It’s been a long time coming, but I finally beat Xenoblade Chronicles X! Obviously, there’s still a lot of content I haven’t seen, but I’ve finished all the main story missions. So, I guess for one last time, let’s go over some numbers. My total playtime is exactly 78 hours, my main character is level 53, and I’ve completed through chapter 12 of the main story. Oh, and even though this has been true for the entire series so I shouldn’t have to say this, there will be spoilers.

The majority of my time this week was spent getting ready for the final story mission. I had been warned by a friend that it would be quite difficult. So, I decided to save up for a level 50 skell and to make sure to save my division bonus items for the mission. This resulted in me doing a lot more affinity missions than I had been.

I’m not going to go through all the missions I did, but one dealt with Tatsu. I’m assuming I was expected to do this much earlier in the game, but oh well. We meet Tatsu’s rival, Tora, who tells us the location of Dodonga Caravan, Tatsu’s home caravan. Tatsu is delighted as he didn’t know where they had ended up, so we head out to see them.

Once we arrive, we’re introduced to Tatsu’s siblings and his mother, Koko. Tatsu tells his mother that he’s now thirteen, which is apparently important, and would like the glasses that his father used to wear which are supposed to be passed down to him. Well, it turns out that Koko was convinced that Tatsu had been killed by the Prone when he was captured, so she threw the glasses into the sea. She tells us where we might find them, so we head out.

When we arrive on the beach, we see a monster take the glasses and run off. What a jerk. We fight and easily defeat the monster, then return to Koko. Tatsu puts on the glasses, and they kind of look like the ones the leader of the Squirtle Squad wear on that one episode of Pokemon. You know the one. So, that was pretty silly.

After a bunch of other missions, I was able to afford the cheapest level 50 skell. I buy it and start the final mission. The Lifehold has been found, and now it’s a race to get there before the Ganglion. So, every Blade flies off to the location. It’s pretty cool to see so many skells all at the same time. Unfortunately, the Ganglion are already there. Elma orders the other Blade teams to cover us as we head to the front door.

We’re in for a bit of a surprise when we enter the Lifehold. There’s no bodies anywhere. Okay, so what’s going on? Before we can get any answers, Luxxar attacks in the Vita, that alien skell from earlier.

The fight against the Vita is tough, and I end up using up all of my skell healing items trying to get through. Even with all the items, only my level 50 skell survives. With Luxxar dead, Elma starts giving us some answers. It turns out the whole “our real bodies are aboard the Lifehold” thing was just a cover story. In reality, the consciousnesses of everyone on Earth had been turned to data and stored on the ship. Inside the Lifehold was the means to generate new bodies. Doug has some problems with this, but before we can get anywhere with that, Luxxar turns out to still be alive.

Luxxar attacks the computers inside the Lifehold, causing the Lifehold to activate it’s defense systems. Apparently, that means spawning weird monsters. Elma says we have to stop Luxxar right now, but before we do, Lao appears out of nowhere and stabs Luxxar in the back. He thanks Lin for helping him see the light before he and Luxxar fall into the genetic material used to make new bodies. Somehow, this results in Lao and Luxxar merging into some kind of giant monster that looks fairly similarly to Dr. Birkin’s final form in Resident Evil 2.

Lin tries to stop us from fighting Lao, but he tells us that we have to. Luxxar’s mind is taking over his, so we have to kill him before it’s too late. The first part of the fight is pretty easy, but the second gave me some trouble. He has a move that drains the fuel from your skells, forcing you to fight on the ground. This took me quite a few tries, but eventually I realized that I hadn’t re-equipped my skills the last time I changed my class. Whoops. Doing that made things much easier.

After the fight, Elma says that there actually is one real body on the Lifehold. It’s her’s, and she transfers her consciousness to it. A pod containing her body rises from the floor and opens to reveal her real body. It turns out Elma is an alien. She was the one who warned the Earth of the coming attack and helped us prepare. With that out of the way, all that’s left is celebratory feast. Roll end credits.

And then some weird stuff happens. After the credits, we see a cutscene of Elma and some crew in the wreckage of the Lifehold. It turns out all the memory had been damaged, meaning everyone should be dead. Even weirder, Elma determines that the damage happened when the White Whale landed, meaning everyone should have been dead the entire game. Elma says it must have something to do with the planet. The screen fades to black and displays the words “The story never truly ends”. What?

Xenoblade Chronicles X has been an amazing journey. I have a tendency to burn out on JRPGs before finishing them, but this one held my attention the whole time. If you like RPGs at all, this game is an absolute must play.

I hope you’ve had as much fun keeping up with my progress with the game as I did writing this series. I’m going to take a week off from big RPGs before starting another one. So, check the blog out next Sunday to see what the next game to get the “Check-In” treatment is.