Nintendo’s remaster of the beloved, but often overlooked, WiiU RPG is the perfect way for the Switch to end its era.
Following an intergalactic space battle, the United States’ Ark ship has crash landed on the alien planet Mira. You’re woken by Elma, one of the survivors of the crash and a resident of New L.A - the city that the survivors of the crash have built and are now working out of. Joining up with Elma, you take on her goals: find the ship’s lifehold module, free the residents currently held in stasis and re-establish the human race.
XENOBLADE CHRONICLES X: DEFINITIVE EDITION is a dark horse of a game, the strangely titled weird sibling of a beloved JRPG series known for its focus on telling thoughtful and considered stories about war, loss and cycles of violence (...except for 2, which sucks).
At first, exploration takes place entirely on foot and can be quite dangerous, littered with high level bosses and aggressive enemies that can one-shot you easily if you’re not careful. Learning to skulk around, creep past higher level enemies and get to your quest objectives is a core part of the game’s opening hours. It instills a sense of danger - this is not your world, and you will need to respect the denizens of the land if you want to survive.
The world itself is intriguing; lush jungles with glowing plants towering into the sky; grassy forests with dangerous wildlife; and hidden tucked away caves and dungeons available for the most intrepid explorer to randomly stumble across. The template for what would become Nintendo’s masterclass of open world design (Breath of the Wild & Tears of the Kingdom) can be felt here.
The story component of XCX takes a backseat to combat and exploration, in a first for the franchise, told in a more barebones fashion with sparse cutscenes and quite a bit of its story being explored in smaller side quests and companion ‘affinity’ missions that are drip-fed throughout the game. It’s a cool concept, and one that sits mostly outside the existing lore of Xenoblade’s numbered series.
The true star of XCX is the world of Mira itself. In a very Breath of the Wild moment, your character reaches the top of a summit and the camera zooms out to the sprawling hills and valleys stretching out into the horizon. Giant dinosaurs the size of skyscrapers lumber through the valley (a future threat to watch out for!) and you’ll need to start navigating your way through the alien landscape to find the resources, gear and the precious experience points you’ll need to get through the game’s storyline. There’s mechs you can hop into and roam about with, opening up entire new avenues for exploration, combat and discovery. And of course, the requisite ocean of convoluted menus, systems and mechanics to master that all good JRPGS indulge in. It all shouldn't work - but it does, and when it sinks its fangs into you, you won’t want to stop playing.
The FrontierNav system breaks the world map up into hexes, each one having a single goal to complete to help increase the percent of exploration you’ve completed. Some nodes will contain probe points - reach these sites and you can launch a probe into the planet, unlocking new information about surrounding map hexes and creating a fast travel point. You can also upgrade the probes on your FrontierNav map using a convoluted system that will allow you to harvest passive resources and rare materials for crafting.
It’s rewarding and easy to get lost in - just like the game’s endless ocean of menus and systems. You know you’re playing a good RPG when you boot up the game and spend over 45 minutes tinkering gear, digging through menus, reading the in-game manual about various stats and debuffs before even setting off on a quest to climb a hill in the distance. It’s complicated, but thankfully the Definitive Edition offers a new streamlined tutorial to help slightly ease new players into the oceans of depth you can get lost in.
Combat in XCX continues the established formula of the Xenoblade series, mixing auto-attacking with combat abilities (or arts) that you trigger on cooldowns. It’s all very inspired by MMO-combat design. If you’ve played Final Fantasy XIV or World of Warcraft, you’ll feel the similarities here. You’re able to target certain body parts of monsters in combat, allowing you to break appendages for extra loot drops and to weaken enemies in battle.
The Unique ‘Soul Voices’ system allows your character to issue challenges (set to a timed button press) to your party - allowing them to respond with certain attacks and combos that will heal the team and provide various effects. Your own team-mates can issue their own challenges at you, asking you to mix up your combat style for a boost of healing or much needed buffs in a tight situation.
It’s all very fun and flashy, and strangely addictive. It’s very easy to get lost in the grind in XCX, the joy of just randomly mowing down enemies as you explore a zone can keep you focused for hours, while the story barely registers in the background.
It’s rare that I play a Japanese-style RPG for the grind of its combat and world exploration alone. Usually I need the hook of a solid story to drag me through. It’s why recent releases like Bravely Default 2 & Visions of Mana with their flat writing and narratives have failed to keep me engaged despite their mostly solid combat mechanics.
XCX is an oddball - a deep, rewarding experience that offers endless character customization, mech building, world exploration and even occasional flashes of intriguing story writing. It’s the perfect swan song for the Nintendo Switch and an adventure that even those with no history of the Xenoblade franchise can dive right into - if they’re willing to read some in-game guides to understand its many, many mechanics.
A copy of XENOBLADE CHRONICLES X ENHANCED on Nintendo Switch was provided to SIFTER for the purpose of this review.
