Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition (NS) - Review
by Evan Norris , posted on 19 April 2025 / 3,624 Views
Over the past eight years, the Switch has hosted pretty much every WiiU port of note. But for the longest time, there were three big omissions, which time and time again made it to the top of gamers' wish lists: Twilight Princess HD, The Wind Waker HD, and Xenoblade Chronicles X. And while those HD Zelda titles remain a pipe dream, the Switch version of Xenoblade Chronicles X became a beautiful reality last month. No longer shackled to Nintendo's ill-fated console, one of the better role-playing games of the eighth gen can now be appreciated by a much larger audience, thanks to a new definitive edition.
Like the original, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition starts with a bang. Its opening minutes, in which two unknown alien races appear in space above Earth and cut each other's fleets to ribbons, are stunning, spectacular, and awe-inspiring. In fact, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call the game's initial cut-scene one of the best sci-fi openings of any medium. Once you get over the spectacle, you can begin to understand the ramifications: caught in the cross-hairs between two impossibly-advanced alien war machines, Earth is gradually consumed by war.
Sensing the inevitable destruction of the planet, its inhabitants launch multiple colony ships into space; only a handful survive. One of them is the White Whale, which endures its escape from Earth only to be ambushed again and crash land on the inhospitable planet of Mira. There, the remnants of the human race establish a foothold, and attempt to survey the planet and reclaim lost pieces of the White Whale, all while surrounded by dangerous fauna and hostile alien beings. You are one of the few survivors, rescued from your escape pod by a soldier of BLADE — Builders of the Legacy After the Destruction of Earth. Soon after, you join the ranks of BLADE and fight for the future of humanity.
The premise and storytelling in Chronicles X are both good, and the characters are likable and memorable, but it's in the area of world-building that the game makes its best impression. Developer Monolith Soft has a knack for details, and it's never been more obvious than in the living, breathing world the studio created here. Everything in the game has a reason for being, a history, and a relationship with something else. The human stronghold, New Los Angeles (NLA), is a bustling metropolis with four quadrants, including commercial, residential, industrial, and administrative sectors. BLADE has touch-points in all sectors, and realistic, believable, detailed interactions with the political, economic, and social spheres of life — not to mention third-party Arms Manufacturers that develop the weapons used to protect NLA. The level of minutiae is remarkable, really, although it can be overwhelming at times.
Overwhelming is a word that can be used to describe Chronicles X, both original recipe and Definitive Edition, in more than one place. Monolith Soft loves deep, complex role-playing systems with lots of moving parts and customization options, and that love is on full display here. There's just so much to understand. Indeed, the game doesn't truly "start" until around the five-hour mark, after you've experienced hours of tutorials and training. Even after that, you'll continue to learn new things and keep wrapping your head around all the interlocking systems and mechanics. Don't be surprised to find yourself spending almost as much time navigating menus, re-reading gameplay tips, and going down customization rabbit holes as you do out in the field exploring and fighting — at least at first.
The upside to all these intimidating, dovetailing systems is that Chronicles X is a preposterously huge, amazingly deep role-playing game with hundreds of hours worth of content. Mira itself is absolutely massive, with five huge continents, each with discrete biomes, weather patterns, and ecosystems. Furthermore, what you can do within the world often feels limitless. You can explore at your leisure; take on story, affinity, and basic quests from friends, citizens, and fellow BLADE operatives; install survey probes, which support another complementary system called FrontierNav; invest miranium in Arms Manufacturers, thereby updating their corporate level and unlocking new weapon types; personalize your BLADE barracks; or engage in battle with the dangerous beasts and bipeds that inhabit Mira.
Battling is a big part of Chronicles X. And like a lot of the game, it's overwhelming at first. On foot, you'll attack enemies with melee and ranged weapons. Once you initiate a battle (or once you're spotted by a hostile creature, and no longer have a choice) you'll enter into a flow where you and your party members automatically attack the opponent with a certain frequency, as long as you keep it within the weapon's attack range. You can freely move around, to attack from the side, the back, or above in order to gain a tactical advantage, and deploy one of several Arts — special skills that enter a cooldown period upon use.
But that's not all. As the battle continues, your allies will shout out instructions and suggestions called Soul Voices. If you respond with the right Art at the right time, you'll trigger useful boons, including healing effects. There are also Soul Challenges — essentially quick-time events that, when completed correctly, boost tension points (TP) and raise the party's morale, leading to more frequent Soul Voices and even bigger TP gains. As a result, there's an exciting rhythm to the combat encounters in the game, and a lot of strategic depth.
As you pick more fights, encounter more enemies, and gain more experience, you'll start to run afoul of larger and larger animals, or "indigens" as they're called by BLADE. These are best engaged not on foot, but in a Skell: a powerful armored vehicle that can fly, transform into a vehicle, and wield terrible strength in battle. With Skells, which are introduced only after a good chunk of time and several mandatory quests, Chronicles X shifts into the next Xeno gear, so to speak. They greatly enhance your fighting ability and locomotion options. And piloting one is just pure power fantasy. It never gets old.
In addition to all these single-player offerings, Chronicles X has a fairly significant online component, in which you can join a squad of up to 31 other players online and work together to complete tasks, including defeating specific enemies. This functionality, which is completely optional and can be turned off at any time, serves to accentuate the MMO-like flavor already present in the game. Overall, Chronicles X draws inspiration both from traditional story-based role-playing campaigns and from social sandbox-y games like World of Warcraft. This causes some issues — the blank slate protagonist and story often take a backseat to the questing/raiding gameplay loop and there are leveling bottlenecks that can only be overcome through grinding — but also makes the title a fascinating departure from the Xenoblade franchise, and RPGs in general.
So, it's great that a new audience can experience the game via this Definitive Edition, which not only retains the idiosyncrasies of the original but also introduces new features, both major and minor. It includes a new location to explore, two new companion characters, newly added story content, and new musical tracks co-composed by Hiroyuki Sawano and Misaki Umase. It also includes remastered graphics and performance improvements. The game targets and (mostly) hits 30 fps, although not without some annoying (and sometimes aggressive) pop-in. As for the character designs, they're definitely different — slightly less plasticky and more stylized. The new ones are overall superior, although not without artifice.
There are also lots of little quality-of-life tweaks. You can now change the time of day and switch party members directly from the main menu. There's a new auto-save functionality and four total save slots. Four is still insufficient, especially for such a big game, but far, far better than the original one. In addition, everyone on your roster gets experience points, even those not in the party.
Finally, there's quick cooldown, which is a total game-changer. If you press Y while hovering over an Art on cooldown, you can expend aux energy to instantly recharge and activate the Art, keeping you in the fight. Note that it's not limitless: you'll need to obtain additional energy clips to store more aux energy. Still, it adds a brand new, exciting wrinkle to combat (even if it creates some balancing issues later in the game).
One of the better RPGs of the eighth generation has a second lease on life, thanks to Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition. All the things that made the game special in 2015 — extraordinary world-building, impossibly deep role-playing systems, an obscene amount of content, and a unique gameplay loop that at times straddles the line between RPG and MMO — are present here, along with new story elements, refined mechanics, remastered graphics, and quality-of-life updates. There are still some technical hiccups and the game remains overwhelming, especially in its first few chapters, but overall this Definitive Edition is just that: the definitive way to enjoy an underplayed gem from the WiiU era.
This review is based on a retail copy of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition for the NS
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One of the best RPGs ever, that will reward anyone who gets through its "rocky" initial hours with one of the best worlds, combat systems and experiences ever created. The Skells give new flavour to the game after 30 hours in, and the DE exclusive "Jet Mode" is an outstanding adition that makes traveling across Mira a total delight.
Playing it again, I can’t believe the Wii U could handle this gem.
I really love how they incorporated Xenoblade 3’s mission support style.
The only annoying bug I've encountered so far occurs when you need to collect a single item that’s also in the Collectopedia. If you add it to the Collectopedia before completing the mission, the game tells you that you can continue the mission, but in reality you need to find another of the same item. This issue only happens when the side mission requires just one.
This is one of my favourite games of the the 3D era. I'm about 130 hours in, now with flight. Taking my sweet time, and also spending A LOT more time exploring every nook and cranny of this amazing world.
Some people don't like the story. But for me, it's one of my favourites of the last 20 years. The whole story of a city against the world is the most profound that a Xenoblade game has been since Monolithsoft began using the label. And there are so many little stories all throughout the world that weave together in a tapestry. It's not just the external conflicts with NLA vs Mira, or NLA vs the Ganglion, but the internal conflicts of the city from integrating several species of aliens with the human colonists. It reflects a lot of our real world struggles, with the different people of the city having completely conflicting views of what the city is and what the city should be. And through all that, is the building of New LA from a human colony trying to adapt and survive Mira into exploiting its resources and for survival to a thriving cosmopolitan city that is capable of waging war against the powerful Ganglion.
Xenoblade Chronicles X is a game which really went against the rules of how to build an RPG, and did it successfully. And that's why it's a standout game, IMO. Its world and exploration philosophy has also had a clear influence on one of the biggest games of all time, Breath of the Wild.
Loved game but did they fix the end of game? You spend 100+ hours in those awesome mechs then there is a point you are forced to battle without and if you focused on mech battle you cannot get past it and worse you can’t go back to build up the required experience. Great game but battling in mechs is a complete trap…
end is easy
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