Swan Song
Back when I reviewed Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Wii U, I praised its enjoyable combat and a world that was both impressive and fun to explore. However, I also felt that it was also a game that had to be enjoyed in spite of itself in many ways, due to the convoluted progression and various gameplay decisions that made it feel like a chore to play.
With the release of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, it not only marks the milestone of the final major exclusive release for the Switch but a true definitive edition experience, doing away with almost all of the negatives while strengthening what made the original special.
Happy to be able to return to Mira once more.
MSRP: $59.99
Platform: NSW
Length: 70~ hours
As the story content of the game remains largely unchanged outside of the addition of some new content, feel free to take a look at my original review if you’re interested in reading what I felt about it on my first exposure to it.
As to not spoil any of the new content, I will simply leave it by saying that it is much appreciated and felt meaningful in the context of world building and where the original story left off. It helped do away with the feeling that the story ended just when it was getting good and I sincerely hope that we will get a true sequel to the Xenoblade X storyline as I believe it has a lot of potential.
The additional story content made replaying the game for the 3rd time feel worthwhile.
Outside of the story and characters, the true star of Xenoblade Chronicles X is most definitely the world of Mira itself.
This vibrant world of many different biomes is bustling with wondrous and deadly native lifeforms and begs to be explored. When I finally arrived at the point where I took to the skies for the very first time, it still remains one of my favorite moments in gaming.
This time around, the process of progressing through the game and finding the rare items I needed to complete quests felt very smooth and natural. I was no longer collecting items for hours hoping that I would get lucky and find that one thing I needed to complete an important quest and the various quality of life improvements in general made the game no longer feel like a chore to play.
In fact, there are so many quality of life improvements that I have to commend them for taking the “Definitive Edition” moniker seriously. I believe they’ve succeeded with flying colors to make the game feel better than ever to play and I have no reason to recommend anyone play the original over this version outside of FrontierNav feeling a bit annoying to use without the Wii U controller as it was originally designed with that interface in mind.
The visual redesign of characters is great across the board.
In terms of visuals, it’s a much cleaner looking game, running at higher resolutions with work done on textures as well as making the character models look less like weird dolls, leaning more into the anime artstyle which fits the game’s overall vibe quite well.
As much as I would like, the game does not run at 60 FPS but rather at a locked 30 but at the very least, it felt solid, and I was only able to notice hitches infrequently. Given the aging hardware of the Switch, it’s actually quite impressive how they have managed to get it running this well, but Monolith has shown that they are truly the best in the business when it comes to milking the Switch for all the power that it has.
The combat feels smoother and more fast paced thanks to the addition of quick cooldown.
In the original, the combat had plenty of depth to spare as building my own custom class using different skill/equipment loadouts was quite fun but I was often at the mercy of my cooldowns and simply standing there, not being able to respond to soul-voice prompts was never fun. With the addition of the quick cooldown, I was able to strategically use resources to use skills that were on cooldown which expanded the combat significantly and made the moment to moment gameplay feel even more reactive than before.
That alongside the fact that I was now able to change my active party on the world map at any time also meant I was also using a lot more characters than before where previously I was just using the main cast for convenience sake.
The increased rate to gain affinity with party members also had me learn about all the different party members without unnecessary grinding and I came away feeling more connected with the Blade squad than ever before.
Lastly, the online co-op element returned and while the Switch online interface isn’t exactly streamlined, I didn’t have any trouble finding random players to team up with to take on missions and challenge bosses.
I still hate the interactions between Lin and Tatsu.
Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is a fitting swan song for the Switch as its last major exclusive release and showcases just what it takes for a game to truly earn the title of “Definitive Edition”.
Fun Tidbit: Can’t have a Xenoblade review without gushing about the OST a little bit. The remixed songs are great and while not always better than the original, they are fantastic takes all the same.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
