Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (29th July 2022)

[Hero-of-Time]

1 minute ago, darksnowman said:

Yep rating it essential makes them the outlier...  

I got mixed up. It was the Game Informer summary not the Eurogamer one. I misread the Era thread with the summaries. Makes me feel a lot better about the game because I rate Eurogamer's opinion highly whereas Game Informer....meh. 

[darksnowman]

1 minute ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I got mixed up. It was the Game Informer summary not the Eurogamer one. I misread the Era thread with the summaries. Makes me feel a lot better about the game because I rate Eurogamer's opinion highly whereas Game Informer....meh. 

Yes, sometimes it's hard to know with those low scores if they can be trusted or if they're doing it stand out from the crowd and pull in some clicks.

Taking a look at the Eurogamer review now. It's a good piece and the polar opposite of GI. One has nothing good to comment on, the other has nothing bad to say. The truth will be somewhere in the middle of the two.

[Hero-of-Time]

Digital Foundry Summary

• has FMV in the intro
• XC2 dips as low as 360p with sharpening
• XC3 might feature temporal upsampling
• sampling previous frames to improve IQ
• XC2 was spatial
• common resolution is 540p in docked
• fast motion reveals the true res
• in portable, the resolution is similar to XC2 (360p minimum) but significantly better IQ
• there's a warbling effect due to the upsampling technique
• XC3's running animation is better designed compared to XC1 and 2, more like XCX
• usage of inverse kinematic to make the characters more grounded in the world
• movement animation now matches the pacing, no more sliding
• has per-object motion blur, has artifacts due to low resolution
• has a procedural cloud system
• low resolution clouds
• shadows don't change based on ToD
• object pop-in is apparent, still better than the last couple games
• consistent 30fps delivery, changes based on what's on the screen
• as areas become dense or in combat, frame rate can drop
• can go as low as 24fps
• real time cutscenes is stable with some drops
• some macroblocking in the FMVs
• has 5.1 audio
• biggest complaint is too many tutorials
• has a customizable UI

[darksnowman]

54 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

significantly better IQ

Not surprising. Reyn was never passing any IQ tests.

[martinist]

I kinda forgot this came out. Was busy with live a live and xenoblade 1 and 2.

[Glen-i]

12 minutes ago, martinist said:

I kinda forgot this came out. Was busy with live a live and xenoblade 1 and 2.

Come back in three days, then post that comment.

[Julius]

So this is awesome: they built the flutes seen in the game for the game's music recordings! 

 

[Mokong]

My copy arrived today, wohoo...gonna inhale my dinner and get playing :D

 

[Glen-i]

3 hours ago, Mokong said:

My copy arrived today, wohoo...gonna inhale my dinner and get playing

Mine's just about to finish downloading, but likely won't be available until 12.

We'll see how I feel about playing it at midnight.

[Glen-i]

It might have been mentioned in the Direct (I didn't watch it), but the Shulk amiibo has a specific use in this.

[ArtMediocre]

First Switch game I've bought in years. Looking forward to playing it tonight!

[Hero-of-Time]

Xenoblade 3 profile pictures and frames are now available to buy with your platinum coins over on the  missions and rewards NSO page on the Switch.

[MindFreak]

Played for 1.5 hours yesterday. Despite it being the very beginning and tutorial heavy, I enjoyed it very much. I think it was a very smooth introduction, at least if you have played XC2. 

Got to the point where I am allowed to go outside Colony 9 again. 

Edited July 30, 2022 by MindFreak

[martinist]

Still working my way through XB1 and 2. ShopTo are sold out which I think is the first time i've seen that for a Xenoblade game. I'll pick it up once i'm through with the first two games.

[darksnowman]

17 hours ago, martinist said:

Still working my way through XB1 and 2. ShopTo are sold out which I think is the first time i've seen that for a Xenoblade game. I'll pick it up once i'm through with the first two games.

Where did you get 2 or has it been in the backlog for a while?

[Hero-of-Time]

I bought this to play over the weekend but Amazon didn't deliver my copy until 19:00 on Saturday night. By that point drahkon had already got me playing Children of Morta (fantastic game) and that sucked away all of my time. Hopefully I'll get around to playing Xenoblade this week. 

Looking at the thread, it doesn't look like I've missed any conversation about the game anyway.  

[Glen-i]

Well, the only person here that I know is playing it is @Mokong, and we chatted about it while playing Mon Hun.

But fine, I'll give my thoughts so far. I'm on Chapter 2, and I have to say, it's a very intriguing intro. A lot of questions, especially for those who played 1 and 2.

It's also interesting that the game goes out of its way to mix mechanics from those two games as well. We have gem crafting (it's much more straightforward here) from the first game, but also cooking from the sequel.

Half of the party recharge arts over time, the other do so by auto-attacking, again a difference between the first two games.

This mix and matching of mechanics makes battles even more fun for me.

But the real kicker here is that it has a Bravely Default inspired job system going on! You assign a base job to a character, but you can borrow arts and passive skills from other jobs to really customise your strategy! Well, assuming they've leveled up the appropriate jobs, that is.

I love me some job based shenanigans in RPG's.

[MindFreak]

I didn't like that I feel forced to change Noah's class. I don't like the class he changes into. 

But I really like the setting and the story so far (also at chapter 2). It quite philosophical in its essense which I enjoy, and the characters are for the most part likeable and really different. I think they did a spectacular job in that regard. 

[Glen-i]

7 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

I didn't like that I feel forced to change Noah's class. I don't like the class he changes into.

It's only for tutorial purposes, you'll be able to change back soon if you want.

[MindFreak]

1 hour ago, Glen-i said:

It's only for tutorial purposes, you'll be able to change back soon if you want.

Yeah, but then it said that I had already maxed out that class and was recommended to change it. So I kept it the way the tutorial asked me to to max out that class as well. 

[Glen-i]

3 hours ago, MindFreak said:

Yeah, but then it said that I had already maxed out that class and was recommended to change it. So I kept it the way the tutorial asked me to to max out that class as well. 

Ah, right. Yeah.

Well, if you prefer to play as a Swordmaster, you can just swap who you control instead by holding ZL and pressing L or R.

[MindFreak]

2 hours ago, Glen-i said:

Ah, right. Yeah.

Well, if you prefer to play as a Swordmaster, you can just swap who you control instead by holding ZL and pressing L or R.

That's true. Hadn't thoughr of that. 

I just find the tank role a bit boring to use. 

[martinist]

10 hours ago, darksnowman said:

Where did you get 2 or has it been in the backlog for a while?

I played Xenoblade 2 on and off then dropped it. I got to the main characters "hometown" then i just gave up. Once I finish Xenoblade 1 i'll go back to it, maybe start from the begining.

[darksnowman]

1 hour ago, martinist said:

I played Xenoblade 2 on and off then dropped it. I got to the main characters "hometown" then i just gave up. Once I finish Xenoblade 1 i'll go back to it, maybe start from the begining.

Sorry, I meant where did you get it from? Seems to not be in stock in the places I've checked.

[martinist]

15 hours ago, darksnowman said:

Sorry, I meant where did you get it from? Seems to not be in stock in the places I've checked.

Where did I get Xenoblade 2? I had it on pre-order from ShopTo before it came out. Got deleivered a day early. If you're looking for a physical copy I'd check GAME or CEX and maybe eBay if you're getting desperate. The eBay prices might have went up now thaat X3 has been released though.

Tried going through it and was having an ok time but then all those tutorials about driver combos, elemental burst combos, chain attacking, blade combos and spacific rare blade quests started comming up and i just got confused. Ended up just hitting stuff untill it died then I dropped it. Need to get more familiar with the battle mechanics before i get back to it.