I'm close to fifty hours into this and well and fully hooked. It's the best Xenoblade, with its only competition being X, which exists liminally in parallel to the others in the first place and so might not be the most relevant comparison to begin with; no matter how good 3 might be that game's strengths remain fully its own. For the others, though--games I actively resented or was disinterested and worn down into quitting them before the end--this is an improvement in every way.
Xenoblade 2 was a porn parody of Xenoblade 2, and so one might argue that its derived tonal coherence was a deliberate play and execution on its central themes, but it could've just as well been the result of unmoored and unexamined creative id pratfalling into the worst excesses of the related concepts until only pure, distilled garbage remained wherein the game nestled and refused to crawl out of. Some vision drove that game to be what it was, and 3 isn't altogether different because it's also guided by a central set of principles that seek to carve a place for itself as a distinct creative work. What does set it apart is its total commitment to its tone, in all its moribund, solemn melancholies. It's superficially in the premise, with limited lifespan tube-babies wrapped in endless conflict in a staged forever-war, but infects all other parts of the production as well: the visual outlook of the world is less verdant than exhaustedly arid down to the hue of the grass in the beginning spaces; the accompanying music forbids the usual rollicking and triumphant adventure themes typical of the series, instead reaching for subdued and emotionally withdrawn even at its most awe-inspiring moments, drawing a veil of persistent sadness over the world's charted boundaries.
It's not a mission statement that would congeal without the writing to support it, and thankfully it's another space where the standards have thematically risen, or reoriented into something more palatable. The large-scale plotting and convoluted mysteries of the tale don't matter much in the face of the central six who define where the writing emphasis of this game lies, in the small camaraderies and interpersonal leveling with one another. Some pairs are favoured or emphasized among them, but the game takes great care in making sure that all potential combinations among the sextet are featured interacting amongst themselves so the story told isn't of a group of strangers sharing the road for suggested weeks and months of their short lives. It's invested in integrating the group dynamic into all possible narrative expressions of the text, such as in the sidequest model of hashing out overheard humours over a campfire or canteen meal and deciding on a course of direction through consensus and discussion.
Structural writing considerations are important to the game as the optional branches and opportunities that organically manifest through exploration can lead to sequences and narrative beats that feel important and as lavishly produced to be part of the main story, but still aren't, and all the more satisfying to discover as a result. The rewards, outside of witnessing what's done with the stories, are also significant in introducing new party members for the road, their inherited classes to play with (and thus an expansion of wardrobe), and often unlocking some new corner of the world from which further quests will branch out from. The writing in this optional side content breaks the expected form of such text because they don't feel isolated or inconsequential to the core cast, the major characters entangled in them, or the minor characters they primarily star in the moment--all of them serve to inform the ongoing thematic ends of the piece in smaller and larger ways before they're done.
The inordinate time I've spent on the game relative to how far into it I've progressed (barely into chapter 4) has been fueled by the joy of exploration inherent in it. No time has been spent on "grinding", and nothing particular in being stymied or roadblocked by a sought-out or mandatory challenge. This is another way in which I think--at least personally speaking--Xenoblade 3 distinguishes itself from its predecessors because it's the first Xenoblade where I feel like I actually understand the involved play systems. Part of the longstanding issues with the series on a mechanical level for me have been the asinine inventory management and overflow of menus, along with battle operations that I could never untangle from their convolution of overlapping multiplier and chain-focused torrents of chaotic numeration. 3 is not fundamentally different from the baseline, but it is in all ways more legible, more immediate in what it asks of the player and how the results of such actions are drawn. The adherence to the MMO-derived DPS-tank-heal holy trifecta paradigm stymied earlier games, limited as they were to parties that could include no more than those roles, leaving meaningful improvisation and personalization by the wayside. The expansion to a party of six, and seven soon enough, makes the longstanding systems actually feel like they work as part of the small-scale squad's operative flow while leaving room to shuffle those roles as needed or simply desired. I'm constantly continuing to push against the borders of the world because I feel I am equipped to take on what the game throws at me, instead of simply flailing about in confusion and walking away, resigned to the beaten path.
The spaces themselves tempt one to explore them too. The prior two games in the series might as well have been polar opposites in environmental design philosophy; X's true open world contrasted with 2's partitioned, narrow-laned theme park. The former I adored, the other I was as disinterested in as the game itself seemed to be. 3 is a deliberately syncretic work as far as incorporating the totality of the prior series within it, with its world design perhaps embodying that ethos the clearest. Like 2, it features its share of more linearly delineated biomes--but from within those locations, the world around expands and reveals itself far in the distance to visually mark the journey transpired or to come, as the first game might have landmarked itself through its large-scale structure. And while each "zone" is ultimately separated by a loading screen, they are geographically connected as part of a larger whole, with the individual regions seguing from one style of ecology and topography to the other within their maps, allowing giant expanses of ignorable, explorable space to exist parallel to the narrow push toward the next story beat. X had to fashion its world to be a space for omni-axis mechs to exist in, while 2 bungled its execution of exploratory mechanics by tying them into the gacha hell of its Blade system and their arbitrary aggregate statistics, so 3 again meets in the middle: there are universal and passive exploratory-aiding abilities to be gained that allow more thorough traversal, but for the most part it's just up to one's curiosity to push into the frontier as far as one cares to.
The residue of Xenoblade--Xeno as a whole, depending on your level of charitability--still exists in this game. The sexualization of women hasn't evaporated, just obfuscated--dedicated physics models for breasts and the painfully sexually dimorphic Ouroboros designs speak to that on their own. The absolute deathgrip of heteronormativity that's always been with the series is in full force here, especially present in how all of the main cast are paired opposite to their gender lines, and there is a worry that the story's preoccupation with legacy and leaving something behind of oneself is going to go in the "go out and procreate" style of self-actualization and fulfillment, eventually. For the most part, these are passing annoyances to how the rest of the game expresses itself. It's the first time--outside of X's mundanities--that I've enjoyed clothing design in the series, with cosplay dress-up as part of the class system underlining that fact with its individual personalizations. The character writing stands especially firm in unison, but I'm also happy that the kind of quirk-based definition of personality is toned down, with allowances made for the characters to simply be plain if needed. And while doubts remain of the story to come, some of its absolutely gets me, like the villain group of the day being literally spotlit as they mingle amongst themselves, or watch over the party endeavors at a movie theater, through a projector. It's over-the-top community theater and the sheer tonal confidence of the game at large allows me to laugh with it instead of snark against it, which might be the standing assessment of the game right now, where unlike past games in the series, being taken for its ride isn't a struggle against the current to glean whatever good may have come of it, but accepting and enjoying all the relevant twists and turns in store.