Yeah, the character art is disgusting, but the original Xenoblade Chronicles characters looked significantly worse than Xenosaga. The environment graphics look very nice.
Gameplay and UI looks WAY improved over the first two games. I love the more focused and less chaotic battle system, looks much more strategic. Overall, a much better and more streamlined UX without compromising the complexity.
Story seems like Skies of Arcadia. Everyone's on different islands, with airships to travel between, and one of them has an Empire on it. Not surprising considering Takahashi was a fan of that game back during the Xenosaga era.
It's interesting how they used the XCX engine, it explains how they're turning around the game with half the dev time; kind of like how Majora's Mask and Galaxy 2 were between 1/3rd and 1/5th the dev times of the originals... Super Mario Galaxy's development began prior to Sunshine.
The Treehouse definitely WAY upped my opinion on the game, but yeah, when it comes to Xeno-games, I don't think this game should have that title. It should have been called something else. A Xeno-game should have a Gear/Skell-like vehicle, and the universe should resemble a slot in the Xenogears timeline similar to Xenosaga and XCX did.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
