Xenoblade Chronicles 3D makes a good argument for design overriding hardware limitations. The New 3DS normally puts out PSP-quality graphics, yet it's capable of rendering massive open-world naturalistic environments full of moving structures, and realistic human characters capable of emoting through polygonal deformation.

It's less than ideal, obviously; it looks clunky, but it can be done. How do we have developers complaining about not being able to realize their vision on the Switch? 🔸

Something about this has me eager to figure out where the hell this story is actually going, also. I've just hit the Bionis's lower back; Xord and the rest of the Mechon are playing up their evil facade to a cartoonish extent ("GRAHAHA! YOU'LL MAKE A TASTY SNACK!"). Is it a successful attempt to manipulate and enrage Shulk, who doesn't know any better, or a clumsy attempt on the devs' part to motivate me as a player as part of the game's amusement park ride?

Digging this thread up because my recent fascination with the 2DS in 2019 had me picking this game up right where I left it off. And I made it not just to the Satorl Marsh, but all the way through to the Frontier Village, which I'm genuinely pleased to see is full of the franchise's sentient-beachball race.

Oh, I should also say I'm doing every single sidequest as they come up, and engaging with as many of the game's superfluous systems as possible. 29 hours and counting!

Nopon are spherical Chu-Chus, and their species-wide dialect is a shade removed from Jar Jar Binks, but I love and accept them completely regardless. They're explicitly stereotypical anime comic relief, but (and I think I said this when I tried out Xenoblade 2) it's still nice to see a setting where they socialize and cooperate alongside humans despite being so incredibly different. It reminds me of how I felt seeing the Hanar, Elcor, and Volus in the Mass Effect series

Tonight I reached the floating city above the Eryth Sea. The polygonal and texture fidelity of the characters and environments in this game are a shade above the original Half-Life; the screen is 400x240 with no anti-aliasing and minimal texture filtering, and yet, seeing the back of the Bionis's head off in the distance, I am absolutely taken aback by what they've achieved with the sense of scale in this game

- Bionis and Mechonis, the continents, fought over the definition of a parent's 'legacy'
- Egil, piloting the Mechonis, became open to reconciliation
- Shulk was born only as an avatar for Zanza, the soul of the Monado (a force of evil)
- Dickson and Alvis are two members of a trinity of ancients
- Mechonis now destroyed, Egil dead
- All High Entia are genemorphed into Telethia
- Heropon biggest, strongest
- Crush, pow
- Roly poly, keep on rolling

Finished up the Bionis's Interior earlier tonight. I think my next (and possibly final) point of interest before I wrap this game up is to finish up Colony 6 as best I can. Shulk and crew have no idea what awaits them, it makes sense they'd try to make the Bionis a safer and more habitable place for people from all walks of life before departing on what might very well be a one-way trip.

None of the characters are familiar with the notion of planets; they just know the humanoid landmasses and the endless sea surrounding them. "What's that, a ball of water?"

That, and the taste the game gives you of Zanza and the rest in labcoats, are two new ways for Xenoblade to utterly wow the player with the sheer scale of its setting. It'll be interesting to see how this ending ties into XC2, when I eventually pick that back up.

Good morning; it's been over a week since I finished the campaign for this and I'm still buzzing about the state in which it left me.

Ever Oasis is my next JRPG before Xenoblade 2, but gosh, I'm so glad I sunk 90+ hours into this instead of Assassin's Creed Origins/Odyssey or Red Dead Redemption 2 or even Fallout 76, which I can absolutely see another me having done and felt resentful about afterwards