Xenoblade Chronicles 3

More than a decade since the first Xenoblade Chronicles game was released for the Nintendo Wii, can this massive threequel keep the Japanese RPG flame burning?

- Alan Wen

Plunged into a world where two nations are locked in an endless cycle of war, you don’t have to have played the previous Xenoblade Chronicles games in order to understand the anime-influenced charms of this one. What you do need is the time to get through a story that’s the series’ most mature and ambitious yet.

Scale is the hallmark of any Xenoblade game, from the story’s length – that can easily run you close to 100hrs – to its beautifully vast environments. Even if the biomes you visit aren’t actually open-world in design, they nonetheless carry the illusion of stretching out beyond your wildest imagination.

Adding to that is your core party of six characters, considerably more than a typical party-based RPG. There’s also a new feature where pairs of characters merge to become Ouroboros, a powerful biomechanical form.