I've reached Origin after 18 hours, but didn't attempt to tackle the final boss because I've barely managed to beat the boss before that. Three characters dead, including the two healers, so the only real option I had left was to pull off a chain attack that would rack up enough damage to finish the job. It seemed self-evident that I would have to upgrade my weapons a bit more, as well as my characters on the whole.
Standing at 20 hours now, I've completed about 80% of the affinity tasks. I am disappointed that the endgame content is lacking similarily to Torna, only this time around the normal enemies top out at level ~55 instead of ~50. But at least there are more unique monsters with varying high levels, unlike in Torna where the jumps were hefty, going from level 50 to 65 to 75 to 85 to 100. Therefore the grinding process to level 99 should be a bit less tedious and more manageable. Still, some better scaling would have been appreciated. My party is at level 53 now, so I'll soon enter the phase where unique monsters are all that's left to increase my levels. Most likely I'll face the final boss at level 55, then finish up the remaining % afterwards.
I like that ether that is more scarce than in the main game. Here you have to make considerations if you really want to build something right away or rather save it up for a more promising location. Overall, it's nice to have smaller Xenoblade games that are more like normal games and are over after 25-30 hours. Still a shame that Future Connected in the first Xenoblade didn't manage to be something like that.
On a related note, the expansion pass content for the main game was really light. XC2 got tons of additional content, but in XC3 it's not even a handful of new quests, plus a challenge arena. Nevertheless, the expansion pass is worth its money. It's just that this time around Monolith Soft wasn't as generous.
Legend11 correctly predicted that GTA IV will outsell Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I was wrong.
