An enormous story-driven adventure about six young soldiers from two warring nations who are forced to team up. You run around gigantic open landscapes and combat happens in real time, your character auto-attacks while you pick special abilities off a bar and reposition for bonus damage. Budget well over a hundred hours, and expect long cutscenes, since the story is the main reason people love it.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
Why it lands
This closes out the trilogy with real emotional weight, delivering a story about mortality and purpose that's surprisingly mature for a game this scale.
How it plays
Combat blends real-time positioning with class-based strategy, and the sheer number of systems can overwhelm early on before clicking into a satisfying rhythm.
Style and score
Aionios is gorgeous in that draw-distance-defying way this series has become known for, though occasional frame dips remind you how hard it's pushing the hardware.
Who it's for
At well over eighty hours for completionists, it's a huge commitment, best suited to JRPG diehards rather than anyone looking for a quick adventure.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
This is an enormous story about six young soldiers from two countries that have been at war forever, where people are grown to fight and die at ten years old, and who are forced to travel together. It is slow to start and heavy on cutscenes, some of them very long, and that is the point, people play it for the story and characters as much as the combat. Expect somewhere north of a hundred hours if you follow the side content.
The world is genuinely huge, continuous open landscapes you run across with wild creatures wandering around, some of them far too strong for you, and the sense of scale when you crest a hill is a large part of the appeal. Combat happens right there in the field with no separate battle screen. Your character auto-attacks whatever you are facing while you pick special abilities off a bar as they recharge and move around to hit enemies from behind or the side for extra damage. It is closer to managing a squad in real time than pressing attack in a menu.
There is a lot of systems on top, seven party members you swap between, job classes you unlock and mix, pairs of characters who fuse into a single more powerful fighter, and a chain attack sequence that turns a tough fight around. It is a lot to absorb and the game spends its first ten hours teaching you, layer by layer. If you like sinking into one giant game for a couple of months, it is arguably the deepest thing on the console. If you want something you can dip into for twenty minutes, look elsewhere.