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[Kataploom]

The thread is about Xenoblade 3, which is what I assumed you were referring to. The 2nd game is good, but the 3rd games story and battle system is a large step down from it.

It's strange you would make generalizations of how good a series is through both your posts, when you haven't played the most recent entry. Expecially when the latest entry is a lot worse than the previous game

I was just responding to OP but I think I misunderstood a little thinking they were referring to the franchise quality

 

[Komatsu]

Xeno 3 is a good, solid JRPG, but it never quite reaches the heights that 1 and 2 do. I started replaying Xeno 2 after finishing 3 and holy shit, what a difference the score and compelling villains actually make.

 

[JokerMM]

The thread is about Xenoblade 3, which is what I assumed you were referring to. The 2nd game is good, but the 3rd games story and battle system is a large step down from it.

It's strange you would make generalizations of how good a series is through both your posts, when you haven't played the most recent entry. Expecially when the latest entry is a lot worse than the previous game

i think 3 has better story, characters and combat system
it also feels the most complete

 

[JTCx]

Yes its boring and the weakest in the series.

 

[Gobjuduck]

I honestly don’t know how this is one of the highest rated games of the year?

Because it was one of the best games last year.

Do people just have an extremely high tolerance for tropey anime storylines?

Yes

I feel like JRPG standards over the last few years have just nose dived if this is the cream of the crop.

Persona 5, dragon quest 11, xenoblade 2-torna-3, and SMTV are amazing JRPGs. Standards are going up, older JRPGs are tremendous slogs that are padded out.

Whoever came up with the idea that jrpgs need to be 70+ hours needs to be taken out back and shot

Outside of chronotrigger, most of the best JRPGs are 70+ hours long. Maybe the genre isn’t for you.

 

[PonyStation4]

i think 3 has better story, characters and combat system
it also feels the most complete

That's surprising considering the general consensus on it. What about the story did you feel made it better written than 2?

 

[semiconscious]

Honestly, few JRPGs are good these days. It's always the same clichés, the same uninteresting characters with the same voice actors.
Even higher quality games like Persona 5 suffer from this.

I would like to play Tales of Arise, but I already know that what awaits me is 100 hours of the same boring story.

having just finished an umpteenth replay of ffxii, yeah, i'd say that if you have any kind of background with jrpgs from the 90's & 00's, there's really been nothing there of comparable quality for a couple/three years now, at least. certainly nothing that i'd prefer over replaying something older, but so much better built...

Persona 5, dragon quest 11, xenoblade 2-torna-3, and SMTV are amazing JRPGs. Standards are going up, older JRPGs are tremendous slogs that are padded out...

i'd say that this is highly subjective. as in, 'standards'?...

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

tfw when you were banned from the Xeno 3 OT for saying basically what everybody else here is saying

 

[Smasher89]

It was my first Xenoblade game, I probably played less than 2 hours and didn't enjoy any of it. The auto-combat was weird and I didn't care for the character or environment design. I'm not much of a JRPG guy so I don't have a lot of patience for these types of games normally, but coming from Triangle Strategy which I really liked, Xenoblade didn't click with me once.

Combat starts very weak in especially i part of the beginning, did you already get into a full party because its getting better once you gain atleast some control at all ( or over more than your one party member that early in the game). Swapping between partymembers midfight is upping the pace alot.

Yep. Doesn't help that the game was incredibly poorly balanced. Even on the hardest difficulty, I was breezing through most of the game by chapter 3 and never felt like I had a good challenge outside of the rare higher level challenge monster, which only made me more overleveled/OP. If they had the option to *lower* your level for greater challenge, I think the game would have been far more enjoyable for me.

Actually they let you lower level from the dlc options(or maybe it was in new game plus), i went as far as the first Malos fight lowering my party to lv 1 after each time i got exp, om sure i could get further if i just figured out how to win that fight as well.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Bu tthere are 3 other Xeno games...

2 is the best Xeno game followed by Xenogears.

 

[Dr. Claus]

Combat starts very weak in especially i part of the beginning, did you already get into a full party because its getting better once you gain atleast some control at all ( or over more than your one party member that early in the game). Swapping between partymembers midfight is upping the pace alot.

Actually they let you lower level from the dlc options(or maybe it was in new game plus), i went as far as the first Malos fight lowering my party to lv 1 after each time i got exp, om sure i could get further if i just figured out how to win that fight as well.

That is a wonderful addition. Will make my replay in a few years much more enjoyable!

 

[Madflavor]

No I couldn't get through it either. I hated the combat and leveling system. Hated it. It might actually be my least favorite combat/leveling system in any JRPG I've played. The story and characters seemed fine, and at parts pretty good, but there was just too much story. Cutscenes would go on and on and on. The exploration wasn't that engaging either. It was this vicious cycle of:

Hourlong cutscene > Combat I hate mixed with dated exploration > Hourlong cutscene > Combat I hate mixed with dated exploration > Hourlong cutscene > Combat I hate mixed with dated exploration.

I made it to Chapter 5 before I lost interest. I really wanted to like it but I honestly don't see the appeal. This is twice I've been recently tricked into thinking a great JRPG has finally been released. It happened with Tales of Arise when it got high scores and praise from fans, and the same thing happened with XC3.

 

[Hoppa]

Combat starts very weak in especially i part of the beginning, did you already get into a full party because its getting better once you gain atleast some control at all ( or over more than your one party member that early in the game). Swapping between partymembers midfight is upping the pace alot.

I don’t think so, I had the grey guy, girl with wings on her head and a little talking blob but yeah didn’t make it very far at all. I don’t doubt that it gets better, might even be the best game ever made after 10hours in, but that opening was not fun and I did not feel motivated to continue

 

[Secret of Evolution]

As I’ve said in previous threads XB3 is at best a 7. Can’t help but think most who put it above XB2 are doing so simply because it doesn’t have the boobs/tora stuff. XB3 has snooze fest combat, plot, villains, towns, some atrocious nonsense like movie screen theater bullshit walking into the screen(?????). Best thing about the game is the mecha cutscenes.

 

[Synless]

I enjoyed the first two games much more. Something with the cast, environments, and the OST didn’t resonate with me the same As the other two.

 

[DonkeyPunchJr]

I put in about 30 hours then dropped it, definitely the weakest in the series IMO.

I didn’t give a shit about the characters or their conflict. I don’t care about flame clocks or ouroboros or whatever. Characters yap way too long. I especially hated the stupid looking villains with the one-letter names. They belong in some kids’ cartoon show.

Gameplay was also kinda meh. I was excited about having a job system + 6 party members, but in practice it meant I was constantly dicking around with my party trying to cycle them through different classes to learn everything. And battles take so damn long so it just feels like you’re hitting things with a wet noodle.

 

[remember_spinal]

I put in about 30 hours then dropped it, definitely the weakest in the series IMO.

I didn’t give a shit about the characters or their conflict. I don’t care about flame clocks or ouroboros or whatever. Characters yap way too long. I especially hated the stupid looking villains with the one-letter names. They belong in some kids’ cartoon show.

Gameplay was also kinda meh. I was excited about having a job system + 6 party members, but in practice it meant I was constantly dicking around with my party trying to cycle them through different classes to learn everything. And battles take so damn long so it just feels like you’re hitting things with a wet noodle.

I hated the fact that i could just specialize in one class for each member. The game made you feel like you had to constantly cycle around classes, which in the end didn’t really make that big of a difference either way since they all end up doing the same shit.

I always side-eye people that criticize plots in western games or dialogue but then turn around and praise stuff like this that sounds like it was written for 10 year olds.

 

[Pimpbaa]

I couldn’t finish it. i miss the big lively towns, blades with huge knockers, and more upbeat tone in general of the second game. I can’t see any character from 3 making it into Smash Bros, everyone is just so boring.

 

[Gobjuduck]

I’ve played hundreds of hours of the series, and own all the collectors editions.

Gameplay - 2 > X > 3 > 1
Story - 1 > 3 = 2 > X
World - X > 3 > 1 = 2
Music - 2 > 1 > X > 3
Cast - 2 > 1 > 3 > X

Some of the complaints in here are just the flavor of Xenoblade. I question why someone would spend time playing something they are inherently apposed to. It’s like going into resident evil and complaining about inventory management and puzzle rooms.

 

[sigmaZ]

99% of jrpgs not called Final Fantasy are tropey and predictable as fuck. The FF games on PS1 were my intro to the genre, and I used to think I was a big jrpg fan who was just disappointed with the quality of new jrpgs. But eventually I recognized that the majority of the genre was always kinda meh, and that it wasn’t jrpgs as such that I liked, but FF games in particular. While the FF series had its ups and downs too of course, there hasn’t been a single FF game whose main plot or characters made me cringe in the way so many other jrpgs do. Every single one of them had a plot and setting that was at least interesting, something I can’t say for most jrpgs. One of the few other exceptions I can think of are the SMT and Persona games, though even they feel a bit repetitive at times when it comes to character tropes.

Another aspect that most jrpgs are terrible at is character design. For some reason FF is one of the few franchises in the genre whose characters don’t look either ultra generic, over the top, or like trashy fan-service/pedo-bait (Persona is good too, but that doesn’t really count since it takes place in the real world with real clothes). The character design of Xenoblade 2 for example is the main reason why I haven’t bought the game. The mc look like a doofus, while the female lead‘s ‚clothes‘ look so utterly trash that I‘d be embarrassed to be caught playing the game. FF games are some of the few who usually manage to strike the right balance between sexiness and trashiness, between generic and ridiculous. FF (post FF9 at least) is also one of the only examples of the genre to not have an anime art-style.

Though regarding Xenoblade in particular, I actually really liked the first one when I played it on Wii back in the day, even though the characters are walking clichés of course. But I always liked the overly philosophical and convoluted stories of ‚Xeno-’ games (Xenogears is still my favorite among them), so I could forgive that.

 

[Dr. Wilkinson]

I just thought the world design was boring compared to 1. The story was great, but it wasn’t enough to carry it for me. And everything just seemed like it was there to fill time vs being meaningful. I gave it 35 hours but I couldn’t finish it.

 

[Puscifer]

Overwhelming majority of JRPGS are boring waste of times post PS1 era if I'm being honest minus mainline SMT games that be done in under 40hrs minus the ones on DS


These 80-120 hour RPGs just can't realistically hold your attention consistently. It took golden and tons of player feedback too restructure Persona 5 Golden to give the player more agency vs Morgana telling you what you need to do nearly all the time.

 

[German Hops]

It needed mechs.