Xenoblade series combat critical analysis.

preamble

if you're seeing this text, it means we didn't recover our original, nearly complete, draft of this document, and we will be reconstructing it as a living document, over time. this may take the better part of a year.

intro

despite being a supposedly interconnected and iterative series, every single xeno game is completely different. we've never played the xenosaga trilogy, but i assume they also fall into this trend.

this absolutely includes the combat of the series. the only loose thread we've noticed between the combat in all games is how easy it is to compare to fighting game mechanics, but this could be a coincidence.

in this document, we want to talk about the evolution and iteration of the combat in the xenoblade games specifically. they've had over a decade of growth and iteration and have had remarkable impact on rpgs surroudning it since its introduction. we also have a lot to say about this internal subseries, and we've been thinking about this for a long time.

xenoblade 1

xenoblade chronicles' combat is built

xenoblade 3

xenoblade 3 has a powered up form that intially reminded us a lot of skells, in interlinking.

xenoblade 3 introduces 6 active party members at the same time.

the game also finally adds the ability to switch between party members mid battle, which is something we thought the series needed to add to make it truly strategic. at the same time, it also remvoves the ability to customise party setup, meaning characters are always in the same order and can't be removed.

6 party members, or the 7 that happens when you recruit a hero, is a lot. getting comfortable with it is very difficult, especially with the game's extensive build system.