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

And that's all it would take; one really good trailer.

So far they've just done a totally inadequate job of selling this as an amazing true successor to the original Xenoblade, but there's still time to turn things around. And I hope they do; I'm not being negative just for the sake of being negative, I legitimately want this to be amazing, it's just that so far, to paraphrase Shulk, I'm just not Really Feeling It.

I dunno, the Bionis just seemed more vibrant to me with a more attractive colour pallette. XB2's equivalent just looks kind of dull.

Agreed. There are numerous ways they could have changed up the battle system, this seems the most needless. Why couldn't you just have four weapons to change to on the fly besides having four tethered characters?

That's all I need. The first trailer was straight garbage arguably compared to the other 2 games. People may argue how mind blowing a game on Wii could be, but Monolith Soft, the Xeno series, Nintendo, and two gaint fighting Gods is all it took for me btqh. And then you only need to look at the graphical upgrade from Xenoblade Chronicles to X, let alone that the cat was out of the bag pretty early that it was going to be completely open world and larger than the original, add in skells and yeah. Then the third trailer and...... they fall flat on their face with the reveal? Then the second trailer comes and is better in some ways, not in others (bad voice acting revealed). Two 40 minute gameplay trailers and you still can't sell me on what the awesome new thing is in the game.

This is an advertising fail to Wii U reveal levels. Monolith Soft can't sell me a game I want.

3 teathered characters.  And it seems to be a combination of plot and the fact each blade character has a special move.  Honestly, this particular line of complaints seems the most petty.  Its more layers of strategy in combat that enrich the system but are by no means required just to beat the game.  In what universe is that bad?  And the combat interface seems much more easy to navigate here as it sidesteps the issue of scrolling through the hotbar at the bottom of the screen but still preserves the number of arts.

And there's that hyperbole again.  Comparing this to the Wii U's fails is laughable.  Or even more than laughable.  Let's keep things level here.  Comparing this to the Wii U's marketing woes is positively absurd.  Like the first trailer or not, they did not fall flat on their face.  That's an exaggeration of the highest order.  And I've seen mostly positive reception to the first gameplay stream and now nearly universally positive reception to the second outside a small handful of people.  

Don't find what you've seen as compelling as what they showed of X, fine.  But stop throwing around these hyperbolic statements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APWTJMyM4qg

Well the quality of the stream hurts XC2.  But the colors are just objectively better, but that's more a hardware thing.  I do think the various bits of the Titan actually moving is very cool though and there's more variety to the landforms than that one screenshot you picked shows, we get glimpses of that in the stream and the first trailer and the second trailer.  And the concept of the tide of clouds rising and falling concealing and revealing new areas is cool.

That's all I need. The first trailer was straight garbage arguably compared to the other 2 games. People may argue how mind blowing a game on Wii could be, but Monolith Soft, the Xeno series, Nintendo, and two gaint fighting Gods is all it took for me btqh. And then you only need to look at the graphical upgrade from Xenoblade Chronicles to X, let alone that the cat was out of the bag pretty early that it was going to be completely open world and larger than the original, add in skells and yeah. Then the third trailer and...... they fall flat on their face with the reveal? Then the second trailer comes and is better in some ways, not in others (bad voice acting revealed). Two 40 minute gameplay trailers and you still can't sell me on what the awesome new thing is in the game.

This is an advertising fail to Wii U reveal levels. Monolith Soft can't sell me a game I want.

Considering what Xenoblade's first trailer was (before it became Xenoblade), I don't see the complaints about Xenoblade 2's trailer as valid, to be honest. 

Sure X had a hype-worthy trailer, but then the game turned out to be somewhat dissapointing. 

If you didn't understand the hype of Xenoblade for Wii you obviously don't remember the state of jrpgs at the time, especially on Nintendo consoles.

As for X, you may find some things that disappointed you, but as a whole package was nowhere near a disappointing game.