Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition review: The marvelous return of Mira

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Xenoblade Chronicles is a beloved series with a dedicated fanbase, but 2015’s Xenoblade Chronicles X is a bit of a black sheep. It came out on the Wii U in 2015 and didn’t have long to impress before the platform’s discontinuation in 2017. Monolith Soft, however, saw value just begging to be explored, and they whipped up a definitive version of the game for Nintendo Switch to spread it beyond those faithful Wii U buyers of yesteryear. Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition takes an already incredible open-world RPG, and improves it with a few quality-of-life improvements alongside spruced visuals, resulting in an even greater game.

Note: During my evaluation, I didn’t have access to multiplayer modes. This review primarily covers the single-player aspect of the game.

The day the Earth exploded

The story of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is standalone from the rest of the franchise. You don’t have to have prior knowledge (though you should definitely try the other games). In an alternate future, Earth finds itself caught up in chaos as two alien forces arrive outside the planet’s orbit and begin a full-scale war. Earth is destroyed in the aftermath, but the largest nations all scramble to launch an ark program that will carry its citizens to the depths of space in hopes of survival and settlement on new worlds. Our story follows the United States ark, known as the White Whale. It is traveling through deep space when one of the alien forces that destroyed Earth catches up to it. It disables the US ark and sends it crashing down on a wild and unsettled planet known as Mira.

Our journey begins about two months after the crash with a protagonist of our selected name and creation that awakes in a stasis pod in the wild. Thanks to the help of a character known as Elma, we’re able to get our bearings and make our way to the crashed US ark, now repurposed into a human settlement called New Los Angeles (or NLA). After some introductions to the settlement and the BLADES military organization that serves it, we learn our purpose. We are to help explore and chart Mira, defeat hostile monsters that threaten humanity’s settlement, recover parts of the White Whale ark, and ultimately track down a container called the “Lifehold” that holds much of the ark’s remaining humans in stasis.

Xenoblade Chronicles X originally took a bit to really get going as you’re onboarded, and that’s unfortunately true here, too. Even so, once you’re unleashed on New Los Angeles and Mira, it’s a fabulous open world to explore. Mira is divided into a variety of biomes, each with their own conditions and creatures, from the grassy plains and mountains of Primordia to the sunbaked desert heat, sand, and electric storms of Oblivia.

Xenoblade Chronicles X’s open world is absolutely beautiful and I found myself in constant awe of it even as I pushed onward through creatures that were sometimes smaller than me, sometimes larger than buildings, sometimes aggro, sometimes docile, and every variation in between. It wasn’t rare for me to look up and be floored by critters like massive, glowing sky whales that soared under a veil of Aurora Borealis and starlight. All of that beauty is accentuated by incredible music that just might be some of my favorite in the series. The day and night tracks of each biome are quite fantastic as is, but fights, cutscenes, lurking the city, and more are also aided by the excellent tracks that accentuate Xenoblade Chronicle X’s aural variety.

I wish I could always say the same about the characters. There are quite a few of these characters that are great, including Elma, Lin, Lao, and Phog, but I really couldn’t stand characters like H.B. or Yelv right out of the gate. They’re so unlikeable and then they’re in your party for some reason. Fortunately, unless you’re a completionist for friend quests, you can mostly bench them.

By foot or bipedal tank

Exploration and progress in Xenoblade Chronicles X are some of the most unique experiences I’ve had in an RPG, but mostly in a good way. As stated before, your main tasks are exploring and charting Mira, disposing of threats to humanity, and trying to find the Lifehold and pieces of the White Whale ark, and it creates a very interesting approach to moving the game forward.

Mira and all of its biomes are split up into hexagonal segments, each with at least one major thing going on in them. Probe hexes will let you chart that part of the map and its adjacent undiscovered hexes; Tyrant hexes contain a special named monster that must be slain; treasure hexes have one special discovery that must be found and scanned, such as pieces of the White Whale or unique alien tech; and mission hexes contain a Basic or Affinity Mission that must be completed. Doing the main thing in a hex will unlock that hex’s full survey level and add to an overall goal of surveying all of Mira. It provides a constant progress and growth where fighting isn’t as important as exploration and discovery.

Missions in Xenoblade Chronicles X are broken up into Chapter Missions, Affinity Missions, and Basic Missions. Chapter Missions move the whole story forward and often have a condition like exploring so much of the planet or seeing a certain Affinity Mission done before you can take them. Affinity Missions are tied to your fellow party members and always have at least one character they focus on, which allows you to become affectionately closer to them if you want. Basic Missions can be found in the world or at the mission kiosk and provide small rewards, although some can help you unlock Affinity or Chapter Missions.

The biggest thing is that you’re not on Mira to fight everything. If you do, you’ll die… a lot. You can see all sorts of monsters in the biomes around Mira and an enormous amount of them are stronger than you or your team. You have to carefully navigate around them instead and it’s pretty common to have to dodge around high-level creatures that will dust your team if you get roped into a fight.

Don’t get me wrong, you do fight in this game and fighting is much like the Xenoblade Chronicles combat system we know. Players choose a class, and skills and arts are unlocked as they level up that class. All of the party members you meet will have a static class they level up, but you can jump between them and collect skills and arts as you please. There are 8 branching class paths that offer a ton of variety, and building your party based on what class you’re using is key to surviving. I picked the Galactic Knight Path that offered combo-based chaining of plasma sword attacks with debilitating status effects to back it up, but there is also the defensive Shield Trooper, the fast and high critical Full Metal Jaguar, and more to suit your offensive or defensive moods.

Eventually you also unlock the game’s mecha (known as Skells), and that’s a huge moment in Xenoblade Chronicles X. As mentioned prior, you don’t stand a chance against most enemies on foot. Eventually, a Skell is how you even the odds. It lets you combat bigger monsters from the safety of a formidable and customizable machine. It also makes exploring a million times easier. Traveling Mira is hard on foot because the world features massive verticality. You won’t be able to reach a lot of probe sites or treasure spots with jumping alone, and though the Skells come dozens of hours into Xenoblade Chronicles X, their arrival marks a satisfying feeling of power that is incredibly exciting once you get there.

That’s good, too, because Xenoblade Chronicles X will probably frustrate players on the way to a Skell. With how hard the world is to explore without a Skell and how much you have to tread lightly around Mira’s more dangerous denizens, it’s easy to feel weak in this game no matter how leveled up you get. Thankfully, the Definitive Edition fixes make its visuals smoother and ease some pain points like a bad UI in the original game to keep players engaged.

There are definitely still some 2015 issues in organization in this game that its quality-of-life fixes don’t smooth out. Inventory organization is atrocious in this game. You pick up so much armor and weaponry and most of it is useless, but then you have to go through your lists and pick out melee weapons, ranged weapons, and five armor pieces for each character, bit by bit. As your roster grows, it becomes incredibly tedious to make sure each of your rotating characters are decked out. There are very few tabs or organization to ease the sheer amount of useless options for the time it takes to put a character together with fresh equipment.

Chasing the White Whale

If you can get past its tedious organization and swaths of overleveled monsters in your way, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is incredible. This was a game that eluded many fans back in 2015. Now, it has a fresh chance to shine and do so with a new coat of paint and some thoughtful QoL changes. It doesn’t always hit the bullseye, and some 2015 issues went unaddressed. That said, if you let yourself get lost in the wilds of Mira, it’s more than easy to overlook the few things that drag the fun down. Whether you missed Xenoblade Chronicles X the first time or are revisiting Mira, there’s a lot to love and appreciate for fans and newcomers alike.

This review is based on a digital Nintendo Switch copy provided by the publisher. Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition comes to Nintendo Switch on March 20, 2025.

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2025-03-18 17:07