So Xenoblade X has an 84 on metacritix because there is too much to do and the world is too big?

[DivinePaladin]

Lawlight said:

DivinePaladin said:

Lawlight said:
Or maybe while everything is good in the game, it's not great?

Something tells me that's probably not it since from what I've seen from more neutral sources, it's very, very solid. The only major complaints I've seen are nitpicks and admitted as such. For once I'd say a Nintendo game is under-scored so far, considering this is the sequel to the game that pretty much saved the classic-style JRPG. 

I just skimmed the Gameinformer review. The complaints seem legitimate to me - lots of grinding, some design flaws, things get repetitive. I dunno, it seems to me that if you focus on the nit picks, you'd only see those.

Repetition and grinding are a given in JRPGs, and moreover I've barely seen talk of grinding being a problem if you're not running solely through the main campaign. There are clear design flaws with the side missions, but the other two are nothing if not nitpicks with this genre. If the repetition is truly excessive, okay, but from what I've seen it's not unlike finding the Eagle views in AC games. 

 

I haven't gone through the GI review but from what I've read and seen from Xenoblade players the game is very solid. The key to experiencing X correctly, and the key to apparently seeing the story as more than shallow, is to do the side content. Discovering each map segment, doing affinity missions, etc. all seem to flesh out an otherwise bland main campaign, because these are the focus of the game. Many reviews seem to ignore this fact, and I think that's arguably the big issue right now. The reviewers that did do a sizeable amount of side content besides the basic fetch missions have discussed this; it's very similar to Majora's Mask - if you're only gonna do the dungeons, don't bother playing it.