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Lots to see and explore; combat is engaging and varied thanks to the use of Arts; Skells are a fun addition to the franchise; Soundtrack perfectly meshes with the tone and feel of the gameplay and story
Easy to get caught up in world exploration and accidentally wind up in an overpowering fight.
Originally released on Wii U as Xenoblade Chronicles X, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, by Monolith Soft, is a graphically improved version of the original game with the addition of a few quality of life features. Keeping close to the formula of other games in the series, X is an action role playing game with pseudo turn-based strategy layered into the combat.
At the start of the game, players learn that they have crash landed on a planet foreign to them and have lost their memory. Luckily, valuable context is provided to you early on, as it is explained through an epic cutscene and character dialogue that, during a war between two alien races close to Earth, Earth was destroyed in the conflict. Before leaving Earth, spaceship arks left the planet to find a new home.
Unfortunately, their mission did not go as planned. The ship was destroyed and the contents of the ship were scattered on the alien planet Mira. Those contents include the pre-constructed, forcefield-protected city, New Los Angeles, which landed safely, and the Lifehold, a container that holds the vast majority of the citizens on the ship, who are all placed in stasis. The problem is, the Lifehold has broken apart into smaller pods that are scattered across the planet.
With this premise as a base, much of the gameplay and story stems from it. Searching for the pieces of the Lifehold leads to having to explore the vast and vertical reaches of Mira, surveying the land, treasure, and creatures in order to find them. To do this, players work as a member of the organization BLADE (which is an acronym for the less interesting Builders of a Legacy After the Destruction of Earth).
Throughout the game, players reveal hexagonal sections of the map by placing probes that survey the land they’re on. As you reveal these sections, each one will have an objective associated with it. Some objectives include finding treasure in pieces of the ship and alien vessels, some are fighting giant Tyrants, and others contain objectives tied to missions given to you in the city.
Speaking of missions, they’re separated into four categories:
- Normal Missions: side missions that hold less story importance and are given by side characters
- Basic Missions: come from the division you choose at the beginning of the story
- Affinity Missions: unlock new squad members to use in battles
- Story Missions: the only missions that progress the main story forward
Affinity missions bring a lot to the story, but focus mostly on a single character that is added to your squad upon completion. These are really unique and truly enrich the experience, as the mission story usually ties in closely to the personality of the character. For example, early on, there is a character who is smart, competitive, and full of himself, and he makes you prove to him that you are capable enough to join in on his mission by competing against him to do three other missions first.
One element of story and affinity missions that adds a lot to the overall experience is that main characters are fully voiced in both. Giving the characters voice acting provides extra depth to their personalities that the developers would not have been able to achieve if they just had dialogue boxes.
Combat in Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition feels similar to an MMO in the way abilities, known as Arts in this series, are executed. Arts that you have unlocked through the selectable class system can be chosen and are displayed at the bottom of the screen. After using an Art in combat, it will go into a cooldown state. This cooldown can be bypassed by spending TP, or Tension Points.
A meter around the Art will fill up and, as it fills up, it becomes more effective. In order to succeed in combat, you must pay attention to vocal call outs from other squad members. If you use abilities that match their call outs, you will get a boost in damage or ability effectiveness. Action oriented modifications to the system like these make combat more strategic and less of a waiting game than it could be considering that the cooldowns are present.
At a certain point in the main story, you gain the ability to use a Skell, a large mech that you can choose to hop into whenever you choose. Combat in the Skell stays very similar to the combat outside of the Skell. Utilizing the Skell allows you to more easily take on larger creatures and enemies that you come across. In addition to allowing you to take on larger creatures, the Skell can fly, allowing you to traverse the world in a new way. This new form of traversal allows you to get to locations on the map that were inaccessible before.
Enemies in the game vary from humanoid aliens to the giant, towering creatures that are native to the planet. Variation in combat stems from the type of enemy you are fighting. Larger creatures have more points of attack at different body parts than smaller ones. Targeted body parts can be switched between on the fly during combat. Many of the enemies in the world will not bother you if you don’t attack them.
That said, some enemies will attack if you are in their line of sight and others will attack based on proximity to them. Traversing the world becomes a thinking game, as you want to make sure you do not stray too close to a high level enemy that you won’t be able to defeat. Considering the beauty and scale of the planet Mira, it can be easy to get lost and wander into an unplanned battle that you can’t win.
Mira is vast and beautiful, spanning multiple continents, with varying biomes and huge, intricate rock formations scattered everywhere. With such stunning vistas to explore in, it is quite easy to get caught up in running around and seeing all the unique landmarks of the landscape. As surveying the environment is a central theme of both the story and the gameplay, this never feels like the wrong thing to do. Progression of the story does not take place until you have surveyed enough of the land and completed certain important missions.
All of the music that plays during exploration and combat matches the tone of what is happening on screen at every moment. During combat sections, the action music comes in and amps you up. The same goes for exploring the environment. Each moment has a motivating, matching melody to go with it, pushing you forward in your adventure.
Every piece of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition feels meticulously placed. Pieces like it’s beautiful world, well paced combat and music, and gameplay variety give you the motivation to keep exploring every rock formation, combat encounter, and unique mission. Not every game has all these pieces that fit together this well, but this game does and it does it very well.
Nintendojo was provided a copy of this game for review by a third party, though that does not affect our recommendation. For every review, Nintendojo uses a standard criteria.
