Bigger doesn't mean better .... I think the developer should focus more on content and story then making it bigger ....the first Xenoblade was already way too big. Stop complaining about low review score and giving your opinions on a game you haven't even played. Based on Japenesse reviews and gamers they already told us this version was inferior to the Xenoblade on Wii.

so why has Fallou 4 gotten 3% more? 

If you look at the 7/10 range, you see that there are some concerns about the gameplay "frustrating" "lacks depth" or just ill-explained. All this is true. I've been re-playing a bit yesterday because I had ferocious debates on French sites and my conclusion stays the same : combat has terrible balance, healing system is downright atrocious.

I never said grinding SHOULD be part of the genre, I said it is. That's a fact, one lessened in recent history as some JRPGs have diminished grinding this past few years, but it's a fact nonetheless. And from what I've heard from those that I can at least know played the game enough to warrant a solid stance on this, the amount grinding isn't much. It's only gonna need grinding if you focus on the main plot alone, from what I can tell. 

On design flaws: It depends on how glaring they are if they warrant a whole point on a review scale (this game was never gonna be a 10 because JRPG, so I'm starting with a max of 9.5). The game design oversights seemingly exist primarily in the basic missions, and only one of them has been notable. Outside of that, it's mostly an issue of if you're gonna knock down points because it has pop-in. 

The biggest spot where scores should drop is the multiplayer because nobody knows how it works, still, despite it coming out on Friday. That's the biggest flaw and the least arguable.

As for your final counter, these players whose reviews we're reading are by and large not going to be the kind that are thorough, at least not yet. Remember that it's a race to get the review out first, and that everybody is starting at the same time relatively. So you've got two weeks at most to dive into this game, and your editor needs the campaign done by then. That's not enough time to review any RPG, let alone a Fallout or Xenoblade, so you're gonna cut corners and talk about how big the world is as filler so you can pretend you explored as much as you'd have liked. A key phrase that pops up when you look through current reviews is that it's a hard game to pin down; there are some times where the writers admit they lose focus or something doesn't make sense. You can argue that the game may be at fault for that, but given how poor the state of reviews are nowadays - more than one writer admits they didn't even finish the game, both in good and bad reviews - it can't fall chiefly to the game here. Look at GR's review: It's pieced together very poorly with disjointed, often unfinished thoughts. That's sort of a trend, both for good and bad scores here. Nobody seems to have gotten a good enough grasp on the game, period. Not just good reviews, not just bad ones, all of them. And that's a consequence of the way we review games by launch day nowadays. 

Not that I'm gonna argue what score the game should have without experiencing it myself, of course. I'm just pointing out a very clear issue that comes with reviewing this sort of game on a time limit. 

Interesting side comment: Both this game and Fallout 4 seem to have gotten considerable flak by critics for not handing out all the answers on a silver platter. It's a shame reviewers have leaned so casual this past year outside of the obligatory Souls game 9.5/10, because at least with Fallout the learning curve actually turned me even more onto the game than I would have been. I'm sure X will have the same effect on me too. 

Maybe the world is too big for the amount of stuff to do in it? A vast but empty world will do nothing but hamper the experience. Not saying XCX is empty, but maybe there's quite a lot of filler sidequests of relatively low quality? I don't know. Heck, I'm not sure if reviews have even claimed that. IT always make me chuckle when people complain that "media is biased against *insert genre/IP/company* here" though.

opinions
how do they work -_-

Can you imagine if a Suikoden game came out now what it'd review, lol.

To many characters that the game doesn't hand you.
Finding these characters can be a drag, and there isn't an icon showing them on the map.
The mail system feels like a grind, and keeping your residents of your castle happy and the cooking competition feel like filler events.

8/10

Funny enough when I think about special evaluation for Nintendo I would say they are hold to lower standard because of weaker hw and not competing.

Seriously? Lol. It'd be like reviewers taking points off PS4 games because it doesn't reach the resolution, have the same effects, and have the same frame rate of the same pc game. Come back to reality now.

Reviews are crap since ten years, minimum.

Especially Us reviews.