is completely denied, because no other choice is known, the six boys are offered, so that they can break this cycle. We empathize with them, because we then think that their cause is just, that we must live free.

Eventually it turns out that the two worlds of the previous games were connected to each other and were in danger of colliding, so this stasis exists to avoid confrontation, to avoid death, to avoid the future.

The two queens, Melia and Nia, however, had worked out a way…

In fact, in the end the two worlds separate and also the six who have been your travel companions, actually 8, counting Riku and Manana, because they return to their worlds.

So no HAPPY ENDING between Noah and Mio, who in the meantime had fallen in love, tears and broken hearts.

(I asked myself, wasn’t it enough to all stay in the same place? They didn’t have family ties anyway so it was inevitable, well, maybe I’m the romantic one).

So the world of Xenoblade 3, I understand in the end, is a union between that of the first and the second, which in fact can be understood by meeting a key “object”, along the way: see the broadsword where the city is , which was Mechonis’s in the former.

The other characters also seem to have fallen in love but less obviously than Noah and Mio.

Very well characterized characters that are well developed, among other things Noah himself is a protagonist that I preferred to the others: less emotional, more reflective, rational. He seems to be more mature and in fact also his motivation is more aware of him.

When in the first well, we had to avenge ourselves for the death of Fiora (Then still alive), and in the second a Rex tries to reach Elysum for Pyra.

Here we have a reason that is more detached from love, it exists in a more intense way but it is not the main engine it is there freedom.

The two characters fall in love but… slowly, getting to know each other slowly, it’s not an immediate thing.

  They grow up and we grow up with them, knowing and understanding them, feeling like them, with their will to live, for the future, fear of dying.

There are several messages in this game, I thought the main moral was that anyway, in life, you have to move forward. I’ve noticed that a lot of people ILLUDE that they live in a frozen time, but this world is not Xenoblade, we couldn’t escape it at the time.

And yet… I understand the very…human fear of time passing. How many people are afraid of realizing that they have become adults, of growing up. I have noticed that this leads to various errors: childish, adolescent.

We see these characters and they seem “more mature” than many people we know.

But I understood that, like other things, the “More mature” does not exist, it is one of the many misconceptions.

Maybe I liked this game because it took me on some paths of my current life, with a lot of reflections, well…

He had deserved to be one of the most beautiful.

There would be too much to say, but I want to stop here, let me know yours if you’ve played it.