I don't know whether to call this game flawed, or experimental or both. I haven't played anything particularly like it. Even compared to the first Xenoblade Chronicles, I feel like the tone, the combat and the mechanics are really distinct

I think there are a lot of interesting ideas here, and I think a lot of those ideas are going to be appreciated more as I get farther from the game. I do feel like, for me, there were a lot of little irritants here and there with this game like:
- Poppi upgrades rely on playing a generic minigame
- There is a ton of blades available, but the gacha system is annoying and often unfulfilling if you get bad draws
- Some of the character design, including blades is just awful
- The "Tora and Poppi chapter (Chapter 3 or 4 I think?)" is important thematically, but feels disjointed from the rest of the game
- Field skill checks are rewarding when you have the skills, but rely somewhat on gacha and blade management to breakdown a random wall is annoying

There are so many more. I also felt that combat tutorials weren't great, and even now knowing what to do in combat, I still felt like I was doing something wrong (I was. I wasn't using pouch items). In spite of ALL OF THAT, I think what's here is very unique and I think the pros of the game outweigh the cons

The story especially really grew on me as the game went on. Thematically, I feel it is much more interesting than the first game, which I often feel like I struggle to remember anything from other than the main story elements (I also love that game. It's a strange franchise). The game's world really is beautiful, the soundtrack is one of the best ever, and the game's mechanics feel so much deeper than a lot of comparable JRPGs. Even the characters, which I feel like get a lot of hate, have some highlights. Morag, Nia, and Jin were all great. Even Rex I think I prefer over Shulk. I think Rex is the perfect character type to fit the story they wanted to tell, and I enjoyed his interactions with the rest of the case

It's worth a playthrough. There were so many head-scratching design decisions, but the highs are really high. Between this game and the first game, I think Monolith Soft is so close to doing something REALLY special with the franchise, but at the same time, this is a franchise that doesn't play it safe, so who knows how things could go going forward

I can almost respect the idea of making your sequel basically a hard mode expansion, but it's not that these levels are hard, it's that the level design just sucks. The physics in the original game are already wonky here and there so relying on stuff like the springs and wind for so many levels when your jumps aren't as fluid as they need to be is annoying.

It feels like every strength of the game is something that already existed and in almost every area, I think this game just does a worse job. I think it's a bad sequel for 90%+ of the players who will play it and to me it misses a lot of the point of what made the original game so good. Still, I don't think it's totally horrible compared to NES platformers, but I'd hardly call the game good.