On your previous question about Reyn not always using Wild Down (toppling), after a few more hours back in I've noticed a bit of what you mean. It's mostly just a timing thing. You have to wait until he's basically gone through his usual arts and isn't in the middle of any animation. Most of his art animations can take a while, and if you're still using Stream Edge to break, the break debuff from that doesn't last very long.

Also be aware if you're fighting a large mob of enemies, he'll use all his aoe arts too, which can take a while.

Is it worth it to build your affinity levels and develop colony 6 i completely ignored(didn't know about them in the wii version)

I think the main advantage to rebuilding colony 6 is access to the portable furnace, which lets you craft gems anywhere.  It's convenient, but not a huge deal since quick travel doesn't take that long.  There are also some items, gems, and equipment you'll get access to as Colony 6 develops. 

Affinity is more important IMO.  It impacts how often you get extra attacks when you're doing chains which is a pretty big deal.  It also allows you to view heart to hearts (which I like personally), raises your odds of crafting good gems, and lets you use skill links, which allows one character to use skills from other party members' skill trees.  So, for example if you wanted to use heavy armor on Sharla (not sure if you would, but lets say you do), you would have to give her a skill link with another character to let her do so.

I guess it's pointless now that there's an easy mode, but when I found the going quite tough late in the game back in my first playthrough in 2011, my eventual solution, which carried me through all the way passed the final boss, was to kit out my party with as many high grade evasion gems as I could, so that the enemies basically couldn't touch me.

Probably not the most efficient solution, but I was an RPG noob and found the in-depth stuff a bit too daunting. XD

Game is okay, but it makes me deeply miss X to no end.

Far out, and that was just me trying to cheese the game any way I could haha. Well, it did work for me I suppose. 

I guess if anyone else here gets stuck but doesn't want resort to playing on casual mode, you can always try it the way I did. XD

How does the weight of your equipment affect your battle performance? So far I haven't really factored weight into what I equip my characters but I'm guessing it does change something.

Playing this game on my 4k tv and I still think the game looks gorgeous

In Satori marsh. It looks better than ever damn! The new quest markers/tracker makes this game so much easier. Was such a pain in the original.

lol welcome to Xenoblade! That sums up this series. Level 90s enemies next to level 4 enemies. But it entices you to get to the highest level to take them out and it feels great when you do.