So I am 20 hours in, finished chapter 5, a bunch of affinity quests, and a bunch of normal quests. I very much enjoy the story so far (even though I already spoiled it months ago.) The game-play is addicting.

Here is a list of things I like:

- World mechanics feel realistic. There are things like weapons manufacturers, job paths, realistic moral dilemmas, realistic means of gaining money and resources, the scale of the world feels similar to how it could be with the way rivers, caves, mountains, etc are developed, anything that feels unrealistic can be explained away through plot events, the map interface on the game-pad, etc, etc.

- There are high level enemies throughout every continent , and many of them. This makes it feel pretty good when I progress my character. Instead of every enemy in an area being defeatable, I slowly am able to defeat more and more enemy types as I progress. I've also noticed that level matters not so much. There was a level 13 Tyrant in Primordia which gave me more trouble at level 18 than a level 20 one in Oblivia. I love being able to return to something after developing my characters and beating it. Too many open-world RPG's don't do this well enough, and you never really feel like you are becoming better. Additionally exploration and not following the directed path is rewarded. For example there was a quest where I had to kill a certain number of enemies at nighttime. The follow ball directed me to the enemies, but they were level 22 (I was level 16.) I decided I was just going to explore the world some more and walked to the opposite side of Primordia. The same enemies, with the same name was there, but it was only level 11! I was able to complete the quest without doing more work because I decided to explore. I also love finding new ways to avoid high level enemies to get to new places.

- There are so many ways to develop your character and NLA. Whether it is gathering revenue and Miranium. Using that Miranium to boost arms manufacturers or quests. Developing your skills, arts, classes. Messing with your gear in a multitude of ways, and realizing that some gear might be better in different scenarios, rather than there being a best gear. You can level up by questing, exploring, collecting, etc, etc. This is what makes the game so appealing for me. There are just so many ways to mix it up, and not get bored with any one thing.

- The way the story is told. If I were to compare it to an anime. The filler episodes and character development are pushed to affinity quests, while the main story events are in the story missions. I like that. Sometimes I feel like taking it easy and experiencing character development. Other times I like to find out how a story event plays out. I wish there was a greater balance between the two, and more of both though. Normal quests need to take a little bit less of the game-play time.

Things I don't like:

- There are fewer quests found outside of NLA. I think I found a few in Primordia, and only one in both Noctilum and Oblivia each. In the original Xenoblade Chronicles there were NPC's scattered throughout each zone handing quests out. I want some more of that. NLA is probably the least appealing part of the game, and I'd rather not have that be the only area where you find people who actually are important.

- The visuals are beautiful, and the world has so much depth and detail. Everything from animal behavior to landscape design. The image quality is pretty bad on an HDTV. I am going to try it out on my monitor once I get my HDMI -> DVI adapter in the mail, but for now the aliasing and blur is pretty bad on my 55 inch 1080p television. I actually prefer the visuals on the Gamepad. While it is a little bit blurrier, the aliasing isn't very noticeable at all on the gamepad. Maybe I am too use to 1080p games with good AA, but I can't help but want to see the beautiful world without aliasing, blur, and other artifacts.

- Sound settings are not adjustable, and music is inconsistent. I love every song that doesn't take place in NLA. The songs in NLA are atrocious. Also I can't adjust the sound levels of the game, which is a pain, considering how adjustable all the other features are. I'd rather turn voices in combat off entirely, turn down the combat noise, turn up the music when I am exploring the over-world. When I am in a story event, I want to turn the music down, and have the voices up. This shouldn't have been a hard feature to add into the game, to be honest.

Overall, I am very impressed with the game-play and world design. A better balance between story/affinity quests and normal quests could've been made. And I have some concerns with regards to the interface and image quality.

...What are augments and how can I have what you have!?

Geeze, this game.

Augments are special pieces of gear that give you a ton of abilities and upgrades, you can create them in the Arms Manufacture console, however you need miranium and parts of enemies depending on the augments you want to craft

I probably have a shit ton of those since I literally haven't used any of those things. The only thing is that I don't know if it's a waste to augment low level gear.

You can always equip and unequip the augments anytime you want so use it in low level gear and once you get better gear just take them off

This is why I should have read the manuel. I'll check that out and get back to you with more stupid questions.

Haha I´ll be waiting

Most people don't seem to realize this, but all enemies actually have two important ways of establishing difficulty. Enemy level is the second and less important: enemy TYPE is the key one. In other words, each type of beast has its own difficulty gauge: blattas and adusecas are at the bottom of the list, while creatures like Millesaurs and Xedoms are at the top. In other words, a level 40 blatta might be a joke to your level 30 character, while a level 5 Millesaur will easily stomp you. This makes some sense: the world's mightiest cockroach still isn't as deadly as a juvenile rhino. The general rule, as the game said in Hour One, is that bigger is stronger, although there are a handful of exceptions: Milsaadi may be human sized, but they'll wreck your shit much faster than any lepyx ever could.

So in the future, keep an eye out first for the enemy's type, then take a gander at its level.

They're removable. Especially in the late game, they make a huge difference, i.e. they can help your characters do 3 or 4x damage, or to literally walk on lava, or shrug off enemy kill moves. They're indispensible. To equip them, go to your equip screen, press X, and Set Augments. L also has a sidequest which unlocks the ability to add up to three slots for augments on each peice of equipment for a modest price of miranium, so there's no real reason not to start laying into them.

I think it can't use Skells in that battle though... there's a barrier blocking me. 

Oh haha that's what that quest was for? Haha yeah I completed that a while ago. I knew that one was important.