Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition Review

Of the Wii U games fans wanted to see ported over to the Switch, Xenoblade Chronicles X was probably the most requested. It’s not hard to see why — the Xenoblade series has had a fantastic run on Switch, with the numbered titles all available on the console and all performed reasonably well. Revisiting XCX was also an opportunity to tighten up some of the game’s more frustrating elements, and finish up its famously unfinished story. Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition does both of those things, but probably not to the degree that many were hoping for. 

Xenoblade Chronicles X is almost a decade old at this point, so I won’t bore you with too many details about its story. The basic gist of it is that in the 2050s, a bunch of aliens invaded Earth, bringing a fiery battle to the planet that ultimately led to its destruction. Thanks to some very smart scientists – and some outside help – many of Earth’s citizens were loaded into a big spaceship and shot into space, escaping the carnage and leaving behind a planet that ultimately met its demise. They crash landed on a strange planet called Mira sometime later and set up a city – New Los Angeles – but the pod carrying most of the humans, the Lifehold Core, was lost in the process.

Much of the game is about exploring Mira, making it more habitable for humans, and tracking down the Lifehold Core so it can be brought back to safety. It’s a decent enough story, but it’s told very slowly over the course of the game, and it can often feel quite disjointed due to the gameplay roadblocks scattered throughout. Frequently throughout the game there will be a jump in difficulty that almost requires you to take on additional side missions, even when the story is in full swing, leading to hours-long stretches where you desperately want to see what happens next but can’t. That can be frustrating, and while it has been tightened up somewhat compared to the original release, it’s not entirely without its issues. 

“Slow” is a good word to describe Xenoblade Chronicles X, even in its streamlined state. Exploration is slow and unrelenting, with Mira’s landscapes filled with nearly impassible, powerful enemies that stop you in your tracks until you’re a higher level. It gets easier with time, especially when you unlock skells, which mercifully can be done much quicker in this version of the game — not because of any changes to the game’s structure, necessarily, but because of the aforementioned streamlining. The game’s systems and progression are much more logical and straightforward, and a few additional quality of life changes, like a guidance system and extra map markers, make getting through the game easier than ever before. 

But those roadblocks still exist, and they can hit very hard when you run into them. Take, for example, the story mission in Chapter 4. This mission has you dismantling alien anti-aircraft turrets, deep inside the bases of hostile enemy forces. The recommended level for the mission is level 18, but the area is populated almost exclusively with enemies at level 20 or above, and abundantly so. Taking on one level 20 enemy at level 18 is certainly doable, but if others in the area spot you, it can get very dicey, very quickly. If you don’t have the best equipment – much of which is randomly dropped from enemies – or the right skills and party composition, a second, third, or fifth enemy joining the fray means certain death, effectively resetting your progress. Again, it’s doable, but it’s a slow, frustrating process largely solved by spending hours knocking out sidequests first to gain levels well beyond the recommendation and ensure you have better equipment. 

Another frustrating roadblock exists in Affinity Missions, which annoyingly still lock you out of engaging with other missions and quests. For the most part this is usually not an issue at all, but some missions – like Lin’s first Affinity Mission – require you to obtain certain materials from the FrontierNav, a system that gives you resources every 15 minutes or so if you place probes around the world. Even with the most efficient setup, getting those resources feels like random luck, so you’re left aimlessly wandering and knocking out small tasks while you wait for the FrontierNav shipment to come in, hoping it has the goods you require. 

These are all small frustrations, but they add up when you’re playing a game that can easily run into the triple digit hours. The content here is good, the stories are well-written and feel like they have real stakes, but the way it’s delivered – and how necessary it all is for a regular playthrough – means that many who play this game will be fatigued long before the credits roll. It’s made worse by tutorialising that is not particularly great and often not particularly timely. You’ll often be bombarded by half a dozen dry tutorial windows in a row, and often hours later than when you first started engaging with the systems they’re explaining. These small frustrations are what I had hoped would be sanded down in the Definitive Edition, but they’re all still here, and that’s a huge missed opportunity. 

And to be clear, I still love Xenoblade Chronicles X. I loved it when I played it back on the Wii U, and I love it here. It’s a wonderful game, and its slow-burn story and progression is as much a blessing as it is a curse. It’s the kind of game you can dedicate a few months to, slowly trudging through Mira for what I consider to be one of the best payoffs in gaming. There’s a moment when you unlock your skell’s flight capabilities and take your first soar over Mira after slowly trudging through the game for hours, and I don’t think much else in the Xenoblade series quite compares to the feeling that moment elicits. It’s just also a game that is inherently filled with frustrations that could have – and perhaps should have – been addressed in this enhanced port, and that hasn’t happened. 

Those frustrations aside, there is a lot to like about this particular version of the game. The near elimination of field skills is a godsend, as you’ll no longer be locked behind half a dozen different progress bars to perform particular actions. So, too, is the option to swap out party members and change the time whenever you please, right from the menu. These are relatively small changes in the grand scheme of things, but when the core structure of the game is as fatiguing as it is, those small changes really make a huge difference. 

As for the other new additions in the game, most of it comes from a few story chapters tacked onto the end of the game, as well as a few more party members. I can’t really talk about the new story additions – beyond saying that some of it feels a bit low-budget, but it will be exciting for longtime fans of the game – and the new characters don’t make a huge difference in the grand scheme of things, but it’s a nice update to a decade-old game. It finally feels like a finished product, too, which is certainly a good thing. 

Visually it’s had a bit of an update too, though admittedly not as much as Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition. That’s understandable, given that XC1 definitely needed a lot more work done compared to XCX, and the end result is still a game that looks and performs mostly great. There are a few frame drops here and there, and some motion blur that can be genuinely nauseating when swinging the camera around rapidly, but all of the characters have had a facelift and look wonderful, the world is looking as good as it ever has, and the load times are fast and snappy. The most important thing is that the UI has been overhauled entirely, which was a sorely needed change that makes a massive difference. 

Despite some of the underlying issues and frustrations from Xenoblade Chronicles X still remaining in its remaster, it’s hard not to love its harsh, brutal take on the Xenoblade formula. It’s likely to be alienating to fans of the numbered games, but it’s still worth sticking with for a fantastic (and newly expanded) story, satisfying exploration in the late-game, and deep combat. 

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is a worthwhile upgrade to the base game, bringing with it things that fans have wanted for a very long time — but it also leaves some of the game’s more frustrating quirks intact, in a way that feels a little bit like a missed opportunity. It’s still a fantastic game, but it’s hard not to feel like too much was left on the table when addressing the game’s flaws. 

Rating: 4/5