Not that I personally agree with the score. I can understand why he gave that a 6.5

Xenoblade does have some glaring faults, and it really depends on the person if they want to look past them or not.

True, nothing he said was distinctly false, he just emphasized it more than others.  There are certainly issues with the ally AI, though I didn't have anything to the degree he had, and how little control you have over your allies can definitely be a problem.  The sidequests are mostly MMO fetch quests with little meaning behind them, but I don't agree with the idea that the first 15 hours were bad.

I don't agree with that either. I liked the beginning quite a bit.

I am loving the early part of the game. I love the monster hunting part of the game, seeing how powerful of an enemy you can ake out and just dying 18 times trying to battle some level80 brute. My favorite so far is Gentle Rodriguez, love the names on these things. I have been serving my ban on Bionis, fighting those dastardly Mechons.

One thing that I think would have benefitted this game greatly and Final Fantasy XIII, XIII-2 for that matter, or any JRPG where you don't control every party member Is to have something Like Final Fantasy XII's gambit system (only without having to buy the gambits) or Dragon Age tactics.

This allows you to program the AI, so they do what you want. And in my opinion makes you feel like you have something to do with your AI allies winning. And they can always put in presets for people that are too lazy.

I think the EGM review was a bit harsh... but it wasn't distinctly wrong. If the flaws this game has bugs you, it bugs you, and you shouldn't score it high just because everyone else did. A lot of high games get a few contrarian reviews because a point of reviews is to show different views of it's strengths and flaws.

Well I had several problems with Reyn, he constantly used the "Topple" skill way before I even break the enemy, thus when the enemy was in break status, he didn't used the Topple skill because he already used and it had to wait until the cooldown, which by that time the enemy was not on break.

Also, I had problems with Sharla and his healing skills, since she sometimes didn't use them even when a party member was in the verge of death. 

Those problems while bothersome, weren't really much of an issue.

This, it wasn't a big issue. And it wasn't really a big issue, in the games I mentioned or like Persona 3. 
However, since I rated it around a 9. It's a critique along with being a bit balanced better in difficulty that would have pushed it higher for me.

Higher affinity = more smart decisions from your partners in battle.
The guy has not played enough to know that.

I thought, it was just higher affinity resulted in extra chain attacks.

Which isn't smarter just a bonus attack. Sort of like follow up moves in Persona 4 you gain by maxing social links.

And if that is the case and I didn't notice, making your party dumber unless they like you is still a problematic design decision.  I think it just gives you extra chain attacks and this is sensical. It's not a big deal, however if that was improved along with the difficulty/exp balance, It would have been a 95+ game instead of a 90ish game for me.

Meh, I don't buy it. If this game had better graphics and was released on PS3, I bet they'd be giving it a 9.5 and calling it GOTY..