Growing up, I wasn’t a Nintendo kid; I never owned any of their consoles. Instead, I enjoyed Nintendo titles at friends’ houses, envious of all the games I never had as a PlayStation kid. I missed out on the Xenoblade Chronicles series and have never experienced them until now. Nintendo continues its glorious streak of rereleasing titles from the past to introduce to new players and existing fans Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, with the return of devs Monolith Soft to bring the sci-fi RPG back on Nintendo Switch. 

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is a remaster of the 2015 Wii U title, introducing overhauled graphics, changes to the UI and additional story content. It’s a massive action-role-playing title with a jam-packed open-world sci-fi setting. In the far future, Earth has been wiped out by alien factions battling it out, leading the remainder of humanity to flee on space vessels. Our protagonist is one of them. Flash forward two years, and the carrier ship, White Whale, is caught in the crossfire of the space battles and crash-lands on the planet Mira. This is where my survivor’s journey begins.

It’s a tale as old as time, humans flee Earth, and my character wakes up from stasis with memory loss as a lone survivor. Luckily, the New Los Angeles (NLA) colony is there to take her in. Joining the Builders of the Legacy After the Destruction of Earth, or BLADE for short, our survivor becomes an explorer, scouring the planet for resources and fighting alien threats. It’s a promising start, though, with a long series of cutscenes and dialogue-heavy story; it took a while to get into the action, so I was glad when I finally got a chance to head out into the field.

Missions fall into a few categories: Story Missions and Affinity Missions, which focus on building relationships with squadmates; Basic Missions, Normal Missions, and Squad Missions, an online multiplayer mode. There’s plenty to do and sink time into, but it’s not necessarily all action-packed. Many side missions are repeatable tasks for farming materials and XP or fetch quests.

While a nice little boost to XP is excellent, it tends to feel tedious. I was eager to go full blast into the story, but with hefty character level requirements, my survivor was often hugely under-levelled with progression requiring side-quest completion to become strong enough, which ruined the momentum for me.

Where Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition picked up some energy for me was in the customisation of the survivor. My early impression was that combat was repetitive, but as I ventured forth with companions, gained new abilities (or Arts) to use and mastered the Soul Voice system by synergy with squadmates, I felt more badass. Customisation for builds – including different classes- a massive collection of armour, cosmetics, and weapons- sweetened the deal.

Enemies were often large creatures or alien races, and they usually put up quite a fight. It isn’t until way later that our hero has access to Skells, the massive mechs I wanted to pilot, but given the number of side-missions I’m running through, I haven’t yet experienced the joy of mech piloting. 

The music is a highlight, with that edgy JRPG feel amplified nicely, especially in combat. New tracks have been composed for the definitive edition, with the original composer returning. Voice acting is decent, though despite choosing a voice for my survivor during the initial customisation, I barely heard any dialogue from her during cutscenes or conversations. It made it hard to be invested in my protagonist. They felt devoid of personality, taking away from much of my investment in the story with little care for my avatar. 

The sci-fi setting is captivating, as is seeing the bustling base complete with massive mechs or incredible wildlife running in the distance. On closer inspection, the graphics did feel dated. While it wasn’t overly noticeable on handheld, slow load-in and blurry textures hindered some sense of wonder when playing the Switch docked. Performance-wise, the game mostly ran fine, but there were some slow load-in times after cutscenes and after my protagonist met her untimely end in combat scenarios.

As my first foray into the Xenoblade series, I see how the nostalgia hit would be great for fans, but there’s still room for improvement as a remaster. While Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition may not be perfect, it’s a great glimpse into what could be a new future for the series. Hopefully, we will see more from Xenoblade when Switch 2 releases, with a shiny new coat of paint and a bit more polish. Let’s see what the future holds for the series.

Written by: Yasmin Noble