I'm reading through the reviews, and the complaints are less 'there's too much to do' and more 'a lot of it is a slog'. Even some of the reviews giving it a high score acknowledge it's a game that requires patience.
As someone who often quite enjoys fluff content as a way to pass the time (i wouldn't have sunk 1700~ hours into FF14 if that wasn't the case), i don't mind that XCX has a lot of it. That said, others complaining about it and marking it down as such is completely reasonable. To many people such content can hinder their experience, and if a reviewer felt that was the case for them, it's their job to inform their audience of that.
You have to remember that metacritic provide aggregations. They're not trying to represent your tastes as an individual, but a collective opinion. It's the view of a generalized personality. Treat it as such, and then read through some reviews. If one has complaints you think are silly, obviously that reviewer's tastes don't reflect your own. Doesn't mean that they're wrong, or that they shouldn't be included in an aggregation. It's literally nothing but a clash of opinions.
On a side note, an 84 really isn't worth complaining about. Even by gaming's inflated scoring standards it's still a very high score.
