You don't have access to the full battle system, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 eases you into it, unlocking various elements over the course of 7 chapters, with most of it coming in after the first 4. Although New Game + grants full access.

I agree though, the early game on playthrough 1 is very slow and overly handholdy. But it's pretty much the opposite of Octopath Traveler - one game (Octopath) starts off interesting and wears out, the other game (Xenoblade) starts out slow and then ramps up to be phenomenal.

Xenoblade 2 doesn't have random encounters, so it is automatically better.

Xenoblade 2 by a country mile. OT tries some interesting new things, but I don't understand the worship around it. It's very pretty, for the art style it is, I'll give it that. It has a good battle system too. But the character interactions are practically nonexistent, the world wasn't much to get excited about, and the storytelling was okay at best. Xenoblade had solid but not great gameplay, not sure which game I'd give the better grade on battle system, but it had none of the other problems that OT had. Also, save for a few cringy characters, I liked Xenoblade's voice acting better.

Yeah XB2's combat starts off rubbish, but it gets better over time as new mechanics are introduced.

I like you. Ditto for turn-based combat.

Unfortunately I was let down by both. If I could get xenoblade, but with octopaths battle system id be pretty happy. Ill give it xenoblade though. On the basis of value. After 5 completed stories I think I can say octopath is not a 60$ game.