1) If you're going to classify Zelda as a linear game, then X is right up there with it. Both allow for exploration and player freedom, with certain objectives vital to the main story that need to be completed in a certain order (dungeons for Zelda, story missions for X), and both allow for side quests that can be done whenever the player desires after a certain point in the game (after obtaining certain items in Zelda and after reaching a certain level or point in the story for X). The inclusions of affinity missions doesn't make X less linear; all it does is simply change the type of sidequest you're doing or how long the sidequests take to accomplish.

2) I'm not advocating Majora's Mask as something this game should seek to emulate; I'd advocate anything but for something like X. With that said, if the goal of the game isn't to make people feel rushed, then choosing a storyline revolving around the entirety of the human race dying out if a certain object isn't found in enough time was a really, really poor decision.

3) Zelda offers plenty of things to do, and this is where we come to the crux of the issue. Well, two cruxes, actually. The first is offering versus forcing. It's fine if a game wants to allow its player to screw around and completely ignore the story, it's another thing entirely if the game forces the player to do so. If X didn't require the player to, say, save people's cats before going off to search for the lifehold, then I wouldn't have a complaint. The forcing of the sidequest upon the player is what drastically changes things.

The second crux, however, and what I'd argue is the most important one, is that in the case of most Zelda games, you're really in no rush for most of the time. In Ocarina of Time (with the exception of the last bit where Zelda gets captured) the world is already fucked. Can't get much worse. In Majora's Mask, everything's just getting undone anyway, so there's no reason to not screw around. It's not like any good you do will matter much. In Wind Waker, Ganondorf isn't really in a position to do anything harmful at the moment. In X (again, speaking purely from a narrative standpoint), if you don't hurry, everyone dies. That's the difference.

Ideally, pick a different narrative entirely. The decision to implement a story where the player is consistently told they need to hurry felt like a questionable choice to me when it was originally introduced, but something I assumed they would resolve fairly quickly. Six chapters later, I wish that was the case. All that would need to be done is just remove the timer aspect from all of it. Say that the lifehold has the power to sustain itself for years, and your problem is fixed.

With that said, even if we are dead set on keeping with this narrative exactly as is, the next step would be to simply remove the mandatory side quests from before each mission. That way, the players who want to go out and do lots of side questing before they reach the end of the game can do so, and the players who want to get immersed in the game and play as if they were in the story themselves can do so as well.

But, even if we're tied to mandatory side quests for some other arbitrary reason, have all of the sidequests be at least tangentally related to searching for the lifehold. Change them from "finding someone's cat" or "helping some guy get a date" to "help test new software that will expedite the process of finding the lifehold." Some of the affinity missions do this well and I can see how they're related, such as the probe placement. Others, however...don't.

1) I'd argue it is a strong narrative still, since the Ganglion are a threat to wipe humanity out. This makes finding the lifehold important because they're afraid of real human bodies. In other words, finding the lifehold is still an important task, but one that isn't running on an ever present (story) timer. And yeah, while the Ganglion know about it, the pressure isn't quite as intense. Say something along the lines of the Ganglion don't know the maximum distance that the lifehold can function at, so their search will take far longer to find it, as opposed to humanity which has less ground to cover.

There doesn't need to be a huge sense of urgency for there to be a compelling narrative; in fact, I'd argue that in a game based around exploration to the degree that Xenoblade is, it's far better off with a relatively low pressure plot.

2) I think we're using different definitions of the word "immersion" here. It sounds more like you're saying that the player would miss out on a lot of the game if they didn't do side missions, which I'd agree with, but A: that should reasonably be the players' choice to make anyway, B: they have the ability to explore as much as they want in the post game, and C: there's already a high degree of exploration required of the player to simply reach the locations for the story points. Add in the fact that there's at least two story missions per area and an incentive to place probes that comes from the additional money, resources, and fast travel points, and you're already taking in quite a bit of what the game has to offer.

3) When I say, out of place, what I simply mean is that they are not tasks you would expect what is the purportedly most skilled Blade team who's tasked with saving humanity in a limited window of time to perform. It'd be like asking Seal Team Six to go water the White House's lawn before they head off to take down Osama bin Ladin.

No. They haven't. Retro, while maybe not making the games a lot of people would want them to, still make highly polished games that have very few flaws.

Something that clearly isn't the case for Monolith Soft. Xenoblade Chronicles X is a fun mess, sometimes even gorgeous, but still a mess when it comes to game design and polish.

Really good question! I voted monolith since Baiten Kaitos series ... Love their game.

Monolith winning, as it should be.

But only for one vote now :(, what's wrong with people :(.

Opinions. Wrong opinions of course.

Maybe a bunch of the Monolith fans got forced into saving someone's cat before they were allowed to vote.

That's straight-up incorrect. Many of the staff behind the original Metroid Prime remain in the credits of Tropical Freeze, including artists, animators, engineers, audio crew, and producers.