Previews for the upcoming Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition went live today, and there are a lot of interesting details!

The biggest overview has come from RPG Site, which describes several quality of life improvements.

For me, the best piece of news is that you can change your party at any time. I mentioned before how tedious it was in the original X that you had to find your party members in the city and talk to them to switch them into your party – with 18 party members and a big city, I actually kept notes about each party member’s location. Being able to change party members from a menu is the one change I was hoping for, so I’m glad to have that confirmed.

The site also shows a screenshot of the party screen, which has spots for 22 party members. That means there’s four new party members being added, not just one or two?!

Blade level, Division points, and most Field Skills are also gone, which is a change I’m a little more indecisive toward. I like coming across things that I can’t interact with yet while exploring and needing to come back for them later. Still, that’s not such a terrible change that it outweighs the positives for me.

There are some other nice changes as well, like a gauge you can spend to ignore an Art’s cooldown time and exp gain for party members not in your active party. The preview from Destructoid also confirms multiple save slots, and a look at the settings from Shacknews reveals dual audio.

All in all, Xenoblade Chronicles X sounds like it will be a wonderful Definitive Edition. My biggest disappointment is that it doesn’t look like it’ll get a collector’s edition, but I’ll still hold out hope for a little longer.

What do you think of the new changes described in these previews?