Xenoblade Chronicles X wouldn't be a Xeno franchise game if it didn't pile on the content that makes its ESRB T rating dubious at best.
- Sylvalum sometimes gets covered in a spore fog so thick it's near-impossible to see anything. It's also home to a ton of Jump Scare monsters and very powerful roaming monsters with a bad habit of jumping into a fight in their path. They're normally fairly easy to see coming, but with this weather active...
- To make this worse, there's a certain tyrant that only spawns during the spore fog. Have fun fighting a monster you can't see.
- The Millesaurus' long neck is actually an extended mouth they can use to feed and cutting it off reveals its actual face
◊. (Spoiler Warning for unrelated post-game content in screenshot!) - Squallo, the Sand Mirer is a massive Tyrant hiding underneath the sand in Northern Oblivia, so unlike many of its fellow Tyrant, you might not see it coming yards away, aside from the ominous Dangerous Area theme playing when you're close to it.note You can be walking along and it will erupt from the ground catching you completely off guard. Its Sylvalum counterparts Atreides, the Distinguished and Gesserith, the Wileworm are also frightening. Atreides is more out in the open during the daytime and consistently jumping from one hole into another, but generally ignores you until you try to pick a fight with it. At night, however, it just sits in the sand with only parts of its mouth visible like a Sarlacc, waiting for some hapless prey to walk into its maws.
- Duoguills in general. From the top down they look similar to manta rays, but underneath their mouths look like zombie faces.
- So you've just gotten the flight module for your skells, and you've decided to take a flight around Sylvalum in order to reach some of the higher up probe sites, when you notice that one of those massive spheres hanging in the air has an opening in the side. Obviously you decide to take a look inside, and once you enter you notice the large amount of level 60+ indigens floating around. Rather disconcerting, but they're non-aggressive so you ignore them. And then you look up and notice the level 97... THING hanging from the roof of the sphere like a bat. Congrats, you've just met Pharsis the Everqueen, the second most powerful enemy in the game.
- Enjoying Noctilum for its beautiful colors, upbeat music and lively environments? Ready to fly up that waterfall and see the last of the cool stuff the continent has to offer? Because boy oh boy, once you reach the Divine Roost, it's all downhill. The music is flat out unsettling, the single tree in the center bears roots that wrap around the environment like tentacles, some of (including THE) most powerful indigens hang out up there, and the whole place has a very eerie, disturbed feel. Oh yeah, and all the water looks like blood.
- A musical example: the second half of the track aBOreSSs, the "music" accompanying the first phase of the Zu Pharg fight. It just sounds wrong with the heavy percussion, weird synth sounds, the almost total lack of any harmony and the random piano stings. But don't worry, it gets much more melodic later on, and trust us, you'll wish it hadn't.
- Another musical example is in the second section of "z12e201v2e091n4t", an incredibly ominous track that plays in key areas, particularly in the territory of notably powerful Tyrants, areas heavily inhabited by dangerous enemies (such as Dead Man's Gulch in Noctilum, which is infested with Tainted Indigens), or generally uncharted territory. Even when the Indigens aren't that powerful or hostile, the Tyrant isn't available at the moment, or there are no enemies around, it gives off a sense that something is very wrong with the place it plays in and that you shouldn't be there, especially when you're low-leveled. It also plays during some darker plot points, such as when you learn where the Cantors that attacked the Biahno Water Purification Plant came from during the "Lakeside Getaway" side mission.
- Z23 Sama-ru is an ominous track that works well with providing the necessary atmosphere to a scene of a looming danger or a passed tragedy.
- The nature of enemies hiding in plain sight and being untargetable until you get too close, waiting to ambush you. Horrible when you don't want to fight them. Still bad when you do want to fight them, because no matter what, the Jump Scare music will play and you need to spend precious seconds to react to it as opposed to being able to target them of your own volition.
- Filiavents are agruably the most disturbing of these. They're large, tentacle-like sea anemone that, at first glance, a part of the scenery, but once you get close to one, they suddenly hover up in the air and start attacking you. The Tyrants are even worse since they're the size of houses and the one found in Cauldros, Trueno, has the honor of being titled the Cataclysm.
- Filiavents
- Colubrims already look kinda freaky, but the lore states that the species spends much of their time hibernating under rivers of magma... until their appetite causes them to eat everything living organism on sight. This is scary alone but its worst thanks to Elvira, the Talondrake living very close to NLA. Finally, teleporting to the Drop Shaft landmark at Daytime will place you right in front of the sleeping Tyrant, which is not a wholesome sight when you first see it◊.
- Xerns are a group of rare but very powerful enemies that have the appearance of a three-armed black and purple machine that floats very high in the sky. The earliest you can see one is in Sylvalum and you might be mistaken into thinking it can be explored, but once you get close enough, the Tyrant theme suddenly starts playing and you are utterly destroyed by it. It does not help at all that this paricular Xern belongs to Luxaar.
- The mission Definian Downfall introduces the boss Rexoskell◊, a horrific skell-like enemy with tentacle-like appendages. If it's appearance wasn't bad enough, the song its fight is accompanied with is z30huri2ba0tt12le1110, a cacophony of Scare Chords and mechanical sounds. Oh yeah, and the first time you fight this boss is in a cave, meaning you'll have no choice but to fight it on foot for the first phase.
- Lao's final boss form is just a humanoid mess of various body parts, including the heads of various animals. Take a look◊. Even worse, due to being merged with the DNA, memories and consciousness of Luxaar and several other Earth animals, he's unable to control his own body while the other consciousnesses of feral creatures use it destroy everything around them. The only thing he can do on his own volition is communicate. Unlike the previous game, past Xeno games, or the next game, you're not fighting a god or a god-wannabe. You're putting an old friend out of his suffering while protecting the future of humanity. Oh, and it also resembles the horrifying third form◊ of William Birkin. Have fun.
- In the "Predator and Prey" side mission, you set out to rescue two kidnapped female soldiers. You find one of them in a cave. She cries and screams while telling you what she just witnessed: The Prone kidnappers wanted to eat them, and her colleague offered herself up first (in an attempt to buy some time for her friend). When they started skinning her alive, they were furious to learn that she was a mimeosome, so not edible at all... then in their fury they ripped her limb from limb instead. The traumatised survivor cries herself to sleep after you take her back to camp.
