all the talk about the visual downgrades doesn't seem to hold much substance when you look at the grand scale of the environments. they're surprisingly detailed and aesthetically pleasing in motion.

I think the game tries to do that, when it can.  But sometimes it happens on screen.  It's not as noticeable from what I've seen as it was in XC for Wii, but it still happens.  Especially if you do a really big jump after leaving your party a bit behind.

Also, noticed something:  the draw distance adjusts based on context.  In the city where there's not as clear a view, it seems most characters and such don't draw out as far.  But in the field and especially on hills, the draw distance scales up much farther.  Clever trick to keep the framerate steady and yet maintain visual quality wherever possible. 

The soundtrack man, the soundtrack!

Beautiful. Although it doesn't look like a JRPG to me.

xenoblade x is more like a jrpg+wrpg+mmo

I would say the MMO is the smallest part.  Most of your online interactions are in the vein of Souls games.  Your avatar can be recruited in other people's games and you can do the same with theirs.  There are also squad goals that each person works to help complete in the context of their own game, stuff like that.  Only a specific set of quests, Squad Quests and others involving World Enemies are full co-op. 

I honestly feel like XCX is more WRPG in construction but more JRPG in spirit.  The grandness of narrative and theme, the focus on a number of party characters rather than just the one protagonist, the more "heroic" tone of (although this is far darker than XC for Wii), all those things are more of a JRPG tradition; open world WRPGs tend to put story as the backbone but not the focus, focus very heavily on the player character/main hero, and have a much more stoic tone that often will downplay the ideas of outright good and evil.  However, XCX is open world, uses a real time battle system closely tied to similar systems seen in RPGs popular in the west, has a very heavy exploration focus, has a customizable main character, even the aesthetic is more in sync with the west.  So I would say it feels very much like a WRPG in gameplay side of things, though not quite to the level of the Souls series which feels very western. 

I had similar feelings with Dragon Age:  Origins which reminded me somewhat of a JRPG in the way it was constructed in many aspects but was decidedly a WRPG in spirit for sure.  The sentiment wasn't as strong as it is with XCX though.

I refuse to watch anymore gameplay videos, i have seen enough i think.

I don't know if it's because I know the game is now out in Japan... But all the games I play now end up boring me. =(

I want to play this now!

Definitely. The wait for localization at this point will be both long and painful...

Fortunately, E3 starts in 7 weeks (49 days) so hopefully we'll hear something then. That's not too bad I suppose...

Nintendo needs to announce a release date soon. And at E3, they have to announce a new Metroid game for the Wii U (God, make it happen, and don't let it be a 3DS title!).