Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition

@TT21

Wow.
I'm struggling a little bit with the battles, but it's early in the game so I'll persevere.

@Uncle_Franklin Yes, but there's also a town called York in New York that doesn't do that. The "New" is completely arbitrary and unnecessary to distinguish between two towns of the same name.

Yeesh, that Flight Module mission is a bit of a pigeonhole. My level thirty skell has no chance against the gravity-heavy mobs that drop the parts. Mercifully, you can purchase the part using material tickets from your daily log-in. Heaven help the uninitiated who might've spent all of their material tickets prior to this quest.

Almost a rage-quit situation. Not the worst game design I've seen, but not good either.

I’ve put about ninety hours into this game on the Switch. It’s just too good.

60 hours, level 40, chapter ten.

Took on Zu Pharg on foot. Whoops. This must be the level 50 gear check?

It's going to take a while to grind up to that.

@Magician
There are EXP Booster augments that are pretty easy to craft, they use Golden Jewels and Giant Jade Pearls.
The Golden Jewels are pretty easy to farm from Saltat enemies found around North-West Primordia, whilst the Giant Jade Pearls can be farmed from Awakened Liceors found in Sylvalum around FN Site 413. They're level 41-50 so they shouldn't be too difficult. You'll need to break the Saltat's / Liceor's "ball" appendage to get these materials. Alternatively, you can use material tickets since these materials are pretty cheap.

I'd also recommend crafting "Appendage Crusher" weapon augments, they're ideal for material farming.

Zu Pharg is nowhere near as intimidating in terms of in-game stats as it looks. It's particularly weak to gravity damage, so the weapon of choice is the G-Buster, ideally with a few mechanoid slayer augments thrown in, and aimed at its knees. Fill the rest of your slots with quick-charging beam and electric weapons, because it's also somewhat weak to them, and try to get cockpit mode and overdrive.

I am trying XCX on the Switch 2 at the moment, but what is it with all these level 40+ mobs in low level missions? Is this a bug or something?

I have literally mission flagged level 40+ mobs in level 3-11 missions? This is crazy!

I also have an early level 3 mission where I have to find some guy on a hill and its literally perma camped by level40+ mobs and impossible to complete.

What a horrible design, which none of the other 3 games suffer from.

PS. I am not talking about some high level mobs roaming around in areas. All XC games have that and I know you have to try to avoid them/sneak around them.

Was hoping to find some discussion on people’s thoughts of the new content. I finished the game after 152 hours or something like that. I rushed into ch13 right after beating the old final boss cause I kinda just wanted to get it done. And then I figured out how long ch 13 was gonna be lol had no idea. I honestly preferred how the original ending left the game, and felt like ch 13 was tacked on. I don’t know how they thought the new vandham was acceptable lol

@Grim Chapter 13 was mainly the ideas that they had for X's ending originally- but it felt tacked on because they crammed it into a singular chapter rather than having the freedom to naturally lead to it through multiple chapters. It was a rush job so that they could build up the important points for whatever comes next in the series pretty much.

There's also the issue that Lao's role was reduced in Chapter 13 because his Japanese VA ended up passing away before they made the content for it. Whatever they had planned for Lao was scrapped, and they decided to do a tribute to the character and VA instead. It still feels like a pretty good send-off imo, but I can see why people disliked it after waiting for this for so long.

@VoidofLight ok interesting! That makes me want to go back and watch the new cutscenes to see how they honoured the VA. I hadn’t known about that. I wish I had been more patient with that last chapter or waited a few days before starting it I dunno.

Switch 2 Edition upgrade pack for this game is out now!

Physical copy coming April 16th, 2026.

Looks great in 4k, and the 60 fps definitely makes a difference. Feels great to play. And 1080p 60 fps for Xenoblade X in handheld mode feels incredible after what we tolerated with Xenoblade 2.

Load times are also lightning fast. Booting the game and loading a save is incredibly fast, like Mario Tennis Fever. It's so nice when games boot up and load super fast.

I'm not so sure about the handheld mode. There's some very shonky upscaling going on there. Maybe they just couldn't quite get the performance for native rendering at 60fps, but I'd prefer a quality mode. Frame rate aside, the picture looks worse than on my Switch Lite.

Docked is a massive improvement though. Finally, Xenoblade at 4K@60.

I play this game docked 99% of the time so the $5 upgrade seemed more than worth it and, wow, even more impressive than I expected. Already loved the XCXDE when I played it last year, but 4K, 60 brings it to another level.

Nah, gonna have to disagree there- game looks crazy good in handheld.

I run the docked image on my custom modded Switch Lite OLED and it doesn't look this good. It comes close, but that's a screen half the size and outputting docked (and is still 30 fps).

Not saying it's flawless like Mario Kart World or Mario Tennis Fever. But I've played Xenoblade 2 on handheld, and this feels like a proper generational leap by comparison.

GVG discuss the image quality issues in this video. Their footage is entirely of docked play though, which they agree is very much a win.

I'd think that it's a bit akin to the shadow and lighting issues with the Zelda Switch 2 Editions, in that it's not going to bother everyone equally. Once you notice that it's there though, it can be difficult to unsee.

The bottom line is probably just not to expect miracles when it comes to bolted-on upgrades to what is essentially an eleven year old game, even if it is something of an all time favorite of mine.