Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition
Developer : Monolith Soft
Publisher : Nintendo
Platform : Switch
Release Year : 2025
Giant Robots = Awesome
For as long as I can remember I have been huge fan of giant robots, with The Transformers being my gateway. I watched the cartoon religiously, and The Transformers: The Movie from ‘86 is still one of my all-time favourite films; I may or may not be able to quote the whole movie from memory, because I have watched it more than a few times. The toys were great, and I had a sizeable collection of both the classic Transformers line as well as from the amazing Beast Wars series (those transmetal ones were so cool). Then during the ‘90s I discovered Battletech and developed a deep love for the Mechwarrior series, especially when my good buddy Mike got me a copy of Mechwarrior 3 for Christmas one year. Then with the release of Mechwarrior 4: Vengeance in 2000 and Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries in 2002, my love giant robots kept growing, because piloting a giant war machine into battle was, and still is, super awesome.
The world of anime also fed my love of giant robots with series like Gundam, Robotech/Macross, and the life changing Neon Genesis: Evangelion. The fusion of science-fiction and militarism in all of those series resonated with me so much, which is why the whole ‘exploring an alien world and battling in a customizable mecha’ package that is Xenoblade Chronicles X struck such a chord with me when it was released for the Wii U in 2015. Then when I found out that it was being remastered for the Switch, I was so excited to play it again, and I am happy to say that Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition did not disappoint. It was just as awesome and expansive as I remembered, and I was on cloud nine while I explored the strange alien world of Mira.
Gameplay
Xenoblade Chronicles X is an action-roleplaying game in which you explore the alien world of Mira battling the indigenous flora and fauna as well as the aliens who are hell bent on wiping humanity from the stars. Before you start the adventure, you make your character, choosing from either male or female, and then customizing them with a variety of voice, hair, face, and body options. Once you have made your avatar, you have a quick journey to humanity’s only bastion of safety on Mira and the game’s hub, the city of New Los Angeles, or NLA. This city will be your base of operations as you and your companions take on the game’s massive amount of side quests, story missions, and affinity missions.
Combat is real time and is inspired by the cooldown-based combat that you see in MMOs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. You select your abilities from the action bar at the bottom of the screen and then wait from them to come off cool down before you can use them again. Combat works the same both on foot and when you are piloting your Skells (the game’s mecha), with the biggest difference between the two is that while on foot you can use a resource (that refills after each battle) that allows you skip your ability’s cooldowns so you can use that ability right away. There are no random encounters here, instead enemies are wandering around the planet freely and you can choose to engage with them or not. Like it’s MMO inspirations, the enemies have aggro ranges (with higher level enemies having a larger aggro radius and lower-level beasts all but ignoring you) and they will attack you if you get within that range. This means you have to be careful when you’re exploring new areas, or in areas with higher level enemies, because there is a very good chance that you will aggro something, and that something is going to kill you.
One very important combat mechanic in X is overdrive, a mode in which your ability cooldowns are greatly reduced, and your damage output can get to crazy levels. It’s a shame then that the game does an absolutely terrible job of explaining how overdrive works, and how to get the most out of it. Sure, there are ‘instructions’ buried in some menus, but even then, I had to look up how to get the most out of overdrive. Even after watching a few videos, and reading a guide or two, I still felt like I was missing something; I was able to get my combos going, but I was still running out of time. It’s nice that you don’t need to master overdrive to get through the game, but if you want a chance against the game’s high-level enemies you are going to have to do some research on how to get the most out of the overdrive mechanic.
Leveling up your character is a multifaceted and in-depth affair, just like most of the game’s systems. Not only do you increase your overall level, which increase your health and other general stats, but you also increase your class level. There are sixteen classes, each of them focusing on different weapons (one melee weapon and one ranged weapon each) and playstyles ranging from tank, melee damage, range damage, and status dealers. You start the game as the base class, called Drifter, and once you have leveled that to max, you then branch off into the more specialized jobs. As you max out the trees, you are able to mix and match the weapons and abilities you have unlocked from the jobs, letting you really customize how you approach combat. Just like everything else in this game, the level of customization here is intense, and if you really dive into it, you can make your avatar an unstoppable force of nature.
There is an insane amount of equipment for you and your party to collect and equip. Each piece of equipment can have multiple bonuses, as well as enhancement slots, which leads to a huge number of options for how you want to outfit your characters. While it is nice that you can really customize your character to fit your play style, the huge number of options makes it damn near impossible to not get choice paralysis. Then addon to that, having to make the enhancements from materials and drops found out in the world, is just a lot. Now, that is not to say it’s bad by any stretch of the imagination, and I know that some folks will love it, but for me it is almost too much. It's awesome then that you don’t have to jump into the deep end to make your way through the story and most of the quests, but if you do want to take on and defeat the super bosses and harder enemies the game has to offer, you’re going to have to engage heavily with this system.
Once you get access to the game’s transforming mecha, known as Skells, the game opens up so much. Before you get your robots, you are forced to walk everywhere, and with the massive size of Mira, you will be walking for a long time. Sure, there is a fast travel system, but you have to travel to those locations at least once before you can fast travel to them, and that will take a good chunk of time. This does give the game a sense of vastness, which I found really impressive when it launched on the Wii U, but once you can drive across Mira (and eventually fly) in your Skell, exploration feels so much better. Plus, piloting a mech is just so cool to me, and once I got my first Skell, my enjoyment shot up tenfold. The world feels like it shrinks as you get more travel options, which I think is really cool, and does give you a real sense of progression; not only are you leveling up, but you are also mastering the world too.
Like with your character’s equipment options, the options for outfitting your Skells are overwhelmingly impressive. Add to that the fact that the Skells come in three varieties (light, medium, and heavy), you can understand why I, once again, got choice paralysis. I think it’s awesome that there is all this choice, and that you don’t have to dig super deep into it if you just want to play through the story, but I wish that it was somehow more approachable. I have no idea how you would go about making such an in-depth system more approachable, or if you even could due to the inherent complexity of the gearing systems, but I feel the lack of any real explanation or direction here will put off some players who would otherwise love this game.
As with most other RPGs, both Japanese and Western ones, Xenoblade Chronicles X has you talking and interacting with a ton of NPCs as well as your party members. The random NPCs in NLA will give you quests and tasks they need done, which will mostly reward you with some credits and new gear. The side quests are very MMO fare, with you either collecting a certain number of things or killing a number of enemies. These quests are not mind blowing or game changing in any sense, but there is something almost cathartic about picking up a whole bunch of these side quests, and then coming back to NLA to turn them all in. Aside from story missions and the seemingly endless number of side quests, the other quests you will frequently take on are known as affinity missions. You get these quests by raising the affinity levels of your companions, which is done by questing and interacting with them). As their love for you goes up, your companions will start to offer you affinity missions where you will learn more about them, and also about Mira. These affinity missions are some of the best quests in the game, and they do so much world and character building that it is well worth leveling up the affinity levels for all your companions, because you will want to experience them all.
Presentation
When Xenoblade Chronicles X was released on the Wii U, the whole package was amazing. It was mind blowing how big everything was, from the planet of Mira to the wildlife, because everything was on such an impressive scale. That same feeling of size is still very much there on the Switch edition, along with a welcome update to the whole graphical package. The characters have a bit more of an anime look in this edition of the game, and when I first saw screenshots, I wasn’t a huge fan of the new look; I felt they looked too anime, if that makes sense. But after having played the game for well over a 100 hours, the art style grew on me, and I find that it really fits the aesthetic of the game. I am also a big fan of the visual variety when it comes to the armours and weapons, and how you can really pick and choose how you and your party look. The Skells too come in a wide variety in styles, and just like your characters, they also change how they look depending on what armour and weapons you have equipped.
Mira is a beautiful world, and her different continents all look unique and fantastic. The green fields of the game’s first area, Primordia, stretch as far as the eye can see and is home to a wide variety of alien life, both hostile and peaceful; even in this opening area, the size and scale of the world is on full display. Oblivia’s baren desert is beautiful in its desolation, with the massive ruins of an ancient civilization dominating the horizon no matter which way you look. The lush and vibrant jungles of shadowed Noctilum are a favourite of mine, with some of the forest’s trees towering over the region’s tallest mountains; the glowing neon nights here are breathtaking. Perhaps the most alien of the regions is Sylvalum, with its sparkling sands and ‘trees’ that are massive in both size and appearance; it is a place like no other, and I find it hard to put into words how truly alien this area is. Finally, we come to the lava and basalt dominated lands of Cauldros, a land scared by war from both long ago and today. Each of the regions also have their own themes (one for the day, and one for the night), and I still find myself humming them from time to time, especially Noctulim’s. I would be nice if there were more music tracks, but it is definitely not a deal breaker.
The game runs really well on the Switch, but there is some pop in here and there, especially in NLA and when you’re driving around at high speeds. It is still impressive that Monolith Soft was able to make a game of this size and scope, and its no surprise that they helped Nintendo with both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. If you ask me, I think Monolith Soft should help out with the modern Pokémon games, because if anyone knows open world RPG goodness, it’s the folks who made the Xenoblade series.
The audio design here is good, but there are a few things that bug me. I like the music out in the world quiet a bit, but the songs that are playing over and over again in the city (both the daytimes song and the nighttime one) are not the best; the vocals of the tracks are pretty meh, and I really wish that they were just musical tracks. The combat sounds weighty and heavy, with the melee weapons having a satisfying ‘thunk’ to them and the ranged weapons sounding powerful and unique from each other. What I did get tired of is hearing your party members yell out what moves they’re preforming over and over and over and over again, and since combat is so fast paced, their callouts all blend together into a mindless cacophony of noise. If I could change one thing about this game, it would be that, because holy crap does it get annoying listening to the party yelling the same things all the damn time. It’s like, does the move even count unless the character yells about it?
Story
Xenoblade Chronicles X starts with an engaging and beautiful cinematic that sets the stage for the adventure to come: two factions of aliens are at war, and that war has come to Earth with devastating consequences. This battle destroys Earth, and the few humans who are left escape the carnage aboard massive ark ships that blast off into the cosmos looking for a new home. Our story starts with our colony ship, The White Whale, being attacked by the same aliens who destroyed Earth as we are drifting through the stars. Our ship is damaged in the attack, and crashes on a mysterious planet Mira. What follows is a planet spanning journey to rescue the surviving humans from the cryochamber known as the Life Hold, as well as making a new life for those alive on Mira.
The main quest revolves around finding the Life Hold and learning about the aliens who attacked Earth, and why they hate humans so much. It is a pretty by the number’s science fiction story with a heavy helping of mecha anime tropes, and I can’t see any of it really blowing anyone away. I enjoyed it well enough, but I am a fan of both science fiction and mecha anime/giant robots, but if you’re not a fan of those genres, then this story is not about to change your mind. The affinity quests are where the game’s narrative really shines; instead of focusing on the large-scale story of saving humanity, these quests have more focused stories, and I find they really benefit from that. Most of the game’s character and world building are in these quests, and I find they really make me feel like I am exploring an alien planet. It is us against the elements, and I think it’s awesome, and where the game shines in terms of its storytelling.
Making a Home Among the Stars
Being able to play Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Switch is fantastic, because I was fully expecting this game to be locked to the Wii U forever. I was sure that if I wanted to play it again, I was going to have to dig my Wii U out of storage, and that was something I really had no desire to do. But now I can play Xenoblade Chronicles X while I’m in the tub, or even on my break at work, which is fantastic. The changes and additions made to the Definitive Edition are more than welcome, and I find that they made a game I already enjoyed even better. This game is massive, both in scale and in the time needed to finish the adventure, and even after a 100 plus hours I still have things to do and places to explore. I know I will go back to it someday, but for now, I have so many other games I want to get to and write about.
If you’re a fan of science fiction, giant robots, or JRPGs, then this is definitely a game you should take a look at. Be prepared to sink a shameful amount of time into the game, but I will say that the many, many hours I spent with Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition was more than worth it, and an experience I will remember for a long time to come.
