I came close to trying this on 3DS especially when the NEW 3DS came out and it is one of the few games requiring that system. But I was and still am trying to catch up on other 3DS games I didn't get around to while spending so much time in New Leaf. Link Between Worlds, FE: Awakening, Kid Icarus: Uprising, Planet Robobot and WarioWare Gold are just some of the titles I still want to tackle for the system. Plus, I'd started XCX and always felt I'd finish that first and haven't gotten back to it while BotW came out later and then I got obsessed into that game. So, knowing this would probably be a long game for me too meant I kept pushing it off for games I thought I could do sooner.
But with Covid playing havoc on TV and Film production and sports, diving into a 100 hour epic game is no longer a problem with my entertainment schedule. So, it released at the right time for Switch to finally get me to dive in. Plus, knowing it would be a bit more refined experience also helped since I was still nervous about how well I'd do with the battle system and other systems in the game after getting lost in XCX with all that was happening and opening up to me.
With this being the first game and seeing others comments that compared the series, it sounded like XC1 was the way to go in learning the core of the series with how it progressed out information. And that assessment has been correct. There are things here that now click for me in XCX (which makes me want to go back to that and get back in the action there but maybe I should start over since I'm not sure what kind of decisions I'd made back then when first playing) and I'm getting more and more confident with keeping track of all sorts of things to remember in battle.
I received my copy on Jun. 11 but first wrapped up getting the 50 Star Rank in Balloon World for Mario Odyssey and prepared to open my time for long sessions. Started it late on Friday Jun. 12 and played for an hour taking in the introduction lessons and story and setting. Since I was pretty tired from work, an hour was all my brain could take from all this new info it was now taking in and went to bed soon thereafter.
Got back into mid-Saturday afternoon and then just kept playing it late into the night. I wanted to get to the Gaur Plains and by 10 - 11 hours in, I was there. By Wednesday evening, I had over 30 hours into the game. I slowed down a bit in playtime over Thursday and Friday. Maybe getting in an hour each day. Needed to do other things in life like cleaning, getting groceries, vacuuming, etc. Plus, by Wednesday, I'd gotten to Frontier Village which is something I pushed for even though it was already getting late when I first got to Makna Forest. But I knew I was obviously close to adding Melia (due to a cutscene when entering) and Riki since the NPC's were saying the Nopon village was ahead and it felt like that would make a good ending point for the night.
However, it was also a case of now getting two new characters I needed to learn about and a whole big new city in which to get quests and meet people to add to the Affinity Chart in addition to knowing that I needed to start cleaning up a lot of the inventory I was carrying around for weapons, armors, gems and collectibles. So, I mainly just checked in to start doing some research and figuring out how I wanted to start arranging the stats of my party. Saturday allowed me to dive back in to the game and go through Frontier Village which continued on Sunday while also go back to past locales for more quests and to finish off some older ones. I thought I'd covered Colony 9 so well but then I discovered two more people I hadn't met during all my time and return trips there. It struck me again how easy it is to miss things with the size of some of these locales.
But finally got to a point where I was ready to start progressing the story again and move on in the exploration of Makna Forest. Sitting at 45 hours so far. I think I'm around the halfway point though judging by how my Affinity Chart of characters looks like and my suspicion of how the Collectopedia may be broken down. What I'm kind of glad about is that I've really never been spoiled on the story of XC. I guess I've always stayed away from much discussion of it since I always felt I'd get to it at some point. That goes for X and 2 as well. I really don't know how those unfold. So, I'm excited to see where this going to go. There are certain things I suspect and wonder about but even in this thread, where I was worried about possible spoilers, people thankfully formatted their posts with spoiler tags so that I didn't end up glancing or noticing anything I was aware of at this point. However, there was quite a bit of helpful information like stuff on gem crafting that I'm glad to have seen and read. Way to go, NWR class of 2012!