Xenoblade Chronicles 3
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 felt like a do-over in more ways than one. It took learnings from Monolith’s previous games and used them to turn the blueprint for the original Xenoblade Chronicles into a full-fledged open-world RPG that didn’t just feel like beautiful skyboxes over mostly empty fields. The combat is finely tuned, the characters are great, and the story about child soldiers is the best Monolith has ever produced. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 tells an evocative tale of friendship, betrayal, and existential fear with one of the best party-based real-time hybrid combat systems around, and the studio’s obsession with baroque skill trees and stat augmenting systems is kept mostly in check. — Ethan Gach
