Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed

• Genre: RPG
• Time Played: 27 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Just right, having just come off the last one.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm very pleased with this, it has almost everything I would have wanted in the main game.
• Why I played: Because I just finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
• Recommend to others: I would far sooner recommend people play this than the main game if it were at all possible to understand anything without pretty much having played every Xenoblade Chronicles game.

From start to finish Future Redeemed was a joy to play. I loved the two most primary protagonists, two more were really great to see in this game and the last two were... good to exist in the game for story reasons, but didn't really have anything to offer after the cast of 3 and compared to the rest of the cast of Future Redeemed. The story was pretty snappy, always making actual progress to toward the main goal, not meandering and wasting my time, as was the dialog - even the side quest and random npc dialog didn't drone on and on like it does in 3.

Screenshots past this point very spoilery.

Oh, and I do count this as another game because you can buy it stand-alone, and could play it entirely stand-alone. I just would just thoroughly not recommend it, because it's very much a sequel, very much a prequel, very set into the story that you should have had gradually revealed to you and be immersed within at this point. That's the biggest flaw of the game, but also part of what makes so much of the content great. This game is pure fanservice(and not in the Xenoblade 2 way) for fans of the series.

But besides the fanservice, it's just improved in every aspect, you don't waste your accessory slots with the standard damage increase accessories, you do that via a different upgrade, there is a fraction of the amount of accessories, even playtime considered. 20 hours into 3, I was overwhelmed with thousands of accessory options(mostly the same but upgrades), the system still could have been better by just having unique accessories that get upgraded instead of having you pick up a dozen of the same accessory except with slighty better stats each time, but whatever, removing some more "basic stat improvement" ones really made a difference to feel like I was optimizing the character for their moveset.

The streamlined experience was also the improved experience. Too many RPGs get caught up in the layers of their mechanics and systems of offering tiny miniscule boosts, rather than something that actually feels like it has an impact.

So mechanically more sound, but also the progression and exploration - it actually gave incentive. You're given no fewer than 3 incentives to actually explore, unlike the main game which barely gives you anything in a much larger world. By exploring you find unlocks for character growth, by exploring you acquire achievements which give you substantial points for character growth, and by exploring you literally find the items you need to explore more - and you need to do some of it to actually advance because those important items you find are used to unlock the new areas.

 
It also has masts, which a lot of open world games use - usually towers that sort of show you where everything on the map is. I think where a lot of open-world action games that use this feature fail, is that the tower can be seen from basically anywhere so you are always just going from tower to tower and then fast traveling around. The masts in Future Redeemed are small and hidden away, and might require items you don't currently have. When they do reveal all the key points on the map, they are just question mark "point of interest", but pretty much every point of interest is worth going to because it has something tied to character progression, and not just a crappy chest with another destructible weapon or stupid tertiary currency.

If you go straight for story, you can probably knock it out in roughly half the time but unlike the last one where I felt like I had to keep doing stuff or I'd miss out, this one I actively wanted to do everything and was looking forward to it. I wish the whole of 3 could have done what Future Redeemed did.