I have a confession to make.

[Torillian]

I don't think there are many things that would get in the way of you enjoying Xenoblade just because you haven't played RPGs before. It's an MMO type active battle system so it's not extremely strategy focused, leveling your character is also relatively simple and uses MMO-like skill trees, and questing is simplified because you only have to take and complete the quest you usually don't have to return to the quest giver afterwards. Anything that gets a bit more RPG focused like managing relationships is completely optional so it shouldn't be too much of a deterrent for you.