Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition Trailer Sheds Light On Its Story – Nintendo Life
GuestGuestLogin | Sign UpNintendo LifeGuestLogin or Sign UpThe year is 2054Nintendo has released a new trailer looking at the story for Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition on the Switch.Currently slated to release on 20th March 2025, the game is an enhanced version of the Wii U classic, boasting improved visuals and brand new story content. Clocking in at just over 3 and a half minutes, the new trailer sheds light on the game’s plot, backstory, and characters to bring you up to speed before its release. There’s also a small hint at some of the additional content that returning veterans can look forward to.And are those some new areas at the end? Hmm, intriguing…Here’s a look at Nintendo’s official description:”The year is 2054. Earth has been destroyed by an intergalactic war between two alien races, and humanity is on the brink of annihilation. As a member of BLADE, it’s up to you to take on tough foes in a robust combat system, and pilot powerful giant robots called Skells in a combat system that’s as deep as you want it to be.”The addition of Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Switch would mean that the entire RPG franchise is now playable on one system (soon to be two – thanks, backwards compatibility!). This includes Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and now Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition (plus all relevant DLC).It’s UncontrollableYeah, that’s a lotWhat are your thoughts on Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition for the Switch? Is it a day one purchase for you? Let us know with a comment.[source youtube.com]About Ollie ReynoldsNintendo Life’s resident horror fanatic, when he’s not knee-deep in Resident Evil and Silent Hill lore, Ollie likes to dive into a good horror book while nursing a lovely cup of tea. He also enjoys long walks and listens to everything from TOOL to Chuck Berry.Comments 72and the youtube comments are all about ..water buffalos? Im so confusedNot me about to blast Pink Ball Activate from Kirby Planet Robobot while riding a Skell.itll be really funny once we get to 2054 😹😹anyways i played 3 and it was probably one of the top five games ive ever played, i loved the story and characters and world so much. so im debating abt moving onto 1 or this one. hmmmmmStill can’t believe that I get to finally play this game! Keeping myself away from spoilers all these years wasn’t easy.@Justaguest Those are definitely bots.One of the best open world games imoAnd the new area they teased at the end look pretty coolNice trailer, looking forward to playing X even more than I already was – hope I’ll be able to start it as soon as my discounted physical copy arrives and so also the Xenoblade Chronicles series in general (already have all the other games, just haven’t had the time to play them yet)!@Justaguest @BTB20 It’s an inside joke from the Switch 2 subreddit I believe. I don’t know why.The font in the user interface is the best upgrade. We can actually read it. That last few seconds of the trailer shows new areas to explore. Looking forward to that.Best game ever made, it looks as if there are new characters too!Hope it gets a sequel.@Justaguest Go to the nintendo switch 2 sub reddit. The mods have organised a sort of counter-hate joke where everyone comments something water buffalo related on all nintendo videos until the switch 2 revealI’ll give it a shot. The main series got a little too shonen for me, and I’ve never clicked w the combat. But flying them giant mechs around looks awesome.I really should give this series another shot. I remember the story in the first game being pretty captivating, from what I played, but I struggled to get a good grasp of the game’s mechanics.Can’t wait to play this again.Oh my god they made the text readable. Best quality of life improvement.If it’s 30fps then it’s a wasted opportunity.I am beyond hyped. It looks so good!@Justaguest https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch2/comments/1hwt4wh/attention_everyone_were_gonna_pull_a_funny_we/I don’t really agree with it but that whatever.Monolith Soft is the GOAT, and they know how to handle remasters. This looks beyond great. I’m so happy that a whole new generation of gamers will get to discover this underrated gem.How does the combat in X compare to the mainline games? I bounced off the first after a few hours but am open to trying a spin off.@Rob3008 It’s similar. It’s an art selection, cool down, recharge, repeat combat system with combos, buffs, and debuffs sprinkled in. Don’t go into this game thinking it’s turn-based or hack ‘n’ slash. I think that’s what people are most disappointed in with the combat system. Don’t just run into battle and start button mashing on arts because it won’t work.Ok, who was that pilot in the white transforming fighter/skell halfway through the video? And the new area at the end took some notes from TotK…or is it the other way around, Monolith Soft? I hope it’s not progress-locked so I can reach part of it without flight or skell usage. I gotta see how much I can explore on foot and install probes!LETS FIND THE KEY WE LOST!!!!
Super excited for this, played on the Wii U cant wait to reexperienceI wish there was a collector’s edition for this one.It may be “enhanced” but it’s still neutered without the second screen on the Gamepad that I used A LOT while playing this game. There is 1 side mission where you need to get like 150 geld or some such in 1 turn by aligning some scanners and I don’t see how that would be possible without the map. Maybe Switch 2 will let us point at the TV screen? 🤷🏻♂️I am glad they’ve improved the text. It was so small in the original, especially when on the mission board. We sat 7’ away from a 52” tv and my wife and I would make my kids crawl over to the tv to read the text to us. Not a joke.Also, the music was mostly horrible. Particularly inside the skell, when every single time you hit the jump button it briefly played the flying music. Hope they fixed that. And overall the music was so loud we missed out on hearing a lot of the dialogue. We’re all hoping for volume sliders so we can turn the background music down to half. A couple of the regions do have some really nice music.Someone in my family is going to play this over the summer and the other 3 of us are going to watch. Hopefully it’s on Switch 2 with enhancements. 👍@BTB20 they’re not. It’s an inside joke on the Switch 2 subreddit@TheExile285 Thank you. I didnt want to make an effort searching for specifics, after reading what its about. So its basically people posting unrelated comments until nintendo releases the next console, because they dont want to wait anymore.I don’t recognise any of the tracks you can hear in this trailer… They sound familiar but not the same. Is it just me ?@OctolingKing13 we swallowed the false promise of space odysseys in 2001, [commercially viable] flying cars in 2015 and futuristic races in 2019. This fluke will at least have the upside of Earth not getting blown up.@Rob3008 the combat is closer to XC1 than the other two flagships but arguably more hectic than the former and expectedly different from all three. One of the earliest evident examples is how you wield and freely swap between melee/ranged weapons using which boosts the charge (and beneficial overcharge) of corresponding art types. There’s also an extra source of party heals stemming from “soul voices” (basically matching your in-battle actions to various ally requests like focusing on melee attacks or using an aura), and a dedicated menu tab for own soul voice setups indicates that it’s meant to be a common boon in multiplayer missions as well. Oh, and many big adversaries also have multiple parts/appendages to focus on and destroy for further incapacitation. And all of this is just from the early game I left on Deck, before reaching Overdrive or skell combat.@rjejr I put over a dozen hours into the game on Deck whose Cemu iteration just pinned GamePad to back buttons (one pair to summon the thing by holding either of them, the other to toggle stable display), and it worked like a charm; this port may do something similar and maybe even add a dedicated onscreen icon (EDIT: not spotting any of the latter in the trailer so far, but that “R+down” under the minimap is pretty conspicuous). For the record, the text size has proven to be varying mileage as well, courtesy of the aforementioned Deck playthrough where the original looked more than intelligible on a 800p screen (granted, the GamePad one was fairly smaller from what I recall). The OST also rocks even by Sawano’s standards and I fail to dread the prospect of abundant Don’t Worry after it grew to be one of my fave tracks in advance. Then again, I never minded the practical abundance of XC3’s menu music either.😆@echoplex the female vocal (“every time I ask the smallest of things…”) is from Uncontrollable, for instance – you should know it as the local battle theme for named enemies unless you exclusively fought all of those in a skell.Finally! We can now read the texts without hurting our eyes or sanity. What an incredible upgrade here.Also love all those new additions and characters. The main story of XCX felt so unfinished and half-assed. But Monolith were just a tiny team then compared with how big they’re now, more than 10x bigger I think.Wonder if it will getting a post-game DLC or something alike? It wouldn’t surprise me by the slightest considering by that XCX 2 + XCX 3 got it.Also, THANK GOODNESS they made the combat HUD elements smaller! (meters, arts, etc.) We can now see more of the screen while fighting, especially while fighting in skells!F*CK! I saw the new content…I wanted to be surprised. Damn it I did it again.@N8tiveT3ch You better hope Kirby doesn’t read that. Or else you’ll be hearing “POYO” for the rest of your life!Do these games have turn-based combat? Or is it real time? I’m sort of interested in these games but I am not a fan of turn-based combat.@StewdaMegaManNerd It is real time. You allowed to move freely and escape whenever you want. Just like in the first xenoblade or if you play phantasy star online. There is an auto attack as you move around the enemy. Then you have arts or moves that have a cool down. They have different effects depending on the art.So excited! Played this game for 150 hours or so. I remember every moment was basically spent trying to build max-range gem stuff.Totally pointless in terms of combat efficacy, but lots of fun for my sniper.This time, I’ll definitely take a little more time to figure out the systems (like the soul voice stuff) and build a party that actually works together haha.Not that I won’t use the sniper.I bought a wii u just to play x but sort of petered out. I am SO hyped to give it a whirl on the Switch. I’m sure the QOL improvements and actual active multi-player will be enough to keep me engaged this time around.As much as I’d love to revisit the definitive version of this game for the new story content, it’ll have to wait a long time. I definitely don’t need more open world games right now. Loving the Hiroyuki Sawano music callbacks!@N8tiveT3ch Alright, thanks!Yeah, I love this game and I look forward to playing it again but that story is total nonsense and it only gets more bland as the game progresses. Couldn’t care less about any new story content but I can’t wait to tear up the world in a skell.It would be nice to finally play this while on a train to Newport, couldn’t really do that with the Wii U version.Visuals look very good in this trailer, better than the previous XC on Switch to me. Did they upgrade their rendering engine? The blurriness of XC2 was a real bummer, I’ve always hopped to get an improved version at some point.Maaaaan I just want this game in my hands now 😭@Tyranexx Throw your backlog to the side and dive in to this game on launch day. You’ll love it.This will be amazing. I’m really feeling it!I’ve already put about 200 hrs into the Wii U version, but I never beat it and this appears to have more content so it’s an easy buy.Looking forward to playing this, in preparation I’ve been going through my Xenoblade backlog. Finished Torna, then Xenoblade 3 and going through Xenoblade DE. It’s quickly become one of my favourite Nintendo franchises over the years.Between Xenoblade Chronicles X, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, and Monster Hunter Wilds, I think 2025 will be complete when it’s only 1/4 of the way through. I won’t need anything else, unless Switch 2 has a surprise Zelda or Mario title.As expected it got the XB1 DE treatment if the name wasn’t a dead giveawayI would trade away the “gamepad” for all these improvements in a heartbeat if I had a choice with the Wii U version lol.I’ve been replaying Phantasy Star Online recently, and XCX looks kinda similar to that. Last remnants of humanity exploring a hostile new world and… killing all the wildlife.Looking great! I love this PSO-style mecha melodrama.Long ago, I dropped XCX just shortly after getting my skell license (probably about the time when the game was going to start to really cook), when the Switch launch happened.Now I’ll be buying it again, I’m sure loving the first part of the game, and then I bet the Switch Deux will drop and lure me away once again!@Justaguest everybody wants a water buffaloAlright, think that’s all the new content I need before actually playing the game. Still want my second time on Mira to feel fresh.@Olliemar28 I realize this probably isn’t your job, but I don’t suppose we could get a block button for games we don’t want to see? You guys always end up telling me too much about Xenoblade even just through titles and thumbnails, and I’d rather not cut out the whole site just to avoid spoilers for one game.@Anachronism Hmm, I don’t know if that’ll be possible, but I’ll ask the question. We do try to avoid spoilers where possible (and I think we’ve successfully avoided giving anything away with our header and lead image here), but obviously everyone has a different idea of what constitutes a spoiler. We’ll see.@Mando44646 Yours is fast, but mine is slow. Where they get them, I don’t know…@Olliemar28 Much appreciated. I get a lot of my gaming enjoyment out of discovering or being surprised by things, and that experience only seems to become more uncommon the more games I play.@abbyhitter Oh I know XCX is worth my time; I played through it on the Wii U years ago! Which is also why I’m fine delaying diving into this one. Probably one of the best open world games I’ve played even if the story was clearly rushed and bonkers.@xenobladexfan actually a few days ago… a pretty reputable insider said the the next game that Monoliths main team is working on is XCX2If I remember correctly, wasn’t there a level cap below the typical RPG number of 99? I remember running into that and being disappointed since I sucked at the game, and couldn’t just grind to get “better” 😂Can’t wait to get back to playing Xenoblade Chronicles X all over again.Looking forward to the new area. As well as the new characters and enemies.Already preordered a physical copy directly from Nintendo and the only thing holding me back from preordering a digital copy right this very second is the fact that I have no idea what I’d use the second game voucher on.@Yoshi3 lol, those “insiders” are never reputable.As much as I played and enjoyed this game, I’m very shocked that I’m about to double dip. I’m just glad that there’s something new to look forward to for returning players. I enjoyed this game that much that I’m willing to play it for another several hundred hours.Game mechanic SPOILER warning, I guessOh, there’s a Gamestop digital preorder bonus. Looking at what’s being offered, you might as well skip it. Sure it gives you access to some money, gear, and Level I augments before you’re able to craft them, but you can literally start farming the area around the city and earn more cash, levels, maybe better weapons, and practice targeting parts to break off of larger creatures for even more drops. Once you’re able to venture past the starting continent starting at an early chapter, the world itself is wide open! Get out there, save obsessively, reach as many probe sites as you can, find as many named tyrants as you can (just find them, maybe agro, you do NOT have to engage), go everywhere, SAVE!!!, run from everything higher level, open all treasure crates, open up the map hexes, and touch the 4 corners of the map while collecting all the shiny crystals. Those are mostly materials for crafting later and some are also mission items; resist the urge to sell anything except the commons/grey-colored names. Don’t worry, you can’t accidentally sequence break the story by being somewhere you shouldn’t be. The story can only progress by starting the story mission manually at HQ. If you spend some time exploring you may save yourself some collection mission grinding (which is huge, IMO), get a good residual cash and Miranium flow (a precious metal), gain experience and combat levels, and you can at least note problem areas before you actually need to go back there for a mission. Every dark hex on the map has something important in it!@KimBread Level 60 is the cap, IIRC. Yeah, levels really didn’t mean much besides minor story chapter progress locking, skell availability, and dictating what creatures you would agro in the field if you got close enough. There’s a bigger benefit in leveling up all the combat classes to 10 so you can get a huge pool of skills to customize how you want to fight. Then investing in R&D for weapons manufacturers and researching augments for your gear and your skell’s gear. Way past the prime of the original release, some mad players were SOLOING high level tyrants on foot with their builds! I wanna see a new generation do the same thing.I gotta ask why not port the Xenosaga and Xenogears games? I’m sure the blades series is popular but I long for the traditional turn based style of Saga and Gears. Why hasn’t this happened yet?!@abbyhitter Well, my problem with the combat in the series so far has been that early on tactics are extremely limited and nothing feels like it is landing. There’s no impact. Feels like throwing apologies and tissues at the enemy because actions have zero weight.@Rob3008 It’s that combat. It’s FFXII.@LikelySatan Clipping into enemies doesn’t help either. (Don’t all the games do that, though?) Targeting and breaking parts into a stagger or topple is pretty much the best we got for visual feedback. Skell binding is also pretty neat.@GameOtaku That’s up to Namco (saga) and Square Enix (Gears). People asking for rereleases for years.@masterLEON Even if I don’t dig this game, I’m still picking it up. It’s worth collecting, and one of my kids might get on with it.Just in time for Xenoblade Chronicles X2 on Switch 2 in 2026!I’m glad this series is coming to the Switchy. Sirloin steak gaming@masterLEON Thanks for the response! I Googled info on the level cap, and found an analysis of the X DE trailer. Folks spotted sections where characters were higher than level 60. They must have changed the cap. Interesting if so.@KimBread Sounds like the new area will demand a higher level for entry. Another thought, they may also let us use the Ares 90 skell in the new area instead of being a post-game research build. 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