I genuinely think Definitive Edition would be better if Future Connected didn't exist.
Pros:
-The Bionis Left Shoulder is a BEAUTIFUL area, with a ton to explore
-The music is very good, especially the Fog Beast theme
-Tyrea was expanded on quite nicely. Her development was done well too

Cons:
-The characters become bland, obnoxiously sentimental husks of what they were in the main game
-The combat is grossly over simplified with Skill Trees, Affinity, Visions, and Chain Attacks removed. The new Chain Attack Equivalent doesn't carry nearly as much satisfaction nor strategy as Chain Attacks did.
-The writing is horrible (especially from Nene). A tiny example of this is "We measure! find treasure! Ponspectors till we die!" when the "till we die!" obviously should've been replaced with "forever!" so it can rhyme. A bigger more obvious example of the bad writing comes in the form of Gael'Gar and how he was handled, and Nene ruining the final support between Melia and Tyrea
-Reusing a lot of important songs that carried a lot of emotional weight (such as the final boss theme, and the Memory Space theme) for areas/fights that just don't have that same weight attached
-The current state of the Bionis doesn't make sense with how Xenoblade 1 ended. Alcamoth staying afloat makes sense, but why is the left shoulder the only area still standing when the rest of the Bionis sank?

Due to all the above, FC feels like a weirdly high-end Xenoblade ROM hack that has to be accepted as cannon