Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition Review

Xenoblade Chronicles X Gaming Australia review cover image

Genre: Action RPG

Developer: Monolith Soft

Publisher: Nintendo

Release Date: March 20th 2025

Available On: Nintendo Switch

Disclaimer

This is the first Xenoblade Chronicles game I have ever played. It is an enormous game, and so I have not fully beaten it yet. However, after pouring dozens of hours into it, I am confident that I have seen enough of it to give a detailed and fair review of it.

Xenoblade Chronicles X first came out in 2015 on the Wii U. At the time, X was a building block that Monolith Soft used to bridge the gap for fans between 2010's original and 2017's Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Because of this, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a spin-off, and it does not continue the story of the original Wii game. As for the game itself, it is mind-blowing to think that it came out 10 years ago and offers you hundreds of hours of content within a huge open world. Becoming a Blade and fighting different monsters in this world is very fun, and the combat keeps you engaged and encourages you to experiment with various moves, combos and commands for your team. Despite the brilliant gameplay, the game suffers from a lacklustre story, a bland main character, a frustrating waypoint system, and baffling mission progression, which makes single-player progression feel like a slog in some places.

Welcome to Mira

Humans are on the brink of extinction after being forced out of Earth by a mysterious alien race. The war rages, and a crew aboard a ship, the White Whale, find themselves stranded on the beautiful and vast planet of Mira. As the player, you control an unnamed protagonist who is one of the survivors of the White Whale. Elma, a BLADE captain, finds you and escorts you back to a base where humans have settled on the planet. This base is New Los Angeles, and it acts as your hub world. After training to become a BLADE yourself, it is down to you to ensure the survival of the human race by learning to survive on Mira and eliminating any enemies that pose a threat to your livelihood, especially the alien race that followed you to the planet.

Xenoblade Chronicles X has a strong foundation for its story, and the opening two hours are very solid in getting you invested in the characters and your ultimate goal. Unfortunately, the main story feels like an afterthought compared to the rest of the game. There are only 12 main story missions in the game, but there are hundreds of side missions. The lack of story missions is not necessarily a bad thing; action RPGs like Fallout 4, Skyrim, and The Witcher III all deliver great narratives but offer twice as much gameplay in their optional content. Xenoblade Chronicles X attempts to do the same thing, but it does not pull it off as well. The problem is that the story missions feel secondary, and you must complete side missions and affinity missions in order to unlock the next story mission. It did not work because the story lost a lot of its focus after the first few hours, and the long cutscenes scattered across every story mission damaged the pacing further. Long cutscenes work in certain games, such as Metal Gear Solid, but they did not work in Xenoblade Chronicles X.

Despite my problems with the story, most of the characters are great. Nearly all of them have interesting backstories, and the side content gives you more information as to what they were like on Earth and how they became the people they are today. One of my favourite characters was Lin, the 13-year-old girl who can not only assist you in combat but is also passionate about engineering. Completing her affinity missions lets you learn more about her, and you become more connected and care about her. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same about the main playable character. Xenoblade Chronicles X is the only game in the series where you get to create your playable character. You get to customise their look, build, voice and more. It is a good concept on paper, but in the game, your character has absolutely no emotion and never speaks during dialogue. Your character talks during combat whenever executing a specific attack, but they never open their mouth throughout the entire adventure. Some dialogue decisions in the game are choice-based, but your character only interprets a response with a head movement. Monolith Soft could have done more with the playable character, and it would have also improved some of the flaws in the game's narrative.

Fight to Survive

Understandably, this game is a re-release of a 10-year-old Wii U game, and the game's visuals look dated by today's standards. However, I was still in awe of how beautiful the game was. The world of Mira is a complex mixture of different ecosystems, and each part of the map feels different from the others. The first section of the world you explore is Primordia, a huge area that is teeming with huge rock mountains, bodies of water and vast greenery. The further you get into the story, you will explore every section of the map. Oblivia is a desert wasteland that has a huge sinkhole at the centre; Noctilum is a swamp area that feels like you are coursing through the Amazon jungle, and Cauldros is a land filled with hot flowing lava. I have nothing but positive praise for the visuals and open-world Xenoblade Chronicles X. You encounter so much variety, and it has the same level of surprise and variety that Hyrule, Middle-Earth or Westeros has.

Throughout Mira, you will find enemies of different shapes, sizes and strengths. Not only are there dozens of types of enemies, but many of them behave differently. Some enemies are not hostile and will not react to you if you walk directly up to them or run past them. These types of enemies only engage if you provoke them. Other enemies will start an attack if they spot and you are then forced into a combat situation unless you decide to withdraw from the battle. Then, some enemies respond to sound rather than sight and will engage if they hear you battling a nearby enemy. These different enemy behaviours play a big part in exploration, and they reward you if you pay attention to your surroundings. You level up your character when you get more experience points, but every enemy also has a level. Higher-level enemies are much stronger, and if you are on a lower level, they can kill in a couple of hits. To get around this, you have to pay attention to the stronger enemies and note what behaviours they have. If they do not respond to sight or sound, you can walk straight past, but if they engage when they see you, you will have to find another way around to reach your objective. Every enemy scattered around Mira serves a purpose, and regardless of how powerful your character is, you can get to each sector of the map if you pay close attention to nearby enemies and study your surroundings. Monolith Soft has designed Mira and every enemy with such close attention to detail that it is marvellous.

Strategy is the Aim of the Game

If you do choose to battle an enemy, you will have so many different moves at your disposal. There are various classes that you can swap and change in the game, and most classes equip you with two other weapons and different combat attacks. Xenoblade Chronicles X shines in its combat because it encourages you to experiment with every class, level each of them up, and then you have the freedom to pick and choose whichever class you like best or which one best fits the type of enemy you are fighting. Each class comes with two weapons; one of them is a ranged weapon that you can use to take damage to an enemy from a distance, and the other is a melee weapon that deals much more damage up close. It is up to the player to get accustomed to each weapon and learn different enemy attacks so you can strategise when you use particular weapons, where and when. In the beginning, swapping between each weapon and organising your different defence and offence attacks was quite confusing, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes very satisfying. The combat feels like the turn-based combat of Final Fantasy and Paper Mario, but it adds speed and moment-by-moment intensity to make the combat feel visceral.

The combat, as I said before, can be confusing if you are unfamiliar with Xenoblade Chronicles, but once you understand the different types of moves, it becomes second nature. Using a weapon is automatic, so there is no button to perform a basic attack. Basic attacks from weapons do not deal much damage, so you will have to use Arts to give you the upper hand. Arts are powerful moves that you can execute and then go through a cooldown before you can use them again. There are five different types of Arts you can use during combat. Melee Arts utilises your melee weapon and deals serious damage when you are close to an enemy; Ranged Arts deals the same type of damage as Melee Arts, but you use your ranged weapon instead. Healing Arts can sometimes provide health to you and your party members, or they can give you more TP, which lets you execute strong attacks. Then you have Aura Arts, which usually only affects your character and can give you extra damage power or up your defence strength so you take less damage from an enemy. The final type is Debuff Arts, and they can do a variety of different things, such as decreasing your enemy's defences and leaving them open to taking more damage. Not only are there five different types of special moves, but each one has dozens of different attacks, healing and debuff moves for you to play with. You could spend hours and hours trying to experiment with every different Art, and you will have barely scratched the surface. You can also upgrade your Art using Battle Points, which you will earn throughout the game.

Arts are not the only component to consider in Xenoblade Chronicles X's combat; there are also Soul Voices and Enemy Appendages to consider. Soul Voices are quick-time events that appear at different points during a combat encounter. When a Soul Voice comes on the screen, an orange circle appears, and you have to press the B button when the white line reaches the middle of the circle. If you successfully do this, your team's morale goes up, you build your affinity with them, and it also rewards you with TP and health. Soul Voices are essential in every combat encounter, and they can turn the tables if you are close to death. Enemy Appendages are body parts of an enemy. Eliminating these areas weakens an enemy because it no longer allows them to perform an attack on that part of the body. The more Appendages you destroy, the more likely you are to pick up useful resources, armour and weapons from that enemy. You can easily lock on to the enemy and then press another button to switch your aim to a certain body part.

A World of Frustration

Mira is a world that begs you to explore it, and the game presents itself as giving you the freedom to explore any area you want. After the game's first couple of hours, you are free to explore Mira and can go out and place fast travel points, find treasure and find more weapons and armour to make you stronger. The fast-travel points are worth dissecting because they have a practical purpose: to help you upgrade your gear rather than serve as a convenience. You can equip probes to fast-travel points in this game to earn Miranium, which can help you get better gear or upgrade your weapons. The more fast-travel points you unlock, the more revenue you get from each one.

The title of this section is a sad truth: Xenoblade Chronicles X is a very good game, but it suffers from a number of frustrations that damaged my experience with the game. I have already detailed my problems with the narrative and the main character, but another problem I have is the mission waypoints. This criticism only happened once while playing the game, so it is not a major criticism, but it was something that made an early affinity mission over two and a half hours to finish. On this particular mission, I had to install a mining probe at a fast travel point to earn Miranium. Still, the mission gave me no waypoint of which area I should go to, so I just had to travel around to each fast-travel point I could reach until I found one that said it could mine Miranium. The lack of instruction was annoying enough, but then I had to earn a particular resource from a specific enemy. The map marked me to a location where I could get this resource, but it pitted me against a Level. 28 enemy when I was only at level. 7. I tried to fight them, but they killed me in one hit. Eventually, by travelling around the map, the waypoint changed, and it took me to a lower-level enemy that I was able to beat. This broken waypoint made this mission feel unfair, and I could not complete the story mission before I finished this affinity mission. Therefore, I had to go through trial and error until I found an enemy weak enough to get the part from.

Xenoblade Chronicles X objective markers

However, my biggest problem with Xenoblade Chronicles X is the mission progression, specifically between the affinity missions and the story missions. I do not have a problem with the missions themselves, but I do not understand why you cannot take on a story mission and an affinity mission at the same time. If you take on an affinity mission, you could spend a couple of hours finishing it, and if it requires repetitive travels to the location to grab a certain part to progress, it can ruin the pace of the game. On top of that, many affinity missions begin with only one objective. Once you complete that objective, you get four more objectives to complete until you can complete a story mission. This forced commitment to a particular mission kills the freedom of the game. When I started the game, I felt a huge amount of freedom, but the further I got, the more I knew in the back of my head that the game had other plans. This factor is especially disappointing when you consider the huge amount of content in the game, and you will only have that true freedom once you finish the main story and only have affinity missions to do.