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For me part of the exploration was actually just walking around and figuring out what came from _where,_ and what Titans or Bionis body parts comprised each region. Like once I realized the opening battlefield is essentially inside what was once the Gormott titan’s head, and that the Cloudkeep was where the top of it used to be, I was ALL OVER the rest of the map connecting dots.

Don’t care, 3D Land better

Great video! If I had to bring up any areas you didn't mention, I'd probably say Makna Forest/Frontier Village from Xenoblade 1. I always liked the jungle aesthetic and the massive waterfalls which are so iconic they were used to reveal Definitive Edition. Not sure if you've played Xenoblade X, but the regions in that game are also amazing, especially Oblivia (the desert) with the giant ring. Also, I'm glad you mentioned Erythia Sea, it is definitely one of my favorite areas in the franchise to explore and I loved the calm music as I explored the islands. Colony 9 is also one of my absolute favorites for the exact reasons you described, it was so magical to hear that song for the first time and that area always makes me feel nostalgic for my first time experiencing Xenoblade.

For me, Future Redeemed's gameplay and mechanics were PERFECT. Making every single element in the map useful and rewarding with the collectopaedia made easily want to go for the 100%, I hope they keep it like that for next games.

My 40 Characters 01. Mario 02. Donkey Kong 03. Link 04. Samus 05. Yoshi 06. Kirby 07. Fox 08. Pikachu 09. Luigi 10. Ness 11. Captain Falcon 12. Jigglypuff 13. Peach 14. Bowser 15. Zelda 16. Marth 17. Ganondorf 18. Mr Game & Watch 19. Meta Knight 20. Pit 21. Wario 22. Sonic 23. King Dedede 24. Olimar 25. Lucario 26. Villager 27. Mega Man 28. Little Mac 29. Greninja 30. PAC-MAN 31. Robin 32. Shulk 33. Ryu 34. Cloud 35. Inkling 36. Ridley 37. Simon Belmont 38. King K Rool 39. Byleth 40. Steve

How could you cut Meta Knight? He’s sakurais favorite!

Awesome video about an awesome game, bestie! 🩷 I think the bosses in the game are cool (like the whole game), and I adore your insights on the minor characters of the game, the ambience, the game’s movement etc. Hearing the passion in your voice is so adorable (like you, girl!). 🥰 Also, summer is my favorite season by far too! ☀️

Starting to think the reason why xenoblade games are all considered perfect is because fanbase will never let you complaint or admit any problem about their games

I related to That rant about accessories being hard to find so much The game gives you SO MANY different ones, that I just got overwhelmed & let it just auto-equip it for me on my First Run, which made me lose on a LOT of dmg & optimizations from niche but usefull accessories Hope the next game they strike a better balance with them

You apologize for your opinions way too much lol I get it thoughm the internet can be ruthless

This video is genuinely a masterpiece!

I'm glad I wasn't the only person who felt this. The maps definitely felt more cordoned off to try and move the story forward in 3, while 1 and 2 let you help out around the camps, rewarded you with not only landmark exp but skip travels, and gave you great sights in hidden places. 3 noticably had not just a lack of skip travels but a lack of those hidden places - I only ever found one, and that was literally where a hero quest lead me to. The locations also didn't really feel dead, moreso bland. I wish the annihilation event's effects on the terrain was emphasized more in the area design, imagine if we could've climbed up the back of that lake in the desert and up some floating islands to find the charred and shattered debris of the back of Torna's neck where we fought Malos in the Golden Country levitating in the air, held in place by time's stasis and in severe disrepair from the gargoyles and the annihilation events. We'd be able to see it from on top of the mechonis structure between the two areas hinting to us that we can go there. *That* is what defines Xenoblade's map exploration to me. They had so much potential for this, and it was all wasted.

It's funny it's almost tradition, poetically, that I usually wait a couple of years after the game comes out before trying. I fell in love with Xenoblade one, got to experience that on the Wii, 3DS, and now the switch.... Xenoblade two fell in love with that game probably my favorite in the series so far. And just this last week I purchased Xenoblade 3 and I'm about four and a half hours in after all of the tutorials. I could definitely see what you're talking about when it comes to the world. However I'm loving the banter of the party, I was iffy at first but I'm definitely sold to playing a lot more. You can always criticize something you love, I hope this series goes full steam ahead. I plan on playing the future development titles.

XC3 is my favourite game ever, but I will admit to its exploration being less engaging. I think the issue is that XC3 is game designed around 100%. Its strongest aspect is its world coming alive and interconnecting when you do every sidequest, and the world is designed to acomodate those sidequests. The linear, walled off design means FINDING sidequest objectives is an exercise in problemsolving. You have to figure out what the one correct route is, what the opening in the wall to get to where you want to be is. That's really good for when you're sidequesting, and makes XC3s sidequests more fun to play through than the first two games (a shocking amount of them have handcrafted gauntlets leading up to the objectives), but it makes aimlessly wandering around the world feel linear and dull.

This makes me feel like I should go ahead and actually play Sunshine aaaaaaaa

Now this is quality content!

yes bro!!!

swag

Great video! Super proud of you finally getting it out! This video has actually inspired me to want to play through Sunshine and actually complete it. Just got a few other games to finish first. Well done!

Xenoblade fans when they forget that the objective best game in the series, X also exists

I honestly think one of the biggest things that makes Xenoblade 3's areas *seem* less exciting is the more subdued soundtrack. If you took away Gaur Plains GOAT-level theme music, it really wouldn't hit as hard. Even moreso if it wasn't your first Xenoblade game. It's big and beautiful, but also soooo much empty space and a bit of a chore to actually explore or backtrack through. But that music carries it so much, my god.

you have bad taste. the maps in xenoblade are mid.

Comment for the algorithm

Equatorian kids be like... Snow who?_?

I'd argue that this game was designed, beginning to end, in such a way to grab new players to the franchise (people like me who started with 3). I appreciated the linearity of the story as that was what I was most interested in. After I'd gotten hooked on the story at the end of Chapter 1, I just wanted more story. By the time I met Valdi and Colony 30, I was finally ready to backtrack, do sidequests, and explore a little. Sure the world is a mishmash of 1 and 2, but new players don't know how Millick compares to Gaur or Gormott. Neither the brand new player nor the characters know anything of what came before. A brand new player exploring Aionios really feels like Noah and the gang. In contrast, I believe Future Redeemed was designed especially for fans of the franchise. You *can* play FR before 1 and 2 (as I did), but you miss out on so much context. What I think XC3 does well is make a brand new player who finishes the game go, "Why did it have to split apart? What are these two worlds the queens were talking about? How did this all start?" I played 1 and 2, but did not really connect with some of the design choices like Machina or rare Blades. I'm rambling now, but I think maybe exploration suffered in 3 because it was designed for new players with story first in mind.

I enjoy the story of this game but I really couldn’t care less about exploration or fighting the monsters in this game. After playing Witcher 3 and games like that, I just don’t care about the open world here

One of the costumes has to be for the gold badge you get for completing all three logs in the ttyd remake

I know a few smash characters have unique mechanics around them so I think stylish moves should be a mechanic for Paper Mario. In addition to his typical moveset if you execute a well timed follow up button press it would alter the effect of the move. For example with vivien’s punch, a “stylish” input would cause some slight DOT burn damage just like in TTYD’s normal action commands. The timing window for these moves would be fairly tight to avoid obstructing the player’s other moves (like if the b button was the stylish button it might prevent the player from doing a follow up smash attack and force them into a stylish move) and also to make it a skill based “combo”

Sorry but this is a pretty bad analysis of the world design in the games. if you look more closely at the trilogy as a whole you'd find all three of them tend to funnel the player down a particular path. every game has its tunnel linear areas, but even the most open ended areas have their beaten paths and when you get around to continuing the story, you're going to end up on that beaten path many times. and you're giving 3 a hard time when the other games are just as guilty of it. for instance, you criticize Erythia sea for its islands being linear but take no consideration that the areas that one is a combination of are both largely made of tiny islands connected by single linear paths. Both Eryth sea and Leftheria are be no stretch "non-linear" in their design or exploration. To justify one dead end having bunnits as being good, but not consider anything at all in the other comes off a bit disingenuous too. Its not that Xenoblade 3s areas are designed badly or that there isn't anything to find or do in them. there's a fair bit actually. The reason why I find its a worse experience comes down to a couple of reasons that aren't the fault of its map design. The first being the general story structure of 3. In 1 and 2, there would be lots of points where the story would make you take specific paths and head toward certain points of interest across its areas, especially its more open ones and often times you'd get some additional story peppered in. take for instance Uraya in 2 where after reaching Garfont it sends you down a path towards the blowhole before bringing you back then sending you towards the capitol. which the path requires a detour in order to remove a blockage. the path itself is fairly linear but its sending you to a wider range of locations in the area. In Xenobalde 3, it doesn't do this as much. most of 3s story is unloaded at the beginning or end of the chapters leaving a bulk of the time between just getting through the area to the point of interest. it won't as often lead you towards several different corners of its areas to progress the story as much as 1 and 2 did. This leads into the second point i think where 3, base game that is, doesn't incentivize you to explore its areas. compared to 1 and 2 where growth of your characters or abilities were more dependent on exploring and doing things out in the world. 1 practically forced you to do sidequests if you wanted to keep your level up and through beating unique monsters you could find especially powerful gear and more importantly manuals to improve your arts further. 2 had the blade system and affinity charts which required you to go out and do various things in the world if you wanted to improve your blades or get more of them. and everything you accomplished in these games would also translate to points you could use to power up abilities in what order you saw fit. Base game 3 in comparison provides barely any incentive to explore. The gear you could acquire was never really as good as what you could simply buy, expanding and improving your characters was now entirely relegated to leveling them up and the big thing to find, the classes, were always found by these big glowing yellow markers on the map telling you to go there and no where else. even powering up those classes had nothing to do with really exploring or doing anything other than fighting enemies. which if you spend too much time doing so would be easy to find yourself overleveled thanks to the level curve of the game. Its why FR is so much better in its exploration compared to base 3 despite their area designs not being all that different. because FR gave you all the incentive to explore and do things in its areas because everything relied on it. from expanding arts and accessories, to powerful chain accessories, to leveling up and learning arts and skills. it required investment into its world.

The world if Xenoblade 3 didn’t reset the time to day every time you fast traveled:

I totally agree with you. I prefer the open square maps with open area's filled with things to look at and run to, like gormott and uraya. That's what I love about Xenoblade 2's world, each titan is a wide area in an enclosed space, but it stil feels giant. The only thing I disagree with is when you said that Xenoblade 3's walls are less deteiled then 1 and 2. Like most of xenoblade 3's world, it has the most detail out of the trilogy, the walls in 1 are mostly just blurred 2011 game walls, and Xenoblade 2 barely has any not man-made walls meant to serve only as a barrier, so it's hard to make that comparison, but they're about the same detail as xenoblade 3. Overall Xenoblade 3's world is my least favorite world to explore but I still love it. And story-wise, it makes sense how non diverse the geography is, considering the world is in the shape of an ouroboros. (also I know it doesn't matter but I'm your 300'th sub so that's cool)

I think Xeno’s exploration gameplay-wise (mostly movement) has always been the weakest aspect of the series. Not that i judge it too hard because the time was obviously spent elsewhere. However the floaty, mostly uninteresting movement and wide open terrain are usually made up for by all of the interesting big things to look at in the backgrounds of the levels. In both 1 and 2, unless it’s a cave there’s always something really cool or interesting to look at while you’re running around the so vast, empty levels don’t hurt them as much. 3’s just feels kinda weird since it doesn’t follow that trend and kinda just merges all of the fantastical 3D-ness of the settings in the last two and just makes them a flat circle with normal-looking terrain, with some noticeable landmarks. Again, in the last two EVERYWHERE you go is notable. Sue me but I think 3 should’ve done something crazy and made the endless now just feel like a super F’d up alien environment since it’s basically the last two worlds on the precipice of clipping and colliding with each other and destroying one another. I hope I don’t have to explain how many cool things you can do with that and XBC3 just… doesn’t. Hear me out… Fortnite. lol. The Fortnite setting is the perfect analogy to what xeno 3 should’ve been- a bubble of collided landmass floating in the cosmos stabilized by a powerful magic sphere. Sound familiar? Just make the terrain crazy by having the bionis, mechonis, and titans all floating in space, colliding with each other and frozen in time during the process of ripping each other apart due to their sheer mass. Make the skybox look like the cosmos during both the day and the night and have gravity localized to the landmass you’re currently on, meaning you can still have the wacky ouroboros circle but it can be a cool 3D kinda-circle where you look UP at the places you were instead of a flat boring one. Great Xenoblade settings need larger than life 3D vertical environments imo. Anyway monolithsoft hire me i have many more great ideas like xenoblade sex update

I hate how much time I've spent on Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and will continue to with replays in the future Nothing will top Xenoblade Chronicles X world tho

Those maps would be better if the game had better movement like SMT V otherwise they don't work too well. That's why I can't stop thinking that those maps will be better for something like Xenoblade X. Suddenly you get more verticallity with the Skell's jump before being able to flight

It' was a poorly developed game, I finished it just because I stupidly paid for it

You do realize Aionios is supposed to be the worlds of xenoblade 1 and 2 mashed, or colliding together, frozen in a moment of time right? They aren't going to be the exact same way you remember them because they aren't supposed to be. I get some of your overall criticisms of the visuals, but it's really not fair to try and hold one particular area's structure in Xenoblade 3 to how they looked and functioned in the past games, heck, I was just happy to reminisce around "Colony 9" again in Future Redeemed.

The whole time watching this I just kept thinking “all these problems are fixed if you play Xenoblade X” lol It blows this whole trilogy out of the water in terms of exploration

Xenoblade 2 the best

I dunno I just liked Xenoblade 3 a lot more, never put any further thought into it Only thing that distinctly was better for me was I never felt like I was playing a borderline porn game, which 2 made me feel like a couple times

"if you see something you want to go to you're going to have to find a specific path on unlike Xenoblade one and two" I definitely disagree with this sentiment. Especially with xc2. Umon shipyard, the broken down factory in mor Adain. That's not even mentioning the side quests. Xenoblade two had so many parts in the game where you had to go through a very specific path to continue going and checking things out. In fact I thought it was very annoying and too. So many times I had to look up guys cuz I could not figure out how to get to a certain area I saw from a distance

When I was playing through Xenoblade 3 I felt like the exploration was kind of not fun. I think part of that has to do with the themes of Xenoblade 3. After all can't really build a world if the people living in said world aren't allowed to grow and are only there as pawns of war. But even outside of that I kind of hated the lack of landmarks and meaningful places to go. I think this video really helped me figure out why I wasn't a fan of this. I think Xenoblade 3 has my favorite story in the series, the areas could of used more work. This is an amazing video btw. You should do better audio balancing cause it sounds like the background music was overpowering you at some points. Outside of that good shit!

I think you pose some fair points here, but I personally find comparing Bionis Leg to JUST Millick Meadows to be a bit of a disingenuous comparison. Personally, I don't consider Millick Meadows to be the real "Bionis Leg / Gormott" area in XC3, but rather that should go to Ribbi Flats & Rae-Bel Tableland (combined, because of how similar they are and how they practically overlap, in the same way the upper and lower parts of Bionis Leg and Gormott are). Sure, Millick Meadows is the typical "first open grassy area" that you explore, but comparing it to Bionis Leg and Gormott is a bit unfair; Millick Meadows is one of the smaller and more simplistic areas in XC3, whereas Bionis Leg and Gormott are some of the larger and more expansive areas in their respective games. It's like if you tried comparing Bionis Leg to Cliffs of Morytha. Furthermore, if we are going to compare to Millick Meadows, why are we constricting ourself to JUST Millick Meadows when it's connected directly to other areas in the Aetia Region? I wanna be clear that, even though XC3 is my favorite game in the series, I still do think the areas are generally a bit of a step down from XC1 and XC2, at least in specific comparisons. I mention comparing Bionis Leg / Gormott to Ribbi Flats & Rae-Bel Tableland instead, but that doesn't mean I think it's *better* than those areas. And I can't help but feel a bit sad that the absolutely stellar Urayan Titan in XC2 is so dull and limited in XC3, even if it is for lore purposes. Probably my biggest issue is something you mention: the general lifeless feel of Aionios in comparison to Bionis and Alrest. I think just adding more flora to many areas could've gone a long way to making Aionios much more fun to explore. For example, Syra Hovering Reefs might be my least favorite area in the whole game because sure, I guess it's SUPPOSED to be pretty lifeless, but just imagine how gorgeous it would've been if we had floating islands full of grass, trees, and other flora as opposed to a bunch of barren rocks.

I think the main thing that should be taken away from this video is that not having enough skip travel points is a huge problem, especially in certain Xenoblade games.

Damn good video I do prefer 3's world design but I can definitely see your point. But I prefer 3 because it's less tedious, it feels like you're constantly finding new things, always tapping into your sense of curiosity, even if it does mean the world is less overwhelmingly massive and exciting. 1 and 2 relied on the wow factor of seeing these gigantic unbelievable locations and they're beautiful but it feels like only 20% of it is actually necessary, meanwhile 3 feels like at least 60 to 70% is necessary. That's why I prefer it, I'm not saying it's objectively better. Some people would rather have a massive gorgeous landscape, but personally I'd rather have a curated well designed area.

Let's face it, XC3 was disappointing in every aspect of the game. Dull exploration, corny story, lame characters, boring battles, &c. None of these 3 games is in the same league as XCX, the best of the franchise by miles.

Neither of these games got anything on Xenoblade X's maps and traversal mechanics. They are so much inferior I can't even replay Xenoblade 1~3 without getting bored and turning Xenoblade X on instead. I have THOUSANDS of hours doing on foot parkour in XCX and I STILL discover new ways to get to new places, some of which were thought impossible even almost 10 years after the game's release. Basically, XCX is the premium vertical open world experience with the finesse of mechanics not unlike Super Mario 64 or old school Tomb Raiders. I wish MonolithSoft would give us something like this again otherwise I'm done with the mainline games and their clunky, sad little jump without any stakes.