Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Hits Switch 2 on July 30 With a New Blade Pulled Straight From Xenosaga

The Switch 2's run of big JRPG re-releases keeps rolling. After Final Fantasy X/X-2 and the Final Fantasy XIV announcement earlier this month, it is Nintendo's own turn: the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 launches digitally this Thursday, July 30, and the overview trailer Nintendo published yesterday shows this is more than a resolution bump.

The headline addition is MOMO, a new Rare Blade that longtime Monolith Soft fans will recognize from the studio's Xenosaga days. She is not a skin. She has two modes, real and imaginary, that you can swap between to change both her appearance and her elemental affinity, and she arrives with her own Blade Quest to work through.

Video: Nintendo of America on YouTube

What the Switch 2 Edition actually changes

The technical upgrade is exactly what this game has needed since 2017. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was one of the blurriest high-profile games on the original Switch, especially in handheld mode, and the new edition runs at 4K in TV mode and full HD in handheld, both at 60 frames per second, with improved cutscenes on top. For a game whose art direction was always better than its image quality, that alone justifies the revisit.

Beyond MOMO, there are two more meaningful additions. Merc Assault is a new action battle mode that lets you directly control the Blades you send on mercenary missions, which in the original were a passive menu affair you checked back on later. And Pyra and Mythra get new outfit designs that show up while adventuring and in cutscenes, not just in a menu.

Torna gets a free 4K update the same day

There is good news for owners of the standalone Torna: The Golden Country too. On July 30, both its digital and physical versions receive a free update enabling 4K at 60 fps in TV mode and 1080p at 60 fps in handheld. If you own Torna through the Expansion Pass instead, you get those upgrades by purchasing the Switch 2 Edition upgrade pack, which also covers owners of the original base game who do not want to rebuy the whole thing. The physical release of the Switch 2 Edition itself lands later, on October 1.

Our take: this is the right way to do a Switch 2 Edition. New story-adjacent content, a mode that fixes a weak system from the original, and a real technical overhaul for one of the most ambitious JRPGs Nintendo publishes. If you bounced off Xenoblade Chronicles 2 because of how it looked or ran in handheld, Thursday is your excuse to try again.