Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition, a world to explore, a title to (re)discover

Real-time combat, mystical powers and futuristic cities alternated with villages where magic fills the life of peaceful medieval-like communities, all supported by an immersive experience lasting a million hours: with Xenoblade Chronicles X, later, Monolith Soft hit the jackpot and it was only a matter of time before a truly definitive edition was announced on the red-black-blue hybrid.

Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition will arrive on March 20, 2025, and there is good reason to be happy about it, let’s see why. Before dealing with the game’s plot, fundamentally in line with the idea of massive exploration and open-field battles that are the series’ hallmark, I want to spend a couple of words on the graphical power of Nintendo’s console, which is pushed to the limit here, judging by the officially released screenshots, showing us hyper-technological settings and dreamlike scenarios, full of forests, ruins, and evocative alien vistas that alone are truly worth the price of admission. As is tradition for Xenoblade, we are projected into a distant future on a planet to be colonized, Mira, humanity’s last horizon of salvation after being decimated by an alien war that has thrown the solar system into turmoil:

Mira turns out to be a world that is still rough around the edges, but only up to a point: it will be up to us and the party we assemble to identify its resources, conquer them through pitched battles and more, with an interesting Minecraft mode (as I like to call it) in which we will have to manage every aspect of the construction of Mira’s capital city, with the perhaps slightly cheesy name of Neo Los Angeles, weaving social relationships between our characters and the various NPCs, as well as the party members themselves: in the series’ original installment, they were called Empathic Dialogues, and unlocking them in the game economy was a real torment, I remember it well. The hope is that in this reissue of X, we can get around complicated mechanics inherited from the past.

La mixing of genres presented by Xenoblade Chronicles X is its calling card and also its strong point: the exploratory phase in the style of Monster Hunter is wonderful as well as satisfying; anyone who has ever played the Ranger class while playing Dungeons and Dragons will find plenty of food, and monsters, for their teeth, I assure you. Moreover, the possibility of joining online to take on increasingly difficult challenges by cooperating in group missions, a mode that really seems to wink at Capcom's “rival” house, can only cast even more interest on this definitive edition.

At the dawn of the series there was a much more marked fantastical nuance; if we analyze Xenoblade’s development in detail over the years, stringing together prophecy after prophecy about the concept of the Chosen Ones and worlds that, despite the futuristic direction, hoped for a return to origins, amid lush landscapes and nature taking back control. The current trend, instead, has a sci-fi-oriented interpretation: Xenoblade Chronicles X is a clear example of this, a sign that the evolution of a saga is truly such only when it knows how to reinvent itself, while still maintaining the underlying elements that form its pillars.

Con X: Definitive Edition, perhaps the evolution will mark another fundamental step. We just have to wait.