9/10 – 22 hours
Review as written on 7/31/2023
MAN I’M FREEZIN MA BALLS OFF
DOUBLE SPINNIN-DOUBLE SPINNIN-DOUBLE SPINNING EDGE
I’M FEELIN FULLA BEENZ
I MUST BE SUM KINDA JEENUS
STOP THERE! I’LL BE YOUR OPPON-OH NO! I LOST THE ENEMY’S ATTENTION
The peak Xenoblade experience, and a reminder why I love this series so much. Refinements on 3’s improvements, phenomenal music and characters, gorgeous locations, and mind blowing plot revelations. It’s all here. If you are a Xenoblade fan, this is an amazing experience. I truly love this series from the bottom of my heart.
Monolithsoft have had a good track record with their extra story scenarios, with 2’s Torna being a fan favorite and 1’s Future Connected being a fun epilogue with amazing music. Future Redeemed (FR) is no exception, using the amazing platform given by the base Xenoblade 3 and expanding on it design-wise and using it to tell an amazing concluding story to the Klaus saga of Xenoblade. Starting with the gameplay changes, the game plays quite similarly to the base game, but is refined in an extremely refreshing way. This is best seen in the improved integration between progression and exploration. Even in base 3, the world felt void of anything meaningful to find, and you were drowning in materials that you never needed due to limited usage. FR mends this by making points of interest more numerous, having said points be significantly more rewarding, and giving important items many more uses. Crates and chests hold items that unlock extra ability and equipment slots, as well as passive items to strengthen moves or be traded in for more useful items. Dark Souls style shortcuts can be built with materials and Ether, the latter of which was borderline useless in the base game. I finally found myself using it often. Weapons can be upgraded to maximize damage output, especially useful for classes that have trouble dealing damage. The list goes on. Finding all these allows you to gather points to spend on upgrading your skills; the cherry on top. Xenoblade is finally a worthwhile open world experience.
The selling point of this DLC for many fans is its bridging of all 3 games’ characters and events, and FR excels at doing so. We’re treated to a host of callbacks and continuity from previous games, as well as returning characters and locations. Shulk and Rex return and make the experience so enthralling, with their calm and collected badassery throughout the story. We meet their children, Nikol and Glimmer respectively, who aren’t as fleshed out as the new characters Matthew, Na’el, and A, but share touching moments with their fathers despite knowing nothing of their origins. Every character has a familiar origin, and it does well to keep the story engaging and maintain continuity with events and themes presented in previous stories. The glimpse into the pre-Klaus experiment world was mind blowing in particular, and served well to illustrate the flaws of resetting the world completely. It really is a joy spending time with this cast and accompanying them on their journey. Plus, they’re all dripped out of their minds, I love Shulk and Rex’s redesigns, A and Glimmer look really cool as well.
In terms of faults, I felt quite conflicted with the exploration emphasis added to the gameplay loop. I really do enjoy exploring a lot more, though it still feels slow since all you can do is auto run, and jumping still feels as jank as ever. Seeing so many of my abilities and equipment slots locked drove me to explore which is a good sign, but the actual exploring still isn’t so amazing, as “secret areas” usually just require you to either fall down a hole or turn left instead of right. I’ll still take it over the previous barren worlds.🤷
Many boss battles were a lot tougher which was also a bit conflicting. Most of this was due to the tanks’ inability to hold aggro for long; their one and only job. They just aren’t balanced around how broken the attackers are, especially Rex’s Double Spinning Edge art which recharges fully on nearly every use due to its high crit ratio. His output is way too strong for the rest of the party to keep up, and he ends up drawing aggro and dying way too often. Finally, some of Matthew’s line deliveries felt a bit off, and almost all of Glimmer’s were terribly delivered. I get she’s supposed to be a moody teen, but the monotonous tone lasts all the way to the final cutscene is completely tone deaf. Besides these issues, the standard Xenoblade-ism of attack range being wonky persists. Your arts won’t work properly when you’re too far away from an enemy, but enemy arts will hit you from miles away solely because they’re aggroed to you. It’s beyond stupid, and it should have been addressed.
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