The Wii U’s Very Best Game Just Got a Stunning Nintendo Switch Port

After spending dozens of hours hoofing it around the majestic alien planet of Mira, getting my hands on a mech felt just like when I got my first car as a teenager. Untold freedom that changes everything – and the ability to get into more trouble than I ever had before.

Xenoblade Chronicles X already felt ahead of its time when it released on the Wii U in 2015, but playing it ten years later it’s now abundantly clear how true that actually is. It’s a stupendously bold and ambitious game that isn’t afraid to wholly commit to doing its own thing. This RPG emphasizes exploration, a network of interconnected systems and mechanics, and subtle understated storytelling. The just-released Definitive Edition on Nintendo Switch doesn’t just give Xenoblade X a chance to shine, it thoughtfully and meaningfully improves nearly every facet of the game.

In Side Quests We Trust

Xenoblade X is technically the second game in the franchise, but it’s also a completely standalone title – not a sequel to the first. The sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles is Xenoblade Chronicles 2, released on Nintendo Switch in 2017. By comparison, Xenoblade X splits off in an entirely separate direction both in terms of story and gameplay.

Sometime in the future, so X’s story starts, the Earth becomes ground zero for a massive battle between two alien civilizations. With humanity’s technology paling in the face of these civilizations, they’re forced to sit and watch as the Earth is obliterated. As the planet explodes a number of colony ships are launched in a bid to send the human race to settle somewhere else in the universe.

The ship you’re on, the White Whale, crash lands on Mira, a wild planet filled with alien life. So the remaining humans establish New Los Angeles, and from that base, your task is to chart the planet, collect valuable resources, and establish a new civilization for humanity.

Despite the dire straits, Xenoblade X is a game largely about hope, persevering in the face of hardship, and even accepting those that don’t align with your worldview. In Xenoblade X you play a silent protagonist, the only player-created character in the franchise. This is a story about New Los Angeles as a city, about the ensemble cast of the entire city. There is a cast of core party members who all have their own arcs, but even then they all feed into the overall idea of the city at large.

Initially, the characters don’t feel as fleshed out as your typical RPG party members. Give it time. There’s so much development layered into them through other aspects of the story, with your party members constantly popping up in other quests and have their own schedules and jobs to do. If you need to see a little bit more of them you can build affinity by having them accompany you, then see “Heart-to-Heart” conversations. From these, you’ll learn a surprising amount. Frye, for example, is a cheerful drunk who is gung-ho about fighting aliens but also masking his pain over his estranged brother. Murderess (yes that’s really her name) is an ice queen with a checkered family past. These are characters that grow in complexity the more you work alongside them, bonds that build as New LA becomes stronger.

Equally, as you explore more of Mira you’ll come into contact with an array of friendly alien races – who then migrate to live in New LA. From there, the game explores themes of culture clash, integration, and how a melting-pot society works. You quickly get a sense that this is a real community painstakingly working to survive — from the pizza shops and thrift stores of the commercial district to the oil-drenched floors of the hangar. A key part of communicating that idea is how the actual gameplay loop and overarching mechanics emphasize the storytelling. Xenoblade X is essentially a side quest-focused game, where anything and everything is communicated through taking on optional objectives. There are a handful of story missions, but in order to play those you’ll need to chart the planet — quite literally.

Getting To The Mech

Xenoblade X's open world is made up of a hex-like grid that contains hundreds of different segments. Every segment corresponds to some kind of activity in the games – quests, treasure to find, a strong enemy to take down known as “Tyrant,” or a spot to drop a survey probe. Those survey spots are known as FN Sites, and activating one reveals all of the segments around it and gives you a probe spot. In these spots you can set a number of different probes to generate money, gather valuable mineral called Miranium (used for quests and to research new weapons), and increase your storage of that resource.

Through the hex system and probes, Xenoblade X liberally rewards you for exploration — it’s the entire game’s loop. As you complete pieces of the hex-grid you contribute to your survey rate of Mira, as well as the survey rate of that specific area — and as those survey rates get higher you’ll get better rewards. All of this means that Xenoblade X is very much an experience where you get out of it the more you put in. A good comparison is Dragon’s Dogma or even Breath of the Wild, where so much of the reward and satisfaction hinges on exploration, uncovering secrets, and seeing the narrative play out in subtle, unconventional ways.

But even the systems that are built around all that exploration are compelling, namely the combat and character customization. Xenoblade X, like the rest of the series, uses semi-real-time combat that feels like a single-player take on an MMO. Your character auto-attacks, but you have a selection of “arts” to choose from that are special attacks, modes your character enters, or healing. These arts can cause a variety of different status effects on enemies that you’ll want to take advantage of, like Stun and Topple — while many arts also get power boots under specific conditions or positioning. Your party members are controlled by AI, but you can give commands on the fly to adjust tactics.

So combat is a mix of on-the-fly adjustment and liberal preparation and preparation. Building your character and party right is essential, and to that end Xenoblade X provides a robust array of classes to choose from. Party members all have pre-assigned classes, but the protagonist can choose from any of them. Each class has a different set of weapons and abilities, and a different focus in combat. For example, the Shield Trooper focuses on drawing enemy attention and pumping up defense and healing. Meanwhile, the Winged Viper focuses on quick attacks that take advantage of positions and status buffs. The sheer variety between these classes and different ways you can build your party is staggering, and that’s even more so as your options expand throughout the experience.

As you expand your Survey Rate and stockpile more Miranium, you can pump that into arm’s manufacturers, thus unlocking better equipment. At the same time, you’ll gain Battle Points and experience for nearly everything — meaning the more you explore and complete, the more you can power up. It’s remarkable how everything in Xenoblade X is linked — every system and mechanic weaves into one another, and a tangible, meaningful sense of progression.

Roughly a third of the way through the story you gain access to a mech called a Skell, which completely turns the game on its head — unlocking new options for exploration and combat. Skells are just as customizable as your character, and suddenly all those far-flung places you’ve seen in the distance become accessible. The entire way you interact with the game changes with the Skell, but crucially still builds on the established systems and mechanics.

The Definitive Definitive Edition

Xenoblade X throws a lot at players right out of the gate, overwhelming you with a wealth of systems, complex combat, and a massive world to explore. Piecing those systems together is what makes this game so satisfying — and the developers of the Definitive Edition entirely get this. It’s truly an upgrade, and a big one at that.

First, the most obvious upgrade is found visually. Xenoblade X was, by far, the best-looking game on Wii U — a technical achievement that pushed the system to its limits. The game looks even better on Switch, with improved character models and a jaw-dropping gorgeous world, filled with dazzling vistas and sights — from the neon-infused alien forests of Noctilum to the volcanic valleys of Cauldros. Xenoblade X also runs exceptionally well, with very little slowdown and snappy loading times.

In terms of story, new party members add more complexity to the narrative, on top of a robust brand-new epilogue that provides some vital closure the original game didn’t have — and some tantalizing hints for a potential future. These are seamless additions that feel like natural parts of the story — there’s no way to know they’re new unless you’ve played the original.

On the gameplay front, there are even more drastic additions. A Quick Cooldown feature is an absolute game-changer for battles, letting you use abilities before they’re fully ready – and drastically increasing the speed of battles. You can now change party members and the time of day anywhere, instead of having to head to specific points. Quest tracking has been improved to make the “Follow Ball” feature more intuitive. Affinity with party members increases more quickly. The BLADE Level feature has been entirely removed, letting you access most of the treasures in the world right away. The list goes on and on.

Almost all of these additions sand down the rough edges of Xenoblade X, but crucially don’t remove the game’s friction and focus on exploration. It’s still an experience that demands a lot of the player themselves, but has eased almost all of the needless frustration present in the original game. It’s maybe the truest sense of “Definitive Edition” that I’ve ever seen in a video game.

Through ingenious use of exploration and ensemble storytelling, Xenoblade X feels like a precursor to Nintendo’s own Breath of the Wild — not to mention the countless open world games that would follow suit. With a decade of time, Xenoblade X’s strength has only grown more pronounced, and this Definitive Edition eliminates nearly every weakness the game had.

Xenoblade Chronicles X isn’t a game for everyone. It doesn’t have the kind of guided story a lot of RPGs do, and its dense systems can be a lot to digest. But it’s a game with a wholly unique vision, and only gets better the more time you put into it. It’s hard to think of a bigger high note the Nintendo Switch could be going out on.

10/10

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition launches on March 20 for Nintendo Switch.

INVERSE VIDEO GAME REVIEW ETHOS: Every Inverse video game review answers two questions: Is this game worth your time? Are you getting what you pay for? We have no tolerance for endless fetch quests, clunky mechanics, or bugs that dilute the experience. We care deeply about a game’s design, world-building, character arcs, and storytelling come together. Inverse will never punch down, but we aren’t afraid to punch up. We love magic and science-fiction in equal measure, and as much as we love experiencing rich stories and worlds through games, we won’t ignore the real-world context in which those games are made.