Awesome / Xenoblade Chronicles X

WARNING: Per wiki policy, spoilers are unmarked on Awesome Moments pages!

• Any concerns about Nintendo's lack of marketing were obliterated by their EU division's ad campaign; particularly the gameplay and story trailers.
• Ask yourself which is better:
  • The moment you finally get your first Skell, allowing you to fight the Tyrants on equal footing. Made even better, once you have a full party of Skells and you hear the guitar riff for "Uncontrollable" kick in at the start of the battle.
  • Or unlocking the flight upgrade, so you can finally view all of Mira from the air and explore all those floating land masses - just knowing there's all sorts of hidden areas, loot, and bonus enemies waiting to be discovered when you get there.
• On the topic of Skells, no love for the badass Skell pilot who went all Mech-pilot Rambo in the opening cutscene? Especially since this person is probably Elma?
• While the reveal of your robotic nature and the actual scene of getting your arm blown off can feel like something else entirely, the scene where your character saves Tatsu from being blown to potato chips by the arm gun of an enemy Skell with a diving catch is heroic as hell and helps establish the player character as one of the best BLADEs.
• Chapter 6: So you're deep within Tainted territory, surrounded by rabid creatures on all sides, exhausted after taking down a Sphinx. Three more Sphinxes show up ready to play. What happens next? A Telethia makes its surprise appearance, and near effortlessly annihilates the three Sphinxes, while you most likely had a tough time with just one earlier. The fight is vicious, brutal, and awe-inspiring, and you can easily see where the Telethia got the epithet "Endbringer". Very fortunately, it decides the heroes are not a threat and leaves them be.
• While the Ludonarrative Dissonance about not actually being in the Skell you all-but-surely brought for Chapter 8 can be distracting, it has to be admitted that the game does want to imply that you took on Dagahn, AKA a hulking beast that threw Skells around like toys, on foot and won, which is pretty awesome. Ryyz can't believe what she's seeing and it certainly is another feather in Team Elma's Cap of Badassery.
  • Chapter 8 in general is pretty amazing, and it's clear that it's where no small part of the cutscene budget went. The Skell firing line atop New LA's wall and Team Irina defending the East Gate are particularly great moments.
• Chapter 9's boss fight is stunning, and a fitting beginning to what is essentially the main plot's last act, as it's basically a duel to claim both your freedom and, in a real way, Jiarg's honor. The setting is cool to start with - basically a field of flowers in a faux-snowy Sylvalum clearing - and the music sets the tone for an epic duel, which unfolds in two parts. The first is a forced ground-only battle against Jiarg, Buidhe and their retainers, which turns into an awesomely chaotic player-controlled melee. Win this part, and Jiarg, Buidhe and their retainers mount their Skells, including Jiarg's massive Vasara. Jiarg then tells you to "arm yourselves as you wish", which is a slightly-awkward-but-still-clever way of saying "yeah, you can now mount those Skells you brought but haven't been in cutscenes so far" and you the engage them in a mech battle - with Jiarg's retainers forming a fighting circle at first, but joining the fray halfway through the Vasara's HP. At the end, Jiarg acknowledges your prowess and that you've earned your freedom, and that the Wrothians have "failed" the Ganglion because they couldn't "catch" you (despite having you cold at the start of the event). The whole fight being player-controlled makes it better, in a way, because it's not Cutscene Power to the Max - you, yourself, actually beat Jiarg and earned your freedom.
  • Even better. Near the end of the fight, fire and brimstone starts raining from the skies, making for an even more epic setting for this Climax Boss. You'll notice Sylvalum is neighboring Cauldros, and you'll assume the impromptu weather change comes from there. You couldn't be more wrong. Not only is the battle's location relatively far from the entrance to Cauldros, the Enemy Index entry on the Vasara clearly states that the intensity of their insane clash causes the firestorm to rain down upon the entire continent.
• The boss of Chapter 10 is similarly grand. You fight against the Zu Pharg, by far the biggest mecha in the Ganglion arsenal, and the largest boss in the entire game. And by biggest, we mean you could be forgiven for thinking that fighting this thing would be relegated to a cutscene. You would be very wrong. You actually have to fight this monstrosity as a boss. The scale of this fight can be made even more interesting if you bring a team of Skells with flight modules, allowing you to zip around it and blow off each of its parts. Even more, the arena for this boss is all of Sylvalum, and the fight ends with its wreckage sitting in the middle of Lake Ciel for the rest of the game. This fight can potentially be one-sided if you don't have Skells (contrary to what it may seem like, it can be beaten without the flight module even in the flight phase), but the fact that you are able to walk up to it on foot without suffering any lag is quite a feat for the Wii U's processing power, fitting for a game already very massive but with relatively little loading. The cherry on top is the death of Ryyz, being smothered within the Zu Pharg as it burns up with Daghan suffering by her side.
• The mission where you actually recruit Celica gets super rad: Rock, despite hating all violence because of what he was forced to do to Celica's village, steps in to protect Celica from a rampaging indigen that looks like a flying Narwhal whale. He does this by grabbing its horn in both hands before it can pierce Celica or him, holding it in place, and then flinging it clear across the football-field-sized cavern. The poor critter is clearly rather amazed by all this, and it's easy to see just why Chausson wants Rock as a fighter at the start of the mission. Rock then carries Celica to safety with one hand while Team Elma fights the indigen as a conventional boss.
• Nagi kicking ass ass against some Ganglion soldiers effortlessly.
• The way the Tyrants are named are by combining a regular name and a random description. This can lead to the player fighting tyrants with odd qualities, such as "Ludvik the Picky Eater."
• The sidequest, The Gauntlet, is a huge montage of meeting many important people throughout your journey, in the midst of a gallant tournament. Among the people you meet are the Orphean who helped the water facility, the Wrothian whom you sparred many times with, and the Definian defector. And at the very end is a fight with a level 90 Skell (don't worry, it's not like the overlevelled Tyrants throughout Mira).
• After you defeat the Blood Lobster in battle, he exposits on his motives and then eggs you onto finishing him off as part of his delusional obsession with heroes vs. villain; you can do so, but refusing to play any further part in his game is much better. Doing so completely tears his worldview and morality play asunder, and leaves him a shivering wreck for the rest of the game, begging you to kill him so his story can finally end. Much more satisfying.
• Lin gives a Tersqual a swift and painful lesson in why you shouldn't mess with Tatsu while she's around. It swallowed him whole so she made it swallow her fist and sent its ass flying with a Shield Bash Megaton Punch that was hard enough to flip it into the air and make it spit him out.
• Finishing Alex's Last Stand is this. After all the trouble he's given you and NLA, and after all his hypocritical bullshit ramblings, he finally meets his end. If Rook didn't bother to negotiate with him, it's even better, as he's finished off by the Definian he worked with then betrayed.