Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition

Genre: Open-World RPG

Players: 1, Online Content Sharing

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

While Xenoblade Chronicles X first released on Wii U in 2015, I reviewed it much more recently, with my review of the Wii U version of the game originally being published in 2022. At the time, it was one of the last few remaining major exclusives on the Wii U that had not yet been ported to Nintendo Switch. However, in 2025, Nintendo and developer Monolith Soft have now changed that by bringing this game to Nintendo Switch with updated visuals, new quality-of-life features, new visuals, new party characters, new story elements throughout the game, new areas. Even more than Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, this is clearly more than just a quick and dirty HD remaster, though not anywhere near so extensive it would qualify as a full remake. As this is mostly the same game, I am copying over the contents of my review of the Wii U game, and changing them where it is appropriate.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is an Open-World RPG that is generally regarded as a spin-off of the mainline Xenoblade franchise because even though it features some elements in common with the other Xenoblade games, it takes place in a world that is entirely unconnected to the other Xenoblade games, and there are some distinct differences in the presentation and core gameplay loop here too.

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Chronicling the Fall of Earth

Perhaps the most noticeable change before the game proper even starts is that unlike those other games that take place in more fantasy-inspired settings with strong sci-fi elements, this game’s much more sci-fi focused story takes place in the future of our Earth, with the prologue explaining that our planet got caught in the crossfire between two warring alien species fighting a massive battle in space. Humanity found itself forced to flee Earth on massive colony ships called Arks to escape the destruction which would ultimately destroy the planet, with only a small fraction of these refugees surviving the exodus from their homeworld.

Survivors on the colony ship The White Whale find this escape only earns them a brief reprieve, as some of the aliens responsible for the destruction evidently tracked them down and attacked their ship, forcing it to crash-land on a planet dubbed Mira. It is on this planet that the remaining survivors of Earth form the colony New Los Angeles out of the habitat portion of the colony ship, and must contend with hostile alien wildlife while trying to scrounge for resources on this alien world, as well as fighting off more of the malevolent alien forces seeking to destroy them.

Players take the role of a user-created character, an amnesiac survivor of these events who is awakened a few months after the crash-landing. Players are soon enlisted in the paramilitary group “BLADE” and tasked with helping to explore the planet, defend against threats, gather resources, and assist with other tasks as needed. Over time as they uncover more of the planet Mira and participate in story missions, the player will come to learn more about the planet Mira, the mysterious aliens that attacked humanity, and the all-important Lifehold that the BLADEs desperately seek and humanity’s fate is tied to.

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Otherworldly Sights and Sounds

The presentation in this game is extremely uneven, presenting visuals and sound that are at once both very good and pretty bad. The world of Mira is wondrous and imaginative, with beautiful alien landscapes that have become one of the signature traits of the Xenoblade series, and bizarre alien creatures that are similarly imaginative and interesting-looking. Even the human-built machines and architecture are delightful to look at here, impressive in scope and in their intricate designs.

Having said all that, the game suffers from pretty atrocious pop-in that constantly reminds you that you’re looking at a game and not a strange new world. There’s also inconsistent framerates that never quite get to be bad, but can be distracting with how often they shift and change. Also, in cutscenes, the camera sometimes seems to shake and shudder in an odd and unsettling way, and I have no idea why this is – I suppose they might have been going for a shakycam “found footage” sorta’ aesthetic, but if that was the case, they failed miserably.

There is one other visual element that made this game particularly unsettling to look at, and that’s the strange, expressionless faces of the game’s human characters, with flapping-jaw movements for speech but otherwise odd, artificial-looking faces that seem to try to straddle the line between an anime style and something more realistic, but end up having the appeal of neither.

I should note that all of these visual issues were present in the original Wii U version of the game, and remain in place here – nothing has been fixed, for better or worse. That’s not to say that the visuals haven’t been improved here, though – the resolution has been bumped up from the Wii U version’s 720p at 30FPS to a 1080p dynamic resolution in docked mode with a 720p dynamic resolution in handheld mode, all while maintaining the 30FPS framerates. I did notice a few very brief moments where the framerates dropped, but overall this is an improvement, albeit not as dramatic as some might have hoped.

As for the sound, the game has decent voice acting saddled with often dry and boring dialogue, or dialogue that sounds forced and unnatural. The soundtrack, meanwhile, has some really excellent themes that mix orchestral, militaristic percussion, synthesized sounds, and vocal elements, that combine for a sound that reminds me somewhat of James Cameron’s Avatar (which is fitting, I suppose), with standouts like Theme X, Mono X (Title Screen), and Uncontrollable. There are also some fun rock-influenced songs for New Los Angeles: NLA (Day) and NLA (Night). It’s an eclectic mix that makes this game sound very unlike much else on the market. The problem? The use of these songs is often odd and inexplicable. Often I found myself being distracted by the music, or have a story scene where the music built to a crescendo when there wasn’t anything especially interesting being said. As a result, these sounds often made things emotionally confusing more than anything.

In the end, I would say the presentation in Xenoblade Chronicles X is not terrible, and it’s usually very interesting, but often seems flawed or scatterbrained in ways that mix together good and bad elements.

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World of Possibilities

Turning to the gameplay, I would say that arguably more than any other game in the Xenoblade franchise, and perhaps more than most Japanese-developed RPGs in general, Xenoblade Chronicles X is extremely ambitious. The epic scope of the story, the massive open world, and a complex collection of game mechanics make this a game that’s not really like anything else out there, not even the other Xenoblade games. The open world plays a large part in this – this truly is a largely seamless open world, where the other Xenoblade games feature massive open areas that are ultimately still segmented.

This open-ended nature ties into the core gameplay as well. After a few initial chapters to establish some common tasks and to give players a feel for what’s out there, they are given the opportunity to approach the game how they please, with different tasks contributing to the progress of different BLADE roles. Players can focus on seeking out sites to deploy probes to reveal more of the map, mining resources, collecting data on local wildlife to empower research and development, defend against or hunt down threats, or even settle disputes between the residents of New Los Angeles.

There’s a good variety to the different task types, and many of them feel useful in their own right – the advantages to uncovering more of the map, gathering resources, and conducting research into new weapons and armor are all pretty self-evident, and players frustrated by difficulties in pursuing one of these tasks can always change gears to focus on another. In fact, the amount of options and variety of goals to pursue can be a bit overwhelming, though I’ll get to this a bit later.

Later in the game, players will even gain access to mechs called “Skells” that open things up further in multiple ways, though you definitely should not go into this game expecting to trounce around in a mech any time soon – it takes an estimated 30 hours before you can get to that point, even though the game taunts you with those mechs right from the start, and they are present throughout the game. Just focus on the on-foot exploration and combat and look at the later mech stuff as a fun element that will open things up later.

There is also a multiplayer element here, sort of. Players will be able to recruit computer-controlled versions of other players’ characters to temporarily join there team. It’s a nice little addition, but ultimately I don’t think it adds much to the largely single-player experience.

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Fight for Humanity

As they explore Mira and complete tasks, players will be surrounded by alien wildlife. Some of these creatures are benign, but others are openly hostile and will engage the player in combat if they see or hear them. Players may also come across the alien forces hunting down humanity. While there is some ability to sneak around out of sight to avoid combat, often areas will be so teeming with hostile forces that there won’t be any way to get through without fighting.

When the player’s party engages hostels in combat, their characters will automatically attack enemies in range, much as happens in other Xenoblade games. Freed from having to select “fight”, players instead must focus on swapping between melee and ranged weapons, positioning their character to target enemies’ front, side, or rear, aim for specific parts, and make use of abilities that each have their own cooldown and need to be recharged after use.

Players can simply spam abilities and grind to get through battles, but there’s a lot of strategy to the combat here for players who have the desire and patience to dig into it – abilities that chain together well, teammates calling out for the player to perform specific actions and rewarding the player when they do, strategies for flanking enemies or dividing their attention, and even a new combat mechanic in the Nintendo Switch version of the game called Quick Cooldown that adds even more strategy to combat. However, that “desire and patience” bit is no small hurdle, either…

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There Are Still Issues… But They’re No Longer “Mech-Sized”

Earlier I said that Xenoblade Chronicles X is overwhelming, and this isn’t just because of the massive amount of possibilities this game offers. Xenoblade Chronicles X does an especially poor job explaining its varied and complex mechanics. Gameplay is occasionally interrupted by brief screens introducing a gameplay mechanic, but there’s not really any sort of tutorial, and many gameplay elements are left completely unexplained – the player will either be left feeling lost in an ocean of terminology and inexplicably moving parts they don’t understand, or they will be forced to page through the game’s extensive digital manual to try to figure stuff out, or possibly just look up a wiki.

Having said that, the Nintendo Switch version cuts down on the confusion quite a lot in other ways. Commands and button combinations are much more clearly presented here, and where the simple act of pausing the game was a chore in the Wii U version, here it’s just a simple button press. I know it may seem strange to praise a game for letting you pause with one button, but that’s how convoluted the Wii U version was.

Elsewhere, the game has made it easier to swap out party members, there are more saving options, you can adjust the in-game time in menus, experience points are shared with non-party menus… while I still think there’s a lot more that this game could still streamline, I definitely need to stress that a lot of work has been put in here to make this game much less of a headache than the Wii U version.

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A Perfected Masterpiece or Overrated Mess?

In the end, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is unique, original, ambitious… and yes, still flawed. Some elements of the game seem scatterbrained, poorly-explained, or undercooked. There is a lot going on here, but much of it doesn’t feel cohesive or make much sense. Still, despite how awkward, frustrating, and confusing this game can be, it’s also hard not to admire just how much they attempted to do something special here. And despite its flaws, this is still a highly enjoyable Open World RPG, and it will frequently have you in awe of its scope and variety, even if just as frequently it leaves you scratching your head.

The Nintendo Switch version of the game absolutely earns its “Definitive Edition” subtitle – the improvements are many, and they are quite significant, and absolutely make this a better game. But there are still places that could do with more improvement. In particular, the graphics still have numerous issues that I wish were addressed, and the tutorial could do with improvement as well. But despite its issues, I feel like this is still an excellent RPG that is definitely worth seeking out for fans of the genre on Nintendo Switch, as there’s nothing else quite like it.

tl;dr – Xenoblade Chronicles X is an Open-World RPG about the remnants of humanity trying to survive on a distant planet after fleeing an Earth destroyed by a massive battle between alien forces. This is a massive, ambitious game, one with a lot of complex systems at work, and thankfully the Nintendo Switch version of the game adds a wealth of improvements and additional content over the Wii U version. If you’re an RPG fan with a Nintendo Switch, this is definitely a game you should look into, although it is still far from flawless. Despite this, it remains a truly unique and enjoyable game, and one still very much worth playing.

Grade: B+

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition

Genre: Open-World RPG

Players: 1, Online Content Sharing

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Review:

Xenoblade Chronicles X already got a graphical boost when it was ported to Nintendo Switch, so the question is whether we see yet another jump on Nintendo Switch 2. Let’s have a look!

First, I can say that the inconsistent framerates are steady here, and the dynamic resolution tops out at the max of 1080, but it’s not always easy to appreciate that when the pop-in is still really bad and the aliasing is still extremely prominent. I wish we got an even bigger resolution bump and some aliasing here, but I suppose this still looks really good, if not a dramatic improvement over what we already had on Nintendo Switch.

No, the real dramatic improvement is the loading times. On Nintendo Switch, it took 27 seconds to load up the game, and an additional 34 to load into a save. On Nintendo Switch 2, those loading times have been cut down to 4 and 8. The difference is nothing short of remarkable.

Is it a transformative difference? No. But this is still a good improvement over what was already a great port on Nintendo Switch, of a game that was already ahead of its time on Wii U. If you were hesitating on whether to pick up Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition to play on your Nintendo Switch 2, know that while this isn’t a major boost over the version we saw on Nintendo Switch, it’s still a solid improvement on a game that already looks quite at home on Nintendo’s new hybrid console.

tl;dr – Xenoblade Chronicles X is an Open-World RPG about the remnants of humanity trying to survive on a distant planet after fleeing an Earth destroyed by a massive battle between alien forces. This is a massive, ambitious game, one with a lot of complex systems at work, and thankfully the Nintendo Switch version of the game adds a wealth of improvements and additional content over the Wii U version. If you’re an RPG fan with a Nintendo Switch, this is definitely a game you should look into, although it is still far from flawless. Despite this, it remains a truly unique and enjoyable game, and one still very much worth playing.

Grade: B+

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