Roughly a year ago, MultiVersus came back from a year’s hibernation, promising a total revamp of the game that was originally launched in beta back in 2022. Of course, at the time of writing, MultiVersus has officially been taken offline for good, unable to be downloaded on any storefront, so clearly things didn’t go very well. And so we must ask…what went wrong here, and what can we learn from for any future attempts at crafting a game like MultiVersus? Let’s talk about it.
THE REVAMP’S FAILED REINVENTION
I’ve already written about the relaunch and its many problems (LINK HERE), but let me sum things up again. Upon relaunching back in June in 2024 MultiVersus was found to be a buggy, slow-paced mess that had also doubled down on all of the monetization models that people had already been complaining about back in beta. It was abundantly clear that the year they had spent reworking the game hadn’t yielded that much. We had a swap to Unreal Engine 5 for marginally better lighting, slightly improved (but still spotty) netcode, a few new characters and…that was about it. So right off the bat, the first impression of this full launch was negative, and it would be a herculean effort to right the ship after stumbling out of port like this.
To be fair to Player First Games, there was an attempt to save the game. They didn’t sit idly by and took criticism to heart, but for everything they added or changed, there’d be something else they would break in the process. It was truly one step forward and two steps back. Season two gave us Samurai Jack and Ranked Mode…except Jack was overtuned and annoying to fight, and Ranked had a ton of problems that held it back at launch. Season three had another fan favorite with The Powerpuff Girls…only for them to also be overpowered. They teased the addition of a shield mechanic in season three and fully implemented it in the following season, and while it was often requested from players, just as many hated the mechanic. Even defenders of the shield would largely agree it wasn’t implemented as well as it could have been. And then there was season four, their last big chance to turn things around and they pulled out all the stops. Arena Mode, Raven and Marceline as the new characters, and a new way to unlock fighters with Fighter’s Road. But uh…if you can guess the pattern here, those didn’t go well either. Arena Mode was a slog and barely anyone played it after a while. While Raven was mostly well regarded, Marceline felt super overtuned at launch. And then there was Fighter’s Road…the grind to end all grinds that largely created more problems than it solved.
With all this in mind, it was no surprise that season five would be the final season of the game. What WAS surprising though, is that the final big patch ended up leaving the game in a much better place, to the point people lamented that things were finally turning around…it was just too little, too late. The final patch decreased hitstop across the board and even adjusted the speed of some characters, finally addressing concerns over the game’s speed from the relaunch. Aquaman and Lola Bunny, the final two characters, were shown to be really fun additions just to rub salt in the wound. But for all of the positive changes, as much as hardcore fans might hate to admit it, MultiVersus was still a heavily flawed game, and it just stands to reason that it shouldn’t have relaunched in the state that it had in the first place. These issues were present even during the beta, and if those weren’t addressed with the relaunch, then its fate was sealed.
THE ORIGNAL SINS
For as highly as people speak of the beta version of MultiVersus, let’s not forget that game’s player base cratered well before the announcement it would be shut down for the relaunch a year later. Even in the beginning, this game had massive problems that went unaddressed. Monetization is an easy thing to gripe about, just to start. Having $15 and $20 skins was always gonna shoot this game in the foot. But it might have been easier to take if you didn’t have to buy characters too. There’s a lot of debate on if a free-to-play fighting game can even work with free characters, but I think MultiVersus had a chance to hit the ground running by offering the characters for free and just make the money back on all the skins. Look at the success of a game like Marvel Rivals, having all of the characters available all at once. While Rivals of Aether 2 is a paid game, all post-launch characters are going to be free, and they’ve also been relying on paid cosmetics to bolster development, as another example.
Even if you HAD to make characters paid, there was no reason they had to keep jacking the prices up. Going from $7 to $10, with new characters costing $12.50, this in addition to the skin prices just made this game a massive expense that many couldn’t afford. Really, this game failed one key aspect you see in all of these successful free-to-play games; you can hook the whales but you have to make it fun for everyone else too. The game feels like a massive grind if you don’t spend any money at all, and that just made people like me want to avoid giving it money in the first place. The game itself was shamelessly greedy, most evident with those limited time event skins. If you were willing to grind for hours to get the special currency you could spend ALL of it to get ONE of these skins for “free,” and then have to buy the others with real money…and all of those skins were roughly $30 each. Some people argued that because you were able to get ONE of them for the low, low price of several hours of grinding, it was OK to price the others that way and…yeah I’m just not buying it. And clearly it didn’t work or this game would still be around. Cuz let’s face it, TONS of free-to-play games are just as, if not more money grubbing than MultiVersus but they’re still kicking. And that’s because getting past monetization….this game just had huge flaws that sucked the fun away.
From the early days of the beta, it was clear MultiVersus left a lot to be desired with balance, hitboxes, and just overall core gameplay mechanics. Hitboxes were awful for most of this game’s life, and even after multiple changes you’ll still see characters phase through attacks that SHOULD hit them, or get tagged by something that was nowhere near them. We’ve had overtuned characters and one trick ponies throughout this game’s life. If it isn’t Samurai Jack, Shaggy or Banana Guard’s side special spam, it’s Taz’s tornado spam from the beta. Wonder Woman, Bugs and Harley barely got touched throughout the betas and full release, allowing them to just utterly dominate and do things so many other characters wished they could do. Velma, Gizmo and so many others got gutted with constant, needless changes, and then you have the gigantic can of worms that is the Iron Giant. All those years when Sakurai was made fun of for saying Ridley was too big for Smash…yeah no, I think he knew what he was talking about. Virtually every major patch required tons of extra work for Iron Giant, and at times he was taken offline entirely due to some exploit being found. He was always hovering over the precipice of being either total trash or completely breaking the game over his knee.
When it comes to mobility and defense, the game largely never sat right with me, or a lot of other people. The beta was too slippery and fast, and the full release was too sluggish. They never found a happy medium. I’m still baffled that they decided to put in a dash attack in a game with no dashing. The dodge serves as the only real burst movement option in the game, when it’s supposed to be a defensive mechanic. The dodge, as well as the parry added later on, felt finicky to use. Some characters, like Jason, barely moved when dodging and would eat attacks that others could avoid. The parry has so much recovery, even on a successful one, that you often couldn’t get the best punish out of it, and outside of a specific perk, it was detrimental to use against projectiles. Even the addition of shields later didn’t really help. Whether you’re for or against shields, I think we can be in agreement that such a major defensive mechanic shouldn’t have been so hastily added. Many were already used to the game lacking them, pointing to games like Brawlhalla or the first Rivals of Aether games as not having shields but still doing well. But those games had better core movement and just feel better designed in general compared to MultiVersus. The game was fun for a bit but the cracks formed quickly and weren’t being filled in fast enough, and the player base never really recovered. But maybe players would have stuck around with better picks for the roster.
From the jump, the potential that MultiVersus had was huge. Warner Bros. has so many properties that they either own or could get the license for that this could have been a game that celebrated movies and animation the same way that Super Smash Bros. celebrates video games. The original beta’s starting roster had a wide spread of IPs to pull from; Scooby-Doo, Game of Thrones, the various superheroes fromDC Comics…but there were also some rather strange picks that made many scratch their head. We got Shaggy and Velma but not the talking dog that’s the namesake of his series. We had Bugs Bunny and...Taz, but no Daffy in sight. I know there must be diehard fans of Gremlins out there, but did they really need TWO characters on that roster? The addition of Black Adam of all characters to the DC side was a transparent attempt at synergy with his own flop of a film, when there were several other more popular choices. And this is a problem that never really went away.
It was so strange for the relaunch to give us stages themed on Dexter’s Laboratory or The Powerpuff Girls, but no playable characters from those series (at first anyway). And when it came to adding in a new Adventure Time character, they went with…a random banana guard, a poor excuse for a joke character. We also settled into a pattern with these relaunch seasons that got old fast. It was a mixture of cartoon character and DC character after a while, with only Beetlejuice serving as a temporary break from that pattern. While characters like Raven or Marceline were well regarded, they came far too late. And when it finally came time to get another Looney Tunes rep…we got Lola Bunny before Daffy, despite a film starring the duck coming out around that same time. That said, it was Nubia who was criticized the most, a rather unknown DC Comics character that felt like a strange addition. An amazon wielding a spear, she felt a bit redundant when Wonder Woman and Banana Guard were already on the roster. I have no real qualms with the character and I can welcome more unexpected picks at times, but she really did feel like the epitome of “who asked for this?”
There’s rumors that the game’s main director pushed for some of these characters, and various datamines show that there are tons of other characters that were always in various forms of development that’ll never see the light of day. Raven had announcer packs leaked back during the beta, alongside a Wicked Witch of the West announcer pack. The Witch, alongside the likes of Scooby-Doo, also starred in the tie-in comic that was out around the same time as the relaunch. Why was the comic advertising characters that weren’t even in the game? Why all these leaked packs WELL before the character ever came out? Why prioritize someone like Banana Guard or Nubia over safer picks like Raven or The Powerpuff Girls? It just speaks to whoever was in charge being incredibly unorganized, and much like the rest of the game, they seemed ill-equipped to make what had been asked of them. So with all that being said…what can we learn from this?
LEARN FROM THE FLOP OR BE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT
Just a few years ago MultiVersus was being hailed as a shift in how fighting games could market themselves. Alongside the still un-released 2XKO from Riot Games, many argued that this was the beginning of the free-to-play age of fighting games. But I’m not so sure this will really work out. For one, there are simply SO MANY live-service games these days that competition is just too hard. All of these games are “forever games,” designed to take as much of your free time as possible and keep you from booting up anything else. Even with new titles coming out, they often end service within a year because they fail to tear people away from the heavy hitters. Fortnite continues to do well, alongside a few others, but for every success you have a dozen of failures like Foamstars, Concord, Knockout City, Rumbleverse and so on and so on. The live service bubble feels like it’s bursting, and this is a trend that just isn’t worth chasing.
But let’s pretend that isn’t the case. You’re built different, and you can deliver on a fighting game that can manage to get people’s attention and maintain it. You’re that rare confluence of events that leads to a smashing success. How exactly are you going to accomplish that? One of the biggest things successful live-services do is pump out content. You need to keep giving people a reason to boot your game up. So that means new skins or events or in the case of a fighting game, new characters. But right away there’s an issue: a fighting game character is so much more complex than just adding in a new gun or skin in something like Fortnite. It often takes MONTHS for a new character to come out in something like Street Fighter 6 or Tekken 8. Those games are also incredibly visually complex, with so much detail packed into a single character. So many cloth physics and high resolution textures so I can see every individual pore on their skin or hair on their head. Even if you go for a more stylized, less realistic look like the Guilty Gear series, the modern Arc System Works games spent so much time recreating that anime aesthetic, going through every animation frame by frame to adjust it so it looks just right. You’d have to try something different to pump out characters faster.
You’d need something with a simpler art style, that isn’t nearly as detailed or time consuming to make. But there’s also the matter of how complicated a character can be with their moveset and how you’d balance that with the rest of the cast. A gun being added to something like Apex Legends only has so many things it can do by contrast. So let’s trim that moveset down a bit, boiling it down to the bare essentials. You also need to make sure you’re constantly putting out new cosmetics in the meantime between characters. All this requires a TON of work though, and it can get costly, so you’ll have to find a way to price things accordingly. Don’t make players break the bank, but don’t give everything away for free either. Our ideal free-to-play fighter that learns from the mistakes of its predecessors would then have to have a simple art style, simple movesets, and not be too egregious with the monetization. Could such a thing exist? Well yeah…it’s called Brawlhalla.
I’m not even really joking. Brawlhalla is a free-to-play fighting game that has managed to survive for a decade and still maintains a healthy player base. It has collabs with everything from Star Wars to Tekken to wrestlers and more. Now, I can’t speak to the monetization in general, as even in the best case scenario it’s bound to be pretty gross. However, this game also has an option to just buy the whole roster for forty bucks, and that will count for all future characters. It’s a ridiculous deal the longer the game exists. You can even try out every character and skin in training mode to try before you buy individual characters if you want to. It’s been a massive success largely in the background and other games refuse to really learn from it. There’s also 2XKO but that hasn’t launched at time of writing and we’ll have to see if Riot can pump out characters fast enough, and not overcharge for skins. Which uh…knowing Riot that probably will charge hand over fist for all of those Ahri skins. So in the end, the solution is there and everyone refuses to learn.
CONCLUSION
In the end, the writing had been on the wall long before MultiVersus came back from that year hiatus. There was a chance for the game to right itself, but it was a slim chance to fix everything in a year. I think that Player First Games certainly has very talented artists and for all the misfires with some character designs, they also had some really great realized characters. Tom & Jerry were a fantastic take on a duo character, perfectly showcasing their own animosity against each other, with other fighters just caught in the crossfire. Rick was also an inspired design with tons of shenanigans you can get into with his portals and various projectiles. I can give the game credit for attempting to make a 2v2 focused game and emphasizing team work. There are bones of a good game buried deep within MultiVersus but sadly you have to dig too far to get there. Maybe if things had just been a bit different. If anything, I hope this game can be used as an example of what not to do when designing a fighting game or a live service one for that matter. In fact, it seems Riot already took notice, as there are rumors that they had been working on their own platform fighter and it was cancelled after seeing what happened with MultiVersus. I do feel for the fans of this game and I hope that everyone who worked at Player First Games gets on their feet with a new job. Ultimately, a lot of people suffered for the decisions likely made by just a few, which is unfortunately a trend in the gaming industry these days. There will continue to be more flops like MultiVersus for as long as the industry is ruled by greed and hubris. I have my doubts we’ll see those in power learn their lesson, but it doesn’t hurt to hope for the best, right?
A little over a year ago I put out this post going over my frustrations with Splatoon 3 and my hopes that with another year of planned updates they could address these issues and end on a strong note. As of this writing, Splatoon 3 seems content complete without any plans to add any more substantial content, so it’s time to do a deep dive on how this game spent its final year of updates and come to terms with how this trilogy will close out.
REWORKS AND ROADMAPS
First off, let’s recap my main complaints from the original post and see just how Splatoon 3 addressed those points: I had issues with the game’s online stability, the seasonal update cycles, Salmon Run’s reward system and the quality of the multiplayer stages. To be honest…very few of these complaints were addressed, though I kind of expected that. The online experience in Splatoon 3 is largely the same now as it was back when I made that post, and any alleged improvements aren’t all that noticeable to me. Rooms still break down at random when matchmaking, and you still see a lot of players disconnecting at all points of a match. There was a patch not too long ago that seemingly tried addressing lag issues in matches, though I can’t say I noticed any major differences. For a while the game seemed to disconnect me and then punish me despite doing everything in my power to stomp out issues, though that did diminish greatly over time. Other than that, it’s the same ol’, same ol’.
I didn’t expect the seasonal content droughts to really be addressed and they also went mostly unchanged. In fact, we got LESS per season near the end with less weapons and stages. There was an attempt to improve the frequency of the various Challenges with wacky rule sets though. I’d still argue they were too infrequent and I was often not able to play even when they were active. There was a fun one where Rollers were super-fast, so that was neat I guess. Salmon Run also received a patch that awards players some silver and gold scales per shift if you do all your rewards, but that’s a bandage being slapped on that game’s horrid economy that comes too little too late. The shop still makes you buy things just to see what else is on sale and the prices are still FAR too high most of the time. There’s only one thing I think this game really did that felt like they were responding to criticism and that was regarding the stages.
For one thing, many of the later stages added post-launch got better with time. Starting with Drizzle Season 2023, I think the devs were finally willing to budge on some of their early design decisions with stages. Crableg Capital had a lot more verticality for starters, with Shipshape Cargo Co. having a lot of wide open space and multiple ways to get around and into the enemy side of the stage. From there Robo ROM-en was a really fun stage with a good theme and an interesting lower route that allowed you to actually flank your opponents. Marlin Airport made use of fans that would move platforms around for an interesting stage gimmick too. Our final brand new stage, Lemuria Hub, was an interesting take on asymmetrical stages with more moving platforms as a hazard to make it stand out. Admittedly, Bluefin Depot’s return was a bit underwhelming but it still has a very unique layout that helps it stand out. But the real talking points here were all of the stage reworks.
Starting with version 5.1 Splatoon 3 would start doing stage reworks as they have done in the past two games. First up was Mahi-Mahi Resort, which ended up addressing a lot of my problems. The stage was made a lot bigger even before the water levels dropped, with the side routes on the left side being made bigger and a better flank route overall. It still doesn’t hold a candle to Splatoon 1’s iteration of the stage but it was a great step forward. That said…I think we kind of peaked there. The subsequent reworks for Mincemeat Metalworks and Undertow Spillway were a lot less impactful. They did make the stages a bit better with extended routes out of spawn or slightly reworking the middle of the stages but they were still largely the same and barely count as a rework in my mind.
(Compare the launch version of Mincemeat Metalworks (LEFT) with the reworked version (RIGHT). Sure they're some changes, but at a glance could you even notice?)
The Version 8.0 update ended up changing MULTIPLE stages at once though. Hammerhead Bridge and Barnacle and Dime would also receive reworks, alongside multiple other stages getting smaller changes across a few of the modes. That said, these final reworks were a bit all over the place. Barnacle and Dime did add a new route on the left of the stage and slightly reworked paths out of spawn which was appreciated, and Hammerhead Bridge did extend the routes out of spawn a bit alongside a one-way drop into the middle of the stage on the right side of the stage…but the stage itself was still a glorified corridor. In the other ranked modes (aside from Splat Zones), these changes were barely notable. When it comes to the other assorted changes, some ended up being more notable than expected. Eeltail Alley added some blocks that allowed you another way to get up to the center bridge (though only in Turf War), and the changes made to the lower flank routes on Museum d’Alfonsio and Brinewater Springs were pretty major changes. Adding a random block here or there on Manta Marina…doesn’t really set the world on fire though. Oddly enough, Um’Ami Ruins received a lot of changes that I count it as an unofficial rework, getting a completely revamped right path out of spawn with a new ink rail to get to the middle of the stage faster. To be honest, this game did end up changing more stages than I thought they would, and we are definitely in a much better place with stages now then at launch or even a year ago. But at the same time, the issues these stages faced are systemic and would take way more time to change than a simple patch would allow. I can only hope that Splatoon 4 isn’t afraid to let players ink walls and have more routes to get around. I feel like making sure stages could be modified for extra modes like Big Run or Tricolor Battles, alongside all of the other ranked modes led to stages feeling less dynamic and interesting across the board. Still, as perhaps my biggest beef with this game, I appreciate the effort. With that said though, let’s talk about some of the NEW stuff the final year of this game’s content cycle would give us.
SPLATOON GOES ROGUE(LITE), WITH A GRAND FINALE
Teased way back before the game even officially launched, the single player expansion was hotly anticipated…and they ended up taking quite a bit of time to release it. That said, I think it ended up being well worth the wait. Side Order ends up serving as a bit of a follow-up to the storyline from Splatoon 2’s Octo Expansion while also being a very experimental side mode. Side Order is a roguelite adventure, with Agent 8 having to scale a tower in a digital world in order to take out the embodiment of order itself to save Pearl and Marina. Players start with a weakened main weapon but each floor they ascend gets them a random power-up that can help turn the tables. For every given “run” of the game, failure or not, you get currency to purchase permanent power-ups to ensure the next run goes smoother. It ended up being a lot of fun with some really addictive gameplay that kept me playing until my thumbs hurt. While maybe not quite as large as Octo Expansion was, it was definitely filled with more than enough to keep me coming back again and again until I cleaned my plate and did everything. All the power-ups cataloged, runs with all the weapons, and even the special run with the Order Octo Shot with no upgrades. For Nintendo’s first crack at a rogue-lite I’m happy that they nailed it so well, and it makes me hopeful future Splatoon games continue to experiment with their single player content. If nothing else, Splatoon seems to always nail their single player modes.
That said, as the end approached it was clear that we’d have to say goodbye…and the game did everything in its power to ensure the final main Splatfest would be one to remember. The Grand Festival didn’t just feel like the finale to Splatoon 3 but a celebration of the entire trilogy. All three main idol groups came together to form the Now or Never Seven, performing for an extra-long Splatfest that lasted three entire days. For this event players were also transferred to a completely different locale this time around, the Grand Festival Grounds near the desert crater where our story first began in this game. It felt like a real full-circle moment, and the fact that the developers went and made a HUGE venue filled to the brim with characters and little details that would only be used for three days was pretty impressive. We live in a world where game devs do everything they can to reuse assets and make sure players see everything they worked hard on, and a lot of this stuff was only available for three days! You know, assuming you don’t own an amiibo of the idols.
Adding to that, prior to this event we got a sneak peak of the final Tricolor map, the Grand Festival Bowl with the final Big Run of the game. Once again, introducing content that wouldn’t be readily available afterward, it was a cool way to tease the stage. The prompt for this final Splatfest was also an interesting one, asking players what they valued most: the Past, the Present, or the Future, with the three idol groups all picking a side to represent them. In the end though…it was a blowout. The power of nostalgia dictates that people value the Past more (or maybe they just like the Squid Sisters the most?), and while Present had a decent showing…in the end Future ended with zero points. How fitting that the final Splatfest of this game would once again demonstrate how hard it is to balance three choices without creating a third wheel that doesn’t really contribute to the greater outcome. That bummer aside, I think the Grand Festival was a really special sendoff for the game on the whole. It’s worth noting we’ll still see reruns of some seasonal Splatfests as time goes on, so it isn’t the TRUE end to the game, but its close enough. That said…as good as this finale was, I do think the true final state of the game does come up a bit short.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
With confirmation that no more major updates were planned for this game, fans will have to more or less accept Splatoon 3 for what it IS rather than what it COULD be. I do find it strange that, for a game as obsessed with the number 3 as Splatoon 3 is, we never did get third kits for weapons at all. It is worth noting Splatoon 3 has more weapons than either Splatoon game before it even WITHOUT third kits though, so I’d argue there is still a lot of variety. That being said, the lack of more options for some weapons can really hurt, especially when you consider the long wait some weapons had to even get their second kit (Bamboozler mains I feel for you!) thanks to the seasonal updates. The fact that we got brand new weapons such as the Decavitator right at the end of the game’s life with both kits at once stings all the more.
Considering how much work this game put into multiple versions of stages for certain modes and events, I am a little shocked a final update didn’t let players do private room Tricolor Battles or even be able to add on the modifiers from the random Challenges. Seeing as Shifty Stations became fair game after the Final Fest of 2¸I don’t see a reason for not implementing something similar for the likes of Tricolor stages, or even Big Run stages. I understand that making something limited-time only makes it feel more special (I even just praised this about the Grand Festival), but considering what past games have done it’s hard to feel like 3 isn’t dropping the ball a little bit.
Just so we’re clear here, I still think Splatoon 3 is a game bursting at the seams with content. Between two solid single-player experiences, by far the most stages and weapons in the series (especially if we’re counting variations for modes like Big Run or Tricolor Battles), a more fleshed-out co-op mode with Salmon Run, it even manages to have smaller stuff like a card game hidden within. Both Splatanas and Stingers are interesting new weapons and some of the other new weapons added later on in the game are pretty interesting. I’ll still hold firm that the Zipcaster is one of the coolest special weapons they’ve ever made. The game has a lot of technical polish and the visuals, even if they aren’t a huge leap from past games, feel all the more refined. I put hundreds of hours into the game across these two years and some change, and I enjoyed the vast majority of it. Playing with friends on the weekend was a pretty common activity, as opposed to the other two games that eventually boiled down to dusting it off every so often for a Splatfest and then turning it off again for months at a time. Splatoon 3 is a great game and in a lot of respects a great finale to the trilogy, but I won’t deny I still feel a little let down.
We have no idea what the future holds for this series now. Final Splatfests have had some impact on the next game in the series. Marie having more of a role in 2’s story, or the entire “chaos” theming for 3 on the whole…so who knows how Past winning will impact the hypothetical Splatoon 4. The devs have mentioned the trilogy closing the chapter on the current plot, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a total clean slate moving forward. Maybe we’ll get a game set in the past to get more of that juicy lore. Maybe we’ll get a game that’s geared more towards design elements from the first game even! One can hope, I guess. The Splatoon trilogy has definitely had its share of ups and downs, so I don’t want to paint this as something that only 3 had going on. The first game was at times an unbalanced mess, since it was a new IP that wasn’t sure what it wanted to be yet. The second game got rushed out the door to hit the launch window of the Switch too, and had its own share of strange design decisions (here’s looking at you, Sting Ray). With 3 I had hopes the devs would finally have the time and resources, not to mention past experiences to draw from, to make the best game in the series and…3 was not that at all. But it was also a game made during a pandemic, with a new Nintendo online infrastructure, on top of being on aging hardware that may or may not have once had a “pro” version in development. All things considered I think Splatoon 3 came out OK. It still delivered on a sense of style that stands out from the rest of Nintendo’s games, and kept me coming back for more even with all of these issues, so clearly they were doing a lot right. Whatever the future holds, I’ll always be down to make a mess with some ink.
In 2022 Warner Bros. released a new platform fighter that managed to make quite the splash. MultiVersus, a 2v2 focused free-to-play title, found impressive success after it entered its open beta with well over 10 million players within the first month. The game was praised for its colorful artstyle that blended together characters from all sorts of different mediums, from the Looney Tunes to Gremlins, to the likes of Rick and Morty with Game of Thrones; it was a crossover that seemed like it had potential to rival Nintendo’s own Super Smash Bros. But then just as suddenly as the game arrived on the scene…content dried up, the devs were silent and at the conclusion of a rather underwhelming season two it was announced that the open beta was concluded and would re-launch within a year. This struck many as odd, as the game’s beta period was quite long and featured a multitude of balance patches, new content and characters being added, as well as a plethora of monetization options that certainly made it look like a full release. That year has come and gone, and MultiVersus has re-launched…but something has clearly gone wrong, as we enter a multiverse filled with a multitude of mishaps.
A REGRESSIVE RE-LAUNCH
In the first ten minutes of me booting up the re-launched MultiVersus, I found myself constantly repeating the same question: why was this feature better in the beta? For starters, the tutorial, while a bit more robust with a true level to run through as you’re taught the basics, lacks the advanced tutorials found in the beta. No more ways to learn about directional influence or how certain moves are meant to function. This is especially puzzling when this re-launch added new mechanics, such as the parry and dash attack, so you’d think they’d want to make sure people know they exist! Following this, I went into training mode, but was dismayed to see that you could no longer go into training with every character regardless of having unlocked them. In a world where every fighting game gets DLC and being able to train against them or even see how they play requires buying in, MultiVersus allowing you to “try before you buy” felt really revolutionary and fairly consumer friendly. The same held true for local play, making it a godsend for offline tournaments that would no longer have to rush to unlock everyone in preparation. That BOTH of these features are gone is troubling on its own, especially when you factor in changes to progression and monetization, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.
As I went into training mode I noticed that ranked play was present on the menu, but grayed out with a “coming soon” message. The original beta eventually got some form of ranked play briefly before the beta’s shutdown, and to not see it back again is disappointing. There were also a number of options and settings that were either taken out or adjusted from the beta, such as being able to swap the inputs for your basic three-hit combo and your strong attack. I used that feature since I felt the default was a bit awkward, but now I have no choice but to leave it as it is. Training mode no longer lets you change controls, and it seemingly takes longer to swap characters while in that mode. Another puzzling change is that stats from the end of battle are no longer there, such as listing who got the most ringouts or who did the most damage, making it difficult to tell how effective you really were in a fight. You can’t even see which players agree to or decline a rematch, and there’s no longer an option to “toast back” your opponent if they toast you, making it harder to give them props for a good fight. In general the UI is…different, and while somewhat improved it still feels somewhat lacking. You no longer have to move a very slow cursor for individual menu items on console, but there’s still parts of the UI that make it feel like it was made for a keyboard and mouse first and foremost.
Really, I could list out all of these changes all day, and to be fair most beta versions of a game are going to see changes for the full release. But to see so many changes that are basically just whole features being taken out is a concerning first impression. Now, about a week into the game’s re-launch an update has gone out that now allows everyone to play as every character in training mode, though not in local battle. Player First Games has been quick to respond to feedback and are currently attempting to put back in as many of these features as they can…but that kind of begs the question…what were they doing for a full year if this is the finished result?
SACRIFCED AT THE ALTAR OF GREED
An issue this game has had since day one is that Warner Bros. is the publisher, and they’re among the greediest when it comes to Western game publishers. From prioritizing DLC rather than fixing poor PC versions of various Batman Arkham games, to adding in loot boxes to a single player game like Middle Earth: Shadow of War, I knew things weren’t likely to be great. The beta was rife with terrible monetization. They gave you a fair bit of the free currency for characters right away to trick you into thinking the game will be more generous than it actually is, because after all…the first hit is free but once you’re hooked you have to pay for the rest. We had an abundance of costumes costing twenty dollars or more, with characters at seven dollars a pop. I knew that the chances were slim that the monetization would get any better, but I wasn’t really expecting it to get worse.
For starters, characters now cost ten dollars each…at least for the older beta characters. A new character like Joker costs about $12.50. That’s not even getting into the changes to the free currency. In the beta you had Gold, which could be used for characters, perks and a small handful of cosmetics. For this re-launch, they’ve seen fit to cut Gold entirely, but ADDED three new currencies to replace it. There’s a separate currency for perks and a separate one for fighters, with a new “prestige” currency that you only acquire by…getting cosmetics, which then lets you get a small handful of EXCLUSIVE cosmetics. Speaking frankly, it’s disgusting in just how brazenly greedy it all is. Before, you had options of what to spend your hard earned Gold on, and you’d gain some for every match played. Sure, it was a drop in the bucket, but every bit helped. But with these separate but equal currencies you’re far more limited. Once I’ve bought up all the perks I want that perk currency just sits there, useless and unable to be converted into anything else. Same goes for character currency, which also takes way longer to acquire. You only get it for specific events or character mastery, and even then you’ll get like 100 of it at a time, which doesn’t mean much when every character costs THOUSANDS of the stuff. In the beta, characters cost varying amounts of Gold; easy to use characters like Garnet or Taz were cheaper at 1500 Gold, hard characters like Tom & Jerry were 3000 Gold, and everyone else was at 2000. But now you’ll find EVERY character from the beta is 3000 of the character currency, and a new character like Joker costs 6000 of it. I already disliked the idea of pricing characters differently, since it kind of sets them up to be compared. If Joker costs more than everyone else is he just better? For the record, for the past two weeks or so since release I’ve done all my daily and weekly missions and about as much of the PvE stuff as I can, and that’s netted me a little over 11,000 character currency. I’ve gotten one character from the old beta, as well as Joker, leaving me with roughly 2000 currency I can’t do anything with for some time, and knowing future characters are going to cost more I’m more likely to hoard it than anything else. Adding to this, at launch you only earned battlepass XP by doing your daily and weekly missions, severely curbing just how fast you could advance through it. A later patch granted you a comically small amount of XP for a win and even less for a loss, though those amounts were also increased with yet ANOTHER patch a bit later. Nothing’s been done with character currency, meanwhile, so hoarding continues to be the way to go there.
You’ll see people try to defend this, stating that this is just like the good old days where you’d unlock everyone by playing, but the time investment here isn’t comparable at all. A game like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate infamously locked the bulk of its 70+ character roster away, leaving you with only the first game’s 8 initial fighters, but it took me way less time to unlock the entirety of that game’s roster than it has to get TWO characters in MultiVersus. I have it better than many, as I got to retain anyone I unlocked in that beta period. I have roughly half of the roster at this point, but for anyone starting fresh all you get is Shaggy and four rotating characters every week. I remembered when completing the initial beta’s tutorial got me Wonder Woman for free, thinking it was super generous…little did I know we peaked there. In all honesty, the initial closed beta was even more generous so this is the SECOND time they’ve slowed everything down to a crawl. But nowhere is this horrible, manipulative design more apparent than with the PvE mode added here, the Rift.
At first glance, The Rift seems like a lot of fun. A full on campaign mode with mini-games and boss fights, with plenty of ways to modify fights and give you a lot of things to do cooperatively with friends rather than just fight against each other online. But as with everything else here, fun has been sacrificed at the altar of greed. For starters, to get very far in the mode you’ll need to unlock and level up Gems, power-ups you affix to your characters that can have a range of effects. These help to make you stronger and fight back against increasingly tough missions, but you’ll quickly realize how much they drag things down. You see, there’s multiple difficulties for each campaign in a given Rift, and you are outright gated out of certain difficulties if your Gem level isn’t up to snuff. Even then, some fights get so tough at the higher difficulties you might not be able to win without getting your Gem levels up even higher. You have two options to get stronger: you can either go through every mission and complete the various sub missions within, some of which are fairly tedious to do and might require a character or skin (or a specific skin of a specific character) that you don’t have….or you could just slide them some money to juice the Gems that way. So much of the Rift’s progression is designed around a grind that wears you down so you just shell out and make it stop. It’s all about the path of least resistance, and BOY does this game resist you a lot. If you want full completion on a given Rift you’ll have to do almost every submission in every fight. It’s easier if you have a friend with you, as every fight has a submission for doing it with a co-op partner, but if you don’t have a friend to play with you’ll really struggle to fully complete a Rift. The devs even got into some hot water when it was found that later difficulties would have a limited amount of lives you had to budget each day, with the option to buy more lives with real money. They lie through their teeth that this is some bug, despite this being a part of the in-game shop and has dedicated UI elements for it, but even if it was a bug, it certainly fits in with the manipulative design.
It became pretty clear early on that the Rift mode just wasn’t going to do it for me, but you’re forced to contend with it if you want to progress your daily missions among other things. They even have an event going on that will reward you with the next character, The Matrix’s Agent Smith, if you can defeat 20 bosses in Rifts…but that will require a significant amount of time and effort…or money, of course. That would mean doing pretty much every Rift on every difficulty, and later Rifts actually take away one of the easier difficulties, just outright forcing you to contend with the harder versions of these same handful of missions over and over. This could have been a great contender compared to the Smash Bros. single player experiences, but they’ve only succeeded in making a mode I’m loathe to even look at. But hey, even if the monetization is awful, and the new mode is a grindy slog AND this full release is missing tons of features from the beta, as long as the core gameplay is fun this is all worth putting up with….right?
TOO FAST OR TOO SLOW, NEVER JUST RIGHT
The original beta for MultiVersus was fun, but flawed. It had a lot of interesting ideas, but with some shoddy execution. I had hoped that with a year or more to polish things up, the game could at least come back with some kinks ironed out…but what we got instead is practically a different game in some ways. For starters, the beta was notable for being a bit “slippery” for people. You had a great amount of air control and your dodge was fast and easy to spam over and over. So it was difficult to really catch up with opponents and chase them down. Adding to that, many attacks both came out fast and had barely any recovery, meaning you could just keep swinging away with no one able to punish that behavior. This re-launch has slowed the game down considerably…but now it just feels awful to move around. Some of this might be down to taste, but most players seem to agree that something is OFF about the game now. Some have noticed that the input buffer seems ludicrously high, storing inputs for upwards of 30 frames. For reference, Smash Ultimate has a buffer of around 10 frames, and people haaaaaaate how that feels. To be fair here, I think slowing the game down in some respects actually was the right call. There were too many actions in beta MultiVersus that were basically instant and really hard to punish. Finn could throw out a gem and instantly teleport over to it, as an example. Finn’s infamous backpack spin and Taz's side special spin were also notoriously hard to deal with as if you dodged them they’d recover and be able to do it again before you could stop them. The online for the beta also got…really bad at times, with characters constantly teleporting around and acting weird due to instability. They’ve allegedly upgraded the netcode for this game, and while I still see a fair variety of issues (such as frequent desynchs), the online experience DOES seem better. A slower game makes it easier to deal with stronger moves, while also making the online experience smoother….but the problem is that they didn’t stop there.
(Credit to MadMikeYT on Reddit)
In addition to slowing the game down so much, they also increased the size of every character by a good deal, all without changing the sizes of stages at all. The camera is also zoomed in a lot more than it used to, making things seem even more claustrophobic, especially on certain stages. But I think the single worst change here was the addition of FAR more hitstun to virtually every single move in the game. All of this combined makes for a game that’s incredibly different in feel and pace. Beta MultiVersus was slippery, making it hard to run someone down and start your offensive, but the full release of MultiVersus is a sluggish time where you’re in constant danger of being stuck in a near-infinite loop that’ll lead to your death. As a result of this, 2v2 matches feel like crapshoots, where you could just constantly get ping ponged around and suddenly have a high damage percentage seconds into a match. 1v1s run the risk of being locked into long combos that can lead to early kills too. With the more recent patches, they have attempted to look into these issues a bit, such as reducing the hitstun in 1v1s only, but also changing a number of moves in an attempt to stop all of the infinite loops and force people to get more creative with combos. That said, they still have a lot of work to do.
On that note with these patches, the balance is clearly lacking this early on. I’m not a competitive player by any means so I can only say so much about it, but the consensus seems to be that the game is still a bit of a mess, not really an improvement from the beta. Certain characters seemingly got touched up and greatly improved like Taz or Black Adam, while characters like Velma got completely gutted. Curiously, some of the reported best characters in the game like Bugs, Harley and Wonder Woman, are barely touched despite so many other characters clearly needing more work to bring them up to par. I’m still baffled at how this game has tried to balance moves with cooldowns in a very uneven way. As an example, Wonder Woman’s lasso had a cooldown in the beta, despite it not being THAT powerful, and then it was removed for the full release….and now it’s back again after the first patch. Which is it? Why does Velma’s down special have a nearly TWO MINUTE cooldown when the buff she achieves with it doesn’t last more than a few seconds? There’s also the matter of the Iron Giant, who was found to have tons of infinites and exploits, leading to him being taken offline for well over a week before returning. Now, I don’t expect any fighting game to ever be perfectly balanced, especially at launch, but for things to be so bad you have to bring an entire character (that people might have paid MONEY for) offline for several days again begs the question…why did this game release in this state?
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
At this point, MultiVersus has been out for a few weeks, with a few patches thrown out to address some issues, with more along the way. I’m sure with time bugs will be addressed and certain features will be added that were missing. Player First Games have been pretty up front that they ran out of time with this re-launch and had to prioritize certain things to meet the deadline. The upgrade from Unreal Engine 4 to 5 is also likely contributing to some of the problems in this game. I’m not a programmer but I can assume performing an engine switch in just a year’s time is a tall order for any studio, let alone a smaller, less experienced one.
I want to make clear that I’m not going after anyone from Player First Games. The ones that are in the trenches doing testing and bug fixing and putting their all into designing characters are just doing their jobs to the best of their ability. I’d never accuse anyone here of being lazy or phoning things in. I truly think this dev team wants to make the best game they can, but they are also saddled with a publisher that is known for screwing over games with their greed, not to mention the whole of Warner Bros./Discovery being on fire right now and having to cancel projects for tax write offs and trying to shake off debt. I can only imagine the issues going on behind the scenes that the devs are forced to endure when they just want to make a fun fighting game. I’m sure that no one is more frustrated with the state of this game than the people working on it day and night.
That all being said though, this is still a game that people have spent money on. A game that people are trying to compete in professionally. Just because I can be understanding of the circumstances surrounding this game that doesn’t really change the fact that this full release is littered with bugs, predatory design and gameplay changes that severely impact my enjoyment. I’m sure others are in a similar boat; I WANT this game to succeed, but I also don’t want to make excuses for it. Time will tell if Player First Games can stomp out some issues and keep a decent content stream going for this game, or if people will get burned out or impatient and just move onto something else. With a new Nintendo system on the horizon, that just means a new Smash Bros. game is a matter of “when” and not “if.” There’s also more competition with games like Nickelodeon All Star Brawl 2 or the upcoming Rivals of Aether 2 that’ll be competing for the attention of platform fighter fans everywhere, so…the clock is ticking. That’s kind of the rub with live service games; you only have so much time you can dedicate to them and there’s SO much competition. If something better comes along, people WILL flock to it. The always-online nature of this game also worries me with the fact that one day Warner Bros. could just flip a switch and take it offline forever. Hell, they’ve already done that once! I think there’s still time to improve this game and maybe down the line they can redeem themselves…but this is already their second chance and I’m not sure they’ve done anything to warrant a third.
Whether you’ve heard of game developer Monolith Soft before or not, if you’re into the gaming landscape they’re definitely a name worth remembering, and they’ve had quite the history over their 23 years in the business. Founded by Tetsuya Takahashi and Hirohide Sugiura, themselves veterans of Square from the 1990s, the company has undergone many trials and tribulations and worked with a variety of different companies from 1999 to the present day. With their latest release wrapping up the current trilogy in the Xenoblade series, I figured there was no better time than to look back and reflect on the journey the company and the founders of that company have gone through, so let’s get right to it!
TAKAHASHI’S PERFECT WORKS
Looking at Takahashi’s resume alone will show that he had a hand in a variety of beloved games during his time at Square. Working on Final Fantasy IV, V and VI among a few other titles such as Romancing Saga, Takahashi and his wife, Soraya Saga, would pitch an idea for the seventh Final Fantasy game. While rejected for being considered too dark for the brand, they were eventually given permission to develop it into their own title, which would become known as Xenogears. Takahashi and Saga had ambitious plans for the title, believing it could become a massive franchise in its own right, though the actual game’s development was fraught with issues.
Xenogears was composed of two discs, and the first disc set up lofty expectations for the rest of the game, balancing a story steeped in religious and philosophical themes alongside turn-based battles that would utilize giant robots, or “Gears.” However, the second disc was mostly comprised of narration from characters with hardly any gameplay or cinematics. This was allegedly done as a result of both the development team’s inexperience and inability to extend the two year development deadline, and thus was done as a compromise of sorts, or else the game would have shipped half-complete. The game’s English localization almost didn’t happen, with several translators quitting the project, both due to the difficulty of translating a game loaded up with references to various scientific and philosophical concepts, on top of controversy surrounding its religious themes. Despite these setbacks, the game was still critically acclaimed and it was clear that Takahashi and Saga were keen on developing the game’s world more. Alongside development of Xenogears they had also crafted “Perfect Works,” their plans for other installments in the setting that would span a much larger story. Xenogears itself was considered, chronologically, to be the fifth part of what would have eventually been six entries.
However, Takahashi and company had routinely faced issues with Square both before and during development of this title. Growing frustrated with their prioritizing of the Final Fantasy brand above all else, they would eventually found Monolith Soft, taking with them a number of other staff they worked with. They found themselves in bed with Namco, who would publish their games for much of the 2000s. Monolith Soft would then decide to start over and craft a new franchise that would follow Perfect Works…and that game would become the Xenosaga series.
A more explicitly sci-fi series from the get go, Xenosaga was conceived as a six game series, with possible plans for it branching out into multimedia, with an animated series and manga series produced, alongside a few spinoffs titles that would end up staying Japan exclusive. A spiritual successor through and through, Xenosaga contained a number of references to the Xenogears series, alongside a continued focus on mech battles, religious and philosophical themes and turn-based combat. While the first game was a strong debut for this new franchise, each subsequent entry would sell less and less, eventually trimming the series down to three games out of its originally planned six. History repeated with regards to development issues, particularly with Xenosaga: Episode II, as Takahashi had taken on a supervising role, and the team itself was composed of newer staff that wasn’t prepared for such an ambitious title. Takahashi would admit the series underperformed on the whole, part of the reason for the sudden halving of the planned story. Despite a clean start, it seemed as if Perfect Works was anything but a perfect project, with now two failed franchises behind them. However, the winds of fate would wind up changing.
FINDING THEIR FOOTING WITH NINTENDO
Monolith Soft ended up cozying up with Nintendo as the years went on, eventually being purchased by the company and becoming a first-party studio in the late 2000s. Morale at the studio was low after Xenosaga’s abrupt ending, but Takahashi was ready to move onto a new project as a way to boost employee spirits. Coming from an image that appeared in his head of two gigantic gods locked in fierce battle, the idea would develop into a game originally titled Monado: Beginning of the World. However, at the behest of former Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, the title would be changed to Xenoblade, to honor the struggles Monolith Soft had undergone over the years and serve as a slight connecting thread to past projects. And the rest is history…to a point.
The original Xenoblade Chronicles debuted on the Wii in 2010, a massive near open-world RPG with a deep MMO-inspired combat system and an ambitious story. Compared to past efforts, Xenoblade was a game that Takahashi and company were able to realize with a comparatively smooth development, with few compromises to the original vision of the game at that. Releasing to relatively high critical acclaim, the game was initially not localized outside of Japan. Eventually Nintendo of Europe showed interest and would localize it, but Nintendo of America wouldn’t budge. This game, alongside a few others, actually inspired the “Operation Rainfall” fan movement to give them more attention and see localization (and I’ve even written about it before LINK HERE), and while Nintendo might not publically acknowledge the campaign as a deciding factor the game would eventually be brought to North America…exclusively in Gamestop stores. A low initial print, combined with Gamestop selling “used” copies at high prices, insured it became one of the harder to find Wii games, and while it was somewhat better known outside of Japan, it was still rather niche.
That began to change in the Wii U era, however. In a 2013 Nintendo Direct showcasing early looks at various Wii U games, a mysterious title from Monolith Soft was shown. Codenamed X, it was yet another massive RPG with a decidedly more sci-fi look…that sure seemed familiar. Eventually releasing as Xenoblade Chronicles X in 2015, this title would also see acclaim for its massive world and complex combat, though being a Wii U release it didn’t exactly reach many players. A year prior however, Shulk was revealed to be included in the base roster for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, being the last character announced before launch. This helped to put Xenoblade as a series on the map, and gave some momentum that Monolith Soft would continue into the Nintendo Switch era.
Since their acquisition, Monolith Soft would also work as a support studio for Nintendo, particular with their Kyoto office comprised mainly of artists, creating assets for a variety of projects. Over the years, they’ve worked on the Super Smash. Bros. series (Brawl), the Legend of Zelda series (from Skyward Sword all the way to Tears of the Kingdom), the Animal Crossing series from New Leaf onward as well as the Splatoon series. Their help was greatly appreciated with the more recent console Zelda titles in particular, as they were instrumental in creating the vast expanses that would help make Breath of the Wild a smash hit. Considering they’ve lent their talents to a variety of games that have gone on to sell like hotcakes and break past previous franchise records, I think that really helped them prove their worth as an asset for Nintendo, and as such they are given license to continue their own ambitious projects.
At the tail end of 2017, the Switch’s debut year, we would get Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which would go on to become the best-selling entry in the series and experience a boon of new players. More in-line with the fantasy aesthetics of the Wii game, 2 also continued exploring similar themes and further developing the battle system shared across both previous games in the series. Despite its success, the game itself still ran into problems though. With much of Monolith staff working on BOTW it was mostly a skeleton crew on Xenoblade 2, resulting in a number of third-party artists being brought on to ensure the game could be completed, though that also led to complaints about the inconsistent art style and character designs. Technically, the game had issues at launch that were slowly patched out, and being the first simultaneous worldwide launch of the series, it was clear that the English localization was not given as much care as previous games. Despite this, it was clear that this title was what helped to establish Xenoblade as a core Nintendo IP moving forward, and the franchise continues to do well.
A BRIGHT FUTURE AHEAD
Following Xenoblade 2’s release, it would receive a prequel game as part of its expansion pass, Torna: The Golden Country, which fleshed out events happening in that game’s distant past, alongside polishing up gameplay to relative acclaim. In 2020, an enhanced port of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 would release on the Switch, with updated visuals (in particular polishing up the character models), and a new epilogue story, Future Connected. The heroines of Xenoblade 2, Pyra and Mythra, would be announced as playable characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate’s second Fighters Pass as well.
In 2022, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 would see a surprise reveal at the start of the year, releasing just a few months later. After the somewhat mixed reception of the previous game, 3 received rave reviews and several Game of the Year nominations. Many felt it to be an emotionally charged journey, once again spanning a massive world and containing complex combat to wrap it all together. In just a few years, the entire trilogy was now available all on one system. Not too shabby for a series initially struggling to get localized.
The major thing to remember with the Xenoblade series is that it was yet another fresh start for Takahashi and company. While still clearly its own thing, as the years went on many eagle-eyed fans would spot various references to past Xeno games. These often were seen as knowing winks and nods, but little else. When it came to various characters and story beats, there were also some connecting threads indicating that Takahashi, after all of these years, might finally be dusting off “Perfect Works” and starting anew again, after he had previously sworn it off and considered the ideas scrapped. One major change this time around however seemed to be based around making sure each individual game in the Xenoblade series would be a standalone tale that wouldn’t require playing previous entries. There were some connecting threads, yes, but ultimately each entry could stand on its own and fully realize a given theme or story idea without having to overtly connect into a larger narrative. And then Xenoblade 3’s story DLC happened.
Released at the tail-end of April 2023, Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed was yet another prequel campaign in a similar vein to Torna. Future Redeemed would cover events that occurred in the backstory for the base game, however this time around it became clear VERY quickly that this was where it would all come together. Without getting into the details of things, on top of being wary of spoiling this expansion after it just released, Future Redeemed ends up being the means to tie the trilogy together and end it on a satisfying note, with a conclusion that gave fans a lot of closure. Various theories were finally put to rest, though just as many have sprung up in the wake of that game’s ending.
It isn’t immediately clear just where this franchise, or Monolith Soft as a company, will be going next, but my gut tells me we have some great things in store. The core Xenoblade trilogy may be done, but Takahashi has gone on record stating he wants the series to continue for as long as he can do so. There’s still a lot of clear affection for their previous efforts as well. Xenosaga’s KOS-MOS and T-ELOS were guest characters in Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s expansion pass, and there have been more…overt nods to the series in general as time has gone on. There are rumors here and there that the series might return in some form. At the very least, I’m sure many a fan would be happy with simple ports to current systems, but we’ll have to wait and see just where Takahashi’s Wild Ride takes us.
In the end, I’m just happy to see that Monolith Soft has managed to turn out alright after all these years. I first became aware of them when, on a lark, I picked up a copy of the original Xenoblade. I was struck by that game’s scope and ambition and I’ve been a diehard fan ever since. Seeing just how much they’ve been carrying Nintendo into the Switch era, I think it’s only fair that they get the respect they deserve. On top of it all, it sounds like the company promotes a fairly healthy work/life balance, and their time with Nintendo has enabled them to see their visions through with few compromises. A win-win for all involved, really. Their own original entries might always be a bit niche and definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but I’m glad their ambitions are becoming more and more realized as time goes on. From humble beginnings in the trenches at Square, to now being a pillar of one of the Big Three game publishers, I can’t wait to see the heights that Monolith Soft can climb.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Review: The Best of Both Worlds
Monolith Soft knows a lot about ambition. From their early days as a game developer, they’ve always strived for more. With ambition however, there’s often compromise. For co-founder Testuya Takahashi, his vision has often been unfulfilled despite his best efforts. From Xenogears’ infamous second disc, to Xenosaga being cancelled partway through the six planned entries, and even with Nintendo’s own Xenoblade franchise there have been issues that held the games back. Xenoblade Chronicles wasn’t initially localized outside of Japan, Xenoblade Chronicles X was both on the ill-fated Wii U, but also had re-writes that severely impacted the story, and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was made with a skeleton crew, as Monolith Soft was also assisting with two major Nintendo games (Breath of the Wild and Splatoon 2) that would launch in the same year. Despite all the hardship, Xenoblade has become a bona-fide franchise and with the latest release, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, we might be getting a look at Monolith Soft when the shackles can finally release and they can complete their vision without compromise.
FIGHT TO LIVE, LIVE TO FIGHT
Something to address right away: it is perfectly OK to play Xenoblade Chronicles 3 without having played any prior game. While connections exist, the focus is on the world and characters introduced in this game, and while having extra context is nice and you might notice some references to past entries, it is far from required reading. With that said….
In the world of Aionios, there is nothing but war. Two factions, Keves and Agnus, are locked in an eternal struggle. They don’t fight for resources or politics; they fight and kill because it is the only way they can stay alive. These factions find themselves at the mercy of the Flame Clock, a measurement of their remaining life force. Though they must also eat and sleep, they too must take the lives of the enemy faction to keep their own Flame Clock filled. The people of Aionios learn to fight from the moment they are born, and have frighteningly short life spans, or “terms,” of roughly ten years. Should they make it to their tenth term, they are taken before their queen for a Homecoming ceremony, returned to her and laid to rest. A life of nothing but fighting, no one questions the natural order…until one faithful day.
Six soldiers, three from Keves and three from Agnus, find themselves on an unorthodox mission and end up meeting a man named Guernica, who is far older than anyone they have ever seen before. He tells them of a “true enemy” and that the world was once different, though it isn’t long before the group is attacked by this enemy: Moebius. Though fatally wounded in the battle, Guernica bestows a strange power to the six youths, enabling them to fight back against Moebius and give the world a fighting chance to set things right. With both factions branding them as traitors and Moebius also working to hunt them down, it is up to an unlikely ensemble to shatter the nightmarish status quo and find out what it really means to live.
Xenoblade 3 at times is the darkest entry in the franchise to date. A somber atmosphere, the game doesn’t shy away from the horrors of war. The fact that most characters in the game are basically child soldiers is merely the tip of the iceberg. Each of the main cast have experienced trauma from the constant fighting, from the people they’ve lost and what they’ve had to do just to survive in the nightmare of Moebius’ creation. Noah and Mio, our main leads, are off-seers, tasked with sending off those that die in battle, so they are both the closest to death among the main cast but also the ones who are quickest to set aside their differences in an effort to set the world to rights. Noah is a lot more philosophical about life and death throughout the game; despite being against fighting if he sees another option, he’ll still take up arms if he sees no other choice. Mio meanwhile is fairly restrained and kindhearted, but is constantly weighed down by the knowledge that she is on her final term, with roughly three months left to live at the game’s start, giving her a sense of urgency to complete the group’s mission before it is too late. That’s not to say the game can’t have more light-hearted moments though; though not to the extent of Xenoblade 2 there are often characters and missions with a more laidback, comedic bent which serve to mostly balance out the otherwise bleak setting, and leave us with memorable secondary characters. Despite the dark setting, there is a sense of optimism that shines through and keeps the game from being too exhaustingly bleak. On top of that, it might just have the best main cast in the series.
A goal for the development team was to flesh out the main cast, to not have any one “main character” that took up the bulk of screen time and development, which is definitely something the other Xenoblade games have been guilty of in the past. While Noah and Mio are given a bit more focus in the core plot, the rest of the group aren’t far behind and have their own effects on the narrative at various points. Lanz, easy to write-off as the hotheaded idiot of the team, works through his own trauma throughout the game and has to come to grips with letting go of his past if he wants to walk forward. Eunie, a brash if well-meaning friend of Noah and Lanz, struggles with strange visions that haunt her and give some eerie implications into the greater setting. She also has some of the funniest lines in the whole game. Taion, who I feared would quickly fall into a route “smarmy know-it-all” archetype displays a fair amount of depth early on. Despite being among the least-pleased with working with his former enemy, he’s smart enough to rein it in and at least attempt to get along with everyone. Despite taking a lot of pride in his strategic prowess and at times coming across as stoic, his more emotional moments lead to both some of the more touching parts of the game, and also some of the funniest. Sena, at least initially, came across as a bit lacking. She’s the plucky girl who seems to be Mio’s personal cheerleader; however her development is more subtle. Despite being driven and powerful in her own right, she lacks confidence in herself and is constantly seeking validation. She sees herself reflected in other characters throughout the game, and eventually learns of her own self-worth, though I do feel that quests ostensibly meant to be focused on her aren’t always keeping her in the forefront, so it isn’t perfect.
While the main cast feels more fleshed out than any previous Xenoblade game, I do feel that the antagonists are a tad undercooked as a result. Moebius are billed as hedonistic monsters who orchestrate the eternal war behind the scenes mostly out of boredom. They pointedly refer to this all as a game, and have no real respect for any life but their own. While easily detestable, I do feel that the vast majority of Moebius lack depth, coming across more so as Monster of the Week styled obstacles than real characters. Coming off of the villains of Xenoblade 2, in my eyes the strongest antagonists in the franchise, this is definitely disappointing. Then again, seeing as Torna in Xenoblade 2 was a tight-knit group of five, it was far easier to flesh them out compared to Moebius’ 25 members. They went with quantity over quality, but even with the “main” members that received larger focus, I do feel that the game fumbles a bit at giving us villains that are all that memorable. While I want to avoid outright spoilers, I do have to mention I find the ending also loses a bit of steam. The game has a real emotional and narrative high point and…kind of runs on fumes after a while; though I think the ending is strong enough. I do feel there are more unanswered questions with this game when the credits roll, and some moments that don’t make much sense if you stop to think about them. Xenoblade 3 at points seems to be going for a more thematic, symbolic story than an overtly logical one, so I can let a few things slide. Seeing as there is story DLC coming next year though, it is possible the closure and explanations I yearn for are a ways off.
On the whole though, I think Xenoblade 3’s story is very well done. An interesting hook at the start, a steady supply of new developments that push things forward, with a large variety of interesting characters and the best main cast in the series yet, even with the ending stumbling a bit. Monolith Soft seems to have taken a lot of the criticisms of the English dub of Xenoblade 2 to heart here as well, as the English performances are excellent across the board. Lip synching also applies to either the Japanese or English audio tracks, so we no longer have the more awkward moments from Xenoblade 2 where things didn’t even remotely match up. As far as other aspects of the presentation go, Xenoblade 3 continues to push what should be possible on hardware as old as the Switch. Vast landscapes filled with things to see and do never fail to impress, while the overall character models are expressive and detailed. The main cast can even get dirty when out exploring, with a dedicated option to wash clothes when at camp. What the game might lack in high-fidelity textures it often makes up for in its strong art direction and expressive anime cel-shaded style on characters, making this one of the Switch’s most technically impressive games. Also worth noting, there has been more focus on making the game look good in handheld mode as well, which was often seen as an afterthought for previous Xenoblade games on Switch. Coupled with a targeted 30 FPS frame rate the game is about as smooth as one could hope for, considering the console specs and sheer scope of the game. I also feel I should point out how seamless the game is when switching from cutscenes to gameplay. Previous entries in the series would have to fade to black to quickly load in boss fights but in 3 the game instead has a more stylish zoom out straight into gameplay out of the cutscene. While there is a definite difference in quality for the pre-rendered cinematics versus the in-game cinematics, the transitions between the two are a lot smoother, and coupled with voice work even in many of these in-game moments, the overall presentation is a good deal higher than past entries in the series.
To go this far without mentioning the game’s music is a crime unto itself, but to be honest here, when it comes to Monolith Soft, I simply just expect great music by default. Thankfully, Xenoblade 3 delivers here. From a beautiful piano piece that serves as the main menu theme, to several fantastic battle and field themes, there’s almost too much to parse when picking favorites. Compared to the previous games, Xenoblade 3 has a heavy emphasis on flutes, tying in with Noah and Mio’s instruments when working as off-seers, and giving the game its own distinctive sound. It can be hard to name favorites but I’ll try anyway. The Moebius battle theme itself includes ominous chanting, which ties in with the player tackling higher beings with god-like power, and at points the song even sounds like it is laughing at you, emphasizing that Moebius sees this all as entertainment over anything else. “A Step Away” is one of only two vocal tracks in the game, playing at the game’s emotionally draining darkest hour and may or may not have caused tears to be shed. For my money though, “The Weight of Life” has to be my favorite, despite how little it plays in the game. A climactic song that amplifies the cutscenes it appears in, it showcases just how hard the team has to work to overcome overwhelming odds and has moments of intensity that give me chills every time I hear it. Appearing at the end of the game’s second official trailer, I couldn’t get it out of my head then and still can’t. As always, Monolith never disappoints when it comes to music. Well…except for the fact that using a Chain Attack completely overrides whatever theme is playing, which means you can miss out on the more dynamic boss themes. So that could be better. That said, we still have an actual game to describe here, so I’d best move on.
BATTLE WITH CLASS
To anyone that has played any of the games in the series up until this point, Xenoblade 3 will be easy enough to get into, but for those that might be new to the series, here is a quick run-down of the basics before we get into what this game does differently. Speaking broadly, all Xenoblade games play out very similarly to MMO-styled combat. Players are free to move around in control of one character while the rest of the party is controlled by AI. When in range, you’ll attack automatically, though these attacks are often weak. The real damage comes from using Arts, special attacks with a wide range of uses and effects, which undergo cooldowns after use. Some Arts require you to hit opponents from a specific position, like Noah’s Edge Thrust, which does more damage from behind. Depending on which faction they belong to, Art cooldowns differ slightly in this game. Kevesi characters like Noah, Lanz and Eunie, have to simply wait for the cooldown to expire similar to Xenoblade 1. Agnian characters (Mio, Taion and Sena) instead recharge their Arts with auto-attacks similar to Xenoblade 2. Many Arts also are used in status combos, with the party using specific Arts in sequence to force a given status onto the enemy. Noah might inflict Break on opponents to stagger them, and Lanz can follow up with an Art that inflicts Topple, making the enemy defenseless for a time, as an example. While the AI generally follows along with what you want to do, this game also allows you to swap control to any main party member during battle, and even outside of that you can give some orders to allies to make them do specific things if need be. For the most part as long as you do your thing, you can let the rest of the party handle things on their own, but having the option is certainly nice.
This game really emphasizes proper team composition and everyone acting according to one of three roles: attacker, healer or defender, which should be fairly self-explanatory. New to this game is a wide variety of classes characters can obtain, all of which fall under one of these three roles. While Noah and company all have their own starting classes, throughout the game players can recruit extra party members, known as Heroes, and unlock the Heroes’ classes for the rest of the party. As a class is used, it levels up separately from the character and after certain milestones players will gain skills and Arts that can be used regardless of class, which is where some real interesting customization happens. You could have characters learn some healing Arts so they can help out regardless of class, or just give characters more offensive options in general. Given enough time it becomes easier to do various status combos or inflict some big damage, but the game still has plenty of other systems at play to make you even stronger.
Following the inciting incident in the game, the core party gain the ability to Interlink into powerful forms known as Ouroboros, which they can freely use in combat a bit later on to great effect. While active, the Ouroboros has powerful Arts unique to them and they take no damage from attacks, though the form has its drawbacks. The Interlink will eventually overheat if not cancelled early, locking out the form for some time, and early on before the forms can be properly leveled up you won’t last long and be able to do as much. On top of that, characters have specific Interlink partners; Noah with Mio, Eunie with Taion and Lanz with Sena. If one of the pair is defeated in battle or hit by certain statuses, the Interlink cannot be performed. There’s also the problem of being down a character. If your healer Interlinks your party loses out on any heals, so you better make them count. While not an instant-win button, with practice the Ouroboros forms can help turn the tide of harder battles, but for situations that require even more power, there’s always the series staple in the Chain Attack. Once the Chain Attack gauge is filled, players can activate it at any time. Time stops and players can go all in on one enemy with the ability to use any Art on any party member. Without getting into the intricacies, the player is given an assortment of “orders” at the start of each “round” of the Chain Attack, which all have different effects if completed. Noah’s order has attacks potentially bypass an enemy’s defense, for example. The goal of each round is to use Arts to build up Tension Points. Once you reach 100 Tension, the order is executed. Rinse and repeat until you either run out of party members or the Chain Attack gauge empties. Heroes have their own orders that can be incredibly powerful; Valdi adds more Tension to his Arts if fighting a machine-type enemy, for one. And later on, Ouroboros orders can be used if certain conditions are met for even more damage. It takes a bit of luck and coordination but this game’s iteration of Chain Attacks might be the best yet in the series…perhaps even too good.
The series has quite the reputation for being difficult to get into and having quite complicated combat, though 3 aims to streamline things a great deal and ease players into things. From an honest to God training mode, to the slow but steady introduction of major mechanics with dedicated tutorials, Xenoblade 3 is perhaps the most straightforward game in the series, even if the beginning of the game somewhat goes too far with handholding and forcing players to do something as simple as, say, equip a piece of gear onto a character step by step. I’d rather the game teach me at all than flash a tutorial prompt on screen that can never be revisited though, so it’s a massive improvement from Xenoblade 2! Navigating menus is also made easier, with shortcuts that let me get right to where I want from the main game, like letting me open up the area map or party customization screen instantly, and those shortcuts can even be customized. There’s lots of smaller accessibility features in the options as well to make things flow smoother, like letting your AI allies Interlink on their own or leaving it to your explicit order. These quality-of-life updates really start to add up over time.
Throughout the series, Monolith Soft has streamlined combat and with 3 they’ve landed on a really solid series of systems. The combat is faster and snappier than in 2, though retains that game’s improvements from 1’s combat, such as attack cancelling and the more streamlined UI. That said, an issue this game shares with all but Xenoblade Chronicles X is the inability to jump and run in combat, which can get awkward in the often bumpy terrain battles take place on. Getting launched by an enemy attack can cause you to get stuck on a small hill and be unable to get back to fighting unless you holster your weapon, at which point you’re a sitting duck. While the UI is streamlined and the game generally does a MUCH better job of teaching you, some fights are still a cluttered mess. I’m not sure it was really worth it to have the entire party (plus one Hero) active at once. Against larger, single targets like bosses it is mostly fine, but when fighting multiple enemies at once it becomes sensory overload, it being a legitimate problem trying to find who you’re locked onto and knowing what’s even going on. Those issues are fairly minor though, and the end result is some of the most engaging combat the series has ever had. Other aspects like equipment are further de-emphasized as was the case in 2; you can equip some basic accessories and gems to your character, as well as fiddle with the skills and arts you obtain by mastering classes, but that’s about it as far as “builds” go. As someone who dislikes having to constantly buy new armor and weapons for huge RPG parties, I’m not all that upset to see things simplified down like this and find the class system engaging enough when trying to optimize characters, so I think it balances out. While fighting is a huge part of the game, let’s not forget there’s other aspects to this gameplay experience too!
SATING MY WANDERLUST
As a series, Xenoblade really excels at sating my wanderlust, boasting vast landscapes filled with things to see and do that are often quite striking. In some respects, 3 makes some great improvements from the previous entry, though I’m still left wanting more. Aionios, according to the developers, is roughly five times bigger in terms of walking distance compared to Xenoblade 2’s Alrest, though I find the ways to navigate this world aren’t scaled up to match. Your run speed and jump height and distance aren’t much different than in either Xenoblade 1 or 2, despite the world being so much bigger and it just doesn’t cut it. Often the jumping is mostly to get over the small bumps in the road that you should logically be able to already walk over but can’t for whatever reason, and it’s otherwise useless for any amount of platforming, and while I made frequent use of the fast travel system to get around there’s still large stretches where I would turn auto-run on and put my controller down to do something else as the group crossed large expanses. The most infuriating thing about all of this though is that Monolith Soft already solved these types of issues with Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Wii U. That game was also massive, bigger than Breath of the Wild in fact, and was a seamless, open world to boot. And to match that players not only could run FAR faster than in any other game, they could jump far higher and farther to make navigating the vast world of Mira fun in its own right. And later still you would gain access to a giant robot, the Skell, to cross even larger expanses faster and eventually unlock the flight module to make the world your oyster. While I’m not asking for 3 to add in a giant robot to fly around in (I mean I wouldn’t say no either) at the very least I wish this game took the running and jumping from X. Later in the game you do gain access to a boat to cross a large aquatic region…but its controls both leave something to be desired and the sheer scale of this ocean means the boat only makes moving from point A to B SLIGHTLY less tedious.
To the game’s credit though, it does improve on one of my least favorite aspects of Xenoblade 2’s navigation. In the latter, you would frequently need to unlock paths forward with field skills and constantly open up menus to swap around Blades to get the appropriate skills in order, but it was a real mess and pace breaker. In 3 field skills are taught to the party after meeting certain Heroes, and just have them permanently active from that point onwards. The game even teases you a bit at the beginning by showing you tightropes you won’t be able to use until a ways later into the story. That said, there’s only four field skills in the entire game and two are completely optional, and even in those cases I can count the times you DO need to use them on one hand. Expecting every Hero to have their own field skill would have been overkill for sure, and in this specific case I’m glad Monolith Soft didn’t go for quantity over quality. Sadly, the game couldn’t improve on 2’s map at all, as it still makes it difficult to judge differences in elevation. Certain symbols only show up on the minimap but not the full map, and you’re limited to just one pin you can put on the map per areas, which simply isn’t enough. Seeing as so many people from Monolith Soft worked on Breath of the Wild, which had detailed maps that showed off things well, as well as multiple pins and such to work with, this is a pretty disappointing step down. Far from unusable but there’s more that could have been done here.
Thankfully, the game does improve on one aspect the series has always been a bit iffy on: the quests.
HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO (QUEST)
Xenoblade has often had a LOT of quests, but very few were really worth doing outside of the experience or money they’d give you. The first game went a little too hard on MMO-styled quests that just amounted to killing a given number of enemies or gathering a given amount of items. Some quests had more worthwhile rewards and little storylines associated with the NPCs giving them out but it really wasn’t worth having to trudge through all of the basic ones to get to them. Xenoblade Chronicles X was a fair bit better with more engaging quest lines throughout the game with more tangible rewards. Watching your city slowly accept more alien citizens into it was really neat, among other things. But that game also had strange requirements to even take on quests and often limited who could or could not be in your party to even accept them which held it back. The vast majority of quests in Xenoblade 2 were kind of unremarkable to be honest, though the Blade quests were often higher quality…a shame most Blades were only obtainable through in-game gacha that took TONS of luck and grinding to even get. So really, the bar was pretty low for Xenoblade 3’s quests and they still raised it so much higher that it’ll be very hard to top.
Side quests in 3 come in two flavors: basic quests and Hero quests. Basic quests can vary but often concern themselves with NPCs and tend to have their own minor storyline connected to the colony they hail from, while Hero quests are for both recruiting and later strengthening the Heroes you can add to your party. Hero quests come with voice acting and even some extensive cinematics at times, so the presentation really makes them stand out. While some Hero quests are actually required to complete the story, the vast majorities are optional…but if you take nothing else from this section, know that it is within your best interests to do them if you can, because they contain some of the game’s best moments. Be it character development, gags, or some really great rewards in the form of power-ups or party members, I was almost never disappointed with the Hero quests. Some are so good I’m shocked Monolith Soft didn’t make them required, especially since they often tie up loose ends to the core story or some characters’ personal arcs.
Something I came to enjoy about all of these quests is how they would often feed into each other and in some cases build off of one another. Take the quests found in Colony 9. The colony is rather run down at the game’s start and the new commander, Zeon, isn’t well respected by the rest of his subordinates. His initial Hero quest is about learning to trust Noah and the others, but subsequent quests around the colony are about him earning the trust of his peers and eventually getting the colony to start growing their own crops to sustain themselves. This requires the help of Colony Tau, which you encounter much later on, but serves to strengthen relations between the two. Most of the colonies in the game end up being paired off with a colony from the opposite faction, further emphasizing the game’s core themes of looking past initial differences or prejudices and working together for a common goal. Some basic quests can have some unexpected payoff. One questline has you attacked at random points by strange robotic soldiers, which eventually leads to a late-game Hero quest, and that hero teaches you a field skill that enables you to tackle another Hero’s ascension quest as you go off in search of a mythical hot spring. It made me feel validated in scraping every inch of the map and doing every quest when I could. Often times I was torn between continuing the core story and doing as much side content as possible, which is about the highest praise I can think of for an RPG. Things aren’t perfect, of course.
While I would say most missions are at least somewhat interesting for delving into NPCs or occasionally shaking things up, the game does repeat certain quest types a bit too much. Virtually every “follow the tracks” mission is the same, but the tracks themselves sometimes seem to wig out and spontaneously pop into existence. Not bad, but also not very engaging. Any time you have to follow an NPC that walks as slow as possible also kills the pacing of the game. I’m begging you here, Monolith Soft, please never do this again. There’s even two separate quest lines about making it rain that either requires random waiting around or dropping a ton of money on an NPC to make it rain instead. But really, the biggest issue I have with a lot of the quests in the game is how you get them.
Sometimes you’ll just be given a quest straight away, while others will be displayed on the map with a big glowing question mark. But often times you have to gather information on a quest before actually being assigned it. Wander over to NPCs with neon yellow speech bubbles and just eavesdrop for a few seconds and BAM, you have some quest info. But some quests require multiple pieces of information to even accept and even then, you have to go back to camp and specifically discuss the info to gain the quest. Some quests require you to have specific Heroes in your line up OR be discussed at a very specific camp just to give you more hoops to jump through. This does nothing but really add extra steps to the process and I don’t find it adds anything of note but maybe some minor flavor text. I can tolerate it for the most part at least, except for the handful of cases where the information you need to gather can only be obtained at VERY specific times of day. I wasn’t able to even START a few quests near the end of the game because I would have to go to a specific part of the map at a specific part of the day for the CHANCE the conversation would be there to overhear. Granted, you can change the time of day in-game manually but it was still an annoying obstacle that didn’t have to be there.
That said, I did everything in the game, which isn’t something I could say for ANY other Xenoblade until now, as there was always something that would burn me out of the process. Maybe there were just too many quests, or weird requirements to even start them, but Xenoblade 3 is the first game in the series I’ve 100% completed, so that should speak to the sheer quality of most of the side content in addition to the core story. For the most part the game is very keen on making it easy to keep tabs on your progress through quests, or making it easy to see where to go next. Some quests which required you to grab specific items would sometimes mark themselves on your map, and some areas would spawn a large amount of items in said area to make gathering take no time at all. That said, this wasn’t universal and there are still some really tedious questlines involving gathering items that I had to look up to cut down on time. All told though, I never felt the need to just drop a quest and enjoyed having so many things to do throughout the game. Monolith Soft has come far when it comes to their side content, though there are still some pitfalls with the greater balance of the game with all that in mind.
AN UNENVIABLE BALANCING ACT
Balancing a game is hard, especially an RPG with tons of systems layered over one another. Past Xenoblade games have been a bit hit or miss with balance, and going into Xenoblade 3 I was curious how well they’d balance a game where your entire party is battling at once. I think for the most part the game’s intended balance curve when focusing on the story is mostly fine. And it does take steps to keep players from growing too strong too fast and breaking the game over its knee but…well, let’s just say there are some issues with their approach to things.
Most regular encounters are generally fine so long as you are within a few levels of your enemy, and as long as you single out some stronger enemies and don’t attract a group you’ll do fine. Same old Xenoblade. As in past games though, there are varying types of enemies that can rapidly change things, namely the Elite and Unique enemies. Unique enemies are a series staple, basically bosses in disguise and are often far stronger than their level would imply, with Elite enemies a slight step down from that. These two enemy types are a LOT bulkier than standard enemies, and as I found throughout the game, most storyline bosses qualify as these types of enemies as far as health and defense goes. On the one hand, this meant that even in situations where I was quite over leveled, these bosses still put up a fight, but it also kind of makes most fights a drag….unless you use Chain Attacks.
Which leads to my next point: Chain Attacks are kind of broken. They are SO good, you’d be foolish NOT to abuse them, but by using them battles can get kind of samey, all that unique music is drowned out by the Chain Attack theme, and it also makes it easy to over level without even trying. See, similar to Xenoblade 2, if you kill an enemy during a Chain Attack but keep going for as long as possible you end up getting an “overkill” modifier to your experience. Depending on when and where you do the Chain Attack, you could end up getting upwards of 1000 times the normal experience. Add to this that Elite enemies also have a separate modifier for experience you gain from taking them out, as well as the fact that one of the perks to doing more side quests is upping the chances of seeing more Elite enemies…and it means you are DROWNING in experience before you even get to the experience gained from quests and exploration.
Now, in Xenoblade 2 Monolith Soft implemented a system where you would have any non-battle experience stored separately that you could access at an inn to bolster your levels if you needed a boost, or ignore it if you didn’t want to over level. This carries over into Xenoblade 3; however it lacks the ability to level down, which was added to the Switch port of Xenoblade 1, at least until the post-game. So you have a game where it is extremely easy to over level, even if you aren’t trying to optimize it, and that leads to another problem.
Whenever you complete a Hero Quest in this game, a given party member will “inherit” that Hero’s class. So, when you beat Valdi’s quest and add him to your party, Lanz gets the ability to be a War Medic immediately. For everyone else, they have to unlock it slowly by fighting alongside Valdi and/or Lanz in that class, as an example. What the game fails to tell you though is that if you are more than four levels higher than an enemy, characters gain NO progress towards unlocking these classes. Despite the fact you still gain experience and Class Points (to rank up the classes), they saw fit to freeze your progress. In a game where it’s criminally easy to accidentally over level, which pushes you to fight stronger and stronger enemies to actually unlock the classes the game is clearly built around. Which will just over level you even more. It’s a problem that starts small, barely noticeable, but by endgame I was left with a ton of classes I couldn’t really pass on to anybody, which really limited my options.
To be fair here, this isn’t an issue every player is likely to really run into. Not everyone’s going to do every quest in the game, or use all their stored experience. The game is perfectly playable and beatable without getting every class on every character. As I said before, going from story beat to story beat, the game offers pretty decent challenge, and if you don’t abuse certain things like the experience modifiers, you likely strike a good balance with the game. I also only played on the default difficulty so maybe the harder difficulty would have been a better idea. I’ve definitely seen strategies and set-ups that break the game in half and trivialize it even at the higher difficulties but that’s so far removed from an average experience with the game I can overlook it. Monolith Soft likes to put a lot of things into their games and striking a perfect balance between rewarding players for doing it versus not punishing players who don’t engage with every facet is impossible. For the most part, the game works fine as intended and for those that enjoy exploiting and optimizing things out, Xenoblade 3 can be a lot of fun. I just hope in the future they can try to limit punishing players that stray off the beaten path and gorge themselves on all this wonderful optional content. They’re getting better in some ways, but there’s still a lot more that can be done.
BRINGING AND END TO THE ENDLESS NOW
I’ve had a lot to say here regarding Xenoblade Chronicles 3. If you couldn’t tell, I quite enjoyed it and took great delight in devouring it over the course of about 170 hours. As it stands, this game is likely my Game of the Year, or at the very least in the running for it. Monolith Soft has become one of my favorite developers over the course of the Xenoblade series. From their support work on major first-party Nintendo games, to this series, I’ve seen tremendous growth from them. They learn from their mistakes and shoot ever higher, with each original title from them demonstrating that they are some of the best in the business. I said before that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is Monolith Soft more or less at their best in many regards, and shows a glimpse at their true potential, with their ambitions fully realized.
While I am a bit mixed on certain endgame elements of the story, it was an extremely engaging, emotional title that excelled at giving me a main cast I really cared about. I love Shulk, I…tolerate Rex, but the rest of their party members were hit-or-miss By contrast, I love the entirety of the Ouroboros gang here. Demonstrating surprising depth and story relevancy, at no point did they fade into the background. While the setting definitely takes elements from past titles and longtime fans have a lot to dissect and mull over, making this game mostly a standalone experience allowed the cast to shine, no fear of being upstaged or made to play second-fiddle to returning characters. For anyone joining this series with this installment, I’ll say again that you don’t miss out on too terribly much and the core experience will still hit hard.
This is easily my favorite Xenoblade when it comes to the combat, making for a smooth experience that I easily lost several hours in without even noticing. The ease of swapping between side quests, the main story and exploring the corners of Aionios cannot be overstated here. For as long as the game was, it was hard to put down until I saw the ending through. Despite some bumps in the road, Monolith delivered not just a good story, but a good game built around it. It was a journey that seemed endless, and at times I didn’t want it to end.
For as bleak as the game could get, there was always an optimistic streak that kept it from being too much. For as nightmarish as the world was, the heroes moved forward. Xenoblade 3 is a game all about moving forward; it is about accepting loss, celebrating the good times along with the bad, and cherishing the time you have while you can. As tempting as it may be to live in a stable status quo, that leads to stagnation and ultimately destruction. The future is uncertain, there are doubtless struggles ahead, but despite that fear of the unknown, moving forward is the only way we can go on living. The past few years have weighed pretty hard on me, as I’m sure it has for many others out there, and it has put a lot of things in perspective. I found myself frozen, afraid to move forward or back. Trapped in my own “endless now,” I’m glad to have found hope again. This might be “just a game,” but it was a game I felt I really needed to play at this specific moment in time. It means a lot to me, and I’m glad I was able to share my thoughts on it. A triumph of the genre, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 stands out to me more so than perhaps any other game this year, and I can’t recommend it enough.
As the gaming industry trudges on, it’s not hard to notice a trend; games are taking longer and longer to make and the costs continue to climb. Not only does this mean more time waiting for the next installment in your favorite series, but it also has a side-effect of making companies less likely to take risks. A game underperforming nowadays could spell the end for a studio or franchise, and so only the “sure thing” games get made by the bigger publishers. In hindsight, the sixth console generation was a last hurrah for budget titles; there were SO many games of varying length, polish and quality in the era of the PS2 and GameCube. It was a time when Capcom could release absolute bangers like Resident Evil 4 but also finance something “cheap” and weird like God Hand. A time when Nintendo was ballsy enough to have a game starring Luigi as a GameCube launch title. As the HD era kicked off, it became clear that these types of games just weren’t financially viable anymore, though for a time the Wii was home to a fair few hidden gems that were still cheap to make, with one in particular standing out to me: Grasshopper Manufacture’s No More Heroes. Somehow against all odds, we’ve now arrived at a timeline where this niche series about an otaku assassin has reached a third mainline installment as a major Switch exclusive, and there’s plenty to talk about regarding it.
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Let’s set the stage here: way back in 2007 No More Heroes released to the masses on the Wii with a…terrible launch in Japan. The West took to the game very well, however, becoming one of Grasshopper’s best-selling titles. The nerdy, perpetually horny wannabe-assassin Travis Touchdown agrees to become the world’s best assassin because some hot chick he met at a bar said she’d sleep with him if he did. That’s it. That’s the plot! Using a beam katana he got online, Travis sets out on a surreal, bloody journey that can be funny, crude, and more than anything else…memorable.
The original game was not flawless by any means; the story ran the risk of being tasteless at points, the combat was definitely wonky and the open world was empty. Despite all of that, it was filled with a unique charm that only Suda 51 could deliver; Travis was an odd beast of a protagonist. Johnny Knoxville put through a Japanese lens, he could be badass and crude one minute, and utterly pathetic and hilarious the next. While the combat wasn’t nearly as refined as many other action titles, it managed to work in motion controls in a way that was incredibly satisfying, swinging the Wii Remote for the killing blow, making it the exclamation point at the end of the sentence that was that battle. Sure, the structure of the game was a bit of a grind; being forced to work crappy temp jobs to earn enough money to unlock the next assassination fight, then having to spend several minutes driving through a barren open world to get to some actual content. I would argue that all of this helped to reinforce how much of a loser Travis was outside of his assassinations and was a good juxtaposition for all of the slaughter. This all mixed together and resulted in a game unlike anything else. You would NEVER see a AAA game that would get this weird. They’d likely have an open world littered with things to do, or just cut to the next fight without showing all of the weird grinding and dead-end jobs, but that would just suck the charm right out of it. Ultimately, it’s the kind of game that only Suda could make, and likely only during this strange transitional period to HD gaming.
A sequel would follow a few years later and despite polishing up its combat, offering more playable characters and its story having a bit more gravitas to it, the lack of marketing coupled with the Wii’s declining popularity resulted in the game’s sales being quite a disappointment. It’s worth noting that around this time Grasshopper went through some changes; Suda would move to more of an executive role, with a rare directing credit on small games like Liberation Maiden on the 3DS. Over the years, Grasshopper would face issues with the changing gaming landscape and outside of a few successes (like Lollipop Chainsaw), their games continued to be niche at best. One of their more well-known fumbles was Shadows of the Damned which faced executive meddling from Electronic Arts and the game’s eventual finished state would hit Suda particularly hard. GungHo Online Entertainment would acquire the company in 2013, and later Suda would establish a smaller team he would lead over himself, separate from GungHo’s team. It would seem that the indie explosion of the 2010s had a profound effect on Suda and with a new Nintendo console on the horizon, this all culminated in the 2017 announcement of Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes.
TSA is an odd game, even for Grasshopper and Suda 51. It is one part tribute to indie games, one part No More Heroes continuation, one part celebration of Grasshopper’s entire catalogue of games, and it all ties together with a deeply personal examination of the trials and tribulations of game development. Travis spends the game going into the game worlds of launch titles for the fictional Death Drive Mk. 2 video game console, and he develops a deep respect for Dr. Juvenile, the acclaimed developer of these games, and comes to sympathize with the sabotage of her greatest work, which has heavy parallels to the development of Shadows of the Damned. TSA was not going to be for everyone, and was a far departure from the typical No More Heroes formula, but it was also extremely experimental. Large portions of the game’s story play out in old PC-styled visual novels, various other mediums are blended into the game’s sparse cutscenes and allusions to media that Suda loves are abundant throughout. I wouldn’t say the game itself was all that fun to play to be exact though; levels went on pretty long, enemies weren’t all that interesting to fight, and the game’s clearly low budget meant there was minimal voice acting, which severely held back the ability to really bring the characters to life. That said, getting to the end gave the clue that a proper mainline entry might not be that far away. Sure enough, at E3 2019, just a few months after TSA came out, No More Heroes III was confirmed for the Switch.
I’M NOT SAYING IT’S ALIENS, BUT…
When I completed No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle, my visions for a sequel didn’t exactly line up with the No More Heroes III we eventually got, and I think that’s not entirely a bad thing. This game centers on Travis taking on a group of dangerous alien outlaws that set their sights on Earth. They’re well-mannered enough to agree to the whole Ranked Assassin battles that the series was built upon at least, so Travis is able to take them on one at a time as he slowly works his way up to Prince FU, the leader of the bunch. At this point, Travis has fought psychopathic assassins, cyborgs, supernatural forces and sentient computer bugs, so really a fight against aliens was clearly the next step. FU is a fun antagonist on his own; he gets WAY more screen time to flesh out his cocky, laid-back personality, compared to most series antagonists that only show up at the very end of the game. By going with aliens as the primary threat, this also allowed the character designs to get WEIRD, and gives a lot of potential for the boss fights of the game to be the craziest yet. I think the decision to fight off an alien invasion is an inspired one, but I wouldn’t exactly say that the end result was completely satisfying.
I want to dance around overt spoilers, but generally speaking I feel like No More Heroes III’s narrative is very weak overall. For as much potential as the alien plotline has, the vast majority of the aliens Travis has to fight aren’t all that memorable by series standards. In some cases this seems deliberate, but on the whole I feel like the premise was wasted. Adding to that, established characters in the franchise, such as Travis’ disciple Shinobu or the likes of Bad Girl and her father, Bad Man (who got a lot of focus in TSA) barely feature in the game at all, written out in a way that just feels uninspired. Meanwhile there are a few newer characters that get integrated into Travis’ entourage but they aren’t really given a lot of room to be developed and their presence here basically ate up the screen time that other characters could have gotten instead. Probably the most disappointing aspect of the story though is how little the relationship between the primary antagonists is explored. At the game’s start, we’re treated to a nice 2D animated sequence that shows a young boy named Damon meeting a young Prince FU, nursing him back to health and helping him to find a way back home. FU promises Damon he’d return in 20 years’ time…and that’s when this game kicks off. At first glance Damon is shocked at FU’s extremely aggressive demeanor and seems concerned with FU’s dreams of conquest, but then the rest of the game never really delves into it at all. We don’t find out why FU turned out the way he did (outside of some dialogue where he was allegedly “always” like this), and as for Damon…I have my own ideas about why he got so little focus, so put a pin in it for now. Ultimately, the story feels somewhat incomplete and rushed…and then I read an interview wherein Suda stated that around an hour of cutscenes for the game had to be gutted, and suddenly it all makes sense.
All that said though, I’d argue the overall presentation is still pretty good and hits a lot of high points. The game blends in a lot of different mediums and at every turn there are allusions to all kinds of media. Each chapter of the game is given its own psychedelic pseudo-live-action intro that homages old Ultraman opening themes, there’s a mecha anime-styled ending theme for each chapter, super-deformed eyecatches in-between chapters and…loading screens that mimic the Netflix interface as the next chapter begins. At every point you’re assaulted with different art styles and bright, garish colors and it can be a real feast for the eyes. That said, there are also parts of the game that are pretty crude, and I don’t think it’s wholly a deliberate choice. While the character models for Travis, other NPCs and enemies are all often pretty detailed and animated well enough, the environments are often very low-poly and lack detail. Driving through the open world sections in the game, you’re treated to some pretty bad pop-in and lighting that frequently breaks. Areas are just as barren as they were back in the Wii original, but it’s a lot less forgivable given the boost in power between the Wii and Switch. Parts of this game can look really nice, but other parts feel like they come from generations past. Audio-wise, I think III has a fairly solid soundtrack with a lot of variety, including lo-fi rap and techno, though I’m not sure how well it will hold up to the previous mainline entries for me. The voice acting, meanwhile, is fantastic and I’m glad most of the actors from previous entries could reprise their roles even all of these years later. Robin Atkins Downs IS Travis Touchdown and I don’t think anyone else could ever successfully play him, and across the board I think most everyone delivers a good performance, even if a lot of the cast had little material to work with. All that said, the combat is where I think this game surprised me the most.
I STUDIED THE BLADE
Across Grasshopper’s entire catalog, I’d say their action games are…functional, but often lacking in polish, though I’m clearly spoiled by the likes of Capcom and PlatinumGames action titles that prioritize the feel of the action above all else. The first two titles in this franchise are mostly fine and have good ideas; they just needed a bit more time to fine-tune things. TSA was more arcade-like in the action department and the focus there felt more designed around using your special Death Glove powers over your beam katana. I was a tad worried going into No More Heroes III but coming out of it, this is the best combat the series has ever had and quite possibly the best combat in any Grasshopper game. It feels way more polished and responsive, and you actually fight enemies that are varied in design, forcing you to change up your ways to approach them. Travis can still use a few Death Glove powers that run off of cool downs, but the game still allows for fun with the beam katana slicing and dicing opponents. Killing enemies triggers a roulette wheel that has the chance to give you a random power-up (up to and including Travis donning his new fancy power armor), and other aspects like his wrestling moves and his perfect dodge have way more use. In old games, you could only grapple enemies that were stunned with melee attacks, but in this game, if you can get behind opponents, you can just suplex them for free and it feels really satisfying to land a good grapple, and then performing a grab on a stunned enemy also replenishes your swords battery which allows you to keep fighting without stopping to uh…you know…shake some life into it. The Dark Step maneuver in the first two games was more than a little inconsistent, but in this game the Perfect Dodge feels more tuned. Dodge at the last moment and you can hack away at enemies while time is slowed down, or go right for a grab! I wouldn’t say the game’s perfect though.
While the combat is much improved and polished, there’s still some jank. For example, if Travis dodges and time slows down, enemies remain in their attack animations even as you hack away at them, and in a lot of occasions, the instant the slowdown stops I end up getting hit by the attack that I had already dodged…because the game still treats it as being active and the enemy never stopped attacking even though I was slicing them up in the slowed down time. Compare that with, say, Bayonetta, where attacking enemies while Witch Time is triggered put them into hitstun and prevented that exact issue. While I think the enemy variety is MUCH improved, with Travis fighting some really weird aliens that have more inspired designs than “thug with bat” or “thug with gun,” they tend to be a real pain to fight, and that definitely contributes to this game being a LOT harder than past entries on the whole. Travis lacks good crowd control, so he can get swarmed easily and enemies on average have a LOT of health, so you have to dedicate a lot of time to taking out a single target, all while the others are free to take shots at you from off-screen. Making use of all of your tools, from the Death Glove powers, to suplexes, to your roulette wheel can make a huge difference but on the whole some fights just feel like they go on for too long, and there’s little to do but fight.
Unlike past entries that had dedicated levels leading up to bosses, in No More Heroes III you have to instead traverse the open world to find “Designated Battles,” that Travis has to complete before the boss fight is unlocked, in addition to paying a fee, just like old times. These Designated Battles are usually just battling a few waves of enemies in an arena, though occasionally Travis will don his power armor and take to space to take on a huge boss in a shoot-em-up section. Bosses end up having little to no build-up since you just fight generic mobs of enemies that are disconnected from the fight on the whole, barring one real instance midway through the game. To a degree, the levels in the first game weren’t all that fun and cutting them out means little value is lost, but it did add some variety to the game and I really feel their absence. But maybe it would have been easier to accept if the open world sections had been fulfilling to explore on their own.
Unlike the first game, this time Travis has more than just Santa Destroy to explore. There’s also the suburban Perfect World, the desert wasteland in the Thunderdome, the dusty, war-torn Call of Battle ruins, the suspiciously plain Neo Brazil and Damon Tower, which is sadly the smallest area in the game, being little more than a corridor leading to the final boss. While it was nice to explore Santa Destroy again and see what changed, most areas in the game still feel very empty. In the case of places like the Thunderdome it makes sense, though Neo Brazil is little more than a parking lot…with a bustling city looming in the distance you can’t visit. With Suda it’s hard to tell if this is a joke on the player, or just issues with development. Looking at the map, many areas are labeled as a “forbidden zone,” and you never get the ability to travel there throughout the game. It’s anyone’s guess if this was done as a joke, a consequence of development scaling back, or perhaps planting seeds for future DLC. While I can somewhat commend Suda for bringing back the open world aspects that only the first game really had, I do question the execution and feel that the ambition might have been better spent elsewhere on the game. Why make SIX areas that feel lacking to explore, when you could have fleshed out a single area instead?
While I decry the game world for feeling a bit lacking, there are things to do. Travis can engage in various odd jobs to earn money for the ranking battles, and there are a few sidequests players can engage in. Compared to the first game, the grind isn’t nearly as much of a problem; you earn money for doing just about anything in the game and the jobs are often quick and mostly painless. Travis can pick up trash in rivers while fighting off alligators, unclog toilets, help the coast guard fend off giant alligator attacks, or race street punks on his bike to get them off the road and stop disturbing the peace. The only side activity I find to be absolutely bad is mining, where players are forced to navigate super tightly-packed mines where it’s both easy to get lost, and easy to fall into lava pits that immediately cause a game over. Said area is one of the only times in the game Travis needs to jump…and thank God for that because his jump is pretty stiff and laggy. There are also a lot of optional fights players can engage with that open up as the game goes on, but they mostly felt like padding. Not only are some of these later fights absolutely grueling (try fighting 25 waves of enemies for over a half hour!), they also seemed to glitch. The wrong mission would load in, which in turn prevented me from actually unlocking a good amount of later missions. Nothing game breaking of course, but if you’re going for 100% completion you might be in for quite the headache.
UNFLINCHING INDULGENCE
In the long gap between No More Heroes 2 and No More Heroes III, I did my best to expand my horizons when it came to games. I dipped my toe into a lot of franchises I’ve never played before, and played what some might call modern masterpieces. In that time, I think I grew quite spoiled by playing games developed by people that were masters of their craft, and when it comes to these smaller, more experimental titles, I often can’t help but compare them, which isn’t really fair. Like, OF COURSE Breath of the Wild wipes the floor with No More Heroes III when it comes to making a great open world. It’s no surprise at all that Bayonetta or Devil May Cry has more fleshed-out, satisfying combat. Major console exclusives look and run better than this game does a lot of the time, and to say that I’ve played games with better stories than this should probably go without saying. This goes beyond No More Heroes III and can apply to a lot of Grasshopper’s catalog; their games aren’t the biggest or shiniest, they aren’t the most polished and they often suffer from some pretty big flaws…but I still love them anyway because no one else makes games like them.
Like I said at the beginning, gaming has changed a lot in the last decade or so. The budget for games balloons and niche games grow ever smaller. We need these artsy, weird games now more than ever so we can actually have some variety. Not to get on a soapbox, but so much of modern gaming is made up of live-service games that are more concerned with being a constant form of revenue rather than being an entertaining experience, and if they aren’t that, they’re incredibly homogenized. But games with Suda 51 at the helm have an identity. For what they lack in raw visual fidelity or content, they make up for in earnestness and creativity. These are games where characters can just sit on the couch and shoot the shit about anime and movies they like; seriously, the ending of every chapter of the game just has Travis and Bishop talking about Takeshi Miike movies or the latest Kamen Rider show, and it’s clear Suda does this so that he can just talk about the stuff he loves. He uses these games to make commentary on what he likes or doesn’t like about the industry, and honestly I have to admire the courage it takes to be so indulgent. To just homage anything and everything at a given moment, to tie your games together into a loosely-connected universe filled to the brim with callbacks and continuity nods that only the most seasoned Grasshopper fan is going to get.
You have to be tuned to a very specific wavelength to really “gel” with Grasshopper Manufacture’s games, I think. I’m not trying to be elitist when I say that; it’s just that these games clearly aren’t for everyone. They’re dumb, they’re crude, and they are often really janky and barely hold together under close inspection. I can’t say I can recommend their games to everyone, but for a certain niche, if they “get” it? They’re gonna have a FANTASTIC time. Because they found a game that isn’t afraid to not always make sense, or work for everyone. They found a game that, despite any flaws it has, can still shine through and make a connection with the player.
I’d say at the end of the day I’m happy that No More Heroes III got to exist at all and it feels like a small miracle that it happened. In some ways this isn’t the ideal sequel I wanted, but in others it did things I never could have expected, which leaves me with a game that was still very memorable. Knowing that Grasshopper has had its ups and downs and the actual team on this particular game was quite a bit smaller than I had expected, I find that III is a fairly ambitious product. While to a degree it might be held back a bit by Switch hardware, I’m also sure that the pandemic impacted the game quite a bit as well. Seeing as this missed the initial 2020 release date, and hearing of aspects of the game that were left on the cutting room floor, this game was undeniably a result of compromise. That’s pretty much the case with most things though, and this series has even had some jokes about things that had to be cut from the games to ship on time, so it isn’t a huge surprise. Admittedly though, having over a decade to dream about what a true end to the No More Heroes trilogy could be definitely clouds my judgment on this game a bit; there’s a part of me that can’t help but wonder what could have been. At the same time, I’m just thankful this got to exist in any state, and if I’m being honest and looking at this game on its own merits, No More Heroes III is a fun, stylish, and occasionally uneven ride that leaves me hopeful that Suda remains in the director’s chair for more fun stuff down the line. For a game that I had begun to imagine would never exist, it made out OK, and the world is better for having more wacky appearances from Travis Touchdown. According to Suda 51, this is the last No More Heroes game, but I certainly hope there is more to come from his one-of-a-kind mind.
As a platform, YouTube has gone through a variety of “eras,” wherein a particular trend catches on and defines the website for some time. In the early days, you had funny cat videos, then Let’s Plays of video games became rather popular, and now we seem to be deeply entrenched into a new era that has exploded in popularity as of late. If you’ve frequented the website at all in the past few months, it is almost inescapable. Cutesy, anime-styled avatars that play games, sing, chat with viewers, or even cook! What does it all mean? Where did they come from? Are they here to stay? Most importantly, how does one crawl out of the rabbit hole once they fall into it? All that and more will be revealed as we delve deep into the wacky, wholesome and sometimes worrying world of V-Tubers. (photo credit YuuGiJoou. Check her out on YouTube, Twitter or Twitch!)
THE ORIGIN
To begin properly, let’s define the subject. A “V-Tuber” is a “Virtual YouTuber,” someone who streams on YouTube (or any other streaming platform) using a digital avatar as a proxy. The streamer in question typically uses face-tracking software so that the avatar can emote (or at least attempt to emote) to match their own reactions as they provide entertainment for their audience. While it may seem as if V-Tubers are rather new, in doing research on the topic, you’d be surprised how far back things go.
For starters, the concept of a virtual celebrity has been around for a while, with one of the most notable efforts being Hatsune Miku, a Vocaloid voicebank program. Hatsune Miku is every bit as famous and beloved as a flesh-and-blood singer or entertainer despite being nothing but voice synthesizer software. Vocaloid got its start back in 2000, eventually being reworked into a commercial product in 2004, though it wasn’t until the programs started receiving anthropomorphic character designs that it took off, with Hatsune Miku’s own debut in 2007, and the rest is history.
Many will consider “Virtual Idol” Kizuna Ai as the true pioneer of what we call a V-Tuber today, making her debut in 2016, however one could make an argument that Ami Yamato, a 3D-animated vlogging channel debuting in 2013, beat her to the punch. Honorable mention of course goes to Any Malu, a Brazilian animated YouTube vlogger who debuted in 2015 and eventually gained her own show on Cartoon Network Brazil. While Ai may not be the first, she is undoubtedly considered to be the codifier that many later V-Tubers would follow. Ai’s entire shtick was being an AI program that wanted to connect with humans, playing games, singing or interacting with fans. Following her explosive popularity, it was clear that other companies would follow the model established by Ai, with their own spins on it of course.
Nijisanji, established in 2018, proved that this trend could be incredibly profitable, becoming trailblazers in their own right as they established various “branches” of their company in several countries with their own unique performers that could cater to a wider range of viewers. As of this writing, Nijisanji employs over 164 “Virtual Livers,” most of which come from their Japan branch, alongside their Korean, Chinese, Indian and Indonesian branches. Similarly, there is the Hololive corporation, which saw substantial growth throughout 2020 in particular. Established in 2016 originally as Cover Corporation, at first Hololive was the name of an app meant for use in 3D motion capture, though following Nijisanji’s success, Hololive was rebranded as a V-Tuber competitor and also features a variety of colorful characters spread across many different main branches. There is of course the Japanese branch, as well as Hololive Indonesia, the relatively new (and highly successful) Hololive English, a defunct Chinese branch and an all-male Holostar branch in Japan.
Other, smaller V-Tuber groups have sprung up alongside the corporate powerhouses, such as VOMS Project, established in March of 2020, as an independent trio of streamers, and more recently at the tail-end of 2020 with V-Shojo, featuring a group of Western streamers (who ironically mostly stick to Twitch). Outside of this of course are the countless independent streamers who utilize avatars for one reason or another across many different platforms. Even prominent Twitch streamers seem to be getting in on the act, such as Pokimane, though that one has not come without some backlash. So consider that a rough history of how V-Tubers got started in Japan but how did they gain a more global fanbase? Well, in a word…”memes.”
GOING INTERNATIONAL
I won’t deny there had to be at least SOME overseas fans who enjoyed watching V-Tubers before they became more well-known, but for many Western fans their introductions to V-Tubers in general typically came from viral videos taken from various streams that spread like wildfire, eventually getting people curious enough to check them out. For Kizuna Ai, her playthrough of Resident Evil 7 gained notoriety for her mimicking the cursing of the English-speaking player character, and for Hololive, arguably the first real Western breakthrough for the company came from a now infamous moment from Sakura Miko’s stream of Grand Theft Auto 5.
Also from Hololive, Inugami Korone in particular had a variety of memes spread about her due to playthroughs from various games that even got acknowledged by the developers themselves. Her playthrough of DOOM 2016 resulted in a short-lived Easter egg implanted into DOOM Eternal, and her video on Banjo-Kazooie (and the animated Eekum Bokum fan video that spawned from that) got the attention of Rare, Xbox and even Grant Kirkhope, the composer for the original game.
Honestly, the real unsung heroes of sorts for V-Tuber popularity might just come from foreign fans that would clip and translate various moments from streams that helped to build an international audience. There are dozens of Twitter handles and YouTube channels that specialize in spreading these clips around and if you factor in the YouTube algorithm, once you see one video your feed will be flooded with similar videos. It is no surprise fans call getting into the fandom “falling into the rabbit hole.” When you look at the more popular members of Hololive, often the ones with various viral clips have the higher subscription counts. In the case of Aki Rosenthal, one of the older members, her sub count exploded after a fan translated a section from a then-recent stream in which she talked candidly about her less-than-stellar growth as well as the difficulties of standing out in general. While at one point having the lowest amount of subscribers (well below 200,000), in the months since that video her sub count has more than doubled going past 400,000. Sometimes the talent needs a little push.
Now, within Hololive itself, I think Kiryu Coco is also partially responsible for expanding the fanbase, being one of the few employed talents with the ability to speak English (likely a native speaker), she gained a large international fanbase as she would work to translate what she or other members were talking about on the fly, and later on established an ongoing series where she would directly engage with fans over websites like Reddit and “rate” the various memes they would send in. Coco also pushed for establishing what would become Hololive English, which has proven to be a gigantic success, each member of that branch blowing past more established talent’s subscriber counts, with Gawr Gura becoming the first Hololive V-Tuber to pass one million subscribers and just recently passed the two million mark. So yeah, V-Tubers are a big deal now but…what is about them that makes people want to watch them in the first place?
THE APPEAL
So, right off the bat, if we’re going to ask why someone would want to watch a V-Tuber I think it’s fair to ask that of virtually ANY internet personality. The reason why someone would watch Game Grumps or Pokimane or Jojo Siwa or whoever else is the same reason they’d watch Kizuna Ai or Inugami Korone or Ironmouse: they’re entertaining. I guess that seems like a bit of a cop-out answer, right? There MUST be a reason why V-Tubers have blown up in popularity over the last few years, so are there things that make these particular Internet entertainers stand out from the crowd?
Undoubtedly, the fact that these streamers are playing a character is a deviation from the norm, though the dedication to staying “in character” seems to vary from person to person, and over time many V-Tubers tend to open up and are far more genuine. At any rate, even the best actor out there can’t possibly make up various daily happenings or childhood stories for their characters on the fly, day after day, stream after stream. Still, I’d imagine the decision to use a proxy as opposed to their real self can be liberating, a mask they can wear to speak more freely or a role they can play up for entertainment. For the most part, I think the persona aspect is mostly harmless fun that makes the streamer seem more distinct; ask yourself which is more eye-catching: some normal human playing a game and occasionally cracking a joke, or a one-eyed pirate girl discussing her raunchy past? Or maybe you’d rather watch the grim reaper practice her raps? Even talent that don’t really play up their character much still often have interesting character designs; we have princesses, dragons, devils, robots and more. A little something for everyone!
Speaking a bit more personally, I find it interesting to watch streamers from an entirely different culture and how they interact with fans or engage with games. I find it funny when Inugami Korone or Sakura Miko plays more Western-oriented games like the DOOM series or Grand Theft Auto V respectively. Often times they’re blown away by the culture clash, or they view these games through a different lens since it’s so different from what they’re used to. In particular, those two are just genuine goofballs that are funny all on their own. More chat-focused streams are an interesting view into daily life in Japan, such as the stories Houshou Marine tells, though obviously a given V-Tuber’s viewpoint isn’t a metric you can apply to the whole country, but she’s still interesting to listen to. Takanashi Kiara is also notable for her multilingual skills, which has helped her bridge the gap a bit more between the various Hololive members through her Holotalk segments where she interviews other V-Tubers. Outside of Hololive, Amano Pikamee from VOMS Project is just a bundle of energy that’s fun to watch as she rages in Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Sunshine. Her tea-kettle laugh is also just kinda charming. The V-Shojo group stands out for being super vulgar compared to the more corporate V-Tubers and while I don’t watch them all that much, there’s still some fun chaos to be had. Still though, I think there’s one big elephant in the room that would also help explain V-Tubers catching on at this specific point in time: the pandemic. Streaming is one of the few jobs not really affected by the pandemic, and with people stuck inside, they’re more likely to scroll through YouTube or Twitter and find a funny clip and then…well, you know… It’s one bright spot in an otherwise dark time…but I’d be lying if I said it was all sunshine and rainbows.
THE DARK UNDERBELLY
The overall idea behind V-Tubers, at least in Japan, seems to be an extension of Idol Culture…and uh…if you know anything about Idol Culture in Japan, it is all kinds of scummy. Exploitative, filled to the brim with harmful rules and regulations and largely catering to some vary unsavory “fans,” I’ll make it no mystery that I find it incredibly distasteful. Look no further than what happened to Minegishi Minami from the idol group AKB48. To keep a long story short, the obsession with “purity” and being this idealized Japanese beauty means idols are effectively locked into their work, unable to discuss or in many cases partake in romantic relationships, as that would make them less “desirable” to their audience. This unfortunately does at times extend to V-Tubers.
Take Tokoyami Towa, who was suspended for some time and forced to make an apology video for…having some male voices briefly heard over Discord during an Apex Legend stream. She even lost a lot of subscribers and support from Japanese fans following this, though once learning of this, Western fans flocked to her as a show of support. Hololive has also dealt with a variety of issues coming from Chinese fans; though that’s a particular hornet’s nest I don’t want to delve into here too much. To sum it up, fans can get obsessive and toxic, which can lead to the talent being harassed. It is for this reason, it is generally agreed upon by fans to not delve too deep into the personal lives of the V-Tubers, for fear of being doxxed and the illusion being broken. These kinds of issues certainly bring up some interesting questions regarding how talent should be treated moving forward.
Are these V-Tubers characters or just alternate sides of real people? Where does the fantasy end and reality begin? Ultimately, the lines are somewhat blurred. Talent certainly brings some of their own personality into the performance, but they are forced to remain anonymous and as can be seen in the case of Kizuna Ai, they are not always in control of the character they’ve been given. Kizuna Ai’s initial actress was for a time replaced, and “clones” of the character with different voices and personalities started to spring up, likely as an attempt to compete with the likes of Nijisanji and Hololive. In cases where V-Tubers retire from the industry, or “graduate” as some call it, all of their hard work cultivating a fanbase might end up being for nothing as they were forced behind a proxy that isn’t truly themselves and I imagine it can be hard to start over again from square one. Never mind the attempts to step out of the shadow of your older work. Man, Perfect Blue was downright prophetic at times, huh?
I don’t want to dwell on the negatives too much though. It’s worth noting for one thing that Nijisanji seems relatively lax regarding how their talent operates, whereas it seems Hololive is the standout for adhering to the idol ideal, though considering how some of the talent acts (in particular Kiryu Coco), one has to wonder if they’re softening their stances a bit. Many V-Tubers generally talk about the positive aspects of the industry and being given the opportunity to reach people from all over the world. Shortly after Ina’s debut in Hololive English, she was actually brought to tears when told her art streams convinced people to get into (or back into) the hobby, which had been one of her goals for becoming a V-Tuber in the first place. Ironmouse, now a member of V-Shojo, has an immune system disorder that keeps her bedridden and forced to stay inside, so the opportunities afforded by this particular type of streaming has allowed her to reach out to others and as per her own words, has changed her life for the better. While there are definitely “fans” that go too far, corporate practices that are outdated, or harmful and a slew of potential unfortunate implications, ultimately I think most people out there are just looking for quality entertainment, and these digital proxies give these entertainers an outlet to connect with fans in a way that they might not have otherwise.
CONCLUSION
V-Tubers are in a bit of a boom at the moment, though I can’t imagine it’ll last forever. We’re quickly approaching market saturation and after a point, people can only follow so many streamers at once. Hell, as I was editing this up, it seems as if prominent YouTuber Pewdiepie is about to step into the ring, so who knows what kind of shake-up that could bring. The bubble will undoubtedly burst and what becomes of V-Tubers then is still up in the air. Or who knows, maybe V-Tubers will endure and replace all entertainment and we’re just watching the beginning of a cyberpunk dystopia. Stranger things have happened! Considering the world is still reeling from the effects of the pandemic, that should largely have an impact on the popularity of V-Tubers for some time to come, though as we emerge into a “new normal” in the world, it’ll be interesting to see how these entertainers continue to evolve. Now, I suppose there is one question I never quite went over before now, isn’t there? How does one escape the V-Tuber rabbit hole? Well, I’m sorry to say but there is no escape.
The Metroid series is a real standout from most of Nintendo’s in-house franchises. While most Nintendo series are bright and colorful and family-friendly, Metroid is dark and moody, and oftentimes scary. Most Nintendo series forego narrative in favor of pure gameplay, while Metroid has an ongoing storyline and a clear arc for protagonist Samus Aran to follow. Most depressing of all, while most first-party Nintendo series are either clearly dead-and-buried or see frequent installments, Metroid exists in this excruciating middle ground. At times, the series gets attention, only for it to die out for several years at a time. Despite all of the critical acclaim that the series gets, the sales often don’t back it up (fun fact, a title like Super Mario Land on the Game Boy has sold about as much if not more than the entire Metroid series combined), leading to longtime Metroid fans often starving for more content. Following Metroid Fusion’s release in 2002, the series has since danced with either the Metroid Prime subseries (itself set in-between the first two Metroid games), or interquels like Metroid: Other M. For those wishing for a true continuation of the main storyline, it has been 19 long years…but we’re finally here. The long-rumored, often-thought cancelled Metroid Dread…is real. Development of Project Dread has reached the final stages of completion. So let’s start the mission.
THE GALAXY IS AT PEACE…?
Dread opens with a recap of the events of Metroid Fusion. With Samus having eradicated all living Metroids, a new threat emerges: the X Parasite. Gelatinous creatures that can infect, kill, and then replicate any living creature, complete with absorbing memories, Metroids were their sole predators. Samus herself nearly died due to an X infection, but her life was saved by a vaccination created using leftover Metroid cells, granting her the ability to absorb the parasites and avoid further infection. She saves the day, as she does, and the X menace has been thwarted…or has it?
When the Galactic Federation receives word that the X has been sighted on planet ZDR, they send sophisticated machines, the E.M.M.I. units, to take care of the problem. Predictably, something goes wrong and the Federation loses contact with the robots, thus it is up to Samus to investigate and find out if the X are indeed a true threat and what happened to the E.M.M.I. Dread strikes a balance between a more traditional narrative complete with some sparse dialogue and cutscenes, and the subtle, environmental storytelling of the past Metroid games. Some felt Fusion’s linear, story driven approach and pretty much the entirety of Other M’s narrative wasn’t a good fit for the franchise, so Dread might be more to their liking. For my own take, I really enjoyed Dread’s narrative as it finally delves more into the ancient Chozo race, the alien bird people that took Samus in and raised her into the bounty hunter we all know and love. For a long time, the Chozo were a background element at best, but in Dread they are finally brought into the foreground and along with it, we get a more personal antagonist for Samus to face compared to some of her past foes.
Dread’s core presentation is also incredibly stylish, and for being the first HD Metroid, it makes the jump gracefully. The environment is given more detail than ever before, which helps with the eerie, at times hostile atmosphere the game fosters. From local fauna running away as Samus draws close, to hints of enemies that are to come lurking in the shadows, there’s a lot of great details packed into the mostly 2D viewpoints. Various cinematics are woven seamlessly into the gameplay, often switching from one to the other and back again with no major hitches. Adding to all of that, the game’s animation and overall character/enemy design is fantastic. Samus in particular is animated very well; the primary developers for this game, Mercury Steam, manage to pack a LOT of character into Samus with just her body language. She may not have a quip ready every other minute, but Samus’ actions speak louder than words most of the time. Various enemies you encounter, combined with larger-than-life bosses, showcase some great attack animations and telegraphs; an attack might take you by surprise once but often afterwards you can pick up on the subtleties that will let you dodge any further attempt afterward, which really complements the fast-paced action of the game. The sole real weak point here is the music. It’s mostly atmospheric, and I wouldn’t call it bad but it doesn’t do much for me. Maybe in time it’ll stand out a bit more but as of now it hasn’t grown on me. But honestly, that’s one of the few genuine complaints I can lobby at the game. It’s almost entirely aces from this point onwards.
THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR
Dread benefits from the foundation laid out by Mercury Steam’s previous work with the Metroid II remake, Samus Returns. Anyone coming into this game from Samus Returns will be right at home with Dread’s base controls, though for everyone else (even some longtime fans) there might be a bit of an adjustment. Samus can now aim in full 360 degrees using the control stick, and the game will frequently force you to hit enemies at odd angles. Trying to rely on the limited angles of previous games will make this game a much harder, more awkward affair, just fair warning. The melee counter from Samus Returns is further refined, and the game feels more balanced around it. Enemies will frequently charge at Samus, complete with a quick flash that signifies she can parry their attack and let loose a kill shot if she times it properly. A well-timed counter can take out enemies instantly and has them drop more health and ammo, but enemies will frequently feint before going in for the real attack, so timing is crucial. Being able to perform the melee counter while running and jumping was the missing piece that the mechanic really needed, no longer breaking up the player’s momentum and ridding this game of the constant start-and-stop action that somewhat brought down Samus Returns.
As with most games in this franchise (and the greater genre that owes half of its name to Metroid), Dread is a game about exploration. While Samus’ abilities are limited at the start of the game, as time goes on and more power ups are found, the map begins to unravel and allows players more freedom to explore every nook and cranny looking for secrets and yet more power ups. Think of a new ability less like a weapon and more like a key that can open a variety of doors all over ZDR. Many of Samus’ iconic abilities return here, such as the Grapple Beam or Speed Booster, which lets her swing around and pull certain objects with the former, and dash through obstacles with the latter. However, some new moves are mixed in, some right from the get-go. Samus can now perform a slide to quickly pass through some narrow passages, which ends up being useful not only in the fast-paced combat, but also when exploring and keeping up a certain pace. Samus can also gain various Aeion abilities which drain from the similarly named gauge, which can allow her to quickly dash through the air or walk through a given location invisible to most enemies, among other things. All and all, Dread continues the series tradition of leading the player through a maze-like alien world, taking them through various biomes and tasking them with finding the way forward, though it often isn’t immediately apparent where to go next.
Part of the charm of games like this comes from getting lost…or maybe it’s more accurate to say it can be an acquired taste. Not knowing where to go next can at times be frustrating, and if stuck for a long enough time it can really kill the pacing of the game. I consider myself someone who gets lost pretty easily both in games and in real life, but as far as Dread is concerned I think it was constructed with a lot of care to ensure players wouldn’t be lost for long in most cases. From moment one, the game makes it clear that hidden blocks are everywhere, and a missile or bomb will expose them, giving you a clue as to what ability you need to break through a given barricade or unlock a door. So generally if you’re lost, just start shooting wildly and you’re almost sure to find a potential path forward! Though often the game doesn’t need to resort to that, and the level design carefully leads players forward, even if it might not feel like it at points.
To a veteran player of the series, it’s rather easy to get a feel for what the game wants you to do. You pick up on some game design tricks the game uses to get you on the right track. One room might have a ceiling you can shoot through to continue forward, and it places enemies along the path so that as you shoot at them you’re likely to “accidentally” hit the breakable ceiling, and with it, you have your path forward. Often times when a new power up is awarded to you, the very next room outright requires learning how to best use it to advance, working as a subtle tutorial. As far as other quality-of-life features go, the addition of teleporters helps cut down on backtracking slightly, but the real star of the show here is the map. The map is extremely detailed by series standards, even marking various destructible blocks once uncovered, and giving you the option to highlight them. Say you find the Speed Booster and open up your map; you can then highlight any Speed Booster blocks you’ve found to get an idea of where to use your new fancy ability. Being able to add markers on the map is also helpful for investigating other areas of interest. With all of this in mind, alongside various moments of one-way passages, Dread does its best to lead you along the critical path with little chance to get turned around for too long most of the time. It’s certainly possible to get a little stuck despite all of that, and it definitely happened to me once or twice, but never for too long. For those afraid that makes the game far too linear, trust me when I say that the game is arguably just as open-ended and partial to sequence breaking as Super Metroid was back in the day. It’s clear the world was crafted very carefully; the path forward isn’t too cryptic, though there are plenty of other barriers that can keep you from making progress…
HUNTER BECOMES HUNTED
Not long after the game starts, Dread makes it clear that the E.M.M.I. units you encounter aren’t to be trifled with. In a manner similar to the SA-X from Fusion, they are near-invincible hunters that can and WILL run Samus down if spotted. E.M.M.I.’s prowl around specific areas, denoted with a special door. They can “hear” Samus moving about but until they spot her with their vision cone, the mechanical menaces go about their business, though they never stray too far from Samus. Early on, Samus gains the Phantom Cloak ability to let her stealth through E.M.M.I. sections without triggering them, though it only lasts for so long and will begin draining from her health if she doesn’t power it off. Nothing players throw at E.M.M.I. units can slow them down and if they so much as touch Samus, players are given two VERY tight windows to parry their attacks before suffering an instant Game Over. Only by fully exploring a given E.M.M.I. location and locating a Central Unit, can Samus momentarily power up her Arm Cannon to melt off their protective plating and land a powerful charge shot to take the E.M.M.I. units down. They prove to be persistent, efficient predators, able to crawl anywhere and everywhere to pursue Samus, and some units have quite a few tricks up their sleeve to stack the decks even more in their favor. The goal was to create an enemy that instills dread into the player, and while I think at first the game succeeded…there’s quite a few things that could have been improved.
According to series co-creator Yoshio Sakamoto, Dread has been on the backburner for years because hardware couldn’t quite capture what he wanted out of the E.M.M.I.’s until now. While I think they’re competent enough trackers, I can’t help but feel that the E.M.M.I.’s on the whole are a bit of a wasted opportunity. Despite the units using sound to subtly track Samus, players can’t exactly use that against them. You can’t, say, shoot a missile at a far wall to lure the E.M.M.I. away from you, and outside of the Phantom Cloak being active, Samus can’t even walk and is always sprinting about and making noise. It also becomes blatantly obvious as you play through the game that the E.M.M.I.’s are somewhat scripted. They will always spawn ahead of you once you enter a door leading to their area and even if you are being super quiet and stealthy and never make a sound the E.M.M.I. always hangs around wherever you are. It is like they KNOW you’re there but they know they aren’t “allowed” to pursue you until you meet the proper criteria. It all feels a little too fabricated and as time goes on, you become aware that the E.M.M.I. are less predators and more puzzles that require typically only one real solution to get past. Later units also seem to overcompensate to keep the challenge up as Samus gains more abilities that let her escape more easily. Things like hearing you no matter how far away they are, or being able to see you through the environment…it starts to feel a little cheap and frustrating, honestly.
To be fair to the developers, they had a tight rope to walk here. They wanted to emulate the SA-X, which was a terrifying experience in Fusion because it could mow you down so quickly and you never knew where it would turn up next. However after beating the game, it becomes clear that the SA-X encounters are HEAVILY scripted, which makes it lose a lot of impact. With Dread, players encounter E.M.M.I. units far more often and depending on your tactics, you might evade detection or you might be running for your life, so there’s SOME suspense…you know, were it not for the fact that they have special doors telling you exactly when an E.M.M.I. encounter was happening. Imagine playing a horror game where the game would put up a warning telling you when a monster was about to pop up; Dread is a bit like that after a point. Of course, letting the E.M.M.I.’s just traverse everywhere would have led to even more problems so this was probably for the best. Still, they often straddle the line between being frustrating or annoying more than scary or intimidating. Thankfully the game employs very forgiving checkpoints, so if an E.M.M.I. does kill you, barely any time has been lost. Were that not the case, the game might have become unbearable. While undoubtedly a focus in advertising for the game, I do feel that the E.M.M.I. sections are one of the game’s few weak points, though once you accept them to be the puzzles they are, they aren’t too frustrating to deal with and only slightly wear out their welcome.
STICKING THE LANDING
I’ve seen a lot of discourse surrounding this game both before and after release. People argue it isn’t “worth” the $60 price tag, almost entirely because it’s “merely” 2D, or that it is too short to justify the price. Now, ultimately value is going to be heavily subjective and depending on the person, $60 is a lot of money and they want to get the most bang for their buck possible. I can only speak for myself, but I immensely enjoyed the game and gladly paid full price for it. While shorter than many games (though the in-game timer displayed is misleading, only counting actual play time, not counting up if the game is paused or in a cutscene, as an example), I had a blast the entire time. Rather than go on for far too long, risking boring players and breaking momentum, Dread moves at a decent click and there was very little downtime. The short length also adds to the game’s replayability for me, and after completing my 100% run, I decided to do my best attempt at a speed run, even looking up and attempting several sequence breaks that the Metroid community had already found. That only made me appreciate the game’s careful construction even more; anyone complaining the game is too linear should know that there are several alternate ways to progress through the game, and many bosses have alternate ways to defeat them, even being able to skip whole phases instantly. While a normal guided play through lead me from place to place subtly but consistently, once I engaged in some sequence breaks the entire rest of the game was off-the-rails and I got to enjoy the immense freedom and momentary confusion that resulted.
While I struggled quite a bit with the game at first, to the point of feeling frustrated, eventually the game clicked. Enemies are fast, aggressive and hit hard, but they also telegraph their attacks very clearly and once you learn their patterns, they can be taken out quickly. This applies to bosses as well, and while I do think SOME enemies can be a bit much at the point they’re introduced (such as the Chozo Robot Soldiers), with some determination you can adapt and overcome. On my repeat playthroughs I was shocked at how quickly bosses could be mowed down, and how few tries they took in comparison to my first run. With that said, Dread can still be difficult, and there are some things I wish the game would have had to smooth things out a bit more. While the game has a default difficulty and an unlockable Hard Mode, it would have been nice to see an easier difficulty as well. Just have enemies do less damage or make the timing for the parry more lenient. Really I think it’s the reflex requirement that will trip people up more than anything. Allowing for button remapping would have been nice too; this is the type of game that uses every button on the controller, as well as some slightly unwieldy button combinations for some actions and it can be easy to get things like the Grapple Beam mixed up with the Storm Missiles, as an example. Little things like that is just a consideration for a new entry.
My first Metroid game was Fusion, and as I slowly went back through the other games to learn more about the series and where it first began, I awaited a game that would finally take the series forward. I never thought it would take 19 years, and I never thought it would manage to live up to that wait. Proper respect must be paid to Nintendo and Mercury Steam for somehow managing to deliver Dread in such a state, and as such a huge surprise to close out 2021. The game looks incredibly sharp and plays buttery smooth, the challenge is high but never unfair, and the story pushes forward and ended on such a strong note that I immediately just wanted the next Metroid game in my hands to keep it going. The E.M.M.I. sections leave a bit to be desired and the music could have been a bit more impactful, but those minor lows don’t diminish the massive highs that Dread delivers on.
Going into this year, I certainly wasn’t expecting to see much from the Metroid series. With Metroid Prime 4 undoubtedly facing some major development woes on top of everything else going on the world, something like Metroid Dread was the last thing on my mind. Seeing all of the interest in Dread warms my heart and the finished product gives me a lot of hope for the franchise moving forward. It also puts a bit more pressure on Prime 4 in all honesty, but after all is said and done, I’m just glad this franchise seems to be standing on two feet again. The galaxy is vast and full of terrors, but it is reassuring to know that the galaxy has a savior waiting in the wings, and it hopefully won’t be too long before we see her again.
