Despite being in an era of remakes and releases, there are titles that deserve the new lease on life that, for whatever reason, never quite make the cut. For the longest time, Nintendo fans thought Monolith Soft’s 2015 release of Xenoblade Chronicles X was one of those. Thankfully, we could not have been more wrong, with Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition (XCXDE) launching on the Switch on March 20.
So, now the question is: Does it hold up? I’m happy to say that, with the limited time I’ve had with the game, that the answer is an emphatic yes. I never completed the original. Hell, I’m further in the new version than I ever was in the original, but everything new I have seen has only increased my curiosity and pleasure with the breathtaking vistas brought back from the past.
The premise: In 2054, Earth is caught in the crossfire of two warring alien factions and destroyed. To stave off extinction, humanity created great spaceships, known as arks, to ferry its population off-world before the worst could happen. Most were destroyed, but the ark known as the White Whale managed to escape. After two years wandering the stars, the White Whale is attacked and, damaged, forced to crash-land on a nearby planet. Humanity now must find a way to settle this strange, alien world, contending with hostile megafauna and xenos villains coming to finish what they started on Earth.
It’s a fantastic setup, but it does mean the game gets off to a pretty slow start. Of my 15 or so hours in the game, a good third of that was just introducing the most basic system — and by golly, there are a ton of systems. Get used to menus and reading text, because, if the original is anything to go by, an average playthrough is 108 hours.
It’s well worth the time investment, however, as Monolith Soft has not lost their touch when it comes to crafting interesting characters, an obtuse-yet-engaging combat system, and a narrative that holds plenty of twists and turns. XCXDE falls outside the canon established in Xenoblade Chronicles 1-3, which means it’s an excellent starting point for the franchise if you’re looking to dip your toes in. It also means that it has a different focus than the others. Where they were narrative-driven JRPGS through and through, XCXDE, while having a main questline, puts more emphasis on side quests and even has online features, with the player helping out the various NPCs around the hub city of New Los Angeles in their daily struggles of living on a whole new planet. That focus brings an intimate sense of scale, contextualizing the, admittedly insane, scale of the scenario. People are just trying to live their lives, and sometimes, they need a hand to help with that.
The presentation brings all the disparate elements together, and though the graphics are from the Wii U (which I wouldn’t trust to run anything more complicated than Doom), they’re given a decent facelift to bring the game up to modern standards. Everything else is exceptional. The planet Mira is open world, with the player able to reach anywhere they can see from minute one without a loading screen if they manage to dodge all the high-level enemies. Low gravity means you can sprint fast and jump far, bringing with it a sense of momentum of game feel that breaks up the monotony of just running around. Later on in the game, the player even gets access to a mech that is capable of flight to reach even more out-of-the-way locales. All of this is set to an absolutely brilliant soundtrack by Hiroyuki Sawano of Attack on Titan fame. (He did this game first!)
If you have the money and the time, XCXDE is a fantastic outing that is well worth the price of admission, and this remaster finally completes the Switch’s collection of running every single Xenoblade Chronicles game in existence! Hope to see y’all out there blasting aliens and helping humanity with me!
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