I felt it was criminally underrated on the Wii U.

I didn't pay much attention to the critics, but there were a ton of dishonest and unfair criticisms of the first release by players. So much dismissal of its achievements as well. If you go back 8 or 9 years, you can probably find my posts praising this game being attacked by numerous trolls on this forum. But over time the trolls went away, and the game is still great.

The game was phenomenal and groundbreaking at the time, and remains great to this day. I do hope more people play it, and not just those of us who enjoyed it the first time around.

Just to point out how fucking huge the world is. The entire Toussaint map in Witcher 3: Blood and Wine amounts to under 8 square kilometers. Xenoblade Chronicles X is 400 square kilometers, and the world has a lot of vertical map-space too, different layers.

The story was criticized a lot, but I found a city from earth, plunked down on an alien planet, forced to survive, then thrive, and incorporate the natives and other species into the city, as being one of the most interesting stories I've come across in gaming. It's not merely a character driven story, it's a city driven story with over a dozen primary characters and hundreds of secondary characters that help shape the personality and direction of that city. It's also Nintendo's first truly open world RPG, and they slammed it out of the park.

Another thing I really like about it is the size of the city and the types of technology are reminiscent of Xenogears and Xenosaga.

And some of these landscapes are as beautiful as they are huge:

Can't freaking wait to play it.
Xenoblade except for part 3 that one sucked is a fantastic series.

This is gonna be my first Xenoblade game, glad I missed out on Wii U (cos I thought its too long) since this version is much better and Im sure it will be worth the investment.

If I like it ill try XC3, too, but XC1 & 2 don't appeal to me.

1 is the best. While they are stand alone in the main story. It is a connected universe and it would do you no use to play the DLC of 3 if you didn't play 1 and 2.

XCX is very different than the other games tho.

I remember that it didn’t catch my attention much on the Wii U, but I decided to give it a chance after some time. I played it in short sessions, and those sessions gradually turned into moments where I completely lost track of time and space. Oh boy, don’t even get me started on when you get your Megazord... It’s not easy to obtain, but it’s essential for progressing through different areas of the game.

Highly recommended! It was one of my favorites on the Wii U, and now that they've improved the UI and fixed many other aspects along with adding extra story content, it’s an absolute must-buy.

I don't mind losing out on some of the story if it means I can save almost 200hrs of my life by not playing the first two or their dlcs

About 6 hours in, now. I still have yet to leave primordia.

In case you didn’t know. You can bring the characters of your family and friends into your party.

I'm getting my copy probably on tuesday or wednesday this week, so I'm really excited. I'm gonna get completely lost in this game and it will easily fill the gap in my life between now and the Switch 2 direct. The next few days are promising!

Few early game tips:

INVESTMENT (there is a terminal for this on Armory Alley)-
• Remember to keep an eye on your Miranium, when it is near max, invest in various corporations, it will max out quickly in the early game before you have much storage
• While on investment, if you have the best gear you can buy at the moment, don’t hestitate to upgrade its skills at the investment terminal.

PROBES (accessed on tap 3 on the map)
• For data probes, Revenue = Research, Production = Mining, try to chain them up into groups of 3, 5, or 8 for the 30%, 50%, and 80% bonuses. So, if you see a lot of A in production, group a bunch of Mining Probes there.
• Chaining lower grade probes will yield more than individual haphazardly placed higher grade probes.

GENERAL TIPS FOR FUN AND PROGRESS
• Don’t focus through the “main quests” unless you don’t care about story, this is an open world game, the story is stitched together through the side quests.
• Grinding through battles is not the best way to gain co, completing quests and exploration/treasure hunting is.
• The Skell is like the Airship, but savour the game before you get it, because once you have Skells, it’s so much more rewarding to see the whole world you’ve explored expand vertically. In other words, don’t rush to get it if you want the best experience.

I explored a good chunk of Oblivia, all the way up to the giant lake at the back with the trade post island.
Expanded my Probe network across most of Primordia, and got several in Oblivia and Southern Noctilum.
Most of my time in Oblivia was spent running away from more powerful enemies.

Some trivia: Noctilum is split into North and South. The South is mostly dense jungle with acidic lakes, for those who played the first game, this place is kind of similar to Makna Forest, except the night is brighter than the day because of bioluminescence- similar tot he plants of Pandora in the film Avatar. Southern Noctilum is on the Primordia continent, while Northern Noctilum is an entire continent, and is many times larger than Southern Noctilum.

There are some beautiful landmark sites to see on each continent:
Primordia has New LA, and the
Noctilum has the giant waterfalls between North and South
Oblivia has the giant ring among other ruins
Sylvalum has the largest orb and a lot of other giant orbs
Cauldrons has a few things, one late in the game and kind of a spoiler.

Speaking of Cauldros, has anyone gone there prior to getting a skell?