What it said in the title. The downside of playing a story-heavy RPG like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is that you’re limited in where you can go and what you can do for much of the game. It isn’t a true “open world” for now, though I know for sure the whole world will open up eventually, usually right before I’m supposed to kill the very patient final boss.

Happily enough, XC3 has eliminated the biggest issue I had with Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which is that the whole map was open so I couldn’t tell where I had been before and where I hadn’t explored yet. XC3 has also helpfully added a “show route” option, a marker which will lead you straight to your objective if you get lost, but I haven’t used it yet because the map layout is a lot less confusing this time.

I have used the Auto Battle option a few times, mainly for weak mobs that insist on attacking you. In general though, I don’t want to see auto-battle in a game where I’m supposed to be enjoying the combat. Which I kind of am, kind of amn’t. My tastes have shifted heavily towards “Unga Bunga Me Cut You Die” kind of action RPGs, so this auto-attacking with skills stuff feels a bit sluggish. But to XC3’s credit, they’re trying to keep things fresh with a variety of classes.

I’ve already used a sword, a pair of chakrams and a greatsword in 12 hours, with the promise of many more classes on the way. Usually I dislike class systems in an RPG because I get stressed out about optimum builds, but here you can change quite freely, the benefits aren’t that great and it keeps combat from falling into a rut, so I’m enjoying the changes.

Next the story and characters, which I also complained heavily about in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. I’d already accepted that the Xenoblade series is one I enjoyed for the exploration and combat (sorta) while holding my nose at the story, but this time it’s not that bad at all.

The hero Noah is the sickeningly sweet goody-goody kind of hero mainly seen in the kind of isekai manga where the hero forgives all the bad guys and quickly ends up with a harem of slaves… Hmm, now there’s a thought… On the plus side he isn’t slavering all over a random pretty girl, he thinks things through when he can, and he questions the status quo even more than those around him. He’s a sap, but he’s a promising sap.

There’s also the obligatory bulky best friend, the fiesty chick, the Nopons, the possible love interest, etc etc. I’m mainly playing to find out what shady secret Taion is hiding, I know that dude is up to something… But this isn’t a spoiler post (for now) so we’ll leave it here for now. All I can say is I like the characters (except Eunie) and the story-I-won’t-spoil is quite fine, though the cutscenes are a little long. And they still do that thing where I beat up the enemy fair and square but the cutscene afterwards shows us struggling helplessly against a mighty foe. I HATE that trope, but I guess it’s just a Xenoblade thing, so I must helplessly accept it.

Speaking of helplessness, Monolithsoft stopped letting players warp back to town to save and chillax in the midst of a crisis. If you’re persona non grata somewhere, you can’t just waltz back in. If you’re on the run, you can’t teleport your way away from your pursuers because that would be cheating. It adds tension and makes sense so I like it, though it probably won’t be so cute if I ever get stuck on a hard boss for lack of grinding.

Last word for this initial post: I kind of like what they’ve done with sidequests. They’ve shoved all the petty collection and fetch quests into a category where you don’t even have to meet the quest giver to get or finish the quest. They post their request “online,” you find their stuff and submit it “online” which totally doesn’t make sense but we can assume the Nopons delivered the goods. Then you get your rewards. That means there are fewer sidequests, but the ones that do exist are higher quality and more closely related to the story and the characters. Quantity vs. quality.

I lean towards the “quantity” side myself, though. Not everything has to be deep and meaningful in a videogame. In particular I wish there were more “Kill X monsters” kind of quests, but it’s early days yet. In any case XC2 had too many lazybones NPCs so this is a bit refreshing.

That’s enough for quick first impressions. I studiously avoided all Xenoblade Chronicles 3 trailers to the extent that the only things I knew going in were the title, the release date and the face of the main character. That makes every area and every twist and turn fresh and exciting now. I even avoided looking at the poster image, so I didn’t know who would be joining the party until they actually joined. I’m thinking of doing the same thing with Genshin Impact from now on. Now I think of it, it’s self-defeating to play a game about exploration and have everything exposed before you even buy the game. Right?

Anyway, that’s it for now, see you guys in another 13 hours or so!