Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

 Switch
User Score
8.8

Generally favorable reviews- based on 1336 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,179 out of 1336
  2. Mixed: 58 out of 1336
  3. Negative: 99 out of 1336
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  1. SirPunk
    Jun 17, 2022
    7
    After playing a little bit of Xenoblade 2 a few years ago I always wanted to play the first game. Especially with Xenoblade 3 coming out next month and loving what I’m seeing from the trailers I finally decided to play the first Xenoblade. I did kind of rush through it so take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt. I thought the story overall was good BUT I felt for the better half ofAfter playing a little bit of Xenoblade 2 a few years ago I always wanted to play the first game. Especially with Xenoblade 3 coming out next month and loving what I’m seeing from the trailers I finally decided to play the first Xenoblade. I did kind of rush through it so take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt. I thought the story overall was good BUT I felt for the better half of 10 hours in the middle of the game the story just kind of falls flat. The beginning is really good and the ending is really good but the middle portion just felt like a chore. I did not even do many side quest because I wanted to quickly get this game done so I could go and try to beat Xenoblade 2 and Xenoblade 2: Torna before the release of Xenoblade 3. (Side note: I started playing Xenoblade 1 at the beginning of May.) The combat is really fun and rewarding but in the middle I just got so sick of it because that’s all I was focusing on because the story wasn’t doing it for me. So by the end of the game I was kind of sick of the combat. It’s a fun game just don’t try to rush through it like I did because I think that is what ruined it for me. There was a moment at the end where I thought maybe this game in my opinion could be an 8/10. If it was up to me and I hate doing this I would consider it a 7.5/10.… Expand
  2. rebisdee
    Jun 10, 2020
    7
    I'm just gonna say it, this game has flaws. I've played about 12 hours of it, and like it. But it's full of fetch quests and other aging design conventions, along with a bloated combat system. It seems like a great game, and I'll probably finish it. It's no 9 out of 10 but at least it isn't a standard turn based affair. The environments are really pretty and look okay in terms ofI'm just gonna say it, this game has flaws. I've played about 12 hours of it, and like it. But it's full of fetch quests and other aging design conventions, along with a bloated combat system. It seems like a great game, and I'll probably finish it. It's no 9 out of 10 but at least it isn't a standard turn based affair. The environments are really pretty and look okay in terms of resolution, but the Switch shows it's lack of power for sure. Story seems *fine*

    Overall, I 'd say this is a solid addition to the Switch's RPG library. It's possible that I might revise this with a higher or lower rating if I keep playing.    … Expand
  3. annual_ring
    Jun 21, 2020
    7
    a ok game
    a good jrpg
    a good story
    i like the original Xenoblade
    better than Xenoblade2
  4. Valientinita
    Jul 17, 2020
    7
    En resumen hubo algunos detalles en la jugabilidad que no me gustaron del todo, el resto encuentro que está muy bien
  5. CompleteIdiot
    Dec 7, 2021
    7
    I think the game was overhyped for me. I played the second instalment first, and when this was announced as a remake I had a lot of excitement for it. While the visuals and world design is fantastic, I did find the combat and characters rather lacking. Some story plot points were definitely inspired, but overall it felt like a much weaker game than the second one. If anything, afterI think the game was overhyped for me. I played the second instalment first, and when this was announced as a remake I had a lot of excitement for it. While the visuals and world design is fantastic, I did find the combat and characters rather lacking. Some story plot points were definitely inspired, but overall it felt like a much weaker game than the second one. If anything, after playing this one it has made me want to replay the sequel even more! I still haven't fully finished it (have like 2 more hours based on what I read on wiki) but its so hard to pick it up as the core gameplay loop simply is not as enjoyable as it was in the sequel.… Expand
  6. Tikur
    Sep 9, 2022
    7
    This game is good and yes, if you want to try out Xenoblade Chronicles this is truly the definitive version to do so.

    Although the original is now twelve years old, it offers still a gorgeous and beautiful soundtrack, a organic and visual astonishing environment and a deep characterdevelopement. Furthermore the characters of your party itself have all their own relationships between    This game is good and yes, if you want to try out Xenoblade Chronicles this is truly the definitive version to do so.

    Although the original is now twelve years old, it offers still a gorgeous and beautiful soundtrack, a organic and visual astonishing environment and a deep characterdevelopement. Furthermore the characters of your party itself have all their own relationships between each other. Some of them and the way how it will develop are quite obvious, but nevertheless interesting to watch.

    The battle system is complex, intuitive and most importantly offers a great variety of interactions, so that will feel directly involved.

    In this categories it still holds up great against modern games.

    It would get 9 out of 10 rating from me, if there was not be one big flaw in the game and its structure.

    This game is overloaded with, repetitive and mostly boring side quests. This alone would not be that much of a problem, because the story is what really counts. However to make progress in the main story and go further in the games plot, you have to complete a lot of these side quest. If you don't you will sooner or later come to a point where you have to grind a certain amount of levels to be strong enough.

    Unfortunately, there are only four types of them. Killing a special monster, killing a bunch of monsters, collect one ore more specific Items, or search one specific Quest Item like a key.

    The plot itself is at the beginning full of questions which is easily the most exciting part in the story. Sadly the final plot twist and the explaination behind all this, is however absolutley ridiculous.

    All in all a great game with outdated and boring side quests, which you unfortunately have to make use of it.    … Expand
  7. SuperSonicJunus
    Sep 9, 2023
    7
    Solid RPG I completed at work on my downtime. This game falls just short of being special. I was at a point in the game when I thought the game was about to end, and just the story went on another 10 hours. Plenty to do in this one. None of the NPCs are memorable. Shulk, on the other hand, is a good character that I’m glad was represented in Smash.
  8. naiper
    Jul 13, 2020
    6
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The world is too empty. There are no runnings or vehicles, which makes traveling a waste of time. The battle system is fun but the sense of attack is too terrible and after too many battles I feel very repetitive. The story is terrible. The motivation of the MC is ridiculous when he chose to forgive all enemies who destroyed his hometown and killed a lot of people but keep killing the monsters that was transferred from humans but could possibly become human beings once more. Overall, an overrated mediocre game.… Expand
  9. vc21223
    Aug 25, 2020
    6
    The story is pretty good but the gameplay is pretty bad. It doesn't feel satisfying at all and when you finally whittle down a hp bar, the cutscene jarringly steps in and it doesn't even feel like a proper win. The characters repeat the same couple of lines during combat and that gets irritating after a couple of hours. The camera auto focuses in an annoying way where it will often zoom inThe story is pretty good but the gameplay is pretty bad. It doesn't feel satisfying at all and when you finally whittle down a hp bar, the cutscene jarringly steps in and it doesn't even feel like a proper win. The characters repeat the same couple of lines during combat and that gets irritating after a couple of hours. The camera auto focuses in an annoying way where it will often zoom in way too close into the characters when I've set it at max zoom out.… Expand
  10. Neyb
    May 31, 2020
    6
    If you don't have 50 hours to waste (like me) you won't be able to play the game. And the beginning iss just bad. I don't care of the rest...
  11. OldAndCynical
    Nov 30, 2020
    6
    There are JRPGs that age well, and then there are those that don't. Xenoblade is one of the latter.
    This game might have been mighty impressive on Wii, and pretty neat on WiiU.
    But its well past its prime on Switch. The tired level design, the lack of interesting detail, the endless fetch quests that give no real rewards and so on. Its all just too PS2 era, and not in a good way. And    There are JRPGs that age well, and then there are those that don't. Xenoblade is one of the latter.
    This game might have been mighty impressive on Wii, and pretty neat on WiiU.
    But its well past its prime on Switch. The tired level design, the lack of interesting detail, the endless fetch quests that give no real rewards and so on. Its all just too PS2 era, and not in a good way.
    And the 'acclaimed' music is pretty horrid, and far cry from the great soundtrack Baten Kaitos had. And the remastered soundtrack manages to be even worse!
    But I think the worst bit is the lack of atmosphere in the game world, and the unconvincing, cliche'd characters that lack depth.
    This is one of those 'essential' JRPGs that you can safely pass without having missed anything essential.    … Expand
  12. Rei_matarael
    Jun 20, 2020
    5
    Remastered traditional J-RPG. but still UI and UX is not followed these days.
    Especially, side quests were bored, not related with main quest flow and forced repeat play (save & load). There is nothing befored happen Un-expected(reversal) story to predicting that. It is worse point in this game.
  13. Anatoma
    Jul 16, 2021
    5
    Was great at the beginning but got boring later .Didn't like the combat mechanic which is very complicated. Sometimes complicated fighting mechanics get good later on in the game but not in this case.common cliches like power of friendship, gods, not killing any enemy really got on my nerves
  14. Xemnios
    Mar 29, 2021
    5
    One of the best story in videogame history in a terrible and boring game...
  15. RCAVHS
    Sep 1, 2021
    5
    I saw lot of people suggesting playing this after BOTW to get another epic adventure but with RPG mechanics. I wanted a better story since BOTW is lacking in that area, and obviously this game gets high praise for its story. I generally enjoy RPGs and recently played FF XII: The Zodiac Age and it really grew on me, so I was open to this more MMO-type battle system.

    I was impressed by    I saw lot of people suggesting playing this after BOTW to get another epic adventure but with RPG mechanics. I wanted a better story since BOTW is lacking in that area, and obviously this game gets high praise for its story. I generally enjoy RPGs and recently played FF XII: The Zodiac Age and it really grew on me, so I was open to this more MMO-type battle system.

    I was impressed by the world, and the strategy of the combat intrigued me. The voice acting and cutscenes were pretty impressive, and the story seemed quite interesting. Unfortunately, on my second session of playing the game, I found myself dozing off while playing. I figured I was just tired, but then it happened during another session, and then another.

    I still haven't figured out what was so boring about this game. The quests just feel like running from checkpoint to checkpoint on your map. There is no rewarding feeling of discovery from the quests or in the items you get. I would get new weapons/armor and it would make me stronger but there was nothing exciting about getting a new weapon. Sometimes it felt like they were too OP. One weird thing for me right away was that I couldn't use a potion or anything to heal myself in or after battle like a typical game. Your health just restores completely about 5 seconds after battle. So the game seems to be less about using resources to surviving your journey, but rather just about surviving each individual battle encounter. I don't know, this was just weird to me and took away a lot of the challenge.

    I put this game down about 15-20 hours in. I know people say that you have to give certain games more time than that, but I just didn't have the patience. Nothing hooked me.    … Expand
  16. blackalps
    Jan 11, 2021
    4
    The story is good. The rest of it sucks. The combat sucks and gets really tedious by the end. Some characters like Riki have absolutely no point and are useless in combat. The exploring sucks, the gem crafting system sucks, the side missions are tedious and rote. There's no sense of satisfaction from winning the big battles, because once you get the boss HP bar down, it suddenly turns intoThe story is good. The rest of it sucks. The combat sucks and gets really tedious by the end. Some characters like Riki have absolutely no point and are useless in combat. The exploring sucks, the gem crafting system sucks, the side missions are tedious and rote. There's no sense of satisfaction from winning the big battles, because once you get the boss HP bar down, it suddenly turns into a cutscene that will show you losing, or the boss is fine and flies off and you have to beat it again later. If this was a well done anime, it'd be pretty great, but as a game it kind of sucks.… Expand
  17. Gamexpert
    Jun 5, 2020
    3
    The game itself is an absolute Masterwork, one of the best JRPGs ever made.
    What i am criticizing is this Remaster itself. They managed to get my to by this version and it the only thing they really approved was the character models. The World itself and the rest looks a bit better, but i hoped for more. I played the original 2 Years ago, and i should have whatched more Comparison Videos,    The game itself is an absolute Masterwork, one of the best JRPGs ever made.
    What i am criticizing is this Remaster itself. They managed to get my to by this version and it the only thing they really approved was the character models. The World itself and the rest looks a bit better, but i hoped for more. I played the original 2 Years ago, and i should have whatched more Comparison Videos, but everyone talked about a new Engine, its just an Upscale, nothing more. Great Game, not so great Remaster.    … Expand
  18. oxitran
    Jun 6, 2020
    3
    This is coming from someone who loves the original. Someone who's disinterest in the Wii after its game momentum died in 2009, came back and is now someone who loves the Wii and has extremely fond memories of its closing years with Xenoblade, Last story, and Pandoras tower.

    But I have to say it, this is a lazy port. The game is a masterpiece that deserves so much better. The Wii version    This is coming from someone who loves the original. Someone who's disinterest in the Wii after its game momentum died in 2009, came back and is now someone who loves the Wii and has extremely fond memories of its closing years with Xenoblade, Last story, and Pandoras tower.

    But I have to say it, this is a lazy port. The game is a masterpiece that deserves so much better. The Wii version should still not be the definitive edition of the game after all these years. The 3DS version was an acceptable handheld port, but the Switch version is barely passable as a handheld port, and the docked version is a joke. Low resolutions, terrible frame lurches when the resolution changes, and an already poor fps. And for what? different character models, not necessarily better character models.

    Just have a look at the Wii HD texture pack. The mod fixed most of the games textures with ones that are respectful to the source art. The biggest respected aspect is the characters. When you remake a game you dont change the characters art. You can give them smoother geometry and higher res textures, but not different geometry or textures to the point that they look like different people.

    Really poor job on this one. Okami HD could get away with a half assed uprez cause the art suited it. But even still the purists bemoan the loss of the rice paper filter and increase in colour saturation. This game needs a complete environmental overhaul at 1080p 60fps locked with the characters original art intact. Not this mess.

    If you dont have a Wii, PC, or a way to buy the original game, then buy this. But know you are getting a subpar experience at full price.    … Expand
  19. honest_rev7
    Sep 24, 2020
    3
    It was so boring. I liked the characters and the story seemed promising. The world seemed well-built, but by God, all of it combined is just so boring. Dropped the game after playing it for 5 hours, and never touched it again.
  20. jotoer
    Sep 25, 2022
    2
    First half of the game was really enjoyable and I think it would have gotten a solid 8/10 from me. But the last few chapters are so damn annoying, I couldn’t do it. The story is written like a 5 year old kid did it; everytime someone may die, something magic happens and everybody is saved. Literally EVERY SINGLE TIME. The narrators sound like they want to give voice for a kids cartoonFirst half of the game was really enjoyable and I think it would have gotten a solid 8/10 from me. But the last few chapters are so damn annoying, I couldn’t do it. The story is written like a 5 year old kid did it; everytime someone may die, something magic happens and everybody is saved. Literally EVERY SINGLE TIME. The narrators sound like they want to give voice for a kids cartoon show. Completely overdone and over dramatic voice acting.
    Everything apart from the combat and the world design is getting more cringey by the second. And as the sudden ‚betrayers‘ come up (what a plot twist, LOL), I had to put the game out. If you are under 10 years old, you might like it though.    … Expand
  21. Henryseraph
    Jul 19, 2020
    2
    No es posible que saquen el mismo juego de Wii con los
    Mismos gráficos y aveces peores que en su version original.
  22. Haky
    Jul 14, 2022
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This Game is just straight up Boring. I wanted to play the first game because i saw so much about the second game on Twitter.
    So I played it and from the start on you dont know whats happening there is no Introduction or anything you just get thrown into the World and there's a magical Weapon that kills the Mechons better than other weapons, ok. Then you get introduced to Shulk and his random ass friends, who dont get developed the slightest and the one of them dies and its supposed to hurt your feelings. sorry but i dont care much about a character that gets introduced in the first 10 min of the game and then die's randomly. the whole game is just random and unfun things just happen out of nowhere and you have to"figure out" why, but the answer in the end is just , there is a random ass Scientist who created the world and is Hungry for power blabla. So the Story is pretty cringe and boring for today's standards and i would mind as much if the Gameplay was actually fun, but it isnt.
    I was waiting hours into the game for shulk to learn new moves but he didnt, so all you do is all game is spamming air-slash and backslash until the end of the game...
    So like 60 hours into the i was like yeah this is boring, ill try switching up my team. so i grinded a bit and got good weapons and armor for everyone just to lose every fight because i didnt have shulk on the team. All in all combat feels very janky FOR EVERY FIGHT doesnt matter if its normal enemies or the last boss fight, you just HOPE that your teammates do the right Moves and that you dont get janked by bad timing, and that is not fun at all.
    The only thing i enjoyed from this game was the Soundtrack which is phenomenal, it helps to build a feeling of epic-ness and greatness to the world you play in.
    2/10    … Expand
  23. Priception
    May 30, 2020
    1
    One of the laziest remasters I have ever seen. The game looks like an early Xbox 360 title while running at a terribel resolution and doesn't even run at 60 fps?!

    There is definatly a Nintendo bias as this game does not deserve an 89 on metacritic.
  24. dexxx
    Jun 28, 2020
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. badords can't describe how amazing this JRPG still is 10 years later. The characters are so memorable. The music is outstanding. The world is so imaginative that it's still yet to be outclassed by anything else since it's debut in 2010. The story keeps you guessing with it's mystery, and the story is an absolute masterclass because it's so well written and perfectly executed with plot twists… Ex… Expand
  25. Katerinashon
    Oct 9, 2022
    1
    Good plot, but the game play is terrible compared to xc2. The combat requires just scrolling through abilities and spamming them. The game forces you to complete side quests and mindlessly grind enemies even if you just want to play main quest it will throw you into impossible battles. Not worth the money, just play the second part and read the plot in the wiki
  26. Robert2
    May 29, 2020
    0
    I’m going to be honest here, I’m not a big fan of games like xenoblade I don’t really know what I was thinking when I bought it. It’s not very fun at all. Breath of the wild is still my favorite switch game.
  27. Arrc84
    Mar 17, 2021
    0
    I don't understand what there is to like about this game on almost every level.
  28. GenkiYokota
    Jan 27, 2022
    0
    It has the same problem as the XC2, an excess of erotic fanservice, and a horrendous redesign that is not very faithful to the original aspect of the Wii game.
    It is in general a remake-remaster quite lacking in soul.
  29. BigPapa1
    May 29, 2020
    0
    Eh.....
    I like Final Fantasy 7 Remake more. That game has better graphics. Xenpblade isn't as good as Xenogears and has terrible anime voice acting British
  30. Kkodss
    Jun 5, 2020
    0
    single-mmo-trash with lazy level design, boring battle system and bad character development
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Awards & Rankings

4
#4 Best Switch Game of 2020
3
#3 Most Discussed Switch Game of 2020

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
89

Generally favorable reviews - based on 92 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 88 out of 92
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 92
  3. Negative: 0 out of 92
  1. Nintendo Force Magazine
    Oct 26, 2020
    100
    This has been a delight in a dark time in humanity's history. [Issue #48 – September/October 2020, p. 74]
  2. GameMAG
    Sep 14, 2020
    90
    Xenoblade Chronicles is still one of the best games of the genre, which 10 years later continues to delight and surprise with a unique world, luxurious epic landscapes, an incredible sense of freedom, beautiful music and a really interesting story. Of course, it is a pity that the Definitive Edition has a technical limitation in terms of resolution, which does not allow the image to really shine in 2020, but otherwise it is a chic project that every fan of the genre of adventure and Japanese role-playing games should play.
    Read full review
  3. App Trigger
    Jul 20, 2020
    95
    It’s hard to believe this is a game that released in 2012 and not more recently. Though there are some dated and heavy systems, the atmosphere and a combat system that gives freedom and depth make Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition an RPG for the ages.
    Read full review
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