With the announcement of Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, now is the perfect time for Monolith Soft and Nintendo to tweak the game a bit. It should still remain the same Xenoblade Chronicles X fans know and love at its core, but a few alterations could make the adventure on Mira a bit smoother for new and returning players. X can be a difficult title to get into, and making newer players’ entry a bit easier would go a long way.
There are also bigger changes that could make the game an even better experience, like reworking skells or the character creator system. It’s doubtful the developers of Definitive Edition will add too much outside of what’s already been promised, including the return of the online mode and a nebulous bullet point of “new story content,” which is certainly exciting in its own right for players familiar with the original game’s cliffhanger.
10 Quicker Leveling Could Let Players Experience the Full Class System
Mastering Everything Took a Lot of Grinding
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The class system in Xenoblade Chronicles X offers a massive amount of customization for players, as they can master multiple classes, and then essentially combine them as they wish. The only problem with this is how long it takes to master a line of classes, as most players will only have one line fully leveled up by the end of the story. This forces players to grind out all the other class lines if they want to create a truly formidable build.
Having only one class maxed out by the end of the story is fine, but there should be quicker and easier ways to level up other classes once it’s over. The online features returning should help with that, but having some way to gain more EXP from combat would be great. If players could max more classes during the story, however, it would offer a great chance to test their skills and choices in a very difficult boss battle.
9 Players Need an Easier Way to Swap Out Party Members
No More Wandering Around NLA
In the Wii U version of Xenoblade Chronicles X, to swap out party members the player needs to seek out each member they want to add around the hub city, NLA. The two-story required members, Elma and Lin, are easily located within the team’s living quarters most of the time, but like other characters may move around to other locations at various hours of the day. In such a big city, it can be incredibly difficult to find where a single character is hanging out.
While seeking out characters for heart-to-heart quests makes sense, being able to swap characters in and out from the computer in the barracks would cut down on a lot of tedious wandering. NLA is worth exploring on its own, as it changes over the course of the story and after completing side quests, so while recruiting characters in person is fine, there should be some way to call them to your side with relative ease.
8 A Substantial Epilogue to Resolve the Cliffhanger
Fans Have Been Waiting 10 Years, Give Them a Bone
Xenoblade Chronicles X was the second Xenoblade game, and it’s clear that Monolith had much bigger ambitions than their already massively ambitious Wii title. The game is a seamless open world on Nintendo’s first HD console, but Monolith may have bit off more than they could chew story-wise with X as the game concludes on a cliffhanger. Monolith would go on to expand on the original game’s story with two more titles for the Switch but have yet to return to X.
The trailer for Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition has confirmed that there will be some follow-up to that cliffhanger, but that’s all Nintendo has said about it so far. It could be a separate campaign like the other Xenoblade story expansions, or it could be a proper epilogue requiring players to finish the story to access it. Whatever it is, it should leave players satisfied even if Monolith wants to leave room for a sequel.
7 Players Should Be Able to Access Online Exclusive Rewards Offline
Future-Proofing is Important
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The current nature of online gaming is that every service will, eventually, be shut down. Some may last longer than others but at some point, the company running these services will deem it not profitable enough to be worth keeping up. This happened fairly recently with the 3DS and Wii U eShops, causing related online services, including Xenoblade Chronicles X, to be shut down. While the online isn’t critical here to experience the story, it’s a core part of the experience.
When starting up X, players will be asked to essentially join a server of other players. This will determine who they can party up with in online missions but also add bonuses to the single player. If any player in the server accomplishes a certain task, all players will receive rewards. Furthermore, online missions and their rewards are basically inaccessible without access to online. Hopefully, Monolith has future-proofed this version of the game.
6 60 FPS Would Be Nice
Continue Pushing Systems To Their Limits
While no Xenoblade Chronicles game so far has run above 30 frames per second, and usually at resolutions under 720p at that. In fact, X is the highest-resolution game in the series, and having its remaster become the most performant as well would only be fitting. A high frame rate isn’t exactly necessary, especially when combat is menu-based, but it would help with being able to react to enemy attacks or Soul Voices.
Even if it’s only on the Switch’s successor, X is a game that deserves to be experienced in the best way possible. A next-gen patch would do wonders for this already enhanced version, just as it would for the likes of Breath of the Wild or the other Xenoblade games. Since Nintendo will likely have properly announced the Switch successor by then, knowing a game late in the predecessor’s life cycle will run even better on the new console would give players peace of mind.
5 Skells Could Use Some Improving
Not as Good as the Peak of Ground Combat, But an Enjoyable Option
Unlocking Skells essentially opens up the entire game world a second time, and even a third once the player unlocks the flight module, but when it comes to combat they’re disappointingly limited. Unlike ground combat, Skell arts are determined entirely by their equipment, with each piece of gear adding a single art to the palette. Some parts preclude others from being equipped, and all are prohibitively expensive, making it very difficult to get it just right.
Ideally, Skells would be reworked a bit to have the same amount of customization as the player in ground combat. Each class of Skell could come with a pool of arts to draw from, with equipment only adding even more. Just like the base class system, different classes of Skells would be better at different things; heavy mechs would be tanks while lighter ones could buff the party or deal more damage. They should never be better than Overdrive ground combat but should be better than they are now.
4 A More Detailed Character Creator
There’s Stiff Competition Now
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For Nintendo back in 2015, Xenoblade Chronicles X‘s character creator had a decent suite of options. However, character creators have greatly evolved since with players being able to blend face presets or even move facial bones around manually to get their avatar just right. While overhauling the character creator entirely would be far too much work for a remaster, adding some new options would go a long way here.
Let players mix and match face types and hairstyles, or take the eye shape from one preset and use it on another. The character creator does need to remain mostly the same, as NPCs draw on the same set of parts for their bodies and heads, but adding some more player-specific options would help the player’s avatar to feel more unique, especially in what will likely be a much larger online population of players to play with.
3 Online Open-World Co-Op is a Big Ask, But Would Be Worth It
Closer to an MMO, But Still Not Quite
Players can already party up together in certain, small arenas for online missions, but being able to play through the entire game with a friend in co-op would be incredible. It might not work for story missions, as many cutscenes are designed around only having the player, Elma, Lin, and Tatsu around, but simply exploring and doing side quests with a group of four real players would make the adventure all the sweeter to go through.
When taking on certain superbosses, the player character is essentially the only one strong enough to survive against these creatures, leaving the rest of the party dead for most of the fight. Being able to take on these monsters in co-op would make these battles a lot more fun and strategic, opening up the door for more tactics instead of a few specific ones for each boss. It would probably shorten these fights by a lot, but given how long they can last, the trade-off would be worth it.
2 Playable Aliens Would Be a Fun Addition
They’re Just Too Cool
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Starting off as a human character in Xenoblade Chronicles X makes sense for the story, but later on in the game it would also make sense for the player to be able to swap to one of the alien species, such as the Qlurian or Wrothian. Those species already have combat animations, unlike the Nopon or Ma-non, and are at least mostly human-shaped, which would make them much easier to convert into playable characters.
This would essentially be even more options for the character creator, but much cooler. It would diversify players seen online even further, and given the player character is a silent protagonist who can change their appearance whenever after a certain point in the game this wouldn’t affect the story, so long as the player has already befriended those species. This could be made exclusive to the post-game, but the alien designs are just too good to leave as NPCs.
1 X Desperately Needs a Bigger Font
For Accessibility and Ease of Use
A lot of games have the problem of UI elements being too small to comfortably parse, though many games are getting better about this with accessibility options that can increase the size of fonts or other elements to make them more readable. Sadly, Nintendo is notorious for having very lacking options menus, and Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition desperately needs a good one as the base font is far too small.
X does try to fit a lot of information on the screen at once, but with how small the font is, there’s still a ton of unused space left over. The text was essentially impossible to read when playing on the Wii U gamepad, and while the OLED Switch in portable mode would be slightly better thanks to a larger screen, a larger font size is absolutely needed for ease of play in any mode. It is without a doubt the most necessary quality of life improvement the Definitive Edition needs to add.
Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition
The year is 2054. Earth has been destroyed by an intergalactic war between two alien races, and humanity is on the brink of annihilation. A small number of survivors, aboard the USS White Whale, crash land on the vast and untamed planet Mira—and now it falls to you, as a member of BLADE, to help bring humanity back from the edge of extinction…with the aid of powerful giant robots called Skells!
- Platform(s)
- Nintendo Switch
- Released
- March 10, 2025
- Developer(s)
- Monolith Soft
- Publisher(s)
- Nintendo
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
- Number of Players
- 1 (Single-Player), 1-32 (Multiplayer)
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