Brand new to the Xenoblade series, put a good 10 hours in yesterday having made a brief start on Saturday. Here are my thoughts

Likes

I kind of like the story, its kept me interested which for me is a big part of how I take to a RPG

Love the world and finding new things and exploring it

Though the reviews I read stated the opposite, I like a lot of the characters and there have been some very funny bits

A lot of depth to the progress system

Music is amazing!

Dislikes

The combat, though I have seen worse it sometimes feels like im not doing a lot but waiting for an ability to be usable

Blades, I might not be doing it right, but all the new ones I have acquired seem pretty useless compared to the main ones

QTE parts, Im not a big fan of QTE overall, and particularly the scavenging thing I rarely get it right

Difficulty seems very up down, one moment im fighting a monster a few levels higher than me with ease, the next I get demolished by some a few levels lower - also there seems to be a lot of cross level monster, I could be in an area flooded by mobs my level (18 atm) then get attacked by a level 70/80/90+ mob and get destroyed

Biggest Dislike

The voice overs (English) are horrendous! why do so many sound Scottish? and some of the voice acting is really bad. I also hate the amount of in combat banter from enemies, I particulary noticed this when on a mission I was fighting groups of soliders who kept shouting "Think you can take me?" and they repeat this line INCESSENTLY and if there was 3 or 4 of them, its was getting said literally every other second!

Overall though, being new to this series I am enjoying it. It reminds me a lot (play style wise) of FFXV though for the flaws in combat I mentioned, I actually prefer the combat in this compared to that.

Bahahaha loved this part, was smirking the whole mission while slaughtering them. If you played MMO's, the over-leveled monsters/enemies really isn't a big deal, but yeah, it does get annoying at times I don't know why they made this into basically an Offline MMO, have you gotten Rare Blades yet? there pretty decent, and the one I hate the most in the game is the effing Map, why can't they put a detailed map and let you zoom in and out conveniently the onscreen map, instead, they let you go through sub levels of map through skip levels dangit, and the accessories, you can't compare it to what you're already wearing atm jeez.

Did you notice that the guards sound like Mike Myers as Shrek/Fat Bastard?

"YOU THINK YOU CAN TAKE ME?" 

"AND THEN I SAW HER FACE!!!!!!!!!!!! NOW I'M A BELIEVER!"

Finally, someone said it.

XBC is much more accessible.

All I can say now is that the limited edition is a masterpiece . playing Resident Evil Revelation 2 and L.A. Noire

Hmm, to an extent, don't remember XC1 that well, been 5 years since I played it, I think 2 throws more tutorials at you and doesn't let you do much before the next mechanic is introduced, just feels like they want to ease players into it, just the impression I got.

Tho I find any Xenoblade very easy to grasp without really reading tutorials and the like, so maybe I'm not the best to give an opinion on the matter

Loving it so far! It is not perfect, but the good far outweighs the bad and makes this what I would consider a must own for any jrpg lover.

Most things got touched up on, but I will add that while it had a slow start, the depth in the combat and character development is fantastic in terms of gameplay.

The plot is interesting and engaging, which is a must for jrpgs IMO.

I can already tell this is going to take up a large chunk of my time moving forward.

Loving it so far, I get why some people especially new to the series are having a hard time with the battle system, but personally I think it is great a nice new twist on what came before, although the Blades in general add a new level of complexity that compared to the first one or every non main character in XCX was not there in the need to switch them out to access some arts/abilities and stringing together moves to access more powerful attacks.

Yeah, I was surprised to read on the Internet about the "casualization" of the Xenoblade franchise lol. When this game is infinitely more complex and satisfying than the first one. I wouldn't say the game is not accessible, becauase it introduces mechanics little by little, but you really have to pay attention. What I think it's a misfire in this game is the lack of a "tutorial" menu, when you can check the tutorials you made before, in case you forgot about something. Something that can definitely happen because of the huge quantity of new info.