"I personally don't really mind the style they choose as long as I have an engaging story with great characters"

Thats the thing, the main characters look terrible. They look so awful that I lose any interest in the game, I'm really sad they chose this style.

When it was first revealed, I liked the design :p

A lot of the designs past the main two are pretty fantastic too. Theres a lot of cool stuff they are doing with this style.

I like the game's art style and I think the character models look better than in the previous games.

She wants to have a word with you

You're a monster.

A MONSTER.

The biggest problem is the art style is not Xeno. It’s not just cheap looking, it looks very wrong. It’s Xenosaga Episode 2 all over again.

It’s the same as if they decided to exchange Akira Toriyama’s art in Dragon Quest with some kind of generic knock-off Sailor Moon crap.

How can it look very wrong??

Ultimately, its up to the vision and direction of those at the helm of the game. Takahashi, who is being credited as executive director of XC2, stated he wanted to go to a different direction that he usually has gone in terms of story concept and here we are. Its like judging Wind Waker, Metroid Prime, Skyward Sword, and others. Those who have made those games had a vision on how they wanted to present their respective games. Whether you like the art style or not, you can at least respect them for wanting to take on this direction since they appear to know what they want to do with that art style and such. I haven't seen much of the game besides the trailers and parts of gameplay footage at E3 so I will have to try the game myself to make a judgement. So far, though, I don't mind the more anime artstyle. As for character concepts, we will have to see since they are only giving more of the basic character concepts. Who knows, there could be deeper characterization as you play the game. I don't know if fans of Xenoblade Chronicles immediately could tell how Shulk's full character would be at first impression.

I dont really think its an issue.People also didnt like, for the most part, the artstyle that XCX went with, at the beggining at the very least.But then the game went to sell around 1 million units on a system that failed to be successful.And Im personally much more fond of this direction than X, given that they have actual expressions and are far more expressive and honestly, far more pretty.

In the end, the artstyle is something that will depend on each ones tastes, but since the game still looks gourgeous outside of the charachters(even though I like them), and Xenoblade was always cherished more about its story, gameplay and world, assuming the game manages to excel on those aspects, it will be just fine.