In 2022, Nintendo released Xenoblade Chronicles 3, capping off a decade-plus-in-the-making trilogy of sprawling epic RPGs. It’s the total opposite of everything the company’s other internal development teams are famous for. When you think of Nintendo, you probably imagine Mario or Kirby running around a beautiful land using magical powers, not a morose and adult tale about war, redemption and…magical flutes that kinda sorta bring people back from the dead to be fed back into a dystopian society.
The game is everything you could want from a big RPG. It has a huge open world to explore, rendered in as much detail as the aging Switch hardware can muster. It has a deep and complex battle system, blending turn-based and real-time actions together into something resembling an older Bioware game. It has tons of character-driven melodrama and storyline twists, saving some of its big reveals for those truly dedicated enough to play through many hours of content. It’s the sort of game that doesn’t really “get going” until it has laid out several hours of set up, but even those opening moments are filled with activities to do, materials to collect, and huge landscapes to traverse.
It also totally got crushed by the hype around Elden Ring, as far as any sort of mainstream RPG…
