 I have been a huge fan of this series ever since I played the first Xenoblade Chronicles on the Nintendo Wii way back and I remember thinking already back then that the game felt very ahead of its time with simply a ton of fun mechanics, a rather unique battle system, plenty of collectibles, side quests and the pure excitement of exploring the world. Watch my review of the definitive edition, link in the corner. Now Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna was also great games. I also love Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Wii U, which is a title in the series I find odd that people rarely talk about. If that gets ported to the Switch then we have all the Xenoblade Chronicles games on the Switch. Now we have been blessed with another Xenoblade Chronicles game. The brand new title Xenoblade Chronicles 3 exclusively out for the Nintendo Switch and we will go over its story, gameplay, graphics, music and finally my verdict today in this video. Now please feel free to subscribe to my channel and I have 10% off the entire Nintendo eShop if you go to eshaggaming.com and use the code ESHA10. Look at the top pinned comment down below. Story! Story has always been very strong in Xenoblade games and this is absolute litter for this title as well. The world and setting is very mechanical and sci-fi focused in a rather hostile environment with several colonies that are at war with one another. In this world people are bred through these pods for the sole purpose of fighting with life expectancy to only be 10 years. They are born to fight and this is all they are supposed to know. Each colony has something that's called a flame clock which absorbs fallen soldiers life force so that the colony can run itself. And also every colony has people tasked with being off seers, flute playing soldiers who help fallen fighters pass on. The story starts off with us following along Noah the off seer of colony 9 and his friends doing their usual missions and in the confusion of an event that happens while fighting against another colony he is interlinked with another off seer called Mio turning them into an Auroboros which is essentially a very powerful entity. But let me just tell you this story. Boy! Look forward to this! There's so many twists and turns, so many unexpected events. I am just sitting there immersed in this story, I wanna push on, I need to figure out what happens next. The story is very complex and I love it. Every character is interesting to me and very well written. The simple dynamic between them is fascinating and entertaining. I implore you to never skip anything. This is a very rewarding story to follow along to. Now the world has a massive lore, tons of characters and places and just to mention something it's early on revealed that Mio is in her 10th term and only has 3 months left to live which also creates a sense of urgency in the story and also this is on top of everything. The world is also being annihilated by weird orbs. Now pretty early on in the game these two gangs of friends from two rivaling colonies are now exiled and forced to work together. It's all just really good. The story and writing is great. Annihilation event? You mean? If he does, then we whack him and if he doesn't, we listen to what he says. Great plan or what? Gameplay. This is a semi open world story exploration driven RPG with an auto attack battle system with cooldown based arts and tactical positioning. This game is everything. It takes you through huge and diverse biomes and moving from town to town just like any traditional RPG game. You will come across unique enemies, a bunch of side quests which are good. There's no side quest in this game, that's not unique. All side quests has a story to them, really super good. There's also a bunch of bosses and secret locations to discover. Controls are great and you can adjust the camera up and down and in and out. Exploration is to me very addicting as you have to uncover the map just like you did in scene of late one. You have the mini map, an overlay map and the actual map. I love uncovering them up, that is what I do. Exploration is just truly addicting in this game. Out in the fields you come across items everywhere, which you pick up by simply running over them. Containers with even more items, fallen soldiers who need a little tune to be sent off. And landmarks which will serve as fast travelling points. You can also auto run. In combat you can control any of your party members with the three main roles of attacker, tank and healer. And everyone can be everything across the whole bunch of unlockable classes. And as you play the game you unlock more and more classes. And it's like the game wants you to change classes between everyone just willy nilly. Preferably though I don't recommend assigning two interlink partners to be the two healers of the group, you know. And you know what I mean when you play the game. Because they are the only ones that can rest the fallen party members. Now aside from classes, every party member has classes skills, master skills, arts. They can equip specialised gems and their interlink forms. The Ouroboro forms also has its own arts, skills and skill tree. You can change everyone's clothes too. It's all just ridiculously customizable in this game. Now if you are confused with building your characters. There is an auto build button, which I find myself using all the time. Which just puts on the most efficient gear for the currently assigned class. That speeds up some things. The affinity chart is also found here, as we know from previous Xenoblade games. With rewards for your affinity with all the colonies. Completing collectopedia cards helps towards that. Though I have to say, I miss the old collectopedia from Xenoblade Chronicles 1. It was just way more satisfying to fill the pages of all the things that you can collect in the world. Now this game is different, you just collect the items and you send it off to get some affinity points towards that colony. So it's just different, but it is what it is. There are campsites in all major places and out in the fields where you can discuss side quest rumours sometimes. You can also craft gems and cook meals with buffs to them. You unlock meals by eating at every single canteen in the game, which I recommend that you do. Now cleaning your clothes, now that is simply for immersion purposes, if you were wondering. I have to say, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a big RPG game. A lot of content for your back. I have already heard that this game can take 150 hours to find and see everything. Combat is very enjoyable, except for the chain attacks, which I find too slow. I hate doing the chain attacks, I avoid them, unless I am about to die. Should be a way to speed up those. Now I want to say in the gameplay of this game, I just get that feeling that I want to see everything, I want to find everything, I want to do every single side quest. And that is such a good thing if a game gives me that feeling. The first Xenoblade on the Wii was graphically amazing for its time. But I feel like the series hasn't graphically evolved as much as I would have liked it too. Now the animations and facial expressions, they are second to none, they are good. But this game, as also seen in previous Xenoblade games on the Switch, I feel like they are suffering from this blurriness across the entire game and low res textures. Just an overall blurr to the game. It's like the game wants to be pretty, but it is held back by its hardware. In some close-ups of characters in cutscenes it can actually look fine, but other times I just can't see past the struggling graphics. You can call me harsh if you want. But know that I'm not saying that the graphics are taking away from their content and the actual fun factor of the game, far from it. I'm just simply mentioning that it is very noticeable. The blurriness, the view distance isn't great either. But the colors of the entire game are beautiful. The menus are gorgeous and simple and the world in itself is undeniably charming. Everything is actually great. It's just held back a bit by the Switch's hardware right now. Now I'm playing a lot handheld, but also playing docked. I felt a lot of stutters. You know, I was showing this game to a friend of mine and trying to convince the friend that it was a really good game. Because it is a good game. But somewhere deep inside I felt sort of embarrassed when I saw it stuttering and the blurriness and like, I'm like, I hope they don't see them. I felt sort of embarrassed by the graphics when I was trying to show this game off to a friend of mine. Now, it is an ambitious game, maybe too ambitious for the current hardware. But just like I said on Pokemon Arceus, I feel like the graphics are downgraded for allowing it to run at all. In combat, there is a lot happening on the screen, to be fair. So it is what it is. It does not take away my enjoyment. Don't listen to me. Music. The music was good. No, I'm just kidding, but I'm really trying to say that. The music was already good when I was playing handheld, only listening through the switches to speakers. I played this game a lot handheld. But, oh boy, did everything open up and change when I put a headset on and plugged it into my switch. It made everything go to a whole new level. Playing this game with a headset. Just wow, this is such a game. I highly recommend that you do this. Put your best headset on and enjoy the masterpieces of the tracks in this game. Some of the tracks contain super deep baselines that I didn't notice just hearing from the built-in speakers of the switch. But I heard everything with my headset on. Boy, the cave music especially. And the bass music out of this world. Super epic stuff. A whole lot of flutes are used in this soundtrack. But also some pieces contain techno and trance-inspired music. And there's also rock music and almost metal music some places. Voice acting is one of the best I've heard in all recent memory. I love their diverse accents so much. Yuni's accent is awesome. And I love Zion's voice. Ouroboros is bonkers powerful. Right? The only music that I got really tired of, albeit good, was the combat music. The traditional combat music that you hear a lot. Maybe that's why I love the bass music so much because it was such a needed variation. Now I'm gonna mention this one more time. At least try to play this game with headphones on. It's such a soundtrack. Beautiful, the orchestrated soundtrack indeed. Are you an RPG fan? Then yes. Are you a fan of any previous Xenoblade game? Then absolutely yes. Because if that is the case, I can't yes this game enough. It is a grand adventure of epic proportions, magnificent storylines, soundtrack, gameplay, and the game world has heart and soul to it. This game is almost a masterpiece. I give this game nine and a half out of 10, the half point being the graphics, because it's so blurry. But it's a game that wants to be pretty. Remember that. I mean, imagine this game having tales of a rice graphics, then it would be 10 out of 10 instantly. I absolutely recommend this game for you guys. I absolutely recommend this game for you guys. Get this game. And if you want 10% off purchasing this game on the Nintendo eShop, go to ishagaming.com, punch in the eShop 10, 10% off this game, any game, all the games, the entire Nintendo eShop. Purchase all of your Nintendo games from me from now on. Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you later. It looked like second nature to you. It was crazy.