Returning to a game that you love is different to rewatching a movie or revisiting a favourite book. The familiar characters and story beats are just as comforting, the emotional moments similarly cherished on repeat visits, but that interactive element, the mechanical interaction between you and the game, can wear thinner as repetitious actions finally find the limit of their interest.
Xenoblade Chronicles X, a game I’ve returned to many times since its original review, is a world so expansive, so populated, that it tested the relationship between player and game mechanics the very first time I played it. Fortunately, I’ve never found it wanting, and with this new Definitive Edition release you can finally experience one of the world’s best RPGs in its most complete form.
The Xenoblade saga, built on the foundations of the Xenogears franchise, is fundamentally a disparate collection of games, drawn together by shared thematic and narrative elements. With two numbered entries debuting on Switch alongside a Definitive Edition release of the first game in the series, Xenoblade Chronicles X was an oddity stranded on the Wii U. Thankfully it’s now being given a fresh chance to find an audience with the rest of the series on Nintendo Switch.
Set on the planet of Mira, this is humanity’s new home, having fled Earth after their home planet was caught up in a destructive war between two alien factions. The human race escaped on a series of huge colony ships, and while many were destroyed as they left the planet, The White Whale managed to make it as far as Mira, where it was finally brought down. Built from the remains of The White Whale, New Los Angeles is the new home for a race that’s desperately trying to hold onto the trappings of their former lives, despite being surrounded by danger on all sides.
You’re tasked with heading out across the surface of Mira to find other survivors, but before you can explore this alien world, you have to create your player. Chronicles X gives you a significant set of tools to build them, with the character design having a more realistic look than the heavy anime looks that reached their zenith with Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Alongside the narrative setup, it lends Xenoblade Chronicles X a completely different feel to the other games in the series.
Your amnesiac character isn’t really the main character though, and beyond the ability to nod and shake your head at points in the story, they are little more than an active witness to the story. However, that story, and the vibrant characters that you meet along the way, remain amongst my favourite RPG experiences. In particular, the affinity quests where you grow closer to your teammates, and the huge number of side missions, are where Monolith Soft have flexed their writing muscles, and they add depth, emotion and often a welcome dose of weirdness to the world while the main storyline hits a cavalcade of bombastic, memorable moments. For the Definitive Edition, Monolith Soft have brought in new characters, equipment and story beats that will serve to make Chronicles X as much of an adventure for returning players as it is for newcomers.
The planet of Mira is the true star of this alien show. Xenoblade Chronicles X features one of the greatest RPG open worlds ever created – I’d have a healthy argument that it is the best, though Breath of the Wild and Skyrim fans are welcome to submit their points. Where this world wins out is in its size, its diverse and vibrant ecosystem, and its playground nature that draws you in and spits you out a hundred hours later.
Just like the other games in the Xenoblade series, you can explore the majority of the world from the outset, but many of the creatures you’ll encounter will annihilate you if you stray into their field of vision. That’s true from the moment you step outside The White Whale, with herds of monsters grazing in the plains, often with an apex creature at the head of them, or it might simply be a giant monster that’s meandering around on its own. There’s an art to playing hide and seek with them, extending your research area as much as possible before a single swipe from a powerful creature sends you back to the last checkpoint.
One of the greatest joys in Chronicles X is seeing how far you can push things. You can run, leap and jump your way up mountains and into situations that feel as though you’ve broken the game, but it’s all part of the intended experience. It’s something that you’ll never get tired of, and just when you might be becoming overwhelmed by the sheer scale of this world, the developers through you a mecha-shaped bone.
Skells are Xenoblade Chronicles X’s mecha suits, and once you’ve gained the Blades’ trust – the organisation you’re working for – you’ll be able to hop in your own and explore further than ever before. These mechanical wonders significantly bump up your combat abilities, but it’s the fact that they can transform into vehicles, as well as eventually flying, that lets you explore the rest of this incredible planet, digging into every single far-flung nook and cranny. Xenoblade Chronicles X is a pure adventure, and few games can match its sense of wonder and scale.
While the Definitive Edition stands as a new start for the game on a console that has a much larger audience than the Wii U, there have been a variety of clear improvements made to the game that make it as much of a treat for returning fans. First and foremost, the visuals have been given an obvious tune up, with character models looking much more detailed here than in the original game.
It’s also so much more vibrant, where the Wii U release now looks incredibly washed out in comparison. Rounding out the most obvious changes, performance is also clearly smoother, though not without some mild hiccups when things get hectic. I do hope that the Switch 2 gives us 60fps patches for all the Xenoblade Chronicles games, but for now, 30fps remains thoroughly usable.
There’ve also been a host of little tweaks made to the game’s underpinnings that all serve to make the experience more fluid, or easier to understand, and the UI changes made during encounters really help to make things as clear as possible, which is especially handy when things are often descending into chaos, with multiple characters shouting instructions while a host of enemies are attacking you at the same time.
The iconic action palette that first appeared in the original Xenoblade Chronicles makes these interactions easier though, and I still love the MMO-like combat setup multiple games and multiple playthroughs later. As with elsewhere, it’s benefited from a little reworking, giving you extra options to heap the pain on the alien threats. If you’ve never played a Xenoblade Chronicles game before, Chronicles X Definitive Edition is an ideal starting point, and as the Switch comes to the end of its lifecycle, this is the perfect RPG swansong to go out on.
