In an era where open-world games are a dime a dozen, Xenoblade Chronicles X soars above the pack. There’s an unparalleled feeling of freedom and exploration as you fly your mech suit across the massive planet of Mira, the size of which dwarfs other RPGs like it. While its story about humanity finding another home can be forgettable at times, an already engaging battle system is bolstered by the dramatic quality-of-life improvements this Definitive Edition makes, resulting in an RPG unlike any other.
Xenoblade Chronicles X starts off with the human race boarding spaceships in an attempt to escape Earth after it gets caught in the crossfire of an alien war. Your ship, the White Whale, eventually crash-lands on Mira, and it falls on you to find its scattered remnants from the freshly settled city of New Los Angeles. It’s a passable story in a vacuum, but it’s also the weakest of the Xenoblade games overall. That’s partially due to its customizable silent protagonist, who is completely devoid of any personality. That blank slate means the story lacks the same emotional impact as the other games in the series.
Thankfully, the side quests really help pick up the slack, with fascinating worldbuilding and compelling character development for the rest of your party and even many NPCs. For example, as all of humanity was forced to band together in order to survive, one basic quest explores the topic of discrimination against other alien races – it offers important insight into how humans interact with those races on Mira and how friendships can be forged across racial boundaries outside of Earth.
Completing any mission increases the Affinity levels of whoever is in your party at the time, which can then unlock Heart-to-Heart events for them. These are special scenes that provide essential bits of extra backstory, similar to how Persona and The Legend of Heroes handle their bonding events. For instance, Colonel Elma’s cold personality starts to melt away as you learn more about her interest in cars and pizza, fleshing out her character and showing us a different side that the main story doesn’t.
Once a character has a high enough Affinity level, you’ll also unlock their personalized Affinity Missions, and the rewards for completing these are some of the most substantial available. The main draw is that your protagonist will learn exclusive combat skills, called Arts, that otherwise can’t be obtained by leveling up. It’s an excellent incentive to learn more about the supporting cast while also getting stronger.
One standout is the engineer, Lin. Her Affinity Mission details how integral her engineering skills and passion were to the White Whale. While she would much rather sit on the sidelines, she understands that she must also fight when needed, which is why she wields a giant shield and gatling gun in battle. Personal moments with your crew like this really help balance out the fact that your bland silent hero doesn’t have any of their own.
The Definitive Edition even includes brand new recruitable characters, as well as new story content that is well worth seeing. Without going into spoilers, this content is dolled out at an even pace throughout the 50-60 hour campaign, making its inclusion feel natural while adding even more longevity to an already massive game.
While your main character may be bland, one thing that’s certainly not is the open world of Xenoblade Chronicles X. It’s divided into five regions, each with its own type of terrain. For example, the beginning area of Primordia is a lush grassland, while a later area called Cauldros feels overpowering with its lava fields. There are so many gorgeous landmarks scattered throughout Mira that keep exploration exciting, from the giant natural overpass called Arendt Bridge in Primordia to the mysterious and mechanical Leaning Ring sticking halfway out of the sand in the desert region of Oblivia.
While the only hub area for human activity is New LA, everywhere else is still absolutely filled to the brim with life. Both small and giant monsters are crawling in every direction, but what makes them stand out is that some are docile while others are hostile. The low level bee monster might attack you on sight, but that level 40 gigantic dinosaur-like creature could just walk right past you, minding its own business. Each species has its own habits and behaviors, which means you have to stay alert as you explore instead of just mindlessly meandering around like in many other open-world games. Some monsters will only show up at certain times of day, too, which you can now conveniently adjust from the menu rather than having to find and use special pods scattered throughout Mira.
What also helps is the speed at which you run. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth may be great overall, but I was constantly frustrated by how slow Cloud ran, realistic or not. In Xenoblade Chronicles X, your character runs incredibly fast in contrast. Mira’s gravity also feels like the moon’s, letting you cover long distances and even reach higher elevations with a single jump. Decisions like these make exploring Mira much smoother and less intimidating.
It’s also impressive how well the world scales up with its mechs, called Skells, which unlock once you get far enough into the story. When in your Skell, you can move even faster than running on foot, but those giant monsters that were peaceful before may now be hostile to you. That means sometimes it’s better to run to a destination instead of driving your Skell there depending on what is standing in your path. This constantly changes the dynamic between you and Mira’s environment, keeping exploration fresh.
Towards the end of the story, your Skell even gets the ability to fly, letting you reach higher altitudes and providing access to mountains you couldn’t explore at the beginning. This brings exploration to new heights, making Mira really feel like humanity’s new home as you gain the ability to go pretty much anywhere unrestricted.
Everybody was MMO fighting
Combat in the Xenoblade Chronicles series is in real-time, but it is distinct from other battle systems as it feels much more like an MMO. Both enemies and allies fight with basic auto-attacks, and you have a row of more powerful Arts to choose from at the bottom of the screen. The order you use them in is similarly important – for example, some offensive Arts can inflict Topple onto enemies, which is a status condition that causes them to fall to the ground temporarily, while others then do more damage to Toppled enemies. There’s a lot of synergy to play around with that adds quite a bit of strategy to the action.
Another unique feature is the Soul Voice. RPG characters love to call out the names of their attacks and spout quippy one-liners as they fight, and Xenoblade Chronicles actually turns that trope into a game mechanic! You and your allies will occasionally shout out specific phrases that suggest certain actions, like using an Art that inflicts a status effect (which is color coded purple) – following that suggestion will then activate a purple Soul Voice, giving you extra bonuses like making the enemy more susceptible to status effects. It’s immersive while simultaneously leaning into the genre’s more absurd elements.
While that’s all just as fun as it was in the 2015 original on Wii U, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition also adds a bevy of quality-of-life improvements. One substantial addition is the Quick Cooldown bar, which fills up over the course of battle as you use auto-attacks. By spending a portion of the bar, you can completely bypass the cooldown period of any Art and use it right away. Need extra healing and can’t wait? Use your healing Art then Quick Cooldown to save your allies from getting knocked out. The Quick Cooldown bar builds fairly slowly, so it’s important to pick the right time to use it, but it can instantly turn the tide of battle when you do.
Perhaps the biggest adjustment is that you can now conveniently change out your party members at any time, anywhere, from a separate menu. While this is a basic feature of many RPGs, the original version instead asked you to memorize where every single character was within New LA and go talk to them in order to swap them in. Sure, maybe that process was more tied to the world around you, but it was also painstaking and incredibly annoying – especially if you were out exploring, since you’d have to return to New LA to change your lineup. This single change is monumental, and quite frankly, is enough to make the Wii U version feel completely obsolete on its own.
On top of that, characters not in your active party will still gain EXP now, reducing the tedium of swapping people around even further. In the Wii U version, benched members had to be brought in and leveled separately, making for some very uneven party compositions. The Definitive Edition enormously cuts down on unnecessary grinding, which is certainly appreciated.
As for customization, each party member has a specific class that can’t be changed, like Lin as a Shield Trooper, but your custom character can switch their class at will. By going down different class trees, you can level up their ranks to learn new Arts and passive abilities. That makes the protagonist feel like they belong in Fire Emblem, where characters can mix and match different skills, and it’s fun to play around and find the perfect setup that fits your playstyle.
You can also fight in your Skell, and Xenoblade Chronicles X scales its battles to them just as well as its exploration. Their overinflated stats and power make mincemeat out of smaller enemies, but they are perfect for facing off against Mira’s giants and other bosses that would otherwise crush you. Battles in your Skell play out similarly to ones on foot, except the Skell weapons you equip determine what kind of Arts you have. It’s another added layer of depth and tinkering that pleased the min-maxing part of my brain.
Aside from the quality-of-life changes listed above, the Definitive Edition boasts some nice visual improvements, too. The UI is much cleaner and the character models are sharper (as you’d hope they would be a decade later), which makes for a smoother look finally worthy of one of the best sci-fi gaming series around. With the Wii U gamepad gone, fast travel and map info have also been smartly reworked into a separate menu on a single screen, transitioning that information perfectly over to Switch. Now I no longer have to experience the neck pain issues caused by having to constantly switch between looking down at my gamepad and back up at the TV screen.
There’s also some returning multiplayer functionality in Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, though I wasn’t able to test these features as the servers were not on during this review period. In the Wii U version, you could recruit the avatars of other players to tackle Squad Missions such as defeating a specific group of enemies, and online Nemesis Missions offered a satisfying way to test your endgame skills. While minor parts of an otherwise single-player heavy game, these multiplayer elements contributed to the more MMO-centric identity that makes Xenoblade Chronicles X unique, so here’s hoping they’ll have been done justice in the final version of the Definitive Edition.
