I wrote a pretty long comment elsewhere regarding Xenoblade 3, which is pretty much my favourite game of all time in 30+ years of gaming. I guess it would be a cool idea for others to do the same - but don’t just give a list, sell your favourite title to us!
So, Xenoblade 3 (Switch, although I now play it on my PC via Yuzu in 4k) is the final part of the RPG trilogy developed by Monolithsoft (Nintendo owned second party, responsible for the overworld tech in Zelda BOTW/TOTK). The director of the series is Tetsuya Takahashi, who is also the creator of Xenogears and Xenosaga (there are links to Blade, I won’t spoil).
Xenoblade 3 shows what happens to the individual worlds of Xenoblade 1 and 2 once they collide. However the series is structured in such a way that you can arguably play them in any order and not miss out. There are of course twists and callbacks throughout to reward those who play them in order. The one absolute rule is for the two massive DLC expansions. Xenoblade 1 (Future Connected, play after 1), Xenoblade 2 (Torna - to be played after 2) and Xenoblade 3 (Future Redeemed - to be played only after playing EVERYTHING else as it wraps up the trilogy).
Xenoblade 2 put off a lot of people with it’s anime-ness and big tidday girls (not me, but eh). Xenoblade 3…doesn’t have that.
It’s serious and is set in the midst of an eternal war between two nations. Each inhabitant of this world is born at age 10, trained as a soldier to fight, and then either die on the battlefield or live long enough to die at age 20 by force. Both nations rely on taking the life force of the other side to live - hence the war.
The story concerns a group of six, three each from opposing sides who aim to live longer than their artificially reduced lifespans - of the two main protagonists, one (Mio) has only three months remaining. This is the crux of the story, really.
best bet to see if you’d like it are these two videos I took. The first is the first 15 minutes of the game - it introduces the world, scenario, characters, and also introduces the gameplay part-by-part. NO SPOILERS in any of these, I promise.
The battle system is gradually introduced throughout, at a pretty good pace (eg. chain attacks, transformations, combos, class changing). It ends up sometimes chaotic, but always fun. You can stay as a healer with a rifle, swap to a martial arts class and attack with your fists, or change to a tank class for each characters, for example. You also recruit computer playable heroes throughout the game who offer new classes and weapons.
Chain attacks are an entirely other thing, relying on measured logic and number skills. The other main draw is the story - this game takes some pretty dark turns. Your mileage may vary though, depending on your tolerance for cutscenes. There’s still 100+ hours of actual gameplay easily.
and this is a short video showing the scale of the world (one of 9 massive regions - there’s another desert, a canyon and a forest halfway up a mountain trail in this one. The sword in the distance holds a city at its peak. There’s also an ocean that has a rocket powered boat to traverse, or you could just swim it), plus a short battle with 7 team members:
lastly I guess, if you’re a dr who fan (who knows?), it may interest you that Jenna Coleman voices the Kevesi Queen.
anyhow the game is cool imo. I got the first Xenoblade a week before the UK launch date in August 2011 as I ran a Blockbuster at the time (Xenoblade was localised by Nintendo UK and came out here, Europe and Australia a mere year after Japan. NOA refused to launch it in America, until a petition forced their hand another year later). It blew me away, and the remastered Definitive Version is a classic. The fact that Nintendo UK localised it is why it has its unique UK focused VA throughout. The regions in the games are Welsh, Scottish, etc. It adds a huge amount of character that American voiced games lack imo.
Worth giving a shout out to Xenoblade X (outside of the trilogy’s storyline), which still has the largest world of any game I’ve ever known, eternally stuck on the Wii U. That’s a fucking mental game and I don’t even know where to start with it. If you like Xenoblade, mech battles/flights and Attack on Titan’s soundtrack (sawano), then it’s the game for you.
anyhow back to Xenoblade 3, you may hate it who knows but… hopefully this does sell a few people on it.
Your turn
Does Lovecraftian horror interest you? Do you think you could muster fighting unfathomable monstrosities with blade weapons while carefully dodging and parrying their attacks? Do you not mind grinding areas and bosses until you conquer them?
If the answer is yes, you might have what it takes to enjoy Bloodborne!
It was my first Souls game and like for many others, just getting through its first level was a combination of fear, frustration and small victories. But by the time you manage to defeat the first boss just barely, there is nothing quite like the feeling of conquering what on all your previous tries seemed nearly impossible. That just got me hooked on the series so hard that I have played every From Software Souls game at this point and still consider Bloodborne to be the best.
To me it’s the combination of its setting, visuals, art style, game mechanics and level design that make it such a great game.
If you own a PS4 or 5, it’s available on PS Plus so if you have that, you can try it out!
@laxu @richyawyingtmv
I agree with this post. Bloodborne is fantastic and is by far my favourite souls-like, and was for a long time my favourite game of all time (recently overtaken by FF16). I would absolutely recommend Bloodborne to anyone.
I’ve played hundreds of hours between the souls games, played through Demons’ when it was an Asia import on the PS3, played through Elden Ring twice…never played Bloodborne lol
I really should fix that, but I haven’t got a PS4 or PS5 to hand.
@richyawyingtmv @Bad_Noob You should fix it, but that may indeed be difficult without a PS4 or PS5.
I’ve never played Bloodborne, but your description reminds me of a game I just played: Blasphemous. The art direction and story is sooooo cool and gory and medieval. It’s a metroid-style platformer, and the voice acting and script is really good. The second one is coming out in the fall and I am so stoked to get it
Bloodborne is my first Fromsoft game as well. And by far my favourite. The setting, story, everything about the whole game just got under my skin. I love it more than any Zelda game I grew up with. It’s wierd. I pretty much can’t even get into any other Souls game. I don’t like em that much. I can’t even complete Elden Ring. But I love me some Bloodborne. Any other game with similar as style?
Nioh 2 is my favorite “non-From Software” Soulslike game. No need to play Nioh 1 before it.