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Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch)

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I went back after completing the main story, as there was still A Lot To Do. Not least completing the story unlocks two more Heroes – the Queens of Agnus and Keves themselves – but also because I had loads of other side missions and stuff I wanted to look into.

There’s quite a lot more exposition on how the world of Aionios came to be, as well as more backstory on both the main characters and all of the Heroes. Completing quests for your characters also eventually leads to them “ascending”, which unlocks more CP levels for them and some bonuses.

There’s a Nopon you meet fairly early on in the game who tells you to come back once you’ve completed the game, so I did that and he wanted stories of my adventures. Each completed story unlocks something – mostly cosmetic items and skins of characters from earlier Xenoblade games – and to complete them generally means 100%ing something. One I thought I’d go for was to unlock everything on everyone’s Interlink skill trees. To do this requires a lot of SP, and the only ways to get SP are by exploring the world (new areas unlock SP), opening containers (which might contain some), beating big ol’ baddies, and completing quests. Ascension quests unlock 10 SP each upon completion, and were the main things left for me to do, so I focussed on them. Oh boy.

Valdi, the young engineer commander of one of the Colonies, has a quest which involves collecting loads of items. Some are very rare. And only seem to come out of the item generators. Sometimes. I spent probably two whole hours on this tiny bit of one part of one of hundreds of quests, eventually completing it when the RNG Gods allowed it. That gave me enough SP to unlock the final bit of an Interlink tree, which in turn let me go and see the Nopon to get my prize. Only, it turns out, that I’d already got the same “prize” by scanning an Amiibo months ago. Angry? I nearly exploded.

I did, however, mop up some more stuff afterwards until I was satisfied I’d managed to rinse as much information and entertainment as I could out of the game, and with 130 hours on the clock, I called it a day.

Fantastic game. I see the remaster of Xenoblade Chronicles X is out now too, but as it has no ties to the 1, 2 or 3 (bar a single character cameo in a secret mode in XC2), I feel sad I won’t see any more of this amazing world. Or rather, set of worlds. Xenoblade 4 soon please and thanks?

Densetsu no Stafy: spin spin spin

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When renewing my subscription to Nintendo Online it was only marginally more to upgrade to the expansion pass, which has given my sons access to the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC, will provide me with upgrades for Tears of the Kingdom on the Switch 2, and also gives me access to the N64, GBA and MD libraries. Tempted as I was to immediately start playing through Streets of Rage 2 again, I instead had a look for anything new and interesting. The first thing in the GBA list was a Japanese exclusive game, with a picture of a star on the cover, and a title which reads 伝説のスタフィー. Some research after playing indicates that this is Starfy, although that’s his Westernised name from the fourth game in the series, and a more literal translation is Staffy or Stafy. I knew none of this to start with, and so he became known as “Mr Spinny”.

In fact, he can’t spin at first, and his moveset is restricted to just swimming around and jumping out the water. I’m sure the Japanese introductory screen gave some idea what I had to do, but I went into this blind, and wandered around for ages until I found a big crab, who I naturally avoided. Having run out of anything else to do, I tried to swim past the crab and found that he gave me some more instructions (no idea what) and then let me past. I swam around more, found some random junk (a teapot, a big shell, something like that), and eventually returned to the crab who seemed pleased to have his junk back. I had to find other stuff, he showed me new moves (which I only understood from the A, B and D-pad buttons in the text, and then experimenting afterwards), and then eventually I found a big yellow clamshell who, I think, asked me to do the same thing. I had to explore lots, go through many doors, use my new spinny move to defeat fish and crab enemies, and after lots of getting lost I finally found a boss.

Stafy is OK to control, though his attack move is a bit woolly and he has a little too much momentum in water.

There was nothing tricky in this first level, including the boss who was in a big spiky shell but who didn’t seem to attack at all. The most difficult part is just keeping track of which door leads to where. All through the first level there were big scary orange face blocks, which I never worked out how to get rid of (other blocks could be destroyed once I got the spinny move), and I assumed I’d be able to go back to clear them after getting a new move, but after defeating the boss I’ve now moved onto a new level, seemingly alongside a whale.

Stafy looks like he’s not happy at being interrupted.

I thought it might help to understand some of the Japanese text, and tried to use Google Translate’s camera function. That really didn’t help a lot at all.

I am putting out my eyes, indeed.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I’ve been playing a lot of Huge RPGs in the last year or so, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 might be the longest one yet. I’ve completed it, but of course There’s Still More To Do, so it’s not over yet. Just 85 or so hours in.

It’s hard to talk about everything in the game without spoilers. Normally, a spoiler in an RPG like this would just spoil the ending of this game, but in the case of Xenoblade 3 it would actually spoil enjoyment of the previous two games in the series too.

What I can say, hopefully ruining nothing for you, is that the whole existence of the world of Aionios, the setting for the game, is directly related to Xenoblade 1 and 2. This becomes clearer as you play, especially if you remember locations from those games as places you visit in Xenoblade 3 are somewhat familiar, either in look or in name (or both). There are a few “wait, what?” revelations related to it too, but I won’t go into them.

Hung on the front of this is the “day to day” story of the game. Two factions, Keves and Agnus, are locked in perpetual war. Soldiers, when defeated in battle, release some sort of life essence which is used to sustain the Flame Clock of their enemy, and this clock is essential to the existence of that army. For centuries, this life force has bounced back and forth, with no overall victor – intentionally, as it turns out. To add to this, soldiers are “born” as children and only live for 10 years – assuming they’ve not KIA.

You start out as a small group of Keves soldiers, and because of $event, you end up fighting alongside some Agnus soldiers rather than (or perhaps, as well as) against them. This starts off a chain of events which ultimately reveals that this entire war is orchestrated by a higher, malevolent, power and surprise – you have to team up permanently and Become Greater Together and other tropes in order to prevent (or cause?) the end of the world. This mostly involves going round all the colonies, from both sides of the war, and destroying their flame clocks to release them from the endless fighting.

I’m amazed that the three games in the series can be so similar, but somehow still have completely different worlds and events and still be linked in ways that I couldn’t ever have imagined. It’s really clever.

But, that’s the plot. How is the gameplay? Well, it’s similar to what came before, really. You still have a party of heroes, you still have “arts” and other special moves and attacks, and it’s still real-time-ish battles as before. There’s no “foresight” power like in Xenoblade 1, and you don’t have “blades” as such like Xenoblade 2, and there whole upgrading and buffing your party and stats has been streamlined and polished, but it’s still played and controlled in essentially the same way. Battles feel quicker than they did in 2, which was one of my only negative points on that game.

Voice acting is, again, excellent. It took a while for the new characters to grow on me, but I can’t complain about how good their actors are. As before, it’s mostly regional accents – Welsh cat ladies, Australian rebels, etc. – which really adds something. There’s a big variety of characters, loads of heroes you can add to your party (only one at a time, though) each with their own missions and stories too.

And that’s it. There’s a lot more I could say, but spoilers, right? Is it better than 1 and 2? No. But the thing is, I’m seeing all three games as one massive game now, and it’s certainly not a disappointment or a dip in quality. Now, if only Xenoblade Chronicles X was also linked in to the series properly!

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Sadly not the full Metroidvania experience I was expecting (the reason it ended up on my wishlist in the first place, following a review), Momodora still feels like one. Creepy town with a creepy castle, a curse, a map to explore, and pixel graphics? It certainly has the look of one.

What’s missing is all the extra powers that open up new areas. Sure, there are some, but very few. That means it is more a standard explorey platformer, hence my disappointment, but luckily it was still good!

Apart from the ending. I got a bad ending after defeating the final boss, but there was no explanation why it happened and seemingly no exposition as I was playing that it was possible. After that, I returned to the game and found a couple of extra things I’d missed and that allowed me to get the good ending, but it took some extensive exploring without really knowing what I was looking for, or where to look.

Apparently this Momodora is the third game in a series of (currently) four games. The first two are mostly lost to the winds, and the fourth came out fairly recently. I might pick it up if it’s cheap.

River City Girls 2 (Switch): COMPLETED!

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My daughter and I were big fans of the original River City Girls so the sequel was sat on my wishlist for ages waiting for a bit sale. That came around, and we played it through together.

It’s more of the same, really. A side-scrolling, semi-open-world beat-em-up with RPG elements set in the world of Kunio-kun/River City Ransom and made by Wayforward, just like the first game. It has a great cartoon style, loads of in-jokes (with both River City adjacent links, like Double Dragon and Crash And The Boys, and Wayforward properties like Mighty Switch Force) and satisfying and upgradable combat.

As it’s set in the same city as the first game, many locations are back – like school and shopping centre) although they have been modified so aren’t a complete copy-and-paste. There are plenty of new areas though. Similarly, there are both returning and new characters, although I don’t think most of the new ones are as good as the ones in the original. Also returning is another soundtrack from Megan McDuffee, which is also excellent.

The plot is mostly concerned with revenge on the Girls taking down the bad guy in the last game, although there are a couple of twists.

Gameplay-wise there are a few tweaks to improve stuff from before. Shop purchases work slightly differently, and there’s seemingly a lot more money available with which to buy them. The game seems easier too, meaning less death (which causes both progress and money loss).

It’s not all improvements though, sadly. Loading times are particularly bad, but also there are a number of bugs like items getting stuck out of reach, sound cutting out, and a few full crashes. Nothing major because of frequent save points but annoying nonetheless. Some of the new areas, like the overdone game trope of the “forest maze”, aren’t great either, and I’m sure there’s more backtracking this time round too, hindered by the aforementioned loading times.

That said, the fun, humour and style of the game massively outweigh the issues. It’s maybe not quite as enjoyable as the original, but doesn’t miss it by much.