Okey, about those side quests you mentioned (funny, I thought you were going to mention those two quests because I was lost at the beginning xD). And I'd say that this wasn't probably mentioned in a tutorial, at least, I don't remember. You can change the time of the day next to the "save game" option. Try to match the time of the day with the time of the side quest (I think those side quest you mentioned were at early morning and night). And if you have the side quest active, the marker will pop up. It only appears if you're at the right time in the game, if not, you'll have not clue on what to do. Try that and see if you can manage to go on with them.

I can't blame you about the combo system though, it took me about 20 hours to learn how to do them, and the game is still throwing at me new things to do. But I like that, it feels dynamic. 

Yeah, Nintendo is a rich company, they should try to match their consumers expectations.

If you have to make an excuse for why a games lip sync is bad such as: "they aren't synced to the language sold in, but the language it was made in", there is an issue.
Video games are not like movies, we have the technology to re-sync lips with relative ease.
Nintendo could of chosen to re-do the lip sync for the major regions, they made the decision not to.

Nintendo and Monolith Soft, knowing that they wanted to do a world wide launch, should have put effort in assuring that re-syncing and translation is able to be done with ease.
Given competent planning, this should not be an issue.

Im past that point, im just saying why i understand the frustration of others, and why i might go buy the strategy guide

I feel like the lip sync is less important than the VAs delivering lines they seem to have no idea what the context is.

I mean I pretty much knew this would be the case when Nintendo was delivering japanese only trailers or badly VA english trailers(the voice acting in this game isn't even that bad), but the lip syncing is way worse than I could have imagined and like Arminillo said, most VA's sound like they don't know the context of what they're saying.

K, finished Chapter 2. 9 hours in.

Main story so far is alright, I can see where its going and the setpieces are great (tho it makes the combat look more boring if a boss fight comes right after ), still feel like the cutscenes take a bit too long or are thrown one after another.

Characters are likeable (Morag is the best tho). Very Tales of for the most part, humor is hit or miss. I feel that the pacing is a bit off in the character relationships, like I missed cutscenes or something.

Music is still pretty good, visually nice and colorful, except for some very noticeable dips in framerate.

Combat I'm very thorned, on one hand it can be very busy and dynamic and other very boring, I don't feel much incentive to do combos at times, cause the enemy will just go down anyway, bosses need more enemies with them, bosses going solo at the end of the chapter makes it feel like a stand still fight till I can perform a sandstorm and pick a potion if my teamates  get low on health, a grading system would have been useful to make me feel like fighting to the best of my abilities and being rewarded for it.

The camera in tight spaces can still be a problem.

Side quests seem more interesting than the first game, but not as much as X, tho the benefits are enough to make me consider doing some of them.

I wish there was a full map for the fast travel system.

While I'm bummed by no armor customization, there is enough in blades and upgrades to keep me interested.

Overall XC2 is a much simpler game than XC or XCX, far more accesible, not that I have much of a problem with either game. Also thank the fact that I can just skip tutorials quickly. 

Bearing in mind that neither XBC1 nor XCX set the charts on fire, it probably was budgeted so as to turn a profit on less than 1 million sales.

Only played a little of XCX, but if this is accessible then im scared to play XC1. Are you sure its not just because you are used to everything thanks to the first two games?

Xenoblade 1 is infinitely simpler than this. See my previous post on how there are a million systems built into this game. 

That's because the dub was created during the development of the game and not after like XC and XCX where you have the context and the whole scene already presented.

I also notice such thing in other other games, too. Where the line and emotion does not line up with what is shown even if you got professional VA. They have to work with the translation and the info in what kind of emotion they have to speak their text. They don't see the scenes.

Making dub during development is always risky to get the necessary quality. Otherwise there are 2 options. Delay the worldwise release because of the dub or releaase in japan first and half a year later in the west