Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition review — Ghost in the Skell

July, 2054 AD - the Earth becomes yet another casualty in a war between two alien races. In a desperate attempt for survival, humanity launched several colony ships to search for a new home, but a scant few made it out of the atmosphere intact. One of these ships was the White Whale. Two years into the Whale’s journey, they are once again attacked by one of those alien races and crash lands on a strange planet: Mira. Now, humanity needs to find a way to survive on Mira, though the planet itself may hold strange secrets that could unravel the fabric of the universe.

Originally released in 2015 for the Wii U, I did not enjoy Xenoblade Chronicles X my first time through.  I tried to play it like its Wii predecessor, focusing mostly on the story and disregarding side quests. That was a mistake I would rectify in my second playthrough, and it quickly became my favorite Xenoblade game, a position it retains to this day. Mira is one of those rare open worlds that actually feels like it matters. You need to find routes past enemies who are way higher level than you, explore every nook and cranny to find a path to your destination, and there’s at least something to do in every single section of the map. 

Filling out the map really is the focus on Xenoblade Chronicles X, as the main story will often gate you through Mira survey progress. The game does attempt to encourage exploration, but in practice it’s very bad at teaching players how to play or even enjoy the game, even after relaxing the requirements for various Story and Affinity Missions. Editor Katelyn Lawlor assisted me in this review, and she seems to have had the same experience I did the first time around. Rubbing up against the game’s myriad systems and unorthodox design and feeling overwhelmed. 

Definitive Edition does help a bit, with some reworded tutorials, but after the lengthy intro chapters you’re essentially left on your own to figure things out. If you’ve played Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii, 3DS, or its Definitive Edition, however, you at least have a leg up on combat. Battles take place in real time, with you able to move your character around as they auto-attack with either a ranged or melee weapon. At the bottom of the screen is a hotbar, where you can select an art to use, with the color of the art denoting what effect it has. Orange for melee attacks, yellow for ranged attacks, green for support, etc. 

Some arts will have positional requirements for the full effect, but all arts have additional, secondary cooldowns. You can use an art the moment it comes off of cooldown, but waiting for its secondary cooldowns will make the art more effective. It’s a very nebulous description, but you can see what that actually means in the arts menu. Early on in Definitive Edition, you’ll unlock a brand new feature called Quick Cooldown. Press the Y button on any art, and whatever cooldown it’s currently on will instantly be skipped and the art will be used. Given that the only substantial way to heal in X is through Soul Voices, where your allies call out art colors, this is incredibly handy. Quick Cooldowns are managed by a new meter under the arts palette, but it fills all the way back up between battles, so you can really go nuts. 

The combat continues to expand over the course of the game, with players eventually unlocking Skells and Overdrive. Skells are giant robots you can pilot to make taking down larger monsters easier, but in reality their main use is for getting around Mira. They can transform into cars, jump way higher than you can on foot, and eventually gain the ability to fly. Despite how cool they are, in combat prowess they are outclassed by Overdrive.

Overdrive is an enhanced state players can enter by spending 3000 TP, a resource gained through auto-attacks and by fulfilling certain conditions. Upon activation, you’ll see a bunch of text pop up on screen, including a countdown at the center of the arts palette. If you were already overwhelmed by the game, I doubt Overdrive is going to change that, because the game still does a very poor job of explaining what it is and how to use it properly. Basically, Overdrive lets you deal way more damage by shortening cooldowns, adding tertiary cooldowns to every art, and reducing enemy resistances. You gain these attributes by building up a counter, which is just above the countdown. You can gain more time in Overdrive by spending another 3000 TP, and Definitive Edition increased the base time for Overdrive by about 10 seconds, making it easier than ever to stay in Overdrive indefinitely. 

As you can probably tell, you have a LOT of options for combat in Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, and I haven’t even mentioned the Class system, gear attributes, or skills. All of this complexity plays to X’s strengths, but is also its greatest weakness as we’ve mentioned several times now. If you don’t already know how everything works, you might not have a fun time at first. Once you do, though? X has one of the most satisfying combat systems out there. It was incredibly fun to try my hand at an infinite Overdrive build this time around, and by the endgame I was virtually invincible thanks to guaranteed evasion and reflecting most types of damage. It’s a game that is begging you to exploit its systems, but will punish you if you’re not. 

Case in point, by the time I got to the new final boss I was so powerful I literally one shot it. As hilarious as that is, I would have liked some amount of challenge here, if only to hear the final boss theme. Some enemy scaling based on your build or a hard mode would be very welcome here. Thankfully that final boss has a more cinematic second phase, so it wasn’t a total blowout.

Speaking of the new content, I’m a bit mixed on it. I like the new party members the game adds, who each come with two affinity missions. Nielnail and Liesel further explore the game’s themes of alien cultures and the evils of capitalism respectively, while the third character feels like a natural addition to the cast given his and his people’s role in the story. I also really like the epilogue exclusive character, who I won’t name or describe in detail due to spoilers. He has a fun personality, but unfortunately suffers from being the story’s new favorite person. 

He completely steals the main character role from your avatar and Elma, with the latter becoming weirdly passive and demure as a result. I have no problem with characters feeling feelings, but in the base game Elma is an absolute badass, usually putting her emotions aside to her detriment. It gives her a great dynamic with Lin, who as a teenager is the more impulsive and emotional of the two. Add in your avatar who can be either or a median between the two based on your dialogue choices, and you’ve got some great character dynamics in Team Elma. This new character could be another great addition to this, he’s a hothead and a bit too sure of himself, often making him a bit of a loner so he doesn’t get the people he cares about hurt, but since the story focuses so much on him we don’t get to see any of those possible conflicts. 

The story itself has some great moments and ideas, but has two major problems: it’s incredibly heavy on exposition and it completely contradicts all of the messaging of the base game. The epilogue is contained within the new Chapter 13, unlocked after clearing the base game, which itself is divided into three acts. Each of these acts are longer than any single story chapter, save for probably Chapter 12, but a lot of it feels like you’re just sitting around watching the characters sit around and somehow resolve a lot of mysteries from the base game. It doesn’t come from nowhere, but it certainly can feel tacked on and rushed. 

It feels weird to be left hanging on “it’s something about this planet” for a decade, only to hear “oh it’s because of this, moving on.” I think a lot of the story here would have been better served by being the main crux of a sequel, as it can feel like it’s rushing to connect the X universe to the larger Xeno story. 

Additionally, I felt the voice direction was a huge step down from the base game, giving me a bit of whiplash going from Chapter 12 straight into 13. Everyone’s much more monotone, which clashes with the more bombastic and less grounded writing. For lack of a better word, it’s more “anime”. The worst offender is unfortunately Vandham, as for whatever reason Darin De Paul didn’t reprise his role for Definitive Edition. Gavin Hammon replaces him, who I KNOW is a great actor (he played Kenny in The Walking Dead games), but he gives a horrendous performance here. He simply doesn’t fit the character, but I think a lot of this comes down to the voice direction. If everyone sounds worse, it’s hard not to come to that conclusion.

That being said, I still liked what I played. Despite the significantly worse voice direction and writing, I was hooked from start to finish. I especially loved the finale, with some killer tracks composed by newcomer Misaki Umase and the returning Hiroyuki Sawano. The latter’s songs are always intense and unorthodox, while the former compliments this with more traditional instrumentation and a lack of lyrics. X has always had a phenomenal soundtrack, and I’m happy to say the additions are all positive. I can’t tell you what two tracks are my favorites of these additions, as they’re both spoilers, but I will say one is a remix and the other is a new character’s theme. If there is an X2 or Xenoblade Y, I hope both return to compose.

That’s the main thing about the epilogue, I’m really looking forward to what it promises or at least hints at, but getting there feels rushed. However, I say that as a big fan of what was already there for X. If you’re coming at this more enamored with the overall Xeno story and connections to other games, you might love this epilogue. It’s just a shame they couldn’t make both camps happy.

What has been making both camps happy are the Definitive Edition enhancements. It’s no secret that X didn’t look great on the Wii U. The environments could look spectacular, but the character models were weird and uncanny. Now, the game has been brought more in line with the rest of the franchise, while still retaining a bit of its more realistic bent. Outside of epilogue cutscenes, where you can really see Monolith Soft’s improved animation and direction, animations and models all seem to be exactly the same as the original game’s. This is mostly a texture improvement, like Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition, but it looks great all around.

Of course, a lot more has changed than just the visuals. The UI has been almost completely overhauled to be more user friendly, such as being able to change the time or swap out party members from the menu rather than needing to find specific places to do those things. There are still issues that remain, such as the game not loading things quickly enough. For example, there are several missions that ask you to gather information around the main city, New LA, which you do by walking near an NPC with a gold speech bubble. I cannot count the number of times I have ran past the NPC with the needed information because they just hadn’t loaded in yet. Additionally, when swapping out party members, the game will very noticeably stutter for a few seconds as they load in behind you. It’s a persistent problem, though hopefully that will be fixed in some sort of Switch 2 Edition, which will also hopefully make the game 60 fps or above and add in free roam multiplayer. As the game is now, it’s still a blast, but you will have to deal with some bumps in the road. 

I’ve been pretty negative in this review, but that’s only because I absolutely adore Xenoblade Chronicles X. It’s hard to get into, but rewards players who do tenfold with a deep combat system, one of the best open worlds in gaming period, and a great, character driven story. There’s so much to love about X, and its easier than ever to do so.