I'm here to say two things.

1. I'm in love with this game.
2. Screw field abilities.

I'm on chapter 7, and I haven't had to grind once. And I'm the player who avoids most enemies and heads straight for the story.

I don't want to assume that you're playing wrong, but I was for my first 30 or so hours. The only thing I'm needing to grind for are field abilities, which, I mean, I could be doing that wrong too.

I kinda did play it wrong. I needed to mix up my blades more. I did try once, but I should have tried again because I did beat the character on the second try with a different blade. I just thought Pyra was the strongest blade ever, so why would I use anyone else? lol

Some slight spoilers if you don't want to know what the rare blades are.

https://www.rpgsite.net/feature/6418-xenoblade-chronicles-2-rare-blades-guide-elements-roles-field-skills-and-how-to-get-every-rare-blade

Great, I really like Nia as a character in these last 4 chapters. This Xenoblade is more focused on characters imho, and that's why I'm enjoying the writing and plot more in this game than the previous 2. As much as I liked the previous games, I always found the characters pretty bland. Even in the first one, the characters just haven't been really appealing to me. 

Mercenaries missions are great to build the blades' affinity chart, get the field skills (which is probably the only mechanic I'm not pretty fond of in this game, sadly), and some extra EXP and gold. 

I didn't notice Metroid music in this game, at least in the 4 chapters I've played. 

Yeah, field abilites are the only gameplay mechanic I don't enjoy a lot. The rest of it is pretty great though. But the game is totally awesome in general. By the way, did you solve the side quest problem you had? I read about it in this thread or another one, but didn't bother to answer because I didn't have a clue about it and it'd feel pretty pointless xD.

Its in a location called Cliffs Of Morytha. Not sure when you reach it. 

Yeah that's a pretty major deal lol account for weaknesses. I only care about Pyra for healing combined with Nia.

For me it was the combo system and weaknesses. I was doing it wrong the entire time.

Yeah lol turns out there was none. The game is just really stupid with how it handles quest markers. If you don't have an explicit story or side quest, the game will force a marker on you so you know where to go next, which is really annoying and a cheap way to get out of the work of making locations easy to fine organically.

It's my biggest problem with the game - you can't turn the hud off. That and the map is probably the worst ive ever used. I'm sure like 10% of the game is playable without a HUD, because I ignore it when I can, but I'm only human. It's extremely distracting and kills exploration.

Dang, the start of Chapter 7 is such a tear jerker(for me at least).

I'm just hooked and intrigued at the story that I haven't been doing sidequests, I'm 40hrs in too, I'll probably do the sidequests when I feel like I'm near the ending.