You have completed around 25 % of the game.

You are still a ways off but I wanted to say it while it's on my mind. When in Mechonis. Do every side quest. Collect everything (esp if you are rebuilding Colony 6 which btw is very much worth it)

Edit your post. There are spoilers.

He's already been to Colony 6 and we all know you are heading to Mechonis since the near begining of the game. Hell the opening of the game begins on it. That's not a spoiler. I also don't believe in spoiler tags for anything than 5+ years old.

I'm of the opposite opinion. Seeing as how Bristow9091 had trouble getting into this game, to begin with, I'd recommend avoiding side-quests unless more levels/money are required. 

For completionists, there's always New Game+. You can probably achieve all of that stuff in a significantly shorter period of time by playing the entire game activating New Game+ if you really wanted to; everything can be done MUCH faster.

The reasoning is that the side quests are incredibly dry and 98% flavourless forgettable fetch-quests. It's much more fun exploring the world on your own terms without burdening yourself with 400 variants of be at point X between time A and B to talk to a character who will tell you: "Collect 8 Stony Carrot Root, 3 Onion Fish, and 7 Lobster Roaches so Mamapon can make proper soap to wash colourful dino-feather skin pants!"

In my opinion, especially on the first playthrough, moving through the main story without the burden of completing all of the side quest content is a FAR more liberated and enjoyable experience. Especially if for players worried about getting burnt out/tired of the game/sidetracked by other games. As I mentioned before, there's a much easier way for players to do a completionist run: I'm a firm believer that a completionist run with New Game+ is far a more tolerable and efficient experience.

I agree! Increase your levels by 2 can transform a almost unbeatable boss to a walk in the park.

And doing quests that involve killing normal or unique monsters? That way you level up even faster because you get EXP from both the monsters you kill and the quest itself, plus you get some extra gold and affinity.

This is what it looks like at 1080p with 4xSSAA on Dolphin. 

Here is it at 4k. 

Textures could be better, but with the nice image-quality it definitely enhances the experience. 

Ah no...I'm sorry to hear that. I guess the game is old enough that the risk is pretty strong for spoilers. Happens to me sometimes with longer games. Just today I was looking up Pyra fanart from Xenoblade 2 and found some...strange pictures. Whenever it happens I just convince myself I don't know the full spoiler without context, and just file it away as a ??? that I might remember later.

Anyways, if it makes you feel better there's a lot of twists in the last 1/3 of the game, so even if you read one, you still likely only scratched the surface.

Don't be too discouraged. There are tons of twists in the game to enjoy. Most of the big twists you probably would not understand yet since you weren't introduced ro the plot that sets it up. The spoiler I suspect you found is probably one of the more obvious ones which you find out 50% of the way through.