Honestly, I think characterisation in this game is the best in the series.  Characters have dimension and emotional range and growth.  Every villain has a motive and something to generate empathy.  Or at least pitty.  The game even made me like a Nopon, which I though was impossible.

Most of the characterization is pretty good, but I wouldn't say is the best on villians.

There are a couple of them that do get great attention to making them not seem so bad and good development, but there are also ones which motives and backstory get shoehorned at the very end of the game, like now I'm supposed to feel bad about them.

I suppose that's what I meant by pitty over empathy.  

And I meant best in the series which for villains ain't hard.  Excluding Lao and Egil, all the villains of 1 and X aren't really sympathetic.  In this game, all of them at the very least have dimension beyond just being psychotic or narcisistic or power hungry.

Without Morag or Nia this game would have no class

I almost traded this game in several times because I encountered lots of frustrating moments in the gameplay but I kept at it and put in 180+ hours.

Traded it in now although I was hoping to max out all the characters but I lost the will now the main story is beaten,.

I didn't had the same issues as some users here, arf. Nor did I encounter any roadblocks during the main story, arf. I was also taking my time with the game and doing sidequests whenever I could, arf. Some of the sidequests  build on each other to tell their own story, arf. And others will give you rare blades by finishing them, arf. Even by exploring you can find one or two rare blades, arf.
If there was a boss I had trouble with, I just changed my blades and equipment to deal with the situation accordingly, arf. Obviously it's pointless to brute force your way with the same tactic over and over again, arf.

Fights are too long for me. Think game is fine. Just think most enemies should be easy to kill.

Agreed, I really wish fights didn't drag on as long. When these massive damage numbers are popping up but taking only a millimeter off the enemy's health bar, it's kinda lame.

Spoilers from Xenogears, Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2 (I don’t think they spoil much, but some people will).

Jin was a Krelian archetype, maybe not quite as intelligent (since Krelian was a nanotechnology and biology expert), but similar back story and virtually identical motivations. Egill and the Mechon story are essentially a remake of the Nikolai Balthasar story; although Nikolai Balthasar’s motivation was pretty much that he aligned himself with Krelian. Egill is a bit more like Lacan, but less apocalyptic; Malos is easily closer to Lacan.

I'm at the 41 hour mark now, so 14 hours on from when I last posted (at the very beginning of chapter 5 now).

In that time I'd say the game has definitely improved. I feel like the difficulty curve has settled down, whereas earlier in the game it was a struggle taking on groups of enemies that were the same level as - or sometimes lower level than - my party, now I can take on groups that are a similar or slightly higher level without difficulty. Some of that's down to having more rare blades, which means I have more scope for elemental combinations and special attacks in combat.

So now I'm feeling more positive about the game as a whole. I do think, compared the to the original, it's not as enthralling or captivating on an ongoing basis, but I'm very much enjoying it and looking forward to what the rest of the game has to offer. That being said, for all the invention, particularly in the way the game's different systems combine and complement one another the more time you spend with the game, there are still stupid, frustrating elements that shouldn't have made it into the final game.

My biggest frustration is the core crystal system - I've had 6 rare core crystals return common blades, which I think is unfair, frustrating and genuinely stupid design. I get they want people to grind and explore and salvage and do mercenary missions for lots of rewards and to build up the in-game economy etc, but a rare core crystal should equal a rare blade. There's an element of risk each time you bond a rare crystal anyway - what if you get a Tank when you desperately wanted or needed a Healer? What happens when you end up with more and more of the same element? If you get completely different weapon-classes of blades bonded to one Driver, that slows down the rate at which you can improve their attacks. Relatedly, what if you bond the wrong class to one of your characters? That can be a particular problem since you seemingly have limited opportunities to swap blades between drivers. I'm exploring and salvaging and interacting with the game's different systems anyway, so I feel my rare core crystals being wasted by the game's RNG is a slap in the face, and completely unnecessary at that. There are enough risks involved in bonding a rare core crystal without the frequent occurrence of common blades emerging from a rare crystal - it seems particularly poorly thought out and unfair to the player.

Yeah the use of Common Blade and Rare Blade, while having Common Core Crystals and Rare Core Crystals seems like a really bad localization issue. Maybe something like “Core Crystal” and “Advanced Core Crystal” would have avoided that confusion.

Consistency errors are kind of a QA 101 error not to catch this. So it should have been something caught by localization producers or QA.