Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition Review – An Ex-skell-ent Enhancement

Xenoblade Chronicles X has long been the black sheep of Nintendo and Monolith Soft’s ambitious JRPG franchise, partly because it opts for a harder sci-fi setting than the rest of the series, partly because it simply had the bad fortune of being released on one of Nintendo’s least successful platforms. Thankfully for hardcore fans, Nintendo is now crossing off one of the final boxes on their “Wii U ports” bingo card with the release of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition.

Does this tuned-up version of Xenoblade Chronicles X soar to new heights? Or is this Skell destined to crash and burn with consumers all over again? Time to assess this alien RPG once again.

Xenoblade Chronicles X casts players as a survivor of the White Whale, an interstellar ark launched after an alien war forced humans to abandon Earth. Unfortunately, the aliens catch up with the White Whale and it crash lands on the surprisingly lively planet of Mira. After being rescued from your life pod, you soon find yourself in New Los Angeles, a spunky pop-up city built around the crashed ark's habitat unit. You're quickly recruited to join New LA's BLADE military unit under Colonel Elma and tasked with exploring Mira, eradicating threats, and discovering the location of the White Whale’s Life Hold, which is said to contain many more survivors.

Xenoblade Chronicles X’s sci-fi setup certainly sets the game apart from other entries in the series, and the world of Mira is a rich and interesting one, with a cast of mostly likeable characters (er, and Tatsu). There are even a few decent twists later in the game, which we won't get into here, although admittedly, a lot of XCX’s minute-to-minute storytelling is fairly dry, consisting mostly of characters standing around info-dumping and repeating tired jokes. The story’s pacing also isn’t ideal, with the game often taking lengthy breaks from delivering any meaningful narrative as you’re compelled to explore Mira for hours on end.

For the majority of its runtime, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition doesn’t do that much to expand the original game’s storytelling, although there are a small handful of new playable characters and sidequests sprinkled like breadcrumbs to keep returning players enticed. Without giving anything away, XCX Definitive Edition also addresses one of the original game’s most glaring shortcomings – its incomplete, unsatisfying conclusion – by providing a new endgame. While there’s likely to be some fan debate about this new denouement, it’s certainly a meatier story bone to chew on than what Wii U players got at the time.

While Xenoblade Chronicles X’s story can be a bit thin at times, make no mistake, this is a dense game, packed to the gills with interlocking systems. New LA is a sprawling metropolis, consisting of several districts packed with NPCs, playable characters, vendors, and quests. Expanding Mira's map is a matter of installing data probes, which can be managed to passively produce and store various resources. Meanwhile, all your party members can be customized by assigning them different classes, skills, arts, and gear. Around halfway through the game, you’ll also gain access to towering pilotable mechs called Skells, which can be fully customized in their own right. Thankfully, all this complexity is a bit easier to digest this time around, thanks to some well-implemented gameplay updates.

Xenoblade Chronicles X’s combat is similar to other entries in the series, with a few unique twists of its own. Your main controlled character and AI allies move and select “Arts” in real time, with many of these powerful moves requiring you to do certain things for maximum effect. XCX also introduces the unique and somewhat quirky “Soul Voice” system, wherein your allies shout out various requests ("Use a melee attack!" etc.), and if you fill those requests and properly execute a subsequent quick-time event, you'll get some sort of bonus effect. A major focus of XCX Definitive Edition is making the Soul Voice system easier to grapple with, with additions like a quick cooldown system that allows you to fire off a limited number of Arts whenever you want. This arguably makes battles a bit easier, but it also improves the overall flow of combat and allows players to better take advantage of the Soul Voice system.

Ultimately, though, the most important improvement to XCX Definitive Edition’s combat is the game’s slick new UI. In the original Xenoblade Chronicles X, the screen was flooded with hard-to-follow information during combat, but this time around, the UI has been redesigned to be larger, cleaner, and more readable. The Soul Voice system feels much easier to get your head around now, with the game more clearly communicating which Arts your allies want you to use. The improved UI doesn’t just benefit combat either, pretty much anything that involves a menu is more readable and useable now.

Another thing that’s much better in this version of Xenoblade Chronicles X is the map. Originally, you could only access the world map on the Wii U GamePad, which was novel I suppose, but really limited the map’s functionality. Now, you can simply access the map on your TV screen, which allows for a much wider field of view and more detail. Other new map features have also been added, including the ability to track key quest-related collectibles.

Monolith Soft also weren’t afraid to take a scalpel to some original XCX systems. Field Skills, which required you to join a BLADE faction and level up in order to access certain treasures and install some data probes, have been more or less excised. Now, when you find a treasure or probe location, you can, 9 times out of 10, just interact with it. Some may lament no longer being able to roleplay as a faction to the same degree, but the Field Skill system always felt rather arbitrary, and removing it mainly just eliminates an extra layer of needless grind.

Don’t get me wrong; there are still a few nagging irritations left over from the original version of Xenoblade Chronicles X. Checkpoints are more sparsely placed in the open world than they ought to be, which means death sometimes sets you back quite a ways. The Skell “insurance” system, which basically gives you a mere three lives for each Skell you buy, also remains intact. That said, a few small lingering frustrations aside, this feels like a much more playable, streamlined version of Xenoblade Chronicles X.

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition’s visual upgrade doesn’t deliver quite as strongly as its UI and gameplay tweaks. Most of the game’s character models have been updated, but I don’t know if they’ve been universally upgraded (I honestly prefer Elma’s original, softer character design). Mira itself doesn't look that markedly different, but everything is a bit sharper, and the game looks surprisingly good in handheld mode.

I was also somewhat disappointed that issues present in the Wii U version of Xenoblade Chronicles X, like frequent pop-in, are still present on Switch. Draw distance is definitely improved, but you'll still see enemies and objects blink into existence not that far ahead of you at times. I did also note occasional performance hiccups, although, overall, the game does run better than some other recent first-party Switch titles. Oh, and yes, the soundtrack is still a bit of a dog’s breakfast, mixing some rather good instrumental tracks with some clunkers featuring irritating repetitive lyrics. Now, make no mistake, Xenoblade Chronicles X is still rather lovely at times, with an impressive sense of scope, imaginatively rendered vistas, and some of the game’s better tunes sometimes combining to deliver striking moments.

And really, it’s always been the world of Mira that makes Xenoblade Chronicles X a standout. A lot of the open-world design philosophies that Nintendo and Monolith Soft would later refine with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild were birthed here, and in some ways, Mira is even more interesting than Hyrule. The world is packed with mind-bending panoramas and getting to your next mission marker often feels like a puzzle to be solved, with players having to think vertically as well as horizontally. The wildlife you’ll encounter is quite the sorted menagerie as well, with not-terribly-intimidating enemies like alien boars and bugs hanging out right next to towering dinosaur-like monstrosities. Just fighting everything in your path isn't an option, and often figuring out how to sneak past a nest of particularly nasty baddies is part of the complex environmental puzzle.

Exploring isn’t always seamless. One of the most important innovations Zelda BotW introduced was the ability to climb nearly everything, while a lot of your time in XCX is spent gormlessly jumping against rocks and cliffs, hoping your feet will find purchase and allow you to scramble to the top. Small complaints aside, though, this is a fantastic world, and the feeling of increasing power you get as you play through the game is really unmatched in a JRPG. You feel amazing once you get your first Skell and start bounding over previously impassable obstacles, and once you gain the ability to fly? Forget about it.

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition’s core campaign is one of the least daunting in the series. If you stay focused, you can get through the game’s original dozen chapters in around 40 to 50 hours, thanks to changes designed to reduce grind. Of course, if you take all the game’s side content and newly added stuff into account, you could easily be playing for hundreds of hours. Perhaps the best testament to how well this Definitive Edition is handled is that I actually enjoyed this second playthrough of XCX on Switch more than my first, despite it being a less novel experience, and I think other BLADE veterans will feel the same way.

This review was based on a copy of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition provided by publisher Nintendo.

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.