Game: Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Definitive Edition
Genre: RPG
System: Nintendo Switch 2
Developer|Publisher: Monolith Soft | Nintendo
Age Rating: EU 12 | US Teen
Price: US $69.99 | UK 58.99 | EU € 69,99
Release Date: July 30th, 2026
Review code provided with many thanks to Nintendo Europe.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Definitive Edition Back to Alrest
There is something slightly strange about returning to a game that you remember playing years ago and discovering that your feelings about it haven’t quite gone where you expected.
I first played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 back when the original Nintendo Switch was still young. In fact, it was my introduction to the Xenoblade series. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly make the best first impression on me. I eventually found myself enjoying other entries in the series considerably more, particularly Xenoblade Chronicles X, and that left me wondering whether returning to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 several years later would change my opinion.
Well, after playing the main adventure and Torna – The Golden Country, I can at least say that my relationship with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has improved. I like it more than I did the first time around. But I still think it is one of the more difficult Xenoblade games to simply pick up and understand. And that is probably the best place to start.
So, What Actually is Xenoblade Chronicles 2?
If you’ve never played a Xenoblade game before, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 can initially feel like you’ve accidentally enrolled in a university course called Understanding Several Hundred Different RPG Systems. Don’t panic. Beneath all the terminology, the basic idea is actually quite straightforward. You play as Rex, a young salvager who makes a living diving into the Cloud Sea. After a rather unfortunate job goes wrong, he becomes involved with Pyra, a mysterious Blade. Blades are essentially living weapons who fight alongside human Drivers, granting them weapons, abilities and elemental powers. Rex and Pyra set off on a journey towards Elysium, a legendary paradise said to be the birthplace of humanity. Naturally, because this is an enormous JRPG, this relatively simple objective soon becomes rather more complicated.
There are rival factions, mysterious characters, ancient powers, enormous Titans, plenty of world-threatening nonsense and an absolutely enormous amount of anime. The world of Alrest itself is one of the game’s biggest attractions. Rather than exploring a conventional planet, you’re travelling across enormous Titans, each of which effectively acts as its own little ecosystem. Towns, wilderness, caves, monsters and quests are scattered across these gigantic creatures, giving the world a wonderfully unusual sense of scale.
A Crash Course in Combat
The combat is probably where newcomers are going to need the most patience. At its simplest, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 uses real-time combat where your character automatically performs basic attacks once you’ve engaged an enemy. You’re not constantly hammering the attack button. Instead, you’re watching the battle, positioning yourself and deciding when to use your Arts and more powerful abilities. Arts charge as you perform regular attacks, while your Blades provide additional abilities and powerful Special attacks.
Then things start getting complicated. You can switch between Blades during battle, allowing you to change weapons, elements and abilities depending on what you need. You can combine attacks into Blade Combos, while Driver Combos allow you to exploit effects such as Break, Topple, Launch and Smash. Eventually, when everything comes together, battles can become incredibly satisfying. The problem is getting to that point. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 throws an awful lot of information at you, and its tutorials aren’t always particularly good at explaining how everything fits together. You’ll receive another pop-up explaining another mechanic, read it, nod thoughtfully and then immediately wonder whether you’ll ever actually remember what it told you. Thankfully, there is a menu where you can revisit the explanations. You’ll probably need it.
The World
This is another area where I struggled during my original playthrough. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 isn’t particularly interested in gently introducing you to its enormous world. You can wander into areas containing enemies that could flatten you in seconds, sometimes seemingly without anyone bothering to mention that you’re about to make a terrible life decision. I certainly made that mistake more than once. There were moments where I followed what appeared to be the natural route towards a quest objective, only to encounter an enormous enemy that seemed to have been specifically designed to make me question my life choices. Over time, though, I became much more comfortable with the systems. That’s probably the key to Xenoblade Chronicles 2. The game becomes considerably easier to appreciate once you stop trying to understand everything at once.
Torna – The Golden Country
Included alongside the main experience is Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country, a prequel set 500 years before the events of the main game. Rather than following Rex and Pyra, Torna focuses on Lora, her Blade Jin, and the events that ultimately lead to the fall of Torna. Interestingly, I found Torna considerably easier to get into. It uses the foundations established by Xenoblade Chronicles 2 but makes some changes to the combat system. You can switch between Drivers and their Blades directly, making battles feel more immediate and easier to understand. For me, this was a welcome change. It felt like someone had handed me the instruction manual I’d been looking for.
Torna is also a much more focused experience. It’s still a substantial RPG, but its prequel status gives the story a more concentrated direction, and because I already understood the fundamentals of Xenoblade 2, I could appreciate its combat and characters without constantly wondering what on earth I was supposed to be doing. It also adds considerable emotional weight to the events of the main game. Knowing where certain characters and events eventually end up gives the story a different perspective.
Anime and British Accents
Let’s talk about the voice acting. I absolutely love the British voice cast in Xenoblade Chronicles 2. There is something wonderfully entertaining about seeing this gigantic, colourful anime adventure taking place across a fantasy world and then hearing characters wandering around speaking in wonderfully varied British accents. Rex’s strong Northern accent in particular has always stuck with me. It shouldn’t work as well as it does. But it does.
The whole game has a very strong personality. Yes, there are plenty of familiar anime tropes. Friendship is important. People shout dramatically. Characters occasionally become rather more emotional than the situation perhaps warrants. And of course characters won’t shut up during battles. There are moments when the game leans extremely heavily into its anime identity. But I think that’s part of its charm. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 isn’t afraid to be anime as heck.
Rather Lovely on Switch 2
The Switch 2 upgrade is particularly welcome if, like me, you spend most of your time playing handheld. The original game could look impressive, but it was also very obviously pushing the original Switch hardware. The Switch 2 version feels considerably cleaner and smoother. The game now targets 60fps, while TV mode supports 4K output, but since I’m a dinosaur and lack a TV capable of this, I can’t comment on this, but handheld looks lovely.
The scenery remains one of the game’s strongest features. Huge Titans, enormous skies, distant landscapes and colourful environments give Alrest a fantastic sense of scale. It still has that distinctive Xenoblade visual style, mixing anime-inspired character designs with some surprisingly spectacular scenery. And yes, it looks considerably better than I remember it looking.
New additions for Switch 2
This isn’t simply a resolution and frame-rate upgrade either. The Switch 2 Edition adds Merc Assault, a new mode where you directly control your Blades and can switch between up to six of them during missions. There’s also a new Rare Blade called MOMO, complete with her own quest, The Home of the Soul, while Pyra and Mythra receive new styles.
These aren’t necessarily reasons for someone who disliked Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to suddenly run out and buy it again, but they’re welcome additions to what is already an enormous package. If you’ve never played it, this is naturally the version to experience. If you already own the original, however, the question becomes rather more complicated.
Should you revisit Xenoblade Chronicles 2?
That really depends on how you felt about it the first time. If you absolutely loved Xenoblade Chronicles 2, you’re probably going to be very happy to revisit it with smoother performance and the additional content. If you bounced off the game because you disliked its mechanics, I’m not convinced the Switch 2 additions fundamentally change the experience enough to convince you otherwise. And then there’s the small matter of time. This is a big RPG. A very big RPG. You can quite happily lose an enormous number of hours to Alrest, so deciding to revisit it isn’t exactly the same as deciding to replay a ten-hour adventure over a quiet weekend.
For me, though, returning to it was worthwhile. I didn’t suddenly discover that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was my favourite game in the series, but I did discover that I appreciated it much more than I originally did.
Conclusion: Second Gear
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Definitive Edition is an enormous, colourful and occasionally bewildering RPG that takes a little while to reveal why people have become so attached to it.
I still think it has a fairly high barrier to entry. If you’re completely new to Xenoblade, I wouldn’t necessarily point you towards this as the easiest introduction to the series. The first Xenoblade Chronicles remains, in my view, a more straightforward place to start. But if you can get through those many early hours and allow the various systems to gradually settle into your brain, there’s a lot to enjoy here. The combat becomes more satisfying. The world opens up. The Blade system starts to make sense. Builds become more interesting. The story gathers momentum. And eventually you stop thinking about all the terminology and simply start playing the game.
Torna – The Golden Country was a particularly pleasant surprise for me, too. Its more focused story and refined combat made it easier to appreciate, and I think it complements the main game extremely well.
Ultimately, I still don’t love Xenoblade Chronicles 2 quite as much as some of the other Xenoblade adventures I’ve played. But my second journey through Alrest has certainly been a much happier one. It turns out I hadn’t completely fallen out with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 after all. I just needed a few more years, a better understanding of the series, and apparently a Nintendo Switch 2.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot.
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