I've got mixed feelings about the art style. I don't mind the anime characters, in-fact they look great compared to XCX, but i'm not fond of the environments. XCX's were quite sharp and nicely defined, where as XC2's have a weird sort of muddy look to them. Like someone splashed it with some water colours, and decided to blur random parts.

I don't think it's going to affect my enjoyment much, the game still looks fine and it's not like i play XC for cutting edge visuals and perfect aesthetic design, but overall i'd have preferred something like XCX.

The problem with trying to convey the level of expressiveness that 2D animaton gives on a 3D cell shaded model is that 2D animation is much more flexible and open to unique kinds of cheats (i.e. 'breaking the joint') that aren't easily achievable on a fixed 3D character model.
That is why animations that should look smooth, quick and expressive end up sort of ankward and stiff looking. One of the few series that pulled off a transition from 2D to 3D models without a loss of expressiveness well is Ace Attorney.

I also don't subscribe to the theory that noses ears and cheekbones somehow get into the way of expressiveness. You have to look no forther than Mario to see that that is not true. Yes, he is cartooney and has big expressive eyes, but he also has a stache and nose physics and it serves to make him MORE expressive not less so.

Making everyones face a blank slate for huge eyes to play off off is just plain lazy character design imo. One piece still serves an anime aesthetic, but people are allowed to have marked differences beyond their hair and eyecolor and be other things than just 'cute'.

I'm sorry but seeing that the main benefit of this style, namely it's easy expressiveness is severly hampered by the technology of the game, I don't really see it as a positive change.

I wasn't even very opposed to this style before, I like cute cat people as much as the next guy, and I wasn't too terribly fond of previous Xenoblade styles either, but seeing this video sort of highlighted it's flaws in the worst possible ways.

I literally explain it in the second line of the post.

I still don't see an issue with it. It's not like Final Fantasy follows a certain style or that Zelda games follow a certain style. It's not like XCX had the same style as XC. There is no definitive one established on this franchise.

Probably blasphemy for Dragon Quest fans, but I would whole heartly welcome a new style for the franchise. The current one doesn't allow drastic design changes and this leads to a bland and repetitive look on characters throughout the series and everything else that uses it. 

The only thing I'm worried about is the voice acting. I'm hoping there's a download option for Japanese audio because I've been extremely underwhelmed by what I've heard so far in gameplay and trailer videos.

Kunihiko Tanaka's character art style is one of the defining pillars of the Xeno games. For 20 years.

I like the art style. The anime faces tacked onto realistic character models was a little jarring in XCX.

Then why the outcry for the XCX character designs? People were fine with XC, but a lot of them hated the XCX ones. 

Also, he is still doing some character for XC2. Aswell as other designers. 

You mean Xenosaga Episode 2? There was an outcry about that one. The XCX character art style was great, if anyone complained about it, then I doubt they were fans of Xeno games. It's XC2 that people are upset with.

The reason for the difference with the first XC is because it wasn't developed with the intention of being a Xeno-game. It was originally going to be called Monado: Beginning of the World.

The big problem with XC2's character art is not only that the style doesn't match up with other Xeno games, but also that the character art looks very cheap, like it was done by an anime outsource company that specialized in Sailor Moon knockoffs.

i still havent bought xcx precisely because of the creepy doll artstyle