Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition Review
We Can’t Go Back Where We Came From
After the grand success of the Wii’s Xenoblade Chronicles, Monolith Soft was charged with creating a new title to make the most of the system’s follow-up, the much-maligned Wii U. Its creation, Xenoblade Chronicles X, stands out from both the precedessor and follow-ups, with more of a focus on sci-fi and exploring its open world, complete with a customised player character, a host of alien races, and pilotable mechs. It has taken until just before the arrival of the Switch’s successor, but finally the missing piece of the series is present and accounted for on the system. Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition should be deservedly lauded as a superb opportunity for RPGamers to play a title that deserved much more attention than it was ever going to get on the device that eventually heralded its true home on the Switch.
Xenoblade Chronicles X begins with no less than the destruction of Earth. Humanity has found itself caught in the crosshairs of a fight between two unknown forces. Having been forewarned of this threat, humanity has made one last bid for survival by creating ark ships to attempt to find a new home, with most of the people hibernating for the trip. One of these ships, the White Whale, manages to escape and ends up crash landing on the distant planet Mira. However, while this landing allows those active to set up the self-contained city of New Los Angeles, it also results in the lifehold — the part of the ship containing both the hibernating populace and main power supply — being lost somewhere on the planet. This results in a race against time to find and activate it before the backup power systems run out, with the added threat that one of those forces involved in Earth’s destruction is also present on Mira and bent on eradicating humanity.
Players control a customised character, generally referred to as Cross, who is woken up from a lifepod sometime after the crash landing. Missing their memories, they are recruited into BLADE, the military group in charge of getting New Los Angeles self-sustaining, as well as investigating and establishing humanity’s presence on Mira. Joining forces with Elma, the BLADE who woke them; young technological genius Lin; and various other characters recruited across the game, it’s up to players to help solve the various problems encountered by humanity in its new home. These range from trying to find the lifehold to threats from indigenuous life-forms, meeting potential new alien allies, and simply learning more about the planet the escapees from Earth are now stuck on.
Humanity’s new home.
Xenoblade Chronicles X makes itself distinct from the rest of the series in a number of ways. The premise and overall story have a harder sci-fi base. This is used to good effect to allow its focus on the survival of humanity, as well as introduce interesting elements such as interactions with other species and learning about their cultures. The game also gives players a lot of potential party members, and the Definitive Edition adds a few more to the roster, bringing the full set to over twenty playable characters. Practically, Elma, Lin, and Cross are the game’s main characters, with the other party members acting in supporting roles of varying importance. Thus, there’s not so much in the way of a developing camaraderie among the cast, as many of the party members will only interact with a subset of the others within events.
The story itself takes place over a dozen story chapters. Between the chapters, players are free to take on the game’s copious amounts of side content, though some of this side content is actually required before the next one can be started. On the face of it, the plot is ultimately straightforward and the antagonists are always clear and obvious. However, the game uses its premise to full effect with some fascinating reveals and ideas, while using its race against time to inject a good sense of urgency upon on its events. The biggest reveals and surprises come at the end, meaning that while credits roll with its conflict resolved, it leaves some big questions unanswered.
With that said, one of the major additions is a new five-to-ten-hour epilogue chapter, which gives the game a much grander finale. This new chapter is a bit of an odd juxtaposition; it brings Xenoblade Chronicles X much more in line with the rest of the series with some of its ambitious themes and more philosophical look at the nature of the universe, but comes at the cost of largely throwing out some of the more interesting, harder sci-fi elements as well as some of those unanswered questions. It’s very well executed and absolutely means the game ends on a more definitive note, but is a bit of a sudden swerve.
Mira boasts impressive sights and impressive beasts.
While they might not be as involved in the main story as others, each of the party members has a small set of affinity quests, which are given equal mechanical weight to the main story quests in that only one affinity or story quest can be active at a time. These quests help develop their characters out a bit more — some are easily stronger than others — and give them welcome personal stories, even if they don’t get quite the same full development as if they were a true main character. However, Xenoblade Chronicles X’s greatest quest-related success comes in its vast array of side quests. Dubbed Normal Missions, the game’s side quests see players solving the various problems of New Los Angeles’s citizens, which soon expand to include the non-human allies players help gain. These missions cover all sorts of issues, from trying to help a hapless coffee shop employee to solving a serial murder case or a deadly infestation at a water plant. Many of the quests even come with two potential routes or endings depending on the player’s choice, generally with one providing a “best case” result. One of the game’s greatest rewards is seeing how New Los Angeles becomes ever more bustling as players attract new friends for humanity and foster the relationships between them.
It helps that Mira is a glorious place to explore. The location design is superb, splitting Mira’s open world into five large zones to explore, each with its own distinct ecosystem and smaller regions within. There are stunning sights the world over, helped brought to life by the fauna inhabiting them. Being able to explore, take in the sights, and enjoy the game’s quests is helped by a large array of quality-of-life improvements over the original game, which remove many of the blockers that players would suffer from and just makes everything flow that much better. Already tons of fun to traverse on foot, it manages to get even nicer once players are able to unlocks Skells, mechs that are used for both getting around (on land and eventually by air) and for combat. It’s always nice to return to the sight of New Los Angeles as well and see the huge number of small touches that have gone into it. There are a couple of cases where the frame rate drops or there are some texture and model pop-ins, but Xenoblade Chronicles X remains a mighty fine-looking game and a pleasure to see the sights in.
Like the other games in the series, Xenoblade Chronicles X features a real-time combat system where players control a single character, joined in this case by up to three other AI-controlled party members. Basic attacks are performed automatically once in range, with each party member equipped with up to eight skills called Arts. These Arts cover all sorts of effects, including simple damage, debuffing enemies, and healing, and many have conditional bonuses that can be applied based on things like character positioning or whether they are being used as part of a combo. Each of these Arts has its own cooldown before being able to be used again, though the Definitive Edition gives players limited ability to reuse them more quickly. In addition, players can choose to target specific appendages on larger enemies. This has various potential uses, such as preventing a certain attack being used, exposing a weak point, or increasing the chance of certain drops.
Like other titles in the series, Xenoblade Chronicles X features a real-time combat system with cooldown-based skills.
Other important elements of combat are Soul Voices and Tension. Soul Voices are customisable behavioural prompts and advice given by party members, and provide the most reliable healing in the game when followed. When triggered, the player’s Soul Voices lead to Soul Challenges, small quick-time events where players need to press a button when the circles overlap to get their bonus effects. Meanwhile, Tension Points are displayed next to the characters’ health bars. These are restored through auto-attacking or Soul Voices and are used for certain Arts, but more powerfully allow for players to revive fallen party members or enter a powered-up Overdrive state where Arts recharge incredbily quickly.
The pace of combat is generally strong, and players will rarely have to spend more than a few seconds between using one Art and the next, so there’s always something for them to be considering. While party-level tactics are largely limited to choosing which enemies to focus on first or applying the right Arts at the right moments, players can always have a significant impact on fights, particularly if they can activate Soul Challenges. There is a propensity for certain high-level enemies to be wandering where quests send players of much lower level. This means that players may need to try and sneak around enemies; there are some tricks that go a long way to helping this (see Elma’s Shadow Step skill), but it can be a bit grating when an exciting fight suddenly ends with the party being one-shotted just because a powerful foe wandered in from off screen. On the whole, however, Xenoblade Chronicles X maintains fast-paced and engaging combat that’s easy to get to grips with and holds up through its potentially hundred-hour play time.
The main character is able to choose from three base classes, each with two tiers of advancement, while other party members stick to a single class. Each class has its own set of Arts unlocked by levelling that class and can use particular weapon types, though once Cross has unlocked an Art or weapon, they can use it going forward regardless of current class, allowing for mixing and matching. Given the likelihood of players having a mishmash of gear equipped, the game is kind enough to provide separate fashion equipment, letting the party look coordinated while kicking enemy behind. There is a lot of depth behind the combat and character builds available, which can cause a bit of weirdness with the balancing. For the vast majority of the game, players should be fine and not really have to engage with the deeper mechanics a whole lot. However, depending on equipment and party loadouts, certain enemies can provide a much stronger challenge and might require players to dive into that depth, which primarily involves selecting equipment to provide resistances and take advantage of weaknesses.
Skells are awesome.
Meanwhile, Skell combat operates very similarly to on-foot combat, though with a few changes. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, is that a Skell is destroyed if it is reduced to zero HP, with players needing to return to base to get a replacement. Fortunately, players are given insurance that lets them replace a Skell free of charge a certain number of times, while other party members losing Skells does not count against this insurance. Further, Skells use fuel for both flight and Arts — which are assigned based on the weapons equipped to that Skell — which means players will need to refuel every now and then. Skells also have their own Overdrive mode, using the Skell equivalent Gear Points instead of Tension Points, as well as a Cockpit Time that can trigger when using an Art, which puts the camera in a brief over-the-shoulder, in-cockpit view while immediately recharging all Arts. They’re fairly minor changes that don’t alter the combat basics, but help make Skell combat feel different enough to be noteworthy.
Xenoblade Chronicles X’s music diverges from the rest of the series, being put in the hands of Hiroyuki Sawano. Sawano’s style — mixing electronic and orchestral elements — is very much present throughout the game, making use of a number of different vocalists for many of the tracks, from the more urban themes playing in New Los Angeles to the pumping battle themes. It certainly works with the game’s stronger sci-fi focus to give it a more distinctive feel. The mostly American-based voice acting is performed well, but it’s lacking anything that makes it stand out. There’s little in the voice acting that truly separates one character from another, which reduces the emotional punch, and the fact that the player character is silent in event scenes also hinders their impact a bit.
It’s worth appreciating the efforts Monolith Soft has gone to in making Xenoblade Chronicles X accessible to a much larger potential crowd. The studio could easily have left its elements as they were, but the quality-of-life features go a long way to alleviating the small but notable issues. Even for those who had already played the original, those touches ensure it’s a delight to play, and the new epilogue is very much in keeping of what fans of the series have come to expect. Xenoblade Chronicles X’s Definitive Edition is exactly that, and another excellent late addition to the Switch’s bulging library.
Tons of fun exploring and taking on quests
Skells help open up gameplay superbly
Quality-of-life changes are very welcome
New epilogue chapter adds a more complete finale...
...though at the cost of throwing out its more interesting sci-fi elements
Voice acting isn't as strong as rest of the series
Doesn't get the best use out of its mechanical depth
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