Ok 185 hours to credits, I think I'm done with the game now until the expansion.
The Good
+ A good trimming of the fat from the past two Xenoblade games, I'm glad they changed up the affinity tree, armour system and the collectopedia with it's unique descriptions of every item in the game (which I felt obligated to read). We've done that twice already and I'm glad they focused their attention on other areas.
+ Although I think I prefer the old style battle system I'm glad they changed it for the sake of variety.
+ Rex is a likable protagonist on par with Shulk
+ I enjoyed the different motifs they had running through the music.
+ There's sooooo much music and music variety
+ A return to really well choreographed fight scenes that were lacking in X's cutscenes
+ Great economy in this game, you are tangibly rewarded for buying things and I didn't feel like money was basically no object like in Chronicles and X.
+ Voiced heart to hearts are great.
+ The return of English voice acting + Welsh + Scottish + Australian
+ Fonsett Village gave me Xenogears vibes.
+ The land of Morytha was an unexpected curve ball, I'm glad they managed to tie the two games together.
+ When Amalthus brings all the titans together near the end and you can go to those titan's and see them fighting from different angles.
+ Vandham's chapter and the end when the vocals kick in, too good.
The Bad
- General quality of life stuff. Questing feels really slow and much more of a chore than both Chronicles and X even though it's clear they put more effort into them this time round.
- Field skills are a fun idea but the way they are implemented is so annoying. Unequipping and equipping blades is just the worst.
- The music isn't as distinct as Chronicles or X, to be fair it's a very high bar.
- I love a good credits song, compared to Chronicles and X the credits were weak.
- Movement feels slow compared to even Chronicles.
- Forced to quick travel breaks immersion.
- The game was really lacking when it came to world building, Chronicles and X have some of the best worlds in video games but 2 had too much ambiguity for my liking. What is a blade? Are they like Pokemon and you keep them in your bag or is it implied that you have an army of blades hanging out at the mercenary camp? Do blades need to eat and sleep, if they can't die that would imply that they don't? Why do some blades look like humans and others looks like big monsters?
- Exploring the titans isn't as interesting as in Chronicles. For example you never get to go up onto the Gormotti titan's head, in Mor Ardain you only get to go on the titan's shoulder, in Leferia you never even see the titan. In Chronicles they really emphasise the fact that you are exploring a Titan and I feel in this area 2 didn't really do as well.
- I find Rex and Pyra/Mythra's relationship to be really weird. The cast keep pushing him to be like "Eh eh Rex you're in love with them right!", but the game never sets any precedent for blade/human relationships and never really goes into detail to what a blade actually is. It just doesn't sit right with me, Rex is a kid and they're like a 500+ year old super computer processor or whatever.
- You spend the ENTIRE game trying to reach Elysium but when you get there the game never goes into detail as to what Elysium actually was, why the hell was Klaus under a church?
- How does Azurda transform back into a titan at the end of the game? If Pyra reawakened his titan abilities or whatever why didn't they do that ages ago?
- It's implied that Mythra and Pyra still remember Rex at the end of the game, again never explained and if they do remember him there was no sacrifice whatsoever making the whole ending sequence redundant on the space station redundant.
- Malos has really poor motivations and I don't even understand Jin's motivations, Torna in general needed more development.
- Looking at the artbook Nomura's designs look awesome in 2D but in the game Torna just look out of place, I wish they had stuck with one art design for the human characters.
All in all Xenoblade is my favourite series and I'm glad that because of the Switch's success the game has started to hit the mainstream with it's 1.31 million sales, I still really enjoyed it even if I have some gripes. There's still Torna: The Golden Country to come and then hopefully (fingers crossed) at some point Xenoblade Chronicles X-2.