All I can say is that maybe you're a great note-taker, but I would have been totally lost if they'd just tossed me into the deep end.  I'm not the most accomplished JRPG player, particularly for modern takes on the genre and my brain melted during the Nintendo Directs when they were explaining all the mechanics.

The extended tutorial was extremely well-paced for me.  It felt like each new tool they gave me fell into the rest and I could start experimenting with them while juggling my old skills as well.  So I could simultaneously move my character around for maximum damage as I built up blade combos and driver combos while deciding when to cancel an art or switch blades to build up my blade arts, all while working towards finishing with a big chain attack.

Having all those mechanics come to me as easily as they did, felt satisfying as I got a sense of mastery from the game's scaffolding approach to teaching me.

From what I recall I think I'm almost to the point you're mentioning. I've certainly had some trouble staying interested in JRPGs in the past as a lot of them do take their sweet time allowing you to get to the meat of the game.

I think both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses, but I've always strongly preferred having everything thrown at me in the first hour or so and experimenting with it from there. I understand that many people feel overwhelmed and lose interest, but to me that approach is preferable to what has amounted (in this instance) to a 20 hour tutorial (I've admittedly taken my time, but that's because I want to explore the game and not just blitz through it). It's very frustrating, as I feel I've been pretty darn patient thus far.

Do we eventually start encountering enemies that can actually be defeated on the spot, btw? This whole arrangement where I defeat boss after boss only to have a cutscene show moments later that I actually got my ass kicked has grown extremely stale lol

I'll probably get back to it this evening... maybe I'll just bum rush my way through the narrative until it finally opens up and takes off the training wheels.

Well I'm glad it worked for ya. I don't mean to suggest that I'd just nail the combat perfectly if it were all presented to me initially by any means, but I've always liked to have the tools presented to me early and learned for myself as increasing difficulty demands more from me as I go.

It's a bit like the Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis grand strategy games I adore; despite playing them for many hundreds of hours over a decade+ I still find myself learning new things from time to time (though some of that is due to the many expansions that keep it fresh), and the best way to learn those games really was to just throw yourself into the deep end, get your butt kicked, and adapt your strategy lol

I think this game (and others) could have used something akin to the "Newbie Island" of Crusader Kings known as Ireland, where you really get to experiment with the mechanics and such in an easier but still challenging setting (by virtue of being disunited and on the edge of the continent there isn't the same risk of instant death as other starts, though the Vikings will arrive soon enough :D). There's something fun about having all of the tools available and just trying to figure the game out for yourself with impending doom encouraging you to investigate the mechanics further. The challenge is to keep the interest high enough that players don't jump ship when confronted with that difficulty, and while Xeno 2 definitely did that for me, I can see why it's often not a risk studios want to take.

With all the glowing praise in this thread, though, I think I'll certainly press on with the game... I may just blitzkrieg through the rest of the early portion of the story until it really opens up into what I've been reading about in the comments here.

Tbh mate that's not a flaw of the game if you don't like your character being taken to the cleaners story wise, it's a much appreciated change in the usual story of the genre where your character is a nobody who out of nowhere competes with grand master level fighters, here it highlights how out of their league the party are and what they're up against but like it or not it's not a flaw of the game if them being defeated is not to your liking.

Xenoblade X threw everything at players early on and you ended up with complaints about people not knowing what they're doing with even some reviewers not realising that the bar at the bottom were their abilities that they could scroll through and use, XBC2 has more depth to utilise so they pretty much had to ease players in in order for most players to understand what they're doing.

You're free to rush through the early stages like some people have done but then later on in the game a number of these players have struggled because they didn't understand how to utilise certain strats like burst set ups and all, the approach is there for a good reason.

In my opinion it is a flaw (albeit a minor one) simply cause it causes a jarring narrative disconnect between the gameplay and the cutscenes.

I have absolutely no problem with getting my ass kicked by stronger characters early in the game, and many (if not most) RPG's tend to do that. What irritates me is when there is absolutely no sense of continuity between the gameplay and the cinematics, and that's precisely what we have here. Fight after fight I wipe the floor with these guys, and yet a moment later my party is shown to be injured, panting, and getting their butts kicked in by a pristine, unphased foe that moments before crumpled to the ground.

The end result is to essentially invalidate the actual gameplay and take you out of the story, breaking whatever sense of immersion you may briefly have had. These types of encounters can be done right and have been done right for ages: Either have the antagonist grunt and retreat or, if you wish to show that he/she is far superior to you, have them wipe the floor with the player. As it is currently arranged, we have an in-game weakling that becomes a cut-scene untouchable, and that discontinuity can fairly be called a "flaw".

I think I will just get through the first four chapters. As I said before, I don't mind suddenly hitting a difficulty spike and having to further investigate the game to adapt and overcome; that is far more enjoyable and gratifying than being lead through it by the hand in my opinion. Like I said, I understand the fear of scaring people off, but Xeno 2 has thus far had a story and characters that make the effort worthwhile. Really, to this point the only thing that threatened to have me losing interest is an eternal tutorial, but I shall power through lol

That's an interesting conundrum for Japanese studios trying to appeal to western audiences, though: You don't want to frighten them off by laying too many unfamiliar mechanics on them all at once, but western players are also unaccustomed to being forced to go through endless hours of hand-holding (just look at how much more quickly the recent Monster Hunter gets you into the thick of the action as opposed to previous titles). Must be a difficult balance to strike.

Just do pay attention to these tutorials, these systems all feed into each other.  If you brush them off as being shallow trinkets thrown at you, you are going to wind up in a position like some others have where you are the same level or higher than some bosses and getting absolutely destroyed because you aren't properly making use of all your options :P

Also, Monster Hunter and this game are in entirely different genres and this game has far more interlocking mechanics and statistics to come to grips with, not a very good comparison.  

In my opinion it is a flaw (albeit a minor one) simply cause it causes a jarring narrative disconnect between the gameplay and the cutscenes.

I have absolutely no problem with getting my ass kicked by stronger characters early in the game, and many (if not most) RPG's tend to do that. What irritates me is when there is absolutely no sense of continuity between the gameplay and the cinematics, and that's precisely what we have here. Fight after fight I wipe the floor with these guys, and yet a moment later my party is shown to be injured, panting, and getting their butts kicked in by a pristine, unphased foe that moments before crumpled to the ground.

The end result is to essentially invalidate the actual gameplay and take you out of the story, breaking whatever sense of immersion you may briefly have had. These types of encounters can be done right and have been done right for ages: Either have the antagonist grunt and retreat or, if you wish to show that he/she is far superior to you, have them wipe the floor with the player. As it is currently arranged, we have an in-game weakling that becomes a cut-scene untouchable, and that discontinuity can fairly be called a "flaw".

I think I will just get through the first four chapters. As I said before, I don't mind suddenly hitting a difficulty spike and having to further investigate the game to adapt and overcome; that is far more enjoyable and gratifying than being lead through it by the hand in my opinion. Like I said, I understand the fear of scaring people off, but Xeno 2 has thus far had a story and characters that make the effort worthwhile. Really, to this point the only thing that threatened to have me losing interest is an eternal tutorial, but I shall power through lol

That's an interesting conundrum for Japanese studios trying to appeal to western audiences, though: You don't want to frighten them off by laying too many unfamiliar mechanics on them all at once, but western players are also unaccustomed to being forced to go through endless hours of hand-holding (just look at how much more quickly the recent Monster Hunter gets you into the thick of the action as opposed to previous titles). Must be a difficult balance to strike.