LogFAQs > #967940356

I feel like I'm in bizarro world where I'm the one of all people the most dissatisfied with a Xenoblade game, but it's really been a big miss for me in so many categories that I really don't have to think twice about putting it last.

Side-quest praise kinda baffles me - I agree that's where the real meat of the game is, but to me that's more because the main story is so very lacking rather than the side-quests truly being exceptional or anything. Yeah there's some good ones but there's still very much a number that are either annoying (story-wise) or just really boring, and there is a lot. It's weird for me because I didn't really have this issue before.

If I were to try to pin down a reason I think my issue with the sidequests is with the populations of the world being so segmented into their tiny little Colonies, and each one then needs such a heavy bloat of characters that are largely forgettable - with I think exception to Colony 0 that does a good job of really making you get to know everybody.

I know people complain about the abundance of XB1 quests but I truthfully got such a strong impact from the overall relationships of its worlds residents and even getting to decide the fates among them. Also weirdly it probably helps that they don't have cutscenes since I can just read through the story instead of slowing down for so much frankly uninteresting cutscenes to play out.

But XB1's Affinity Chart always felt like such a special accomplishment to get all mapped out and ultimately having everyone connected, whereas in XB3 it's just such a massive mess and I don't feel anything for it. Colony 6 then being the ultimate culmination of your journey in the world, gradually growing the town from rubble and inviting residents from each of the major regions to inhabit it, then offering their own quests and further relationships because of those choices you made. You just don't get any connection like that with all these tiny colonies.

I can fondly remember back to so many rather small-time questlines in XB1 because of the bonds I have attached to those involved, whether it's just showing the power of friendship to Paolo & Narine, or of course taking down the nopon drug smuggling ring. Honestly when I remember XB3 sidequests what sticks out is how much I hate Kite, and recently Koji of Lambda. Okay being fair you can't remember Kite without remembering the highlight of Zeon & Juniper but still oof the annoying ones really stick out when they have a cutscene to 'em.

Honestly though even for like Heroes I would end up incredibly disappointed in how little they actually got to shine. Like I looooved getting Ashera... but then she doesn't really get anything until her ascension which has to wait until Chap 7 and you can spend like a hundred hours getting to that point with her forgotten. Sure her Ascension brings back the nice relationship of Ashera & Eunie but ugh I wish there was more.

Man I can write so much more about this but scrolling up and realizing how much I typed already is telling me to stop.... but fuck I hate how all the colonies have to culminate into some big cliched happy family bit. So many times there's just some asshole and it goes down the route of oh he has a reason to be an asshole and in the end we all get along and work together :) ugh, XB1 doesn't have to treat its NPCs like that, some arcs are people getting ostracized out of town hell yeah you better run Debaba.