With Xenoblade Chronicles 3, Monolith Soft finally seems unconstrained

polygon.com:

Monolith Soft is a master of settling. Every Xenotitle going back to the PS1’s Xenogears has felt, in its own way, like the summation of idiosyncratic compromises between vision and technology. The scope of series creator Tetsuya Takahashi’s vision has never really fit on one disc or one console. And that’s made the studio great at getting the gist of it all across in just 80 hours.

Xenoblade Chronicles has continued in this development legacy since it debuted on the Wii in 2010, each successor and rerelease regarded with measured praise for pushing the capabilities of Nintendo’s consoles. The seams, barely held together, are just a part of the charm at this point.

If I could describe my brief time with Xenoblade Chronicles 3 in just a word, then, I would say it is uncompromising. Though not entirely up to snuff, Monolith Soft has clearly found its stride in creating a more even and altogether consistent experience befitting the Xeno series’ grand storytelling. And there are even autosaves this time.

What’s immediately clear from the very beginning of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is that this is another Xenobladegame. During my first moments roaming an ashy battlefield in the game’s open world, a composite continent of large regions stitched together à la Xenoblade Chronicles, I was met by high-level monsters I would not be able to fight for dozens more hours and inundated with tutorial screens and umpteen more notifications. I quickly found that I could, however, turn tutorial notifications off.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 includes many of Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition’s quality-of-life features, with simpler menu organizations, intuitive button mapping with customizable shortcuts, and a UI so efficient it feels