So… I dropped Xenoblade Chronicles X. It’s been three days and I’m still feeling absolutely rotten about it. That almost never happens to me because despite popular rumor, I don’t drop games that easily. When I let something go, it’s because I’m sick and tired of it and don’t see myself going on any further.
In the case of XCX, however, I was still having fun. Not with the story, which was surprisingly not completely crappy and not completely nonsensical for a Xenoblade story, but with the gameplay. Although I said I was getting tired of the game in my last post, once I got past that fake final dungeon, I got back into the game again in a major way. There were still tons of quests I hadn’t finished when I dropped the game, especially the affinity quests, and while I wasn’t planning on taking down superbosses like Territorial Rotbart, I was definitely aiming to beat some of the bigger ones like that big Xe-Dom in Sylvalum that kept attacking my Skells. And I still had one party member to unlock and test. And I hadn’t yet found the best combination of weapons and skills to make me truly overpowered.
Come on, they’re not THAT much bigger.
Why did I drop the game, then? Short story: pure stupidity. Longer explanation: there were two reasons. First, as I mentioned in the last post, I set myself a deadline of finishing the game before the end of November (and later before the end of the year) so I could play Persona 5 Strikers (which I don’t even want to play now because I’m still upset). I felt I had been playing just one proper (offline) RPG all year long so I should try something else. Thus even though I wasn’t actually ready to move on, I forced myself to continue the story.
Secondly, despite loving the heck out of the sidequests and exploration, I definitely spent too much time on them at the expense of progressing the story so I admit I was a tiiiny bit sick of the game and okay with it ending at that point. I should have paced myself better on that front. That said, I definitely wasn’t sick enough to drop it like I did.
Stop raising those flags!!
Combining the two reasons meant I started forcing myself to rush through the game, only to find that there was a lot more story and game left than I had bargained for. You know when I said last time that I probably had a few dungeons left to go before the game ended? Yeah no, I was waaaay off. Finding the Lifehold is only like 60% of the way through the game. In fact, it’s when the game’s story really begins. That’s when they introduce the real bad guy(s) of the game (we all knew it couldn’t be the Ganglion), explain stuff like why Earth was attacked, how they got such fantastic technology like space travel in such a short time, what and where Mira is, etc. They also introduced new characters including some great hero with his awesome Skell that everyone’s fawning over when I’m just rolling my eyes like “Whatever, just let me finish the game already!”
Excuuuse me for not bowing at thy feet in worship, o great hero
I’ve rarely, if ever, been this sorry about dropping a game as I am about Xenoblade Chronicles X. In retrospect, why was I forcing myself to finish a game just because I felt I “should” move on? I’m not sharing the Switch with anyone, so this was 100% self-imposed pressure. What’s more, I bought XCX full price on day one, so why didn’t I just slow down and get my money’s worth? I can’t even rant about the story now because I skipped huge chunks of it thinking I was practically done.
At this point, readers who haven’t played XCX might ask, “Well, why don’t you just download it again and continue?” Unfortunately, XCX has a pretty final point of no return where everything on Mira and New LA is destroyed (zomg spoilers), meaning that all the quests are gone as well. The superbosses, the continents, the secret areas, all gone. The game does warn you about this, but I blithely clicked on and saved to boot because I thought for sure I was just going to fight the final boss and finish the game at that point. Nooooope.
Annoying thing about the game is they kept asking my opinion like they actually cared.
So I did fight the boss and thought I had won, but then he had a massive temper tantrum and scattered my whole party. I got tossed onto a whole new continent and had to wander around searching for everyone and all our Skells before we could take on the boss again. I was just done at that point. And that’s sad, because if I had taken my time and gotten to the boss organically, I might have been like “Aww noo, I don’t wanna finish XCX, I wanna explore more!” And then I might have been absolutely thrilled for one last chance to run around before finally finishing the game. I really should have keep a much earlier save, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that.
Well, at least I learned a powerful lesson from this, which is not to pressure or force myself game-wise in 2026. Some years ago, I set a motto of “It is enough to play just a little bit of a game,” and that made it easier for me to drop games that weren’t fun, whether I had given them enough of a chance or not. It’s time to set a caveat motto: “It is okay to keep playing a game you’re enjoying.” Even if I only play one game in a year, or two years, or heck a whole decade, it’s okay as long as I have fun with it.
I’m sorry about Xenoblade Chronicles X, I really am. It deserved better. I deserved better. 2026 isn’t here yet, and I can’t say for sure what, if anything I’ll be playing then, but I won’t force myself to play if it sucks, and I won’t force myself to stop playing it if I like it. I never want to feel this way after dropping a game again.
This is very unexpected!
You’re not alone, the whole epilogue added on the definitive edition sours the experience. The tonal shift is real and the amount of fanservice the new char got was ridiculous. The original game finishes at ch12 (finding the lifehold), I think that’s the better ending.
Whoa, huh. I did not know that chapter 13 was a later addition. No wonder the whole thing felt so weird. There should have been a healthy middle ground between the end of chapter 12 (which was a heckuva cliffhanger) and the subsequent time-wasting and fawning over Al that turned me off so much. That fake final battle before the dispersion could have been the real final battle, for example. Anyway, I’m super done with this game now, time to watch the ending on YouTube.
Oh wow, I really felt this post on a personal level. That feeling of self-imposed pressure to “finish” a game you’re genuinely enjoying, only to rush and ruin the experience, is so relatable. Your detailed account of getting locked out of all that post-game content (those superbosses!) and the story kicking in right when you rushed past it really hits home. Your new motto for 2026, “It is okay to keep playing a game you’re enjoying,” is absolutely perfect and something we all need to remember more often.
My question is about moving forward from this specific experience: with the game in its current “point of no return” state for you, do you think there’s any value in starting a completely fresh save at some point in the future, with no deadlines, just to experience the journey and side content the way you wanted to? Or is the memory of this burnout too strong, making it better to let it be a powerful lesson and move on to something new?
Just move on, there are too many good games out there.