While playing Breath of the Wild (for the first time in months) I had a bit of an epiphany about about Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
Objectively speaking, the game is the most solid of the three Xenoblades, yet there was a missing "wow" factor that XC and XCX both had... at least until the later portions of the game when you start having stuff revealed about the nature of the World Tree and the true nature of the Aegis. In the cases of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the spectacle is all about the cutscenes, and much less about arriving at a beautiful location.
Seeing all this beautiful world, each location, and knowing that this is the world you're exploring around - especially in XCX where you can eventually go every place you can see. XC2's most spectacular moments all tie into the action of the story, very little comes close to as inspiring as the first two games to make me want to see and experience what the world has to offer. Many areas of XC2 are undoubtedly and uniquely beautiful. Plotwise, culturewise, and town-wise (generally speaking: NLA and Frontier Village remain my two favourite towns) - Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is undoubtedly superior to the previous games.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
