I think a lot of the wow factor for me was not only how good it looked, but the fact that there were all kinds of secrets in each area where you can find hidden rooms and caves simply by exploring. The videos were they ran down the middle of these areas before released never put emphasis on that at all, and is easily the most enjoyable part of the game. The first time I flew into one of the giant flowers in Noctilum and fought a nemesis it literally was an "AHA!" moment in gaming to where I found myself going through the rest of the world all over again to try and find all these secrets. Not to mention no video could ever prepare me for how big these land masses truly were. You walk around FOREVER and complete a mission and go back to Blade HQ and check the map and see where you went to notice you barely cleared 3 or 4 hexagons on the map. Not to mention seeing the game on my big screen without any video compression, ect, I was impressed. Very impressed.

No doubt as far as scale. XC for Wii came out at the right time where jrpgs were gravitating toward linear level design. X bumped that 50 fold. Add in XV (though not really open world) and LoZ and we have just had a ton of games designed with giant levels in mind, so it does loose a bit of luster. The Titan idea is interesting and hopefully they use them in interesting ways and they aren't just window dressing. The different people that inhabit them really don't strike me as anything other than the different things that inhabit different continents in any game. Sure there is a level of interest there, but it's nothing this game solely has. Just a different approach to an old formula (think Mechon and Homs). 

With the added layers of depth, there also comes a inherent need to grind after getting every new blade, it's a doub;e edge sword (puns y'all).

It's definitely great there is a cosmethics shop, again hopefully it isn't some half baked idea deligated solely to changing eye color or adding earrings and sweat bands but a full on armor customization shop. 

Blade weapon changes seem weird..... Does that mean the monsters won't have weapon specific skills? Will they have weapon levels where your blade gets abilities accordingly? 

Certainly in terms of suprises with enemies and such, it was incredible. I think you're refering to the Mortifoles. I was not prepared to fight them lol. After I died the first 3 times, I decided to jump in the lake and avoid them entirely. That was an even bigger mistake XD. Overall I liked XCX sheer gameplay wise the best, but the wow factor in terms of new places didn't have the same sense of discovery. Definitely deserves (and needs) a sequel of its own though.

Well you certainly have a point that we knew what the continents looked like already. So I do see where you're coming from, I just feel there was still a lot of WOW factor to it. 

Watched like 2 minutes. Going to try and watch as little as possible of this game.

Too often games lose their "wonder" by seeing too much. I feel the X did that. They showed too much of the unique areas. Coupled with the story being less engaging it just didn't wow me as Chronicles did.

Makes me think of some "let's plays' of Xenoblade Chronicles. People doing those I feel can't enjoy the game as much as a person alone. They enter a new area and people in comments, even though trying to be spoiler free will say stuff like "You should see the place at night." thus the lets player will do a time adjust to nighttime. Sure it looks cool, but the person would have missed out on two things. The gradual change from day to night as well as the surprise of it actually being different.

That's what watching too much is like for me. Feels like I know what's coming and loses the wonder/surprise I may have achieved myself.

Yea, but even so, your comment is still a spoiler.

Now I know as well as you do that there is a new metroid evolution. Don't really care, cause I don't plan on playing that game. But is sucks these days how much in the name of marketing things get spoiled.

Take Batman v Superman movie. I personlly think the movie would have gotten at least 10% higher RT score had the final trailer not shown doomsday or the batman/superman/wonder woman interaction. Sure the trailer was awesome, but it basically spoiled teh whole premise of the movie of Batman v superman. We all saw how they will team up and who the final threat will be.  They made a 'cool' trailer that they thought would get more peopel into seats in the theaters, yet in the end spoiled too much. Too many movies do that these days.

The guy in this video certainly agrees with you, he complained that Xenoblade 2's E3 trailer was too weak and it's why the game passed under the radar:

And the Gamescom footage didn't do wonders for it either. The guy playing had always the same camera angle for battles, which wasn't too great because it gave the impression that there was a mess going on. 

Super Mario Odyssey is getting spectacular coverage, so I don't really understand why Xenoblade 2 can't even get at least 10% of that if it's supossed to release this year too. 

Yeah, the series seems to be convoluting itscombat system and interface further with each entry rather than distilling and refining it.

The XCX battle system was substantially better feeling than XC. The biggest problem with XC was at how frustrating targeting was (sometimes it would target super distant monsters, and even bring some extras into the battle inadvertently), the camera was terrible (many times it would flip around into a wall, the floor, or in some odd direction), and it was difficult to tell what side of the monster you were on - all three issues fixed in XCX.

XC2 seems a little bit further refined and simplified from a UI standpoint, while actually increasing the depth; although this might not be a great thing. Although, I hope this is not a needless overdesign, the two extra steps to the topple look a bit chore-ish, kind of like Melia's weird buff + casting. Honestly, I would prefer getting rid of topple, it's a chore after a while. RPGs are better the more simulated they are; that's what the genre's about, after all. Timing/action shit can be fun at first, but kind of ruins the game in the a long term. The more actions they are, the more painful and chore-like  repetitive actions tend to be:

Example: individually taking each slide out of a box, putting it in a projector, turning the projector on, looking at the slide, then taking the slide out, putting it back. Then picking out the next slide, and repeat. OR, press a button to flip to the next slide. If you had to do one or the other for a couple of hours, which would you rather do?

I've had this argument before, so before someone comes running and says "would you rather just press buttons repeatedly to pass levels in Mario?" I'll point out that RPGs don't have to be repetitive, there are different actions to use for different situations, but they don't have have to be convoluted; and on the Mario example, Mario's abilities are incredibly simplistic, jumping is just tapping a button, running vs walking is just holding a button down vs. not holding it down; and also Mario is not an RPG, it's a platformer, two very different mechanics - but both benefit from a simple interface to do what you want to do - you wouldn't want to have to do a button combination every time you wanted Mario to jump, would you?

Yeah Odyssey has been much better handled because both the January and E3 trailers were awesome; the former pushed the "look, an ambitious Mario for the first time since Galaxy and a 64-eque 3D Mario for the first time since 2002" angle while the latter did a great job of showcasing the Capture mechanic.

XB2 by contrast had two weak trailers that failed to capitalize on arguably the biggest draw of the series; mind-blowing worlds. 

I get that they want to focus more on story to show audiences that this won't be another XCX, but the problem is that what they've shown just isn't interesting and makes the game seem like just another generic, dime-a-dozen JRPG.