So I'm 20 houra in, and my impressions are still pretty good. I'm specially in love with the combat system, characters and the Blade system. I have 5 rare Blades and I love to use them. I also loved their designs, specially a blade Azami. I use her a lot. About the battle system, it's deep and pretty fun to use in long combats. Specially chaining elemental combos, combined with the "topple" system (bit different from previous games though). I still have a lot to learn about it though.

I'm about 5 hours into the game so far. Here are my impressions. I'll start with the good ol' negatives:

-When you "engage" battle mode, even if you are very far from the enemy, you can not un-engage it unless you run away. Since your character is super slow in battle mode, this is a huge problem. Now before someone replies to me saying "but this is the same in Xenoblade 1!" i'm not a Xenoblade fan so I can't be sure, but of the first few hours I played of that game I think this is a hundred times worse. The example I'm about to give mad me really mad at the game and is in no way exaggeration. I accidentally targeted a giraffe at a lake near Torigoth. This lake is at the very east side of the town near a huge ass Tree that looms over the town. I LITERALLY had to walk all the way to the entrance of Torigoth just to get the combat mode to disengage, even though I had never hit the enemy, even though the enemy wasn't engaging with me. If you don't actually engage the enemy but just the battle mode, you have to walk miles with this slow ass movement speed to turn it off. Now to be fair, when you get hit by an enemy or you hit them and then run away, the mode can turn off pretty quickly(assuming you don't die). But this begs the question of why there isn't a simple disengage button for when you aren't near the enemy, or better yet, why you can even target enemies that far away? (APPARENTLY I'M WRONG!)

-One of the main quests has you going onto this island while you're about level 8~10. The island has a bunch of level 40 enemies. At first I thought I was missing something. I was pretty cautious going onto the island, but there were clouds all around it and no alternative. So I went in. I avoided the enemies pretty easily(I can't seem to tell if there are eye icons like in Xeno 1 so I was extra nervous), but then I get to the part of the island, there's a quick cutscene, and all the sudden there is a level 9 enemy I have to fight. What? I'm sorry, but that's bad game design. Like, very bad, very odd, game design. The designers should encourage the player  to use their knowledge of their surroundings to assess if they should go to an area. You don't want to go onto an island with enemies 4.5x your level. Even if this is seen as some kind of ingenious way of turning the player's instincts on their heads and making them use their gutt reaction to "go for it", it doesn't work. This isn't an action game like Dark Souls where you're a flexible character who has the risk-reward of running after a lizard who's in the middle of a crowd of enemies. Where with enough skill you can just dodge and run and get out of their with your treasure. It's Xenoblade. Especially since you're not there to quickly grab an item and escape, you have to fight an enemy for the story mode on there. It didn't give me too much trouble, but I did die once because I barely moved from where the game put my character in battle, and a level 40 enemy on patrol saw me and one hit killed me. I barely knew what hit me when I died.

-This game is a lot uglier than I was expecting. I mean, a lot uglier. A few weeks before release people were posting pictures that made the game look really nice. This might actually be the first game I've played that looks worse in motion than if you just look at a pic. The resolution is god awful, the aliasing is bad, and pretty much as soon as the game opens up any idea of image quality is thrown out the window. To be fair, it's not always terrible, even when the game is open you'll occasionally see some nice vistas. I think that might be the dynamic resolution? Either way I do think they could have done better on the hardware they're on. There's a lot going on in the world sure, but c'mon.

-Stopping for tutorials all the time is bad. The game really does not respect your time. From what I remember of the original Xenoblade, it does kind of hold your hand in the beginning, but after an hour or two you pretty much know what you're doing. This game it's like four hours later you get a script telling you what to do. Spacing out the mechanics and teaching them over time doesn't work when there's like 40 mechanics and explaining each takes two minutes. But even past tutorials there's questionable things. Like you'll get these moments where you come out of a cutscene, have to walk four steps in one direction, and then another cutscene begins. Wut? Why? Just start the next cutscene. 

-No "falling out the map" sucks. When I first fell off the trading center and saw I can swim in the clouds, I was like, "AAwwwwwww. That's so cute!" Now i'm like "ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUSSIUJSOUSISI?!?!?!" Every time you fall off you either have to find a way back up(there aren't any a lot of the time) or you have to open up the menu and fast travel, which has like 3 sub menus. Again, not respecting the players time.

-Pyra is really not doing it for me. She has very little development, has the voice of a bimbo a lot of the times, and oddly ... she acts like a third wheel? In a story like this that's kinda odd. 

-Character design for the Tiger is a new level of bad. Holy moly. I've kind of gotten used to Rex but his isn't great either, same with Pyra obviously.

-So far not invested in story.

-Terrible, terrrrible lip syncing

Neutral point = I don't know if I'm the only one who's been thinking this, but just conceptually speaking I don't know if being able to equip different blades is a good idea for this game. Conceptually speaking. The game is about making a connection between you and your main blade, Rex and Pyra are obviously going to have a character arc, and the cat girl(forgot her name) and her cat(tiger!) feel like a good fit with one another. Video games have for a while now been trying to connect gameplay, plot and story altogether, and having you have one main blade would not only extinguish characters more but would make your relationships more cathartic. That's just a theory I have though, and I'll see how I feel as the game progresses. I really like exchanging blades as it offers diversity. I don't know what that'll mean for character diversity though?

Neutral point = The music consistently changes from great to unmemorable. Pre-release a lot of people were hyping up the OST but it's always seemed like just a generic imitation of XBC to me. Like a B-Sides. Thankfully some of the songs fit a little bit better in game and there are some memorable ones(don't know the name yet, haven't listened to the CD yet)

Neutral point = The game's animations are very inconsistent, sometimes they're great and other times they look very lazy and fake

Okay, now the positives:

+If we split up the intro into three parts : Rex on his Titan segment, the Trading/Gearing up segment, and the Ship segment, than 2/3 parts of the intro are great. Unfortunately the middle which is easily the longest portion is way too boring, but oh well it's explaining trading n' stuff. The ship segment was really great though, like wow, I was actually really invested in the story right there. It actually made me want a shonen Xenoblade, and parts like the death Bell sequence were really atmospheric, peaceful and creepy. For a while I just ran around and played at the grass while looking at the cool distortion effect before talking to Pyra.

+The cat girl is a really nice character, even if she was kinda a bitch and her character arc of being a dick wraps up in approximately 10 minutes after meeting Rex.

+So I've played only a few hours of XBC and XB2. I have pretty much gone as far in both. I really like the changes in XB2, even if  from what I can tell there's a bit less strategy and choice. I would say it's not worse or better, just different, and more welcoming for a newcomer like me.

+I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE the sky diving mechanic! Where you dive under the clouds and collect treasure! I'm sure you could make a case that it sucks it's just a button prompt - it would be cool if it was like a mini game where you have to dodge obstacles and actually grab the treasure(I think there was something like that in Skyward Sword?) but still it's so cool as is! I think the reason I love it so much is that it just makes so much logical sense in a fantasy setting - A world where people live above the clouds? Of COURSE you would dive under the clouds for treasure! Nice world building

+Oh and the voice acting is a lot better than expected. It's good to ok

Uhhh....that's all I can think off. Which is odd, because I am really liking this game. Lol. I guess I can't really comment on any positives other than it's a good game.

I will read the rest later but:
R + B will allow you to put your weapon away so you can run in combat.

REALLY? YESSSSSSSSS! Thank you. I love you. Now this game is a A+ . BEST GAME ON SWITCH. 

The funny thing is, I actually tried to combine buttons, press all the buttons, I even looked it up. Thank you so much! 

Yeah, the controls are not the best.
And the animations are real low budget.

Hopefully they take notes for their next title.
If it is going to be a ARPG.

Going to post in more detail once I really get going, but my initial impressions a few hours in are very positive. Characters are fun and the setting is really interesting. Kind of reminds me of Never Ending Story meets Tales of Symphonia.

The HUD is easy to navigate, and side quests feel a lot more interesting than the MMO tedium of the last two XC games. So far, inventory management is a lot more refined as well, but I don't know if this will change as I really get into it. We'll see...hard to really gauge anything else given how long this game is going to be.

Also, probably a minority opinion, but I love the new art style. The more animated appearances lends itself well to a broader range of character reactions, which I like a lot more than the stiff faces of the previous game.

I liked XCX to some extent. But, I got tired of it after 60ish hours and never finished it. I would like something new for Switch.... So, should I pay full price for this game, wait until it gets cheap, or skip it altogether?

It is first party; the game will never be cheap.

Agreed on this, this is great. The collection- and salvaging-system is a pretty good evolution from the collectibles stuff in the first two games and the interesting points stuff in XCX. Now you collect multiple things, but it is an action. And skills learned by your blades may bring you in more stuff to find (similar to how you did have to learn biology or other skill to activate some things to find in XCX). This all is really cool.

Other than that: This game basically brings back many things I loved about XC more than XCX. First of all music: XCX music was no comparison to the music in the first game. The music in XC2 is much much better. Maybe if not still music from XC was stuck in my head (because it was so awesome) I would see the music now as on the same level than XC.

More importantly: I'm not very much progressed in the story, but I do care a lot more about the characters than in XCX. In XCX you got thrown a lot of characters you could go into fights with, but I didn't really cared about them. It was a combination of too many and the stories while different were not connected really to your own character. Maybe also because you could create your own character, so it was taken out of the story. Or more stories in case of XCX. XC2 does have a much more consistent single story and much less characters (so far) that bond to your character much more and therefore I do care for much more.

Probably that is the point the blades come in. With less characters to play the blades allow you to play different combat-styles with each of them. In XC the combat was fixed to each character, Sharla for instance was always a healer. Now it is more diverse, even early on with the core crystals. Each character can with a switch of the blade change the fighting style. That can even happen in the middle of the fight. The only thing is - I wisch I could also switch blades for the other than the main character. Maybe I can though, and havent figured it out yet.

I did like though in earlier games that I could configure which arts to use. Now the arts are fixed to a blade (at least so far, maybe that changes later). I also could access more art in the earlier games, although now they are conviniently mapped to face buttons, so fighting selecting arts is easier. Not sure which I prefer really.

The landscapes and the creatures are great as they were in both earleir games. I do like that. That was the part I liked in XCX so much, although I didn't care about the story, but exploring the land was excellent. But the same was true for XC. The only thing XCX made better was, that I could explore new regions without progressing in the story. As the story in XC was so great, this was no big deal, but still. Now it is like XC, I still have to see if the story holds up, so far it is good. One thing though: I love we are back on Titans. It is much more awesome to run around on a thing, and even more now that they are alive.

The first city (after the trading guild) - I think Terigoth or so - is confusing to me. I actually use the questmarker to bring back stuff I had to fetch for an NPC instead of remembering there it was. And even with the quest-markers, I often don't know how to get down there or up there. It really didn't help that at first I moved through the city per cut-scene. Doesn't help to remember there I was going. After I could move freely, I needed quite some time to find back to the city entrance. I don't know more cities yet, maybe they are designed less confusing. The trade guild is fine for instance.

I would like an option to turn on japanese voice acting, maybe they patch it in later like with Zelda. That would be great.

Overall I like it much more than XCX (which was still a great game) and it is not too far away from XC. Let's see how it all develops.