It's Something About This Planet: What Makes Xenoblade Chronicles X Such a Special Game

Ten years on from its original release on Wii U in 2015, Xenoblade Chronicles X confidently stands as one of the greatest instances of open world game design. Its 2025 rerelease on Nintendo Switch has breathed new life into the game, garnering the attention of a new generation of players that can discover Xenoblade Chronicles X’s unique, brilliant magic. // Image: Nintendo

Every creator, regardless of what they make, shares a common goal: make something special; make something deeply meaningful to at least a single person. Many people turn to writing, creating art, making music, developing games, or embarking on any creative journey because doing so makes them happy. Perhaps more important than that, though, their hope is also that whatever they put out into the world will bring a smile to someone else’s face, perhaps even making a positive difference on their life. Likewise, people choose to read books, watch movies, examine works of visual art, play games, and engage with any form of creative expression because doing so brings them ideas that expand their perspective. Doing so brings them joy. And doing so can and often does change the way they navigate their lives.

I am of the opinion that every person’s life is altered by certain crucial works of art throughout their life. How they think about the world, what profession they want to go down, core values and beliefs they have, and how they want to engage with the world - all of these things are molded by critical works of art that a person engages with at pivotal junctures in their life. A person doesn’t choose what works of art that changes their life - the works of art choose them. And when such a thing happens, a person’s life is never the same. Deeply meaningful art is as personal to one’s own lived experience as it is a point of no return. When something so meaningful has touched your life and has changed aspects of the ways you think and choose to live your life, there’s no way to go back.

Creators understand the weight of this. Every writer, every game developer, every musician, every artist understands the effect that their work can have on people, because they themselves have been the recipients of such life-changing experiences. Creators understand that their work can inspire and positively change the lives of the people their creations reach - this is what empowers artists to reach their greatest potential. Through wanting to create art as inspiring as what has inspired them in the first place, artists can create future generations of artists. Ideas, stories, and values can be passed on from one era to the next. All of this starts with meaningfully crafted art.

Like any other creator, I have certain works of art that have significantly altered the path I have decided to walk in life. There are various songs, books, movies, and video games that have particularly inspired me to walk down the path of a writer primarily pursuing work in tech, game development, and localization - but one game, in particular, stands out as being one of the most decisive turning points in my life; a game that inspired my creativity so much that I still find myself inspired by different aspects of it over ten years after its original release.

That game is Xenoblade Chronicles X.

It can sound like hyperbole to hear me say that this single video game completely set my life on a different trajectory. It can sound over-dramatic to hear that it has significantly informed my own career, writing, and game development ambitions. It can sound unbelievable to hear me say that this game has encouraged so much creativity within me whose effects can still be seen through the writing I am doing right now. But it’s all true. My story with Xenoblade Chronicles X is an integral part of my life journey thus far - it’s certainly one that plays an essential role in the way I creatively express myself.

Truthfully, this has been a difficult blog post for me to write. Not because I struggle to think about what to say about Xenoblade Chronicles X and my experience with the game, but because I feel the need to do justice to my experience with this game. Beyond exploring my story with this game, I also need to discuss what makes this game so special to begin with and what makes it stand out from so many other RPGs of its ilk. This is as much of a personal exploration of my affinity with Xenoblade Chronicles X as it is a thorough examination of what makes this deeply flawed video game such an incredible experience that still holds up a decade on from its original release on Wii U. The game’s recent rerelease on Nintendo Switch, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, has given me the perfect excuse to replay and rediscover this game’s unequaled creative vision.

There’s an overwhelming amount to explore here - a fun sentence to write considering that it’s likely the first thought that enters players’ minds when they step onto the planet Mira, Xenoblade X’s massive, open world. Let’s unpack what makes Xenoblade Chronicles X such a special experience, why and how it inspired me and my creative journey, and what about the game has kept creatively motivating me all these years later.

Mira, literally the Greek root for “wonder”, is the name of the incredibly realized, vibrant world of Xenoblade Chronicles X. This planet makes for one of the greatest open worlds ever crafted, not just because of how alive it feels, but how it blends otherworldliness and familiarity to create an unforgettable setting. // Image: Nintendo

Xenoblade Chronicles X was first announced in a Nintendo Direct in January 2013, only two months after the launch of the ill-fated Wii U. For the first year and a half of the game’s mysterious existence, it was known only as “X” and was marketed as a spiritual successor to the developer Monolith Soft’s previous game, Xenoblade Chronicles. While this new game was not going to be connected to the previous game story-wise, it would be an evolution of the gameplay systems introduced in the original Xenoblade.

During Nintendo’s Digital Event at E3 2014, the game was officially titled as Xenoblade Chronicles X, slated for a release in 2015, a delay from the game’s original goal of launching in 2014. Later that year, the game would lock in an April 2015 release date in Japan. As was the norm for the games industry as of the mid 2010s, the game was not going to receive a simultaneous international launch. For JRPGs with massive amounts of text and voice acting contained in cutscenes, dialogue, quest information, UI elements, item descriptions, and more, the localization process into other languages is a gargantuan effort. Unfortunately, it took time for the industry to pivot towards integrating the localization process during a game’s general development progress.

From the 1980s to the 2010s, many text-heavy games would take months or even years to release outside of their native country (if they even released internationally at all). Even then, it wouldn’t be until around the late ‘90s and early 2000s when localization started being tackled more professionally and substantially. The norm during the ‘80s and ‘90s for RPGs being localized was for publishers to simply put a translator or two on a project and give them a tight deadline to convert a game’s entire script, UI elements, and more for a Western release. As games grew in size, so too did development teams and budgets. As those numbers increased, localization efforts and resources also grew, making localization become a larger aspect of game development altogether. Localization being more integrated into a game’s development process has led to less instances of games being released in only a single territory. Likewise, gaps between releases in different territories have gradually slimmed down to the point where they are today, where nearly all games coming from major publishers now launch around the world simultaneously.

Although the game released in Japan in April of 2015, Xenoblade Chronicles X featured a comprehensive localization effort in collaboration effort between Nintendo of America and 8-4 that resulted in a roughly eight-month-long gap between the game’s Japanese and Western release. Beyond the massive volume of text that needed to be translated and edited into English, Xenoblade X’s localization also brought with it changes to the names of continents, changes to certain armor sets for underage characters, and removals of certain sliders in the game’s character creation menu. Xenoblade Chronicles X’s localization process was long and brought with it controversy among certain circles, but I’m highlighting the game’s localization for the primary reason that it would go on to play a pivotal role in my attention towards and my admiration of localization - something I’ll touch on later in this piece.

December of 2015 finally saw the Western release of Xenoblade Chronicles X, nearly three years after its initial announcement. Truthfully, I couldn’t have been more excited for the game. When I watched the game’s first trailer in 2013, I was a high school student undergoing the mental wall that was taking my first few college-level courses. I suddenly found myself getting drowned in homework and exam prep - to the point where I suddenly had a lot less free time on top of already having a subpar social life. My teenage years were ones where I began to feel loneliness and depression creeping into my life, but video games played a pivotal role in helping me keep my head above water. Put simply, video games constantly gave me something to look forward to. Even on my worst days, I could remind myself that life was worth living because there were games coming out in the coming months or years that I knew I was going to enjoy.

One of those games that kept up my excitement was Xenoblade Chronicles X. Earlier in my teenage years, I played through the original Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii and fell in love with just about everything to do with that game. From the captivating world of the Bionis and Mechonis to the lovable cast of characters to the deep and engaging combat system, the original Xenoblade was, in many ways, a game that felt tailored to my own interests.

Even by that point in my life, I had cemented JRPGs as my favorite video game genre. Moreover, I had really gained an admiration for games that sought to tell deeply meaningful stories through creating ambitious stories and engaging gameplay systems.

What made Xenoblade so especially captivating to me was its incredibly rewarding exploration and combat. Xenoblade’s unique world is conceptually interesting, but what transforms a great video game world in theory into reality is how the game encourages exploration. Sure, players can grind for experience points to level up through battling enemies over and over, but Xenoblade was one of the first games I played where exploring the game’s world was something that actively and consistently rewarded the player with experience points, achievements, and awe-inspiring views of the game’s beautiful world. Therefore, even just walking around towards anything the piquing one’s own interest can lead to meaningful rewards. Spotting a cavern in the distance, charting a path to get to that cavern, walking past high-level enemies can all eventually lead to the player finding a Secret Area - a scenic location that gives the player tons of experience points and maybe even a Heart-to-Heart or two.

So much of Xenoblade’s world can be ignored if players are only interested in progressing through the main story, which makes exploring the game’s world that much more rewarding. The game doesn’t rely on planting markers along the map to signify potential points of interest - the player is simply encouraged to satiate their wanderlust for the sake of it. The game still has boundaries, of course. The game’s zone-based structure means that, even if areas are large, they aren’t interconnected and often only have one exit and entrance that connects to other zones.

Moreover, the player can’t go absolutely everywhere. The tall cliffs that arch far above the player’s head as they trek across the Bionis’ Leg, for example, aren’t platforms that the player can ever reach. But the sheer scale and degree of freedom that Xenoblade provides to its players is incredibly liberating and technically impressive. The idea that Monolith Soft accomplished creating a game on this massive scale on the Wii’s limited hardware makes for a game that always feels like its punching far above its weight. That ambition and that commitment to creating a larger-than-life world, story, and gameplay experience in spite of technical limitations is what made me fall in love with Xenoblade. That, in addition to the game’s countless other aspects that I adored, turned a game that I loved playing into one of my favorite games of all time.

New Los Angeles sits as Xenoblade Chronicles X’s primary base of operations, hosting the majority of the game’s quests. The single city creates a delightful contrast between the mundane familiarity of NLA and the hostility of Mira. // Image: Nintendo

When the game’s spiritual successor was announced and promised an even larger scale, complete with a fully open, interconnected world alongside the introduction of pilotable mechs that can fly through the world, I was mesmerized. With the more powerful hardware afforded by the Wii U, Monolith Soft was now empowered to make what, in many ways, was my dream game. Xenoblade Chronicles X’s marketing made it clear that Monolith Soft’s mission was to build upon the original Xenoblade through creating a massive RPG that combined the deep, customizable, and flashy combat style of JRPGs, the open-ended structure and focus on role-playing of Western RPGs, and even some multiplayer and UX elements evocative of MMORPGs to create a feature-rich RPG unlike any other. Additionally, it became clear that Monolith Soft was doubling down on making an incredibly dense world that constantly incentivizes and rewards player exploration just as they had done with the original Xenoblade Chronicles - but now the scale of the game’s world would be amped up significantly atop a new science-fiction setting where humanity has crash-landed on an alien planet. As a teenager that was getting into the mech genre of anime around the time of this game’s announcement, it all just seemed too good to be true.

After the game’s announcement informing me of Hiroyuki Sawano’s existence, I began listening to much of his music in my free time and even began watching many of the anime and J-dramas he made music for just because he made the music for them. Moreover, I found myself getting home everyday from school looking forward to seeing any updates on the game, going on message boards to theorize and speculate on what the game was doing. It was a much-needed distraction from the many chaotic elements of my life at that point. Put simply, the anticipation for Xenoblade Chronicles X consistently gave me something to look forward to, making the three-year-long wait agonizing but undeniably exciting.

When the game released in April of 2015 in Japan, I was on the precipice of graduating high school and cementing my plans to begin college later that year. It was admittedly tempting to watch streams and videos of the Japanese version of the game to satiate my then-bursting amount of anticipation, but I held off as much as I could. That didn’t stop me from importing the physical soundtrack for the game and listening to it for most of the summer and my first semester of college. The soundtrack cemented my love for Sawano’s work and still stands as having some of my favorite music made by the acclaimed composer. At last, in late 2015, I picked up the game for Wii U and ended up going on a journey that somehow held up to the monolithic expectations that I had built up after years of anticipation for the game. The game had ostensible flaws, but it lived up to the promises it made with its first trailer back in 2013. Despite its rougher edges, Xenoblade Chronicles X would mostly live up to this idea of a dream game for me, and a lot of that has to do with the game’s realization and fantastic execution of its world infused with mechs, sci-fi aesthetics and ideas, and points of interest begging to be explored. The wait was over, and my reward was an experience with a game that I likely won’t ever forget.

My wait for the Western release of Xenoblade Chronicles X took up the back half of my high school experience and the start of the college-going phase of my life. Now, I’m someone that is okay with not knowing too much about a game during its pre-release marketing cycle - in fact, I now rarely seek out additional information about games outside of events like Nintendo Directs, The Game Awards, and such, because I’ve developed an interest in knowing less about games before I play them if I can help it. Plus, I just generally have less free time to get in the weeds of hype cycles for games. My message board days are certainly behind me, yet the few years where I lived life like that were the years I was anticipating the release of Xenoblade X. For that reason, Xenoblade Chronicles X has this mystical nostalgia around it for me, as my relationship with the game also encapsulates a moment of my life where I had the interest, time, and ability to engage with a small but dedicated community excited for the game. The Xenoblade community, mind you, was quite small before 2017’s Xenoblade Chronicles 2 vastly increased the franchise’s visibility and reach. Getting to be part of Xenoblade’s community while it was still in its infancy is another special part of my personal relationship with this game and its legacy.

I share this preamble about my experience because I want to be transparent with the fact that I have a unique bias with this game. It means a lot to me, personally, and I want to make that evident immediately. I’m fully aware of the fact that, in spite of criticisms for the game that I’ll lay out later in this piece, I may seem irredeemably biased in favor of this game and therefore incapable of fairly creating a broader argument about what makes this game so special. However, I feel that it’s vital to recognize that our personal attachment to games and our critical assessment of those same games do not void each other out. I think it is equally important and valid to recognize what games personally mean to us as it is to critically recognize their strengths, weaknesses, and lessons they can teach to the rest of the industry from a more objective lens.

While Xenoblade X means a lot to me personally, I still find myself thinking about certain things that it accomplishes with its open world, traversal, side content, and combat that other games haven’t tried replicating or building upon. I’ve found myself looking for another experience that replicates the liberating freedom, customizability, and pure fun that Xenoblade Chronicles X exudes throughout its runtime. Truthfully, I’ve yet to find a game that scratches the unique itch that Xenoblade Chronicles X scratches, and I want to investigate why that is. I want to investigate what makes Xenoblade Chronicles X so unique and unlike any other RPG that has released since it originally came out in 2015. Xenoblade X has truthfully inspired me to work on writing, game development, and localization in an effort to eventually create a game that accomplishes a similar mission to Xenoblade Chronicles X.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last decade thinking about what makes Xenoblade X work as well as the aspects of the game that could be improved upon. As such, I feel that I’m uniquely equipped to determine and discuss Xenoblade Chronicles X and its unique accomplishments that are unlike that of any other game’s.

After my most recent playthrough of the game via the Nintendo Switch rerelease, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, I find myself thinking a lot about what fuels the game’s unique layer of fun. Upon reflection, I can’t help but think back on Elma’s last line of Chapter 12 - one that was also the final line of the original Wii U release: “…it’s this planet. It’s something about this planet”.

Xenoblade Chronicles X features various continents that all have a distinct visual identity while still contributing to the overall otherworldliness of Mira. Primordia, the game’s first continent, starts out as the most Earth-like continent, with later continents like Noctilum having a greater emphasis on the hostility, brutality, yet undeniable beauty of this alien planet. // Image: Nintendo

Xenoblade Chronicles X begins by setting the stakes for the adventure players will embark upon. Earth has been destroyed thanks to an ongoing war between an intergalactic crime syndicate known as the Ganglion and a mysterious alien or xenoform species known as the Ghosts. Despite efforts to evacuate the planet in the wake of this war, humanity is only able to send off a couple spaceships away from the Earth’s atmosphere from each major city. We follow the perspective of the White Whale, a ship departing from Los Angeles that manages to get past the chaos of the war before humanity’s home planet gets obliterated. After two years of drifting through space, the White Whale is attacked by the Ganglion, causing the White Whale to crash land on a nearby planet and the setting for the game’s adventure.

When the player first steps into the world from a stasis pod holding their created character, the player is confined to a narrow valley as they get their bearings on the basics of the game’s combat and mobility. Walking through this small, corridor-like valley gives a false impression of linearity as the player doesn’t have too many navigation options available to them. The mood of this opening section is remarkably dour, with a late-night heavy rain without any music standing in contrast to the original Xenoblade’s more bombastic opening gameplay section.

As the player walks to the top of a hill that takes them out of this linear valley, though, Xenoblade X shows off one of its most vital sequences in its entire 100+ hour runtime. The rain dissipates and the clouds disperse as the sun rises upon the horizon. The fog looming throughout the grasslands clears. What remains is a vast land brimming with wildlife, waterfalls in the distance, a massive overarching mountain with floating islands around it, plentiful beaches, an incredible amount of verticality to the land, and a massive colony surrounded by mysterious blue crystals - a contrast to the otherwise untamed, naturalistic greenery of the continent before the player. This beautiful introduction to the world that players will be exploring for the next hundred or so hours is capped off with an explanation from the game’s first party member, Elma: “We call this planet ‘Mira’. You won’t find it on any starchart. But it’s our new home”.

Starting an open world RPG with a linear section before letting the player run free in a massive world ripe for exploration isn’t a particularly new concept. The Elder Scrolls is perhaps most associated with this style of opening. In this Western RPG series, players often start the game by escaping imprisonment, often while going through an underground dungeon. After grasping these games’ primary mechanics in their opening dungeons or set pieces, they then reveal the open-ended world to the player and simply tell them to go wherever they want. Seeing Mira in this moment is Xenoblade Chronicles X’s interpretation of this idea for an opening to an open-world RPG, however its execution of the concept accomplishes something vital to the core of Xenoblade X’s gameplay experience: awe.

The best word to describe the world of Xenoblade Chronicles X is imaginative. The opening continent of Primordia is perhaps the most Earth-like in aesthetic and vibe, but even from the reveal of the vastness of Mira in this early-game cutscene, it’s clear that there’s a lot about the world that naturally grabs onlookers’ attention. There are natural pillars erected from the ground, there are floating islands near the peaks of various mountains, there’s a waterfall that, yes, has a cave behind it, and so much more. Mira lives up to its namesake. Sharing the namesake of the Greek root for “wonder”, Mira invites natural feelings of curiosity to the player.

From the moment the player gains control, they are given freedom as to how they can reach New Los Angeles, the game’s primary town and base of operations. Players can choose to take the high road, which provides a mostly straightforward path with low-level, docile monsters that won’t initiate combat against the player unless provoked, or they can choose to trek across the beaches and plains below - all featuring more dangerous creatures and avenues to get to NLA. The game presents countless ways to get to NLA from this point and simply tells the player “Go”.

It’s from this point that the player is empowered to engage in their curiosity. If they want to swim across the Bianho Lake to see what is behind the scenic waterfalls, they can do so. If they want to run along the beaches, see the continent of Primordia from practically beneath it, and even swim to the faraway islands off the southern coast of the continent, they can do that as well.

What makes Xenoblade Chronicles X’s initial push of freedom so liberating is that it immediately communicates how boundless this game’s world is. If players can see something in the distance, they can get to it. Oftentimes, this may include trying to survey the land and understand how best to navigate the environment and avoid triggering combat with significantly higher-level enemies, but this very process of cautious exploration is what makes roaming around Mira so fun. Primordia is significantly safer than the rest of the game’s continents, and yet it conveys a perfect balance of danger and enticing intrigue throughout its design that makes for an immediately immersive experience of exploration.

What exacerbates this exciting feeling of liberation that facilitates the curiosity of exploration is the lack of fall damage. Taking damage after falling a long distance is a mechanic that is used more often than not, even in other open world RPGs. Like practically every mechanic that can be implemented into a game’s design, there are many pros and cons to implementing fall damage into a game. On the positive side, it can make a game feel more realistic. Jumping off of a mountain and falling for a kilometer would realistically kill a person, and so, if a game is aiming to achieve immersion through realism, then it makes sense to implement features that facilitate that simulated realism.

From a design perspective, fall damage can also be used as a way to prevent players from navigating the world in particular ways. This ultimately gives the game developers more control over how players go about game worlds and informs players to be more cautious with how they navigate environments - this is likely the reason why many games, including other Xenoblade titles, implement fall damage. The main downside of fall damage, though, is that it naturally limits player freedom. Through creating situations where the player will always die, that naturally gives them less options for traversal and navigation.

Xenoblade Chronicles X’s decision to forgo fall damage is one that can initially seem insignificant but ultimately goes on to be an essential part of the game’s overall experience. Due to a lack of fall damage, there are no situations where players’ curiosity will be diminished. Players will never be in a situation where they think twice about jumping off a cliff to reach a lower area that catches their interest. Players will never be in a situation where they’re threatened with potential death just for satiating their curiosity. The only thing actually threatening players throughout the experience roaming through Mira are the powerful enemies that walk the land and some occasional environmental hazards such as Cauldros’ lava that the player then needs to figure out how to navigate around. Players only have as many options on how to navigate Mira as their imagination allows them to have. Because of that, the process of exploring Mira has a child-like wonder inherent to it - one that I’ve never seen replicated in another game.

In conjunction with the lack of ever taking damage even after taking massive falls, Xenoblade Chronicles X also arguably has one of the most satisfying jumps in any non-platforming-focused game. While standing still or walking forward, Xenoblade X’s jump feels mostly in line with other Xenoblade games’ jumps, however it’s when sprinting - a feature exclusive to X among the Xenoblade franchise - that Xenoblade X’s jump becomes something legendary. The controlled characters’ arms stretch towards the sky as they practically moon jump in an arc that gets substantial distance and height. Not only does the player maintain a great level of control during the jump, but the verticality afforded by the jump finds great utility when exploring Mira.

Mountains that may initially seem daunting for the player to climb practically turn into minigames as the player has to look for footholds to jump onto. Even landing on the smallest protruding rock can turn into a platform allowing the player to perform another jump and gain significantly more verticality when scaling a mountain. It’s undeniably “video game-y” in the sense that the jump acts as a great traversal and platforming tool that can be optimized by the player to reach certain areas in unique ways. There is no single, correct way to reach an area in Xenoblade Chronicles X, and that’s part of what makes exploring it feel so special. The incredibly satisfying and useful jump plays a large part in making this large world feel realizably conquerable.

Lastly, the lack of any kind of stamina system means that players can sprint endlessly. In a genre that typically gives players a finite resource of energy to sprint in order to encourage broader exploration to take place on mounts or vehicles, Xenoblade Chronicles X’s lack of any limitation on its movement options makes engaging with the world feel consistently freeing. While Xenoblade Chronicles X does, in fact, give players access to faster-moving vehicles to roam the world via Skells, roaming the world on-foot never feels like a compromised option once Skells become available. A large part of that is because players can freely run and jump across the land without any of the limitations that stamina or fall damage often imposes on player characters in other games.

Through the omission of common mechanics that impose limits on player exploration in addition to fast movement and versatile jumping movement, Xenoblade Chronicles X’s exploration truly feels like it centers on the player’s relationship with their curiosity of the game’s world above all else. Fall damage and stamina limitations would only mean that it would take longer for players to reach the destinations that catch their interest - omitting them ensures that nothing stands between the player and often captivating world that encourages them to satiate their curiosity.

On-foot mobility is incredibly satisfying, but it isn’t absolutely limitless. There will inevitably be instances where the player can see certain islands floating in the sky and can’t reach them on foot. Players may discover mystical set pieces such as the mysterious giant disc in Oblivia but can’t reach the top of it while exploring on foot. There will inevitably be instances where players can’t exactly explore the places they want to because of the inherent limitation of being a tiny person exploring a gargantuan setting. This is where Skells inevitably come in - mechs that build upon the combat and navigation options introduced to the player while exploring the world on foot. In time, the player will unlock not only Skells themselves that make way for faster and more efficient horizontal and vertical mobility, but also the Skell Flight Module - a device that gives the player complete, unrestricted freedom to explore Mira.

The rate at which players gain access to Skells and then gain access to the Flight Module feels intentionally drawn out. Players gradually unlock more movement and combat options as they invest more time and energy towards engaging in combat, quests, exploration, and all other activities on Mira. As the player invests more and more in the content and world that Xenoblade Chronicles X has to offer, they gradually get rewards that make the game’s world steadily more comfortable to roam around.

This gradual broadening of exploration and combat options given to the player aligns with the narrative’s concept of more comfortably exploring the world in time. Realistically, navigating through the world around us becomes a lot easier as we get to understand it more. We become more empowered to harness technology to navigate and explore a world once we understand the types of climates, terrain, weather, and geography that different parts of the world possess. The player gradually unlocks more ways to explore Mira as they come to intimately understand more and more of the world.

Because of the various on-foot mobility options afforded to the player, there aren’t too many instances where the player outright cannot reach somewhere on-foot, but those few instances do exist. Because of the rarity of these instances, players will store these instances in the back of their mind once they find another means of traversal (much like how players take mental note of areas they can’t reach in Metroidvanias, then think of returning to those areas once they acquire new items and upgrades). Once the player comes back to these few instances when they’ve unlocked the Skells and Flight Module, they’re left with an unbelievably satisfying payoff, as many of the game’s most hard-to-reach places often come with breathtaking views and exciting secrets to uncover.

One of Xenoblade Chronicles X’s most impressive feats is its ability to realize familiar types of settings in completely original ways. On the surface, Oblivia is a somewhat typical desert environment that has a river connecting its coastlines, but the presence of otherworldly giant discs infuses the area with a layer of mystery. This fuels the player’s imagination and curiosity. This only further incentivizes players to explore even more and uncover as much of the mysteries of this land as they can. // Image: Nintendo

It’s when gaining access to the Skell Flight Module, which, for me, took nearly 60 hours to do on my most recent playthrough, that Xenoblade Chronicles X fully realizes its exploration promise of allowing the player to go anywhere they want. Once they can fly, players can truly access every inch of Mira. They can go to the top of the mysterious disc in Oblivia and look out at the vast desert atop the area’s highest point. Likewise, they can fly across the chasm over a bottomless pit in Oblivia’s center and find hidden crannies underneath the main land that overlook the chasm. They can access the Divine Roost - an otherworldly section of Noctilum that’s distinct from the rest of the region, featuring a strange plant-like structure at its center, which houses various high-level enemies. Each and every corner of Mira is freely available for the player to explore, yet this privilege given to the player only feels as satisfying as it does because in large thanks to the effort player’s need to put in effort to gain access to that unrestricted freedom.

Exploration is an integral aspect of Xenoblade Chronicles X’s game design, but this aspect does not exist in isolation. In order to gain access to Skells in the first place, the player needs to complete a Normal Mission that tasks the player with completing tasks associated with each of BLADE’s eight divisions. In universe, it makes sense that BLADE, New Los Angeles’ government and military organization, tests the best of its combatants before they gain access to the mighty Skells. BLADE’s eight divisions represent different types of quests given to the player. Pathfinders are primarily responsible for quests related to installing FrontierNav Probes and maximizing the amount of Credits and Miranium that’s garnered from each Probe. Harriers are responsible for defeating Tyrants (X’s version of Unique Monsters from other Xenoblade games, complete with names that get creative with their use of adjectives). Curators are responsible for handling the day-to-day issues of NLA’s civilians, and so on. BLADE is a wide-reaching organization that gives focus to all sorts of different types of objectives and stories.

To get a Skell License, players have to complete various quests, all of which task the player with interacting with different activities in the game. The player will need to thoroughly explore Mira to install FrontierNav Probes. They’ll have to defeat various types of regular enemies as well as certain Tyrants. They’ll have to complete certain Normal Missions that help bring the people of NLA closer together. They’ll have to navigate the planet to find various types of collectables and treasures. All of this is undeniably a lot of work that the player has to put in, but not only are these various activities fun in their own right - they all serve as steppingstones toward obtaining a Skell License. By the time the player finally completes all requisites to getting the Skell License and step into their first Skell, it feels like a massive weight has been lifted off of their shoulders. They’ve put in the work to be a significant member of BLADE and have helped NLA establish itself as a more prosperous, peaceful version of itself. The reward is an incredibly powerful tool that makes exploration quicker, more efficient, and most vitally, a consistently fun experience. By the time the player gets the ability to fly in their Skell, it genuinely feels like the player has earned their right to fly through the skies.

Quests play an integral role in contextualizing exploration. The game’s Basic Missions do a solid job at incentivizing players to run through different parts of the planet to find different collectables, defeat different kinds of enemies, and so on. As their name suggests, though, Basic Missions only serve as a surface-level context - they mostly work as a “I might as well complete these while I do other things” type of quest. The primary means of contextualization that quests provide is through the plentiful Normal Missions and Affinity Missions. Both of these types of quests tell surprisingly involved stories that inject the world of Mira and the city of NLA with character, comedy, tragedy, mystery, and fun. For the most part, quest objectives mostly involve talking to NPCs (complete with some solid role-playing elements via dialogue/action choices), defeating certain monsters, collecting certain materials, or going to certain places. While the quests don’t innovate in terms of what players do in them, Missions fulfill an essential role in that they season the game with various micro-stories that flesh out the world and characters of Xenoblade Chronicles X while also giving the player a compelling reason to roam through the world.

Hope’s first Affinity Mission serves as a great illustration of this. Xenoblade Chronicles X features over 20 playable characters that can join the avatar character’s party - all of which have one or more Affinity Missions that focus on establishing and developing their character arcs. Being one of the first Affinity Missions made available to the player that results in recruiting a new party member, Hope’s first Affinity Mission immediately establishes Hope as a generous character - one that’s willing to part with treasured personal belongings of hers if it means that she can help others around her. This quickly establishes Hope as an endearing, likeable character before a Nopon named Lularita urges Hope to assist with destroying monsters threatening the Drongo Caravan in Cauldros. Hope joins the avatar character in their journey to Cauldros to destroy these monsters.

This Affinity Mission provides a strong, storied context to travel from NLA to Cauldros - the game’s northernmost continent. Because of the game’s open-ended nature, there’s no guarantee that players will have been to Cauldros before initiating this quest. Since the game prevents players from accepting other Affinity Missions or Story Missions while currently undertaking an Affinity Mission, players are effectively locked into this questline before they can proceed with the main story or other Affinity Missions. In my most recent playthrough of the game via Definitive Edition, I had only gone through Primordia, Noctilum, and Oblivia up to the point of accepting this Affinity Mission. In order to get to Drongo Caravan, I needed to venture through the north of Primordia, through all of Sylvalum, and up to the entrance of Cauldros. This effectively meant that I needed to walk through an entire continent that I hadn’t even entered up to this point of the game just to get to my quest objective.

I went on to accept various Basic Missions for Sylvalum (the Basic Mission board thankfully informs the player about which continent is associated with each Basic Mission), then headed out towards Sylvalum. Upon my arrival to the continent of silver trees, I then prioritized getting through Sylvalum while installing as many FrontierNav Probes as I could along the way. Of course, as I installed more probes, I gained access to more Segments on the map to complete.

Beyond featuring a map filled with secrets to explore, each continent on Mira and district of NLA is divided into hexagonal Segments, each featuring something that can be completed within that Segment that, when completed, raise that continent or district’s Survey Rate. Some Segments require defeating a Tyrant in the area, others require opening a treasure somewhere in the Segment’s jurisdiction, and so on. Raising each area’s Survey Rate does more than just give players a dopamine rush by seeing a number go up - they contribute to an overall Mira Survey Rate that the player needs to raise to make main story progress. New to Definitive Edition, hitting Survey Rate thresholds also give substantial rewards for every 5% Survey Rate milestone for each area. Because of that, every activity that the player completes is making progress in some way, creating a sense of constant satisfaction that the player is always moving forward in some capacity.

As I made my way through Sylavalum, I became exposed to more available Segments that I could add to my overall Survey Rate. I ended up killing various Tyrants, hunting down certain Treasures hidden in the environment, and generally exploring the area and fighting enemies as I saw fit. I also naturally completed Basic Missions along this journey, consistently rewarding with me additional funds I could spend on new equipment and, eventually, Skells. By the time I finally reached Cauldros via the northern end of Sylvalum, I had spent over three hours simply going through various different parts of Sylvalum, getting distracted by different points of interest that caught my attention. I had navigated through areas ripe with high-level enemies just to complete Segments that were possible for me to complete. Most of all, though, I let my curiosity about the world overtake my worry to complete Hope’s Affinity Mission in a timely manner. I was simply allowed to go about the world at the pace that made the most sense to me - and that freedom afforded to me ended up in hours-long adventures where I fought enemies, unearthed treasures, and discovered secret areas in a way that made me genuinely lose track of time. After exploring and surveying Sylvalum, I got to do the same to a more limited extent with Cauldros, before finally resuming Hope’s Affinity Mission and completing the Mission’s associated quest objectives.

Xenoblade Chronicles X works as well as it does because it thoroughly understands that exploration in isolation is not enough to make such a process meaningful, rewarding, and fun. The game smartly implements hundreds of quests that take the player to so many different corners of the world, all providing small-but-effective stories that make the world feel meaningfully lived in. Beyond the otherworldly points of interest that will inevitably grab the attention of players, Mira is stacked with activities to do thanks to the plethora of Segments to complete, giving the player smaller objectives to complete in each section of the game’s many areas. This, in my mind, is a great solution to the map-marker issue that many open-world RPGs of this type typically suffer from.

Colloquially known as the “Ubisoft-style open world”, many games with an open-ended design such as this, especially around the time of Xenoblade X’s original 2015 release, opt to put markers around the game’s map to illustrate just how much stuff there is to do in a game’s open world. This is often done to give direction to players by giving them a checklist of sorts to make sure they know how much content there is to complete in every part of the game’s world. The primary issue with this design approach is that it’s exhausting and visually messy. A game can be filled with things to do, but when everything is laid out in front of the player of how much stuff there is to do in an open world, it often causes option paralysis of the player being overwhelmed with options. Oftentimes, players may find some of these checklist activities to be more enticing than others, meaning that they’ll choose to complete certain objectives over others. This means that, even if the player completes many activities in a game’s open world, they may continue to see markers in an open world denoting what they still have to do. This all can make the player feel like they’re in a revolving door of content, some of which may seem menial to the player.

Xenoblade Chronicles X simplifies this significantly by only having single activities for each Segment in its world. Just because the player defeated a Tyrant in an area that completed the Segment in order to contribute the Survey Rate, that doesn’t mean that the player has seen or done everything there is to do or see in that Segment. The Segment is simply an entrée of what’s available in a section of the game’s map, but it isn’t the entire menu. If the player only wants the entrée, they can complete the Survey requirement for the Segment and move on, but if they want the entire menu of what’s in that Segment, they can diligently explore the area and follow their curiosity and wonder to uncover whatever secrets that may be awaiting them in that Segment. The use of the Survey Rate system is a subtle but smart workaround for solving an issue that continues to be prevalent in this style of RPG. It’s a mechanic that can and should be adopted and built upon by other games that tackle similar volumes of available content.

If you can see it, you can go there - such is the mantra that Xenoblade Chronicles X abides by. Few games give the player this much freedom to explore wherever their heart and curiosity wishes to take them. The first flight the player takes into Primordia is a magical moment - one that cements Xenoblade Chronicles X as an undoubtedly special experience. // Image: Nintendo

As I’ve illustrated with my story of completing Hope’s Affinity Mission, it’s easy to get sidetracked in Xenoblade Chronicles X, and that’s a testament to how enticing a lot of the game’s content feels to the player. Over the last decade, we’ve seen certain open-world games come out that receive heavy praise for having this very quality. Games like Elden Ring and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are both widely celebrated, award-winning titles that both create immersive worlds filled with things to do in them. More than anything, though, these games have garnered massive audiences because they promise and deliver an adventure filled with things to get distracted by. I’ve heard countless stories of people playing Breath of the Wild in which they intended to go down one path, but began walking down a completely different path because they spotted a Shrine in the distance, only to then go down a rabbit hole that delayed their originally planned objective for at least a couple hours.

The success of these games prove that there’s a genuine demand for players to get lost in immersive worlds, which makes it a tad frustrating to see Xenoblade Chronicles X, a game that achieves this quality with flying colors, rarely ever get credited and recognized as being one of the few games that make distractions some of the most fun moments of an adventure. A large part of that is the undeniable fact that Xenoblade Chronicles X struggled to reach the hands of many players due to being originally released on the struggling Wii U. Even then, Xenoblade was still a niche franchise that hadn’t entirely proven itself to the wider video game landscape. It wouldn’t be until the Nintendo Switch generation that the Xenoblade IP would garner wider critical and commercial acclaim. With the release of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in 2017, Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition in 2020, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 in 2022 (alongside XC2 and XC3’s respective expansions), the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise has now grown into one of the most acclaimed modern JRPG franchises.

With that acclaim has come a recognition of what the series consistently does well: great storytelling, deep combat systems, plentiful side quests, and immersive exploration. The Nintendo Switch generation started approaching its twilight period by the time Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition was announced - a Wii U-to-Switch port that many, myself included, were convinced was never going to happen. The game now being available on a successful platform alongside the fact that Xenoblade is a much more widely recognized franchise means that Xenoblade X and its incredible feats in exploration, combat, and questing can now be enjoyed by a larger audience.

Playing through Definitive Edition marks my fourth-ever playthrough of the game. Despite already being intimately familiar with the game’s map, geography, and secrets, I still managed to find myself getting lost and distracted with the various points of interest and multitude of quests to complete throughout my entire playthrough of X. There’s a real staying power in Xenoblade Chronicles X’s world that entices players to want to continue uncovering more of the world - a lot of that is due to the fact that there can be new surprises, new quests, new treasures, new collectables, new monsters to fight, and new discoveries to make around practically every corner. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its sequel Tears of the Kingdom get this particular praise a lot as well.

This mutual praise makes a lot of sense, though, given that Monolith Soft, the Xenoblade developer, assisted with the development of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. In particular, Monolith Soft designed the iteration of Hyrule used for the two Switch-era 3D Zelda games. The attention to detail, visual variety, and geographical diversity of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom’s world is a large part of what makes completing Shrines, Temples, and side quests so intoxicatingly fun in both of those games. The world of these games naturally invites players to go on countless diversions in an order and path unique to every single person playing those games. This, in turn, creates a sense of adventure that feels unique to every player - and that sense of adventure tailoring differently to every player’s experience is the special sauce makes those games so endearingly fun and special to so many people.

Xenoblade Chronicles X not only achieved this very same feat nearly two years before Breath of the Wild’s 2017 release, but I would argue that X still manages to be Monolith Soft’s best instance of cultivating adventures through their brilliantly designed worlds. A large reason for that comes back to the idyllic freedom afforded to the player that only gets built upon as the player gains access to Skells and the Flight Module. By being able to go anywhere, players can truly go on a globe-spanning adventure that feels entirely unique to the way they want to navigate the world, to the order they want to complete Missions, and to the way and rate at which they want to complete Segments throughout Mira. It is simply impossible for two players to go on adventures through Mira that look similar to each other - there are so many different approaches to exploring the world, completing objectives, and building one’s party through the game’s plentiful and customizable RPG systems that makes every playthrough of Xenoblade Chronicles X feel entirely distinct. I think that’s a massive reason as to why I was still able to find myself going down hours-long rabbit holes where I kept getting distracted by different objectives and points of interest.

There’s just so much to do in this game, yet there’s so many different ways you can go about doing those things that it genuinely feels like the possibilities are endless. That, in my mind, is the very same secret sauce that makes Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom so special to so many people. Xenoblade Chronicles X simply delivers that experience on a greater scale thanks to the game’s emphasis on complete player freedom, incredible amounts of quests and FrontierNav Segments to complete, and a deep, complex combat system that makes fighting enemies feel consistently challenging and rewarding.

Therein lies the key that makes Xenoblade Chronicles X work as well as it does, and what takes the game from being one that I deeply enjoy playing to one that I actively think is a special experience that deserves to be enjoyable by as many people as possible. Xenoblade X creates an interconnected relationship between its exploration, combat, RPG mechanics, and questing systems that collaborate with each other in ways that keep the experience consistently refreshing. Moreover, this relationship of mechanics constantly gives the player the assurance that they always have something to work towards. Even if the player is just running around Mira and discovering new areas and landmarks, they are still garnering experience points and rank points through discoveries that improve their levels and ranks for classes, respectively. Moreover, even if the player isn’t completing any quests or selling any of their unused equipment as they focus on defeating enemies in a new area, the player is still making money from their FrontierNav Probes they’ve installed throughout the world, which give the player funds, Miranium, and other resources for every couple minutes played. Players may focus on completing side quests, but doing so will inevitably cause them to explore new areas, fight new kinds of enemies, and acquire more resources they can use to develop their characters and engage with the game’s deeper RPG mechanics.

This interconnected relationship ensures that all parts of Xenoblade Chronicles X’s gameplay experience are equally engaging and meaningful. No matter what activity the player focuses on, they are slowly but surely gaining resources that will be useful to them in one aspect of the game’s different facets. This creates a perpetual feeling of making progress to the player, which is a deeply satisfying phenomenon that very few games meaningfully provide. Through always feeling as though they’re always making progress at something, whether that’s through exploration, getting stronger via levelling up or increasing ranks in the player’s assigned class, getting Battle Points to level up Arts and Skills, getting resources to craft new weapons or Skells - the player is put in a relationship with the game where they are encouraged to continue doing whatever they want in the game at whatever pace they’re comfortable with. This comfort makes the overwhelming amount of things to do in Xenoblade Chronicles X never actually feel overwhelming to the player. Because the player is always making progress towards something, the massive wealth of content to tackle in the game always feels conquerable. The player is always making progress to complete different aspects of the game, and that unique sense of constant progression is what helps make Xenoblade Chronicles X an incredibly special experience - one that, despite its massive size, never feels exhausting to get through.

That lack of exhaustion is a rarity in open-world games. I recall my playthrough of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth in 2024 - a game I thoroughly enjoyed, but one I definitely felt fatigued by towards the end of the game. The reason for my exhaustion with Rebirth had a lot to do with the fact that some of the game’s activities to facilitate in its open world didn’t feel entirely connected to other aspects of the game. While it’s neat to do timed button press challenges to unlock more summons, doing so doesn’t necessarily make me feel like I’m making significant progress in other ways. Rebirth is still a game I loved my time with, but there was some relief I felt when I felt that I was approaching the end of the game. Not all aspects of the game felt tightly interwoven in a way that made me feel I was always making progress in the game. The lack of such a thing can still a result in a game that I loved playing (to the point of being my favorite game of 2024 ), but prevents it from being a game that I consider to be deeply special. Over a decade after its original release, Xenoblade X continues to be special because of how it always makes me feel like I’m moving forward in a meaningful capacity.

Even when I just want to take my Skell and fly around the world - something that I find to be deeply soothing and fun, especially given the bop that plays while flying -, I’m still making progress. Even when the player is just doing something because they simply like the spectacle that comes out of it, they’re still making progress. That, to me, plays an integral role in making a game transition from being lovable to downright special.

Xenoblade Chronicles X builds upon the combat system introduced in the first Xenoblade Chronicles, implementing additional features like secondary cooldowns, Soul Voices, which are the game’s primary means of healing party members, and the innovative, overpowered mechanic that is Overdrive - a system that, if mastered, can see players deal massive damage in perpetuity. // Image: Nintendo

In 2012, Monolith Soft conducted an internal interview series where they discussed their ambitions for their upcoming projects. In part of this interview series, programmer Michihiko Inaba shared that his wish was for Monolith Soft to become a pioneer among Japanese game development studios. “I’d like to make an HD game that will wow the players,” Inaba says. “I want to show that Japan can still keep up with the USA when it comes to next gen technology. Our goal is to become something like the developers of the Fallout series, Bethesda Softworks”.

Given that this quote comes from late 2012, it’s important to be mindful of the fact that this quote is in reference to Bethesda circa the early 2010s when they were hot off the heels of the releases of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout 3 not long before - two games that deeply influenced how role playing games were looked at in the mainstream. Wanting to be like arguably the biggest RPG developer in the world at the time is an understandable goal. Given that Xenoblade Chronicles X was likely developed in its entirety with this Bethesda inspiration in mind, it’s clear to see part of Monolith Soft’s western RPG influence. Xenoblade X features an open-ended experience that encourages players to embark upon adventures that feel entirely their own - something that many roleplay-focused Western RPGs tend to emphasize. Likewise, Xenoblade Chronicles X features moments akin to those in Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim, in which each of those games feature linear openings sections before eventually leading to an instance where the training wheels come off and the player is exposed to just how vast and open the game’s world truly is. In that sense, the Bethesda influence is clear in Xenoblade Chronicles X, however Monolith Soft builds upon this influence in a key way that makes it feel distinct from Bethesda’s efforts around this time period.

A criticism I’ve consistently felt towards The Elder Scrolls, in particular, is that of level scaling. Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim all feature enemies that scale with the player’s level. Since the player is empowered to be able to go anywhere in these games and navigate the world in a way unique to their individual playthrough, this creates a potential issue where the player may become underleveled or overleveled relative to the enemies that populate certain areas of the game. Weaker enemies in one area may encourage the player to explore said portion of the map earlier on in their adventure while stronger, more dangerous enemies in another area may encourage the player to visit that part of the game’s world later on in their adventure. This segmentation of difficulty creates a degree of linearity that Bethesda’s flagship games are largely a rejection of. As such, Bethesda often implements level-scaling as a means of circumventing this potential issue.

Level-scaling means that all enemies that the player can encounter effectively level up alongside the player - as the player becomes stronger, so too do the enemies they fight against. This prevents the player from ever feeling too weak or too strong to travel through a certain area, which facilitates a gameplay experience that never makes them feel like they’re in particular danger. While this is done to make the player never feel like there is a single “correct” path to take through a game’s world, level scaling has the inherent consequence of creating a world that feels overly accommodating to its players. Players can never truly be intimidated by certain regions of the world. That lack of intimidation creates a degree of safety when navigating these worlds that ultimately downplays the threat that in-game worlds can potentially impose.

Xenoblade Chronicles X vehemently rejects this design approach, and the game is significantly better off for it. Unlike the games put out by one of its Western inspirations, Monolith Soft has chosen to craft a world that features vibrant and diverse ecosystems that exist independently of the player’s relative power. Even in the starting continent of Primordia, the player is not going to exclusively run into low-level enemies to facilitate an easier time leveling up in the early game. The player will inevitably run into enemies over forty levels higher than them, including massive dinosaurs drinking from Bianho Lake not far from where the player first discovers the open world of Mira. There are even Tyrants like the Lv. 91 Luciel, the Eternal that require late game Skells and optimized equipment to effectively fight against. As the player continues to trek through Primordia, they’re inevitably going to find themselves running away from incredibly powerful enemies that can likely wipe out the player’s party in a single attack. Players will inevitably die in many of these instances and learn to navigate the world in such a way that allows them to avoid unwinnable encounters with powerful enemies.

On Mira, safety is never a guarantee. The main story and the overwhelming majority of the game’s quests consistently reinforce the fact that Mira is a brutal, unforgiving planet with vicious wildlife that pose a consistent threat against the people of NLA. The player is never truly safe, and therefore, they need to consistently keep their wits about them and navigate the world with caution. “Discretion is the better part of valor,” Elma often says, and it’s a quote widely applicable to the omnipresent threat of danger that Mira consistently provides. Players often need to balance their curiosity and wanderlust with their understanding of what they can and cannot go up against in battle. Slowly but surely, though, the tides begin to shift in the player’s favor. As the player engages in more exploration, completes more quests, and defeats more enemies, they gradually become stronger, unlock more Classes that give them more combat capabilities, and become threatened by less of the game’s hostile indigens.

Since there are low-level and high-level enemies present in each of the game’s continents, players are still unrestricted with where they can travel to in the game - they just need to be mindful to avoid the hostile enemies that will initiate combat with them if players aren’t careful with where they go. As they get stronger, the number of areas in which players need to be careful gradually shrinks, making more of the world feel like less of a threat. It’s important to note, though, that even as the player gets stronger, the consistent threat that Mira provides never goes away. There will still be instances over 100 hours into the game where the player will find themselves getting humbled by some of the game’s highest-level enemies that roam the planet. Even at their strongest, the player is never 100% safe, and such a thing is fitting given the narrative focus on Mira being a dangerous new home for humanity. Despite its inherent danger, Mira is conquerable through discretion and triumph, causing level and rank progression to become yet another key factor in making players’ progression feel constant and ever-satisfactory.

While I’ve focused a lot of my conversation thus far around the game’s exploration and questing, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t much to talk about regarding the game’s combat - quite the opposite, in fact. Xenoblade Chronicles X features some of the deepest combat I’ve experienced in any RPG, and a lot of that has to do with the build variety inherent in the game’s combat system as well as the unique mechanics that X brings to the table. Many of Xenoblade X’s mechanics, such as Soul Voices and Overdrive, are admittedly complicated and overwhelming at first, but when mastered, they come together to form a battle system that leaves a massive amount of room for player expression, experimentation, and customization.

At a fundamental level, Xenoblade Chronicles X builds upon the original Xenoblade Chronicles’ combat system. Like that game, X allows each character to assign eight Arts on their Battle Palette - active abilities that perform attacks, provide buffs onto party members, inflict debuffs and status ailments on enemies, and so on. After being used, Arts go on a cooldown before they can be used again. When they aren’t triggering Arts, characters perform auto-attacks, making inflicting damage ever-consistent while in battle. New to X is the inclusion of secondary cooldown. If players choose not to use an Art right as it becomes available, it will begin a second cooldown that, when used, will have additional effects. Certain attacks may have a stronger variant when used after a secondary cooldown versus a regular cooldown. Other Arts can immediately be used twice in a row after achieving a secondary cooldown. It’s a smart expansion of the original Xenoblade’s use of Art cooldowns that makes players strategize if they want to use Arts as soon as possible or hold off on them to reap the benefits of secondary cooldowns in order to get stronger combat options. This small change leads to a surprising amount of micro-decision making on the player’s part throughout combat.

Another addition to X’s combat system is the differentiation between melee and ranged weapons. At any point, the player can switch between melee and ranged combat weapon types, which allow different Arts to resume their secondary cooldown, among other benefits. Moreover, this causes offensive Arts to be split into two types: yellow Arts for ranged attacks and orange Arts for melee attacks. The original Xenoblade featured different colors for different types of Arts to facilitate the game’s Chain Attack system that rewarded players for consecutively using Arts of the same type. X continues to color-code its various types of Arts, but for two newly introduced mechanics.

The first of these mechanics is the Soul Voice system, the game’s primary means of healing. Whenever certain conditions are met in battle, be it a critical hit landing, a status ailment being inflicted, or running in combat for a certain amount of time, Arts of a particular color will begin to glow. When selecting a glowing Art, the characters associated with the Soul Voice will heal and gain Affinity towards each other (a mechanic also returning from the original Xenoblade that unlocks additional Affinity Missions, among other benefits). While there are some Arts that can heal party members, the Soul Voice system is the primary method through which party members recover throughout a battle. Because of this, Xenoblade Chronicles X consistently rewards players that have a diverse set of Arts available to them, so as to have access to as many Soul Voices, and therefore as many healing opportunities, as possible.

The other mechanic that has Arts’ colors come into play is arguably Xenoblade X’s most complex yet satisfying mechanic to master: Overdrive. Triggering Overdrive starts a counter that goes up based on how many hits from Arts connect during Overdrive. Using different combinations of Arts creates different effects such as doubling the count of hits from the next Art used, increasing Tension Points (a resource used to trigger Overdrive, revive fallen party members, and use Tension Arts), strengthening damage done to enemy appendages, increasing EXP from battle, and more. More importantly, though, increasing the Overdrive counter increases damage output, reduces cooldown, and decreases enemy resistances to status ailments. On top of this, Overdrive also enables a tertiary cooldown, which often unlocks an even stronger variant of an Art.

Needless to say, there’s a lot going on during Overdrive. It’s a complex mechanic with a lot of moving parts during a relatively short period of time. On top of all this, it was a mechanic that was very poorly communicated in the original Wii U version of the game, meaning many players didn’t know how to utilize this mechanic that, when fully understood and utilized to its full potential, leads to some incredible strategies and damage output. Definitive Edition thankfully communicates and tutorializes Overdrive a lot more clearly to players, making the mechanic more accessible. Definitive Edition also adds the Quick Recast mechanic, which allows characters to quickly reuse Arts in exchange for a newly added finite resource, giving combat a lot less downtime, especially when the player acquires Energy Clips that expand the amount of times players can take advantage of Quick Recast.

There are various other aspects of combat that gives way to various different forms of customization. Different Classes give the player access to different weapons and therefore different Arts to play around with. This, in turn, effectively forces the player to try out different weapon types and Arts and develop a preferred playstyle - and since respeccing is always possible, that means that players never have to fear losing resources for trying a different build and different strategy altogether. There are additional mechanics like passive Skills taught by Classes as well as Augments that can completely transform how a player’s build comes together.

This isn’t even accounting for Skells, which add an additional layer of complexity on top of this game’s already-mechanically-dense combat. Gaining access to Skells further increases the amount of options available in battle, only broadening the degree of creativity and strategy that players can express. Different Skells and Skell Weapons possess different strengths, weaknesses, and Overdrive benefits. Some of the best Skells, when crafted, can completely redefine how players consider battle strategies.

The result of this layered combat system is that there’s an incredible amount of room for players to get creative with how they navigate developing their characters. Even among the highest echelon of gameplay, there is no single best possible build. At a foundational level, though, there’s just a lot for the player to wrap their minds around in relation to getting to grips with combat. This complex system inevitably brings about trial and error, experimentation, and trying out different build types to see what works best for the player’s preferred playstyle. With this many moving parts, combat simply leaves a lot to think about and take into consideration, and because of that, there’s a large skill ceiling to this combat system - the likes of which you rarely see in other RPGs.

This is another respect through which Xenoblade Chronicles X feels special - it takes the deep combat system established in the original Xenoblade and evolves it into something that inspires an incredible degree of creativity. This combat system demands attention, creativity, and critical thinking, and it never lets go throughout the game’s runtime. Taking full advantage of X’s deep combat requires the same imagination and wonder that the very setting of the game begets. There’s ostensibly a lot for the brain to chew on with this combat system, yet the way it is interwoven throughout the game makes combat consistent enough of a presence for players to be convinced that understanding all of combat’s layers is an investment worth making.

In my Definitive Edition playthrough, I ended up discovering entirely new build opportunities (partly in thanks to some of this version of the game’s newly added Arts) and found myself getting reinvested into this combat system all over again with ease. Such is the mark of an incredibly realized combat system. The complexity and many moving parts of Xenoblade Chronicles X’s combat system may be what scares off certain players, but if anything, the game’s complexity is a mark of how much trust the game puts in its players in understanding how to best take advantage and even exploit what is made available to them. There’s nothing else like X’s combat system, and I think there is still potential room to further enhance and refine what can be done with this system. A truly special game is one that feels remarkably well realized yet still has room to be built upon by the developers it inspires. Xenoblade X realizes that easily with its miraculous exploration, combat, and questing systems.

Settings like Cauldros show off the variety inherent in Mira’s visual design. Every area in Xenoblade Chronicles X inspires awe in different ways, often creating images in players’ minds that they’ll never forget. // Image: Nintendo

With all this said, I can’t let my bias get in the way of admitting the game’s many flaws. Despite all the praise I have for Xenoblade Chronicles X, I’d struggle to critically give it a 10/10 thanks to a few nagging issues that prevent the game from always being fun 100% of the time. The largest offender if this is when The Grind™ starts in the post-game. If the player wants to tackle some of the game’s highest level enemies and get a 100% Mira Survey Rate, then the player is going to have to not only repeatedly grind experience points from high level monsters, but they're going to have to farm for materials to craft some of the game’s best Skells, weapons, and equipment.

Put simply, this is an exhausting process that had the most room to be improved upon with Definitive Edition. While the Switch rerelease does a fantastic job at improving quest tracking and keeping track of materials needed to craft materials, the crafting itself remains virtually untouched. This means that players still have to spend loads of time refighting some of the multiplayer-enabled fights and wait for FrontierNav to provide Bonjellum - a resource essential for late-game crafting that is only given to the player in rare bursts. The amount of downtime explodes when trying to do everything that the game has to offer - while Definitive Edition cuts down on some of that downtime, there’s still a lot here that unfortunately rears its ugly head during the post-game.

Of course, Definitive Edition features more changes than just that of quest tracking. Besides the other additions I’ve already touched on throughout this piece, the most significant addition to Definitive Edition is that of the new story content that is included here. Like with 2020’s Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, X’s rerelease on Switch brings with it more narrative to chew on - something that’s desperately needed in X’s case. Beyond adding a massive final chapter to the game, X’s Definitive Edition also adds additional Affinity Missions, complete with three brand new characters that each bring more character development and worldbuilding to chew on.

This is an ideal opportunity to discuss Xenoblade Chronicles X’s story content altogether, as I have some thoughts that delve into spoiler territory. Xenoblade Chronicles X’s narrative often gets unfairly and unfavorably compared to the other Xenoblade games, all of which place a far greater emphasis on storytelling. X’s narrative isn’t necessarily worse than other games in its series - it’s just that it places emphasis on different aspects of storytelling. X doesn’t execute the Hero’s Journey to an incredible degree like the first Xenoblade nor does it implement tragic storytelling elements to break down concepts like cyclical violence as seen in Xenoblade 2 and 3. By such a metric, X has the weakest story in the series by far. But Xenoblade X clearly brings with it a mission that’s different than those of the numbered Xenoblade titles. What X accomplishes that the other games don’t is a greater emphasis on how smaller stories contribute to the greater world around the characters.

Affinity Missions end up having some of the most substantial narrative content in all of Xenoblade Chronicles X. Some Missions are funny and lighthearted while others are tragic and have devastating consequences. Regardless of their tone, all Affinity Missions do a great job at developing the game’s varied cast of characters and casts a spotlight on the different struggles one would have with abandoning Earth and establishing life on a new planet. Some characters have survivors’ guilt, while others want so desperately to create a status quo of normalcy on Mira, just for things to feel like they once were on Earth. Xenoblade Chronicles X’s writing is at its best when it depicts the different types of struggles that people go through when adapting to the traumas that have changed their lives forever.

Another aspect of Xenoblade X’s writing that I’ve come to very much admire is its handling of inter-species politics and collaboration. Xenoblade Chronicles X almost has a Star Trek-esque degree of optimism and idealism in relation to multiple alien races (xenoforms, as they’re referred to throughout the game) living in harmony with one another. This process is a bumpy one, as many quests explore the blatant xenophobia that different xenoforms have towards one another, but Xenoblade X often resolves these types of questlines through characters coming to a greater understanding of those that live differently than them. It’s this type of storytelling that the world truly needs more of, and when it sticks the landing, Xenoblade Chronicles X often tells meaningful, smaller-scale stories that smartly engage with different aspects of living on a whole different planet full of people that share so many differences yet also so many similarities.

It’s when Xenoblade Chronicles X tries to tell larger stories, though, that it stumbles over itself - an oddity considering this is something that other Xenoblade and Monolith Soft titles excel in doing. Despite having a fantastic setting and a good initial setup, Xenoblade X struggles with making a meaningful main narrative unfold despite having substantial stakes. The core plot of Xenoblade Chronicles X primarily revolves around humanity having to defend itself against a crime syndicate that’s but a small crumb of a larger intergalactic organization. Xenoblade X focuses on a betrayal that causes BLADE to get blindsided by the threat that the Ganglion impose on Mira and NLA. What makes this main narrative become one of the game’s greatest weaknesses is the lack of a strong antagonistic force.

The character development needed to add more weight to player’s desire to see the game’s cast triumph over the threat placed against them is largely covered in Affinity Missions, so the lack of significant character moments among the game’s core cast is somewhat excusable in the main story. However, the antagonistic force of the Ganglion doesn’t have any character development in the main story or other smaller stories, making the various Ganglion have a monster-of-the-week energy to them with regard to staying power. The game’s main villain, Luxaar, comes off more as a surface-level cartoon villain rather than a mastermind villain that poses a great threat to Mira, and a lot of that simply comes down to a lack of screen time and development.

Another issue with the main story is that of pacing - particularly with the rate at which information is revealed to the player. The first few chapters of the game are effectively tutorials for the game’s main mechanics, making not too much significant story content happen within them. By the time something major happens within the story, the player is already about halfway through the main narrative. Some chapters don’t feature a lot of exciting story moments until they suddenly do. This accelerates to a head during the original game’s final chapter, Chapter 12, where the game provides an exposition dump around the final few boss fights of the game. While the game foreshadows a lot of the reveals that occur during this late-game info dump, it’s simply too much information that arrives too late - a game light on heavy plot elements that suddenly unloads a lot of its more complex narrative themes instead of smartly dolling them out throughout the narrative in a way that gives the story consistent momentum. As is, Xenoblade Chronicles X tells a story that feels remarkably backloaded.

It’s very evident that Xenoblade Chronicles X is the victim of a narrative that saw significant cuts during development. A lot of elements of the game’s main story feel disjointed and lack the “oomph” of strong set pieces and character moments that Monolith Soft’s other titles frequently have. The inclusion of new story content in Definitive Edition could theoretically have helped rectify this, especially considering the fact that the original Wii U game kinda sorta didn’t have a complete ending.

That’s not entirely true, to be fair. Xenoblade Chronicles X infamously ends with the line “this story never truly ends” after a post-credits scene that comes off as a cliffhanger for a sequel. Definitive Edition’s new story content perhaps overcorrects for the main game’s unbalanced main story by featuring lots of character moments and a more spaced-out dispersal of exposition. Pacing-wise, the newly added Chapter 13 shows a lot of the ways that Monolith Soft’s storytelling skills have improved over the last decade. However, it could be argued that it brings forth a significant issue to the game as a whole.

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The following section contains spoilers for Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition. Continue to the next section to avoid spoilers.

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The last shot of the original game depicted Lao lying on a beach with a man robed in black walking towards him. This comes off as surprising, considering the fact that Lao, after having redeemed himself by killing Luxaar following his betrayal, ultimately perishes after the final boss fight of Chapter 12. We see Lao open his eyes, seeming to be alive and well, before the screen cuts to black. After an entire decade of not knowing what this entails, Definitive Edition finally gives players the answer about what happened to Lao and who the man robed in black was. In actuality… the answer to both of these questions ultimately end up being dissatisfying, largely because it’s hard to believe that Definitive Edition’s story content is anything like what was originally intended when Monolith Soft created X’s ending over a decade ago. In truth, we learn that Lao had woken up in a limbo-like state before fully departing to the afterlife, with Al (a new character that’s revealed to have been the hero that saved the White Whale in the game’s first cutscene) being the man in the black robe. It’s a somewhat dissatisfying conclusion to this particular plot thread.

Chapter 13 is a dense chapter because it introduces so many different moving parts, many of which call back to the very beginning of the game, particularly in relation to the war that happened between the Ganglion and the until-now unknown force of the Ghosts. In this new Chapter 13, we finally learn what the Ghosts are and quickly understand that they pose an existential threat to Mira and the entire universe. It could be argued that Chapter 13 overcorrects all the shortcomings with the base game - there are a lot of plot reveals, character moments, fan service, and a greater focus on the antagonistic force. Chapter 13 does so much course correction that it feels like a big narrative shift from the rest of the game, making it stick out as something that was obviously worked on long after the rest of the game’s story.

That isn’t necessarily an issue, though. What is an issue is how this new story ends, particularly with the reveal that Mira does, in fact, get destroyed. It could be argued that this narrative decision hurts the game as a whole, as it effectively makes everything that the player has worked towards throughout the entire game become ultimately meaningless. Why complete all these quests, help the people of NLA, and survey all of Mira only for the planet and the entire universe around it to get destroyed? It’s a bold, risky leap for the narrative to take, and I don’t know if it was one worth taking. The whole point of the game has been effectively undermined for the sake of (possibly) making Xenoblade Chronicles X canon within the rest of the Xenoblade Chronicles series. It’s impossible to tell whether this decision will be worth it in the end, but I couldn’t help but find myself wondering if there was a way to thread the needle of connecting every Xenoblade’s narrative while not decimating everything that players have worked for throughout their time with Xenoblade Chronicles X.

I truly think Definitive Edition lives up to its namesake and greatly improves practically every aspect of Xenoblade X, however this ending is one that I’ll have to wait and see to determine whether it’s ultimately a good change to the game overall. Could the new content have been written and integrated into the overall game better? I think so. After having seen Monolith Soft’s storytelling chops improve so much over the course of the Nintendo Switch generation, I’m not convinced that X’s new story content is the best of what they have to offer. I want to be excited for what Monolith Soft are potentially teasing for the future of Xenoblade, but aspects of this new story content don’t sit entirely right with me.

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This concludes the spoiler discussion for Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition.

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While presenting an epic main narrative wasn’t necessarily the mission of Xenoblade Chronicles X, I still feel that the potential to tell a greater story still goes unrealized here and could be built upon in a potential sequel. What keeps the game’s overall narrative content compelling, though, is the plethora of Normal Missions and Affinity Missions that help bring this world to life. A large part of what makes these Missions hit so well throughout the entire experience is the game’s phenomenal localization courtesy of 8-4 and Nintendo of America.

Xenoblade Chronicles X features a lot of text and voice acting throughout its runtime across its main story, Affinity Missions, Normal Missions, and the gigantic amount of NPC dialogue littered throughout the game. Thanks to a great localization, the script of this game is consistently enjoyable and does a fantastic job at balancing the game’s more serious stakes with quirky character dialogue. Normal Missions, in particular, are the unsung heroes of the game’s localization. Even though they lack voice acting, they feature arguably some of the most off-the-wall scenarios in the game, and the well-written dialogue keeps these consistently crazy situations presented in many of the game’s side quests enticing to read.

The game’s localization set such a high quality bar that I ended up doing a lot of research about video game localization, translation, and editing. While this was a subject I had been familiar with at a foundational level, my first experience with Xenoblade X was what inspired me to go down the rabbit hole of learning a lot more about the localization and general writing processes that go into video game development. This learning journey set me down a path that would ultimately change the trajectory of my life.

Definitive Edition adds a substantial chapter of new story content to the game, including a brief visit to an entirely new continent. There’s an incredible amount of fan service in this new story content, but some questionable retcons and final plot reveals highlight a main plot that feels messy. // Image: Nintendo

By the time Xenoblade Chronicles X was first announced in 2013, I was unsure of what direction I wanted to take my life in. I knew that I had a keen interest in pursuing game development as a career, but I didn’t know what specific avenue I wanted to go down. As I went through high school, I quickly realized that programming wasn’t necessarily my passion - if I were to go down the path of game development, I felt that I needed to pursue it through other ways based on my personal skills and interests. For a long time, I thought I was going to go down the route of a musician and work as a video game soundtrack composer, having been influenced by great JRPG soundtrack composers like Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda. However, as I looked into getting an education in music and assessing the career challenges that come with working in music, I ultimately decided against it and decided to instead pursue another creative passion of mine: writing.

I had vaguely considered the idea that I had wanted to work in video game writing. Through developing my general understanding of writing and storytelling practices in fiction, I could then apply that knowledge to my aspirations to work in game development and my understanding of what sets video game storytelling apart from that of other forms of media. By the time I started college in 2015, my mindset was simply to grow and learn as much as I could about writing, but to be truthful, part of me was unsure how much I could apply what I was learning towards working in game development. While I still loved getting to learn more about writing practices and getting to improve my creative writing skills quite substantially during this period of my life, there was a part of me that was unsure if the path I had chosen to walk was going to lead me to the destination I knew I had wanted to reach at some point in my life.

After I played through Xenoblade Chronicles X for the first time throughout late 2015 and early 2016, I took great notice of the phenomenal work that Nintendo of America and 8-4 had put in to the game’s localization - so much so that it made me realize the necessity and underappreciation that video game localization uniquely holds. Localization often gets discussed in bad faith a lot of the time when it comes to changes that games make when being released internationally, often being equated to censorship. Though, in reality, localization is a complex process of adapting and preserving the structural and narrative cohesion of the text as it moves across languages and cultures. Localization is far more than translating a game and cutting out features or other elements that may be considered insensitive in certain territories - it’s a balance of preserving the integrity of an experience so that all territories can equally enjoy their engagement with a game. Xenoblade Chronicles X’s localization taught me that. More than that, though, this increased understanding and appreciation for localization ultimately informed me of what path I wanted to walk - that of someone that wants to work in video game localization.

In the years since then, I’ve graduated and worked in various facets of game development and tech roles. I’ve navigated nearly every role I’ve had as a steppingstone towards working in localization, and I’ve even had the privilege of having the opportunity to contribute to localization editing on a freelance basis. Xenoblade X indirectly led me down a more focused career path - one where I could combine my love of games, culture, and language with my skills in writing. This is a path I’m very much still in the process of walking upon, but it’s doubtless that Xenoblade Chronicles X is a crucial work of art that helped set me on this path in the first place. For that reason, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a deeply special game to me, and one I will never hesitate to recommend to others despite its occasional hiccups and flaws.

Those flaws are ones that I oft not linger upon, for I often imagine how I would improve upon Xenoblade Chronicles X’s foundation. Thinking about how I’d improve upon the game’s shortcomings as well as taking inspiration from some of the narrative concepts explored in X among other Monolith Soft titles like Xenosaga and even Squaresoft’s Xenogears have also led me down the path of developing my own game, complete with its own lore, story, and gameplay systems inspired by various sci-fi RPGs. Xenoblade Chronicles X is one of many games that have inspired my own independent game development efforts, giving the game yet another reason to be special to me.

But that isn’t the only lens through which I consider Xenoblade Chronicles X to be special. Zooming out from my personal experience with the game, there’s a lot to enjoy about Xenoblade Chronicles X. The world of Mira is one that begets constant awe - the very kind that makes the player never stop wanting to uncover the countless secrets it holds. Through developing an intoxicating gameplay loop featuring exploration, combat, and completing side quests and centering it around one of the most intellectually put together and creative open worlds ever put in a game, Xenoblade Chronicles X makes for a gameplay experience unlike any other.

I’ve previously described Xenoblade Chronicles X as a “dream game” for me, but the most critical aspect of Xenoblade X being a “dream game” is the fact that it constantly invites and rewards imagination and curiosity - the very aspects unique to games that made me fall in love with the medium in the first place. Video games, above all else, are meant to invoke fun and child-like wonder. Mira is the very embodiment of that ideal - the world of Xenoblade Chronicles X is one that feels actively fun and creatively fulfilling to chart and explore. The game’s deep, customizable combat system and diverse collection of smaller stories told through its expansive questing systems gives further weight, context, and satisfaction to the process of uncovering all of the wonders that Mira has to offer.

Every creator, regardless of what they make, shares a common goal: make something special; make something deeply meaningful to at least a single person. As a collection of creators, Monolith Soft remarkably succeeded at their goal of creating something that brought a smile to players’ faces because of the imaginative world they created and the fun adventures and gameplay experiences that naturally come about in that world. Xenoblade Chronicles X is a special video game not only because it’s a fantastic execution of creating a world and RPG experience full of wonder, but because its fantastic imagination begets further generations to be mindful of how similar experiences can be built in the future. The game has inspired me to pursue localization and game development that aspires to achieve the same fun, freedom, and curiosity that Xenoblade X captures. And I’m but one of many that have walked away from this game with a drive to create smiles for new audiences just as Xenoblade Chronicles X has created smiles for its audience.

The degree to which Xenoblade Chronicles X naturally inspires those who play it is the mark of its exceptionality.

I don’t know how Xenoblade Chronicles X will affect you, but I assure you that it will affect you in some capacity. It may affect your appreciation for localization. It may affect your admiration of open worlds that trust the player to make their own path through the game. It may affect the way you engage with deeply complex combat systems. However Xenoblade Chronicles X will affect you, the game will leave an impact on you, and very few games, in my mind, are guaranteed to do that on all that play it.

Xenoblade Chronicles X is admittedly very special to me on a personal level. However, I can’t discount the reality that Xenoblade Chronicles X is also an innately special game for a lot of different, equally valid reasons. Despite the game’s flaws and imperfections, Xenoblade Chronicles X is a game that deserves more attention. The way in which Xenoblade X show’s its specialness will be different for everyone that plays it, but I guarantee, perhaps more than with any other game, that all players will find something about the game that makes them feel a way that no other game makes them feel. And when they discover that feeling, it will be unlike any other discovery they’ve made. It will feel almost as if they’re not even in a distant land, they’re stuck on a whole different planet.

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Thank you very much for reading! What are your thoughts on Xenoblade Chronicles X and how it manages its open world? How does it compare to other open world games? What aspects of Xenoblade X can inform future RPGs? As always, join the conversation and let me know what you think either in the comments or on Bluesky @DerekExMachina.com.