Curl does make a valid point, there is room for improvement in Xenoblade Chronicles X, including the stuff around the Skell license. There were a lot of polish issues with the game, but the game did so much right that I found many of those issues easily forgivable... but HOPE they fix them the next time they do an open world Xeno-game.

Breath of the Wild is significantly more polished (there are some framerate issues in about 0.01% of the game, unfortunately at one spot you're probably going to go more than few times, but be easily fixed with some scaled up Switch hardware). There are reasons: Breath of the Wild had a SIGNIFICANTLY bigger dev team and budget than XCX. Breath of the Wild also had the benefit of XCX pioneering a lot of design work around Nintendo's version of go everywhere open world; you can see the DNA of XCX in BotW.

I do agree with Curl on the criticism that XCX doesn't make it easy to get some of that low-end material, while BotW makes it very simple; and when you get to those quests where you need like 30-40 of a low-end item, you'll probably have 800. While in XCX you might have to go bug smashing for 45-60 minutes. In that way, XCX REEKS of a lack of appropriate game-test support on the issue. To be fair, Breath of the Wild IS exceptional in this area, no game of this type of scale comes close to getting it THAT smooth. A lot of it had to do with the fact that BotW was heavily QA'd, they halted production for the entire dev team to go and play the game through - hundreds of people at once. I would guess XCX only had designers, a QA team, and production staff played XCX (add that's normal) and signed off on stuff to make deadlines or because of bare adequacy: Breath of the Wild's team had the flexibility to push deadlines back and demand for all-around greatness.

If Nintendo gave XCX2 the same development process as Breath of the Wild and allowed them more flexibility with deadlines, it would be (IMO) the undisputed best game ever made by Nintendo.

On the "more systems" thing. That's mostly a genre thing. While both use similar open-world progression: Xenoblade is in the RPG genre while Zelda is an action-adventure. Xeno games have been on the system heavy side right from Xenogears; and, in fact, the most system-slim game in the franchise, Xenosaga Episode 2, is generally considered the weakest. But the core difference is that RPG mechanics generally "simulate" actions rather than have players directly execute them. While Xenoblade added action elements into the battle system, the game remains deeply entrenched in RPG mechanics and systems; and while Breath of the Wild adds in more simulation elements, the game remains an action/adventure game at its core.

I would agree with most of what you said, but I think polish isn't the right word for the game as a whole, it's  more experience of making games on that scale and having it complement the mechanics of the game. There are areas in the game that can be streamlined or  improved for sure, but what works does so in miraculous fashion. There is nothing I would say that detracts from the game as a whole. 

And I would agree that more systems are due to a difference in genre and approach, which is why I find it irrelevant when people say one should be more like the other. One is not even supposed to be like the other on any scale.

That doesn't help much though when your mission are collecting or killing x number of y enemy/item.

I should stress that, although it may sound like I consider X a bad game, I actually don't.

What it nails, it nails brilliantly; Mira itself, the exploration, and sense of power and freedom the skells grant, all awesome. I just feel like it has flaws that hold it back from being truly great.

Yeah but most of those random kill x collect y already accounts for what you killed and collected. If you already killed a billion you just collect the reward.

I agree X is an amazing game. I do disagree with something holds it back from being amazing.

True, I did like that aspect, but all too often it'll be "oh you've found 14 of these already, go find another 6" or ditto for kills.

I just wish the game had placed less tedious roadblocks; for example, award you your skell license for completing a certain chapter instead gating it behind a whole lot of chores.

I can respect that. I usually had everything so maybe it just didn't effect me as much, but maybe they should tone some of it down. IDK. But if a sequel was to ever drop, the license is already in the bag, so man, it would be hard to even imagine how they'd top X. 

And I just gotta say IMO that overdrive and cockpit mode is some of the most satisfying battle mechanics ever, and were sorely missing from XC2. I mean I absolutely LOVED fighting in XCX... early game it can be a little long, add a few augments though and it is some of the best fighting in a Xeno period, the whole series.

I didn’t mention earlier, but I’m in the small camp of people that found the story of XCX generally more appealing than either of the other XB games. I felt a little more driven beginning as a small player in helping a city from earth establish itself after landing on an alien planet and increasing the role through time. I had a lot more fun exploring the world (as I talked about in a previous post).

While I did really appreciate the Zeboim-like stuff in XC2, I think I would have appreciate that sort of thing in XCX a whole lot more. A vast ruin filled with easter eggs about how the previous civilization rose and fell. Xenogears did it both ways, it had a part of Zeboim Civilization along the critical path, and then it had the part where you could get out into the open, explore the ruins, and dig up a number of easter eggs and learn a lot more about how the nuclear aged civilization met its demise.

Another thing I would have loved to see in XCX was much more content into the colony building aspect. Helping NLA build up NLA into a flourishing society was fun, and the stuff added to and around the city was very rewarding - so if they ever do an XCX Deluxe and have 2-3 years, I’d prefer adding way more content (visual stuff) more so than anything. Maybe more brands and industries. Perhaps even a questline to develop a few larger scale settlements through Mira. The birth of the new civilization.

Knowing Takahashi, if he returns to Mira, it’s going to be quite a while later. 500 years? 10,000 years? Then he’ll fill in the blanks via historical analysis and exploring archaelogical ruins, or deep hidden memories passed through genetic memory or something =D

All things considered, I feel this is far more of a Xenosaga companion more so than a Xenogears or either Xenoblades, I think if they were to continue they would almost need to pick up right after the events of the first as a necessity. There are far to many things that link directly to these characters to skip time, though I know there are things that make time a non issue. I just think it'd boil down to why would it matter. Skip 5 to 10 years and call it a day. In 6 months they pretty much had NLA up and running. In the time since you joined the wroth insurance had a stronghold, the man non have they're ship and there are several caravans, building more cities can likely be done quickly due to skells and man non tech. It's a passable enough reason for cannons sake. Have a few years pass and continue. 

Also, Monolith Soft is pretty much hinting Nin ain't playing ball in bringing X to switch. I just doubt we'll see it. There saying it'd take too much money to do.