The latest in the Xenoblades series, actually the 4th game in the series, but since X is standalone compared to the others it might not count (still waiting for that X-2 or better yet, a Switch-port of X). It begins with the boy Noah together with his friends Lanz, Eunie and Joran running to watch the fireworks and then the timestops. And then we get the set up for the world. There is an eternal war between the nations of Keves and Agnian as they fight for supremacy. Killing enemies fills the flame clocks of their mobile bases and depending what level you reached you get more or less resources, all trying to get to gold class and a chance to end the war. The other way is to reach ten terms in the war and get the homecoming, a ritual back at the castle where they send the bodies, almost like Logan's Run with reaching 30 years old. It's actually 20 here. So we have child soldiers that are grown in tubes at the castle, get one year of training and then sent out for war in 9 years. Survival rate not high as we can understand. They are transfered to colonies that are lead by a commander that report to a consul that reports to the queen. Noah and gang belongs to Colony 9... ha! Nice reference!
One day after destroying an enemy colony Noah, Lanz and Eunie, together with the one month away from homecoming (aka retirement) Mwamba is sent on a special mission when an unknown energy have been located. Noah and gang belong to Keves and the Agnians have been sent out as well. During skirmishes between them the unknown energy seems to be from a cloaked ship that contains humans and are lead by... Vandham? From 2? Same voice as well. Great. He was on a mission to get an "egg" to "the city", but was shot down. Noah and friends fights the Agnians soldiers Mio, Sena and Taion. Vandham stops them from killing each other and activates the egg that gives them the power off Ouroboros. At the same time the real enemy behind all this appears, Mobieus. Who just happens to kill Mwamba... oh no, so close to retirement. This was a joke my friends made while watching the Ridley Scott Robin Hood, it was the same laughter here. They drive him of with their new powers, Vandham still croaks, but tell them to go to the city and escape the war. They don't listen, but go back to their own colonies, who now begin hunting them since they have been marked by Mobieus. They reunite and head of together, along with Riku and Manana, their nopon companions (and Riku is the most tolerable nopon in the whole series).
Their travels take them around the world as they free the colonies on both sides with Lucky Seven, a sword Riku made that Noah got and is able to cut through anything (which he only uses to destroy flame clocks in cut scenes). It's revealed that Mobieus controls everything, the queen being robots and the consuls being Mobieus themselves. They are pure evil in their sadistic nature as they seem to delight in the suffering of humans, watching them on a screen, using them as chess pieces. Killing is just more fun for them. The city turns out being descendants of the first Ouroboros that began fighting Mobieus. Best moment in game is when the players have infiltrated a prison to get information on where the real queen of Agnus is hiding, but they are betrayed and it turns out that two of Mobieus, N and M is... I would say clones, but I think it's the other way around, or that both are clones of Noah and Mio. They get captured and Evil!Noah separates Mio and the rest as she only have one month left before homecoming where her body disintegrates. At the same time Mio and Noah had developed feelings for each others and that moment as he tries in vain to break out from prison, screaming her name as Evil!Noah describes in details how he will enjoy tormenting Noah with this. Spoilers, but it turns out Evil!Mio switched places with Mio so that she could end the constant cycle of death and destruction around her, which sends Evil!Noah into madness.
You find the queen and it turns out that it's Nia from 2 and the queen of Keves is Melia from 1. Apparently the two universes that was created by the experiment by Klaus was on the verge of merging so to counter that the queens created origin to... restart the worlds after the merger? I thought so, but after getting it to work at the end it seemed like the universes was divided again? I don't get that really. Before that though it was hijacked by Mobieus led by Z that at the merging of the universes freeze time and created this constant world of war... why? Maybe to give life to Mobieus? After finishing the game and defeating Z, I still get what Mobieus deal was. They just appears to be sadist with no goal. The main thing they talk about during the end battle is that Z is some personification of fear that is clung to the present and don't dare to go into the future, to change... I get why the human Mobieus does it, they fear dying, but I don't get Z. That's where the game fell apart for me, it's no finding Elysium, or defeating the Mechonis, or finding the ship with all the people of Earth. Which isn't fair since the games play better than 2 since I actually got the chain link system and such, and no random system in side characters, here you do quest and get them and make another quest to level them up. And gems are back from one, but you only have a set that is shared between all the characters so just upgrade them and pick and chose for you. And the damn collection could be exchanged with Noppon coins instead, diminishing the aggravation to find every single item to upgrade weapons, classes or such.
(After reading some reddit threads on the game it seems that Z was fueled by the fears of the people stored in Origin and keeping them in an eternal stage of war feeds that and continues to support Z)
Music is fine, the flute that is thematic for the game is an acquired taste, but it isn't bad. Graphics are on par with 2. Most fun is I got the game one day early so I could play it before anyone else, sadly it was the first week after my vacation so it still took me 5 weeks to finish the 140 hours to reach the end. And I had to restart the final battle after getting beaten at the very last second when my healers fell. So I used all my bonus exp to go from lvl 77 to 93, meaning it went a lot better. Didn't want to replay the three phases more than twice. Gameplay probably the best, but I still prefer X, and 1 story above this. I don't know about 2. It also freeze on me once so I had to restart from the last save, twice the sound went out of sync with the game.
Overall, good game, interesting concepts from the start with the black and white analogy, pacifism, war. One thing I don't agree with was some anglo-saxians saying it was a critique of capitalism... in what way is it about capitalism? There are two monarchies with a complete pyramid of resource distributions depending on how good at killing things you are. Really, they get out of that by trading with each other and not giving, but actually trading different things they have stocked and such. I guess it was an American that made that remark and they missing the points since the left seems to have wired to only see "capitalism bad" that they can't read it in any other way. Give me strength! *Ahem* Where was I? Yeah, the ending feels kinda flat and it seems to be most shared thoughts of the game.
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