Xenoblade Chronicles (Series)

[Mr EliteL]

Well, ended up getting the game only edition. Not fussed without the collector's anymore, happy I got the game.

Playing for the first time today, haven't got that far because of all the side quests. Never knew there could be so much to do at the start of the game. Was thrown off from no attack buttons with your character fighting automatically, you only choose special moves and if you buff, debuff and heal at the moment, and no dodge. I've gotten used to the attacking now, but not dodging as moving away doesn't necessarily mean you're out of range of their attack. Perhaps later there'll be something. Do like how enemies aren't immediately hostile. I may have spoiled myself from some major plot points but back then I didn't know I was going to get the chance to play this. Even with that and how already I'm loving the area and characters, I feel this game has the makings of being among my top 10 favourites.

[Moonface]

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Announced
A brand new instalment in the Xenoblade Chronicles series was announced during today's Nintendo Direct, and will be released in September 2022!

[ShiraNoMai]

XENOBLADE THREE LET'S GOOOOOOOO- -she says, knowing she has yet to complete either 1 or 2-

[Mr EliteL]

I'm quite interested in XC3, I've only played the first Xenoblade and also haven't completed it yet. I think I posted about it in Last Game Played when I was playing it in 2020, but can say that game did indeed make it into my top 10 games, even if I still have some of the story left to finish, need to get on that again. Intentionally skipped XC2, still don't want to play simply because don't like Rex as the protagonist and don't want another game to add to my backlog, but XC3 I'm willing to see what happens with it before I think about whether I would like to play or not.

[Moonface]

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is Releasing 2 Months Earlier!
As Breath of the Wild 2 gets delayed into 2023, Monolith Soft have decided to flex the development of their open world game by bumping the release date of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from September to July 29!

[Mr EliteL]

It's not often a release gets put forward, especially after the last few years there's probably a very small amount or none that have done so. Hope they're confident and it's not too soon, I mean they have to be to announce so. Haven't made up my mind yet whether or not I want XC3, but it's looking good nonetheless.

[Moonface]

Yeah, I can't think of the last time a game got pushed forward either, especially by such a large amount of time. I don't see any reason why this game or any other would bother doing that though unless it simply got finished ahead of schedule, since it's not like anything negative will happen for sticking with the original date.

[ShiraNoMai]

I.... actually wonder if they swapped the dates with Splatoon 3, now that I think about it. I wonder if Splatoon 3 was the one needing more work, and this one had already gone gold and was just waiting release.

[Dragon Lord]

I.... actually wonder if they swapped the dates with Splatoon 3, now that I think about it. I wonder if Splatoon 3 was the one needing more work, and this one had already gone gold and was just waiting release.

100% swapped the releases around because Splatoon 3 wasn't ready. There's no way Nintendo would be stupid enough to release Splatoon 3 and XC3 basically back-to-back. I mean, Nintendo can be pretty dumb sometimes, but that's a level of dumb not even Microsoft is capable of... maybe.

I wish I could say I was more interested in this game though. Not because I'm not interested. It does have a catgirl, so that already makes me interested to some extent, but rather because I haven't gotten around to playing any of the other XC games. I do have... uhhh... was it a port of the first game for the Switch? Yeah, I think so. Haven't played it yet, but I have it.

Maybe by like 2055 I'll actually get myself through all of the XC games, haha.

[ShiraNoMai]

I'd be curious to know your take on them, DL. I enjoyed my time with them. I really wanna replay the first, and figure out how to do the second (I'm stuck on a 'mechanic-required' boss).

[Moonface]

I wonder what Nintendo would've done if this game couldn't be moved forward, having read your takes on it swapping places with Splatoon 3. I suppose S3 could've just come out a month or so later as a holiday release, but that assumes Nintendo doesn't have something big scheduled for that time that they don't want sharing a space with S3.

[ShiraNoMai]

Yeah, it'd have probably have been an even bigger delay if that was the case.

Also, in regards to the trailer, I don't know if anyone noticed but it seems like you now can have 6 people in your active party battling at once. That seems a lot to juggle, considering the combat is real time. It can also be extremely chaotic with audio and visual effects being thrown around and over each other.

[Dragon Lord]

I wonder what Nintendo would've done if this game couldn't be moved forward, having read your takes on it swapping places with Splatoon 3. I suppose S3 could've just come out a month or so later as a holiday release, but that assumes Nintendo doesn't have something big scheduled for that time that they don't want sharing a space with S3.

No way they'd want to push S3 even further back, because then it gets into territory where it'll have to compete against Pokemon Scarlet/Violet (late/holiday 2022). While Splatoon is very popular among Nintendo fans, there's no way it could possibly hope to complete with a Pokemon game releasing very near to it. 

They did the best thing they could do by moving XC3 up to July. That gives people who want both the entire month of August and a chunk of September to get through XC3, then Splatoon 3 will have whatever's left of September + October to be played, and then Nintendo likely does a late November release for Pokemon.

[Moonface]

Wow I completely forgot about Pokemon releasing this holiday. Definitely a good thing XC3 got pushed forward then so none of these games need to compete with each other, and lucky it was in a state where that was possible. Unless it was always going to be ready earlier but Nintendo wanted something for the summer and lacked anything until S3 got a concrete date.

[Moonface]

Well it's not the NotE3 Direct a lot of people were hoping to see announced, but for anyone interested in seeing more about Xenoblade Chronicles 3 regardless should enjoy this Direct that was just announced.