 I know. I have a touchy history when it comes to the Xenoblade saga on YouTube. I'm gonna very respectfully place that one over there. That's why it was so important to me to fully complete Xenoblade Chronicles definitive edition before I reviewed it. Sadly, I could barely make it through five hours of this absolute off... No, I'm kidding. No, I fully finished the game. I even cleared up a ton of the side quests and had a total playtime of about 60 hours over the last couple of weeks. I was glued to this thing. I always tried to stress that I enjoyed the original Xenoblade Chronicles back on the Wii, which is why I personally felt a little disappointed... A little disappointed when I didn't completely love the sequel. A part of me thought maybe I just remembered the original game too fondly. Maybe if I was to replay it now, I wouldn't like it as much as I did back then. I also never committed to finishing the game back on the Wii either, so this would be my first time completing the full story. I want to share my experience with all of you, as in-depth as possible. I also don't want to compare this game with its sequel, so for the most part, I'm not gonna mention the second game from here. I know a lot of you have come to expect a certain thing from me in my video game reviews. However, today, there might be not as much room for my usual amount of goofs and gaps. Because I want to make sure I do this right, and I talk about everything I experienced across my campaign. Since I wanted to share my entire experience with you today, I recorded most of my gameplay in high quality, but I also used the Switch's in-game 30 second capture, which has worked fine for me in the past, but for some reason with this game, it just didn't render the captures out very well. They look bad. But I still need to use some of it as it's important for my review, so I'll have a little prompt on the screen when I'm using that capture and then when I'm using the high quality capture. With all that said, here's my big fat honest review of Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition. I have to start with breaking down the setup for the story. As the first Xenoblade has one of the most epic video game premises and payoffs I have ever experienced. The story of Xenoblade Chronicles starts by showing the battle between McConnys and Bionys. Two gigantic gods fighting for all eternity. Bionys slices off McConnys' left hand, and then both their swords pierce each other at the same time. Eons later, life has flourished on top of both of these gods. A race called the Mekon are living upon the body of the McConnys, and on top of the Bionys, a race called the Homs. This is where we start our adventure. The battle between these gods continue as both the Mekon and the Homs continue to fight. I love this setup. As ridiculous as it is to think that these gorgeous large valleys, forests, and even swamp lands all sit on top of this massive dormant god. Before we meet Shulk, we meet Dunban, who's wielding the Monado joined by the Homs army, fighting off a Mekon invasion. We learn that the Monado is the only weapon that can pierce Mekon armor. And while Dunban is ultimately the hero that saves the day, he's not able to fully control the power of the Monado, and it almost costs him his life severely injuring his right arm. Then, to present day, we finally meet an 18-year-old weapon developer named Shulk, and his best friend Ryan. Pretty soon, we also meet Dunban's sister Fiora, who seems to have a little bit of a thing for Shulk, and possibly vice versa. And we learn more about a character who was an early favorite of mine, Dixon. And side note, Fiora is by far my favorite Xenoblade series waifu period. And if you disagree with me, that's okay, but you're wrong. The small town they live in does not stay peaceful for long, as it's attacked by the Mekon. During the battle, Dunban takes another hit, dropping the Monado. Shulk, the hero that he is, rushes to grab it and instantly sees a vision of a Mekon striking him with a laser, so he dodges the blow and defeats all the Mekon with ease. Shulk continues to see visions of the future, even seeing Fiora's possible death moments later. Once the dust is settled on this attack, Shulk and Ryan head out of the town in search for the metal-faced Mekon to get revenge, Dunban making his own promise to heal himself up and join them later on. And this is where our story really begins. It's a fairly straightforward setup, without too much fluff or convoluted storylines. The game introduces you to the story slowly. Then as you play, you meet more characters and learn more about the world, and you begin to realize just how deep this rabbit hole goes. Throughout all the plot twists, battling and fighting gods, there is one core concept that remains. These friends, fighting for themselves, fighting for each other and their right to free will, determined to change their own fate. Their spirit and characters are so strong. It's impossible not to get attached to every single one of your party members. Well, uh, almost every single one. Still, still one I don't like. Alright, so that's the story. Let's talk about the gameplay. Xenoblade Chronicles utilizes a real-time action battle system, where you manually move the character in real-time, and the party members will auto-attack enemies that enter their attack radius. Typically, I don't love games that utilize auto-attacks, but it's handled perfectly in Xenoblade Chronicles. Auto-attacks aren't your main method of attacking, as they shouldn't be in a game where that action is provided without your control. Rather, this auto-attacking mechanic frees you up to fully concentrate on the battle, utilizing every other ability and strategy available to you. You can select any character to be your main playable attacker, and each have very different abilities and ways to play. They all have their own unique arts, and then a main talent art. Shog, for example, wields the Monado, so his talent art opens an extra window full of Monado Arts, like a huge overhead attack hitting multiple enemies, or a buff that powers up his ally weapons so they can attack Mekon as well. I also recommend leveling up that skill quite a bit pretty early. His own individual arts include a powerful backslash that does more damage from behind, and arts that do more damage from the side. This encourages the player to constantly move around enemies, finding the sweet spots for extra damage. The best part about Xenoblade Chronicles auto-attacks is that moving around won't interrupt or cancel the attack, so there's no punishment for trying to find a better position on moving away from an enemy attack mid-battle. Again, I don't want to reference Xenoblade too much in this review, it's gonna be one of the only times I do it. But in my opinion, in a game like this, the only thing that should cancel an auto-attack is the player selecting a different attack, or that attack being canceled by the enemy. I should not be punished for wanting to move my character, especially when I have other attacks that only work from moving behind or to the side of an enemy. Forcing me to stand in one spot so as not to interrupt any of the action, that's what encourages me to put the controller down and let the battles play themselves out, especially if I feel like I could win by doing that. Whereas in this gorgeous game, there is always something to do while attacking, leading to incredibly engaging gameplay. That's all I'm gonna say about that. Early in the gameplay, I found myself just spamming art attacks in battles, and honestly, that worked fine and it was fun. However, landing auto-attacks builds up the talent bar before you can use it, and late game, there was this really rewarding mix of using arts at the right time but allowing my auto-attacks to land to build up my talent bar. Especially late game, typically with shock, I would save that talent art until the enemy went for a wipeout attack and then use the Monado shield ability to save my entire team. This added so much more strategy into the fights, finding that perfect balance between when to attack with an art and when to watch the battle unfold. There was never a single moment I didn't feel completely in control of a fight, nor was there a single moment where I wasn't glued to the gameplay looking for my next moment to attack. As I said, each character plays very differently, and across my 60-hour adventure, that helped keep the gameplay fresh. I would often switch between using shock, dumb-ban, Reese, and Sharla, not only just to mix things up, but also depending on the battle. In hard of boss fights, I would often play as Sharla as she has multiple massive heals, and while the game's AI wasn't too bad at keeping you healed up, I was able to have full control over her arts and keep everyone alive as they slugged it out in the longer battles. This was actually how I managed to take down one of the final bosses they were proving pretty difficult while I was playing as an attacker. Sharla's only drawback is that she doesn't actually have a talent art. Rather, the more you use her arts, the more her weapon overheats, and eventually you need to stand there and wait for it to cool down. But this actually does balance out her massive heals pretty well and leads to some really tense moments. Dumb-ban is similar to Shulk with his main arts, and his talent art is a massive attack that if followed up by another art does even more damage. Ryan's talent art is mad taunt that will massively aggro the enemies, causing them to target him. Reastaking the brunt of enemy damage was key for me on my playthrough, as he had huge defense in HP to take the hits, and it allowed me to run around as Shulk and get behind enemies and plan my attacks. As you battle, hitting arts at the right moment will fill your team gauge. There will also be some occasional time button presses that will give it an even bigger boost. You use this gauge in a few different ways. You can use a portion of it to revive a downed ally, or to warn one of them of an incoming attack, or if the gauge is full, you can activate a chain attack. These are fantastic for setting up toppling an enemy or just chaining together similar attacks for big damage. Late game, I found myself often neglecting using all of the gauge on a chain attack and rather keeping it full in case I needed to be revived myself or to utilize the warning of an incoming enemy attack. The last big mechanic I haven't talked about is Shulk's visions. This is a really unique idea I haven't seen done in a game before. Typically, these visions happen when an enemy is planning an attack that will kill one or more of your characters. It'll show you who is attacking, who is attacked, and what the attack is. Then it'll give you a countdown to the attack and it's up to you to plan for it. I loved the strategy that follows this, as there's usually multiple ways to follow it up and shape the future. You could try to topple the enemy to break the attack or aggro it into attacking someone else instead. You could use Shulk to cast a shield on the team like I mentioned earlier or you could increase the attack's speed so they dodge it. And there's more on top of all of that. Sometimes you might not be able to do anything if everything you have is on cooldown. This is where simply just saving a team gauge slot for a revival came in handy for me. These visions were great in the battles, but I gotta be honest here as well. When you're trying to take down those higher level bosses that can typically team wipe on every attack, I became very tired of that entire seeing the future animation playing every time the enemy went to attack. I got to a point where I wished I could have turned them off. However helpful they may have been, I was done. I was done with them. Xenoblade Chronicles has some of the most rewarding gameplay I've ever experienced in any game. It's all about learning the ins and outs of your characters and the ways that each of them play. Forming a team that not only works well together but that fits your play style. In my opinion, the first real big boss fight is against the three headed Telethia. You will need to utilize everything you've learned about the game up to that point and if you do, it really does feel like everything comes together like a great puzzle. Sure, you could take hours to over level yourself and wail on any enemy with arts until it dies or you could approach a high level enemy with all the skills and abilities you have open to you and strategically pick it apart in a matter of moments, predicting it's freaking moves. It won't know what hit it. This always felt incredibly rewarding especially near late game with some of the bigger boss battles. I would often breathe a sigh of relief on victory and reflect excitedly on how well I out danced every enemy attack and possible team wipe. I really don't have a single bad thing to say about the gameplay here. Xenoblade Chronicles is a shining example of how auto attack based gameplay should be done. All right. I feel like every time I get through one of these big segments, I'm like... All right, what's next? Let's talk about the way the game looks. This was a little bit of a controversy leading up to the game's release. Visually, this game is stunning. I'll admit I was a little worried going into playing it because we heard in handheld mode it can dip to as low as 378p. This is a legitimate reason for concern as any Xenoblade fans should expect the remaster to look gorgeous and better than ever in both their hands and on a TV, especially at full price. 540p stretched out on a 4K TV just does not look good. And it's weird to me that the resolution here can be worse than it was back on the Wii. We have some really impressive ports on the Switch from this and last gen. I'm not exactly sure what went wrong with putting this game on Switch, but thankfully it still manages to pull it off all right. In fact, some areas manage to still look drop dead gorgeous on the system. Something Xenoblade Chronicles excels at is a large variety of beautiful landscapes and stunning locations. Each chapter you find yourself in some new wonderful dreamland. The character models are the best part. They look fantastic and are a vast improvement from their Wii counterparts. While they still look a little blurry out in the field to the by honest, the cutscenes are crystal clear and immersive and more often than not, action packed. Also I want to say that while playing on my TV my Switch is plugged in via my M cable. This thing proved as a game changer as it really cleaned up a lot of the edges during gameplay. I'll show an example comparison here of my game recorded via my M cable. I'll even drop a link below if you want to check one of these things out for yourself. I've never talked about it before, but honestly it's my little Switch secret as to how I play all my Switch games on my TV. Makes everything look good. Ultimately, if you are happy with the way Xenoblade 2 looks you won't have an issue here and I go even further to say that there really isn't an issue at all. The gameplay is so smoothly and it's still so beautiful to behold that the lower resolution just doesn't matter. Much like I already said on Twitter that 90% of Xenoblade fans took the wrong way. So, are there a temperamental bunch? I don't know, do I fall in that category now? No, I could not be like that. I can take a joke. Of course, it would be nice to see everything a little clearer especially in the wide open areas but it's not something that impedes the game itself or something I really even thought about after the first few hours of playing. By just 10 hours into this game I was completely hooked. There was no need to play for 50 or 60 hours before the game got good. Wow, it was a little... Do I leave that in? With tons of abilities and combat options available to me, a gripping story and lovable characters is not a game you need to play for very long to start having fun and diving into all the gameplay mechanics you have available to you and there's a lot from the start and it just gets more intense as you play. Right as you feel like you're beginning to get a handle on things the game starts to increase its difficulty throwing more challenges at you as you begin to realize you are still yet to unlock the true power of the Monado. I want to take a moment to appreciate some other things I loved during my playthrough of Xenoblade. The new quest tracker is such a time saver and the waypoint system is perfect. I never got lost in my playthrough and I always knew where I was supposed to be headed. Much better than an ambiguous direction marker above your head that doesn't always point in the right direction I swear. The game wasn't grindy at all right up until the end. For the most part I just picked up every side quest I could find and there was hundreds and I killed most things on my path through the story and that was enough to keep me more than leveled. This keeps the main quest constantly progressing at a great pace if you're just trying to play through it. When you die you keep all progress and spawn immediately at the last checkpoint so there is no risk in trying to fight those high level enemies which is nice. You can even return to where you died to pick up any items you may have left behind. It's perfect for hard boss battles too. The last thing you want after slugging it out for 10 to 15 minutes and losing to a boss for the fifth time in a row is having to go back and sit through a cutscene again. Thankfully you can just run back up on them and it triggers the fight immediately, they're just there waiting for you but I appreciated this immensely. Every single level up comes with a big boost in power so even enemies that are 5 levels above you become harder than the boss battles. I enjoyed this though as it led me to really feeling like I'd become so much stronger when I revisited areas and took down creatures and monsters that previously were impossible. To prevent over-leveling the game would have you just miss most attacks on high level enemies and anything above like 5 levels or higher you can forget about landing a hit or an attack at all. None of the fights are super drawn out. In Xenoblade 2 and yes, the last time I'm going to reference it, I recall fighting just random dinosaurs around my level or lower for way too long to be engaging. The fights weren't hard, they weren't doing any damage to me, it just take, it just every fight seemed to take forever in that game, I'm sorry, they just did. But here the only fights that will take a while are the higher level fights. Most fights including those don't out-stay their welcome at all. Each character has a huge array of outfits you can unlock I was playing around with these a lot throughout my gameplay, just don't accidentally give dumb band shorts and forget that you did cause he looks kinda silly in the cutscenes no repeating voice lines think you can take me don't forget that I appreciated oh every character levels together even if you're not using them during that battle, that way they all stay at the exact same level which is perfect for switching between them at any point. The game doesn't punish you for wanting to just rock your favorite 3 characters the entire game, you're free to experiment and try new team ups even right up to the very last boss battle without having to worry about your favorite characters getting underleveled oh this is a big one and I can't believe I've waited this long to say it, great great voice acting from every single character in the game. I'd say Alvis was easily my favorite performance but I didn't encounter a single cringe moment from any of the cast, yeah maybe other than Ricky me one touch hum hum, me one never hum hum relationship building and affinity between characters the more you use certain characters together in battles the closer they become this allows you to link together character skills sharing benefits you also get better chances at creating stronger gems together and gain access to heart to heart conversations around the world which adds a little extra side relationship story between the characters alright okay I want to quickly give my final thoughts on some of the late game and even end game fights and story, so if you haven't played this Xenoblade game yet at all and we are on switch or whatever here is your warning I'm dragging it out here's your warning skip to this part of the video to avoid any kind of spoilers okay yeah three two one let's go I have played many games that have you saved the world but it's hard to put into words how Xenoblade Chronicles manages to pull it off in a way that actually makes me feel like I did just that I think other than the incredible storytelling the game just it made me fight for it I really had to give it my all and it in no way felt like a cheap victory near the end the boss fights were not playing around defeating Lorethea for example was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in a game it was like the hardest fight in the game and it wasn't even the boss anyway and it involved a lot of grinding which I didn't have to do up until that point in the game man I shudder to even think about my experience beating Zanzer initially I progressed past the you cannot return from here part of the game slugged it out with Dixon by the way I 100% saw this coming through the entire game he knew way too much about everything if you didn't see that coming you're blind but anyway I had one of the most rewarding video game victories in my life fighting him with several close calls just to find out I was one level short of being able to hit the final boss at all I am not kidding I just sat there like staring at the boss I have footage of me just sitting there for like 15 minutes staring at him googling and realizing that I was literally one level under being able to hit him at all like I said you can't hit them if they're at a certain level there was literally no way I could beat him and I knew at that moment what that meant it meant I had to exit out I'd have to go back to that moment that it was all like you can't progress past here I'd have to read defeat Dixon and by the way in my entire play through that first time I beat Dixon was still the most rewarding fight in the game and technically now that didn't happen so I exited out I grinded up levels and I did it all over again as frustrating as all of that was I was so motivated to finish the game and save the world you spend 95% of the game thinking Agile is the bad guy and right as you defeat him and you're so ready to see those credits roll you learn everything about Agile you learn the truth about Zanza and even though you feel as exhausted as the rest of the characters must fill in the story by now you know just like them you can't stop now the story does a fantastic job at bringing you into this world and the climactic conclusion of defeating a god and being given the option of becoming the new one is George dropping it's also rare that a game build such a convoluted story with so many crossing paths but manages to explain it all out rationally and have it all make sense by the end then also right at the end adding in some new extra context as you discover how all of this actually even started in the first place I have never been so satisfied by the conclusion of a story this size every single question I had was answered in the most rewarding way also once you complete the game the opening title screen changes to a beautiful shot of the friend sat looking across the lake and that was just such a perfect heartwarming ending to such an epic saga also my waifu totally came back in the best way possible and I love her character easily my favourite character to play as in battles she's so cool so OP alright you ready here we go here's the end of this Xenoblade Chronicles is an addictingly gripping adventure from start to finish it's a story that begins as a tale of revenge over a lost love one and ends up with more twists and turns than anyone could expect every step of the way adds extra mystery and intrigue without straying too far from the heart of the story and its characters the gameplay never felt repetitive and rather it became increasingly more rewarding to master as the game went on it's an almost perfect game for its genre if you're like me and you didn't really enjoy the second installment in the Xenoblade Chronicles series and you never played the original back on we I highly recommend giving Xenoblade Chronicles definitive addition a chance it's not only one of the best games on switch it's one of the greatest games of all time psych it sucks I got ya all the way through the whole thing you thought I was serious 1 out of 10 you know what I'll be nice 378 out of 10 cause that's how it looks in handheld I'm kidding oh my gosh I'm kidding it's great it's really good check it out I did it I beat it I'm exhausted I just wanted to get my first reaction to beating it it was freaking awesome I have like seen and played so many games that are like a fight to save the world but I've never really felt like I fought this hard to save a freaking world before it was just so epic is that gonna be a thumbnail no but someone should paint this for me won't be me buddy wait let me cascade my hair I would just like to point out that they said it would take about 60 hours so I'm 5 hours better than all of you or the average the averages of you so I'm not only did I finish it and loved it I'm the best at it oh and no I did not play the epilogue I actually figured it would be more fun if I did the main story and reviewed that as it was and then played through the epilogue with you guys on my twitch live so I'll leave my twitch link below if you want to come hang out thanks for watching you know what I really want to do right now and I'm not even kidding I want to start Xenoblade 2 again oh