I loved the "having played all other games" payoff part, but no game should take 120 hours to be interesting
Act 1 was awful, Act 2 was pure filler, Act 3 was only good at the end and I did like the Finale but honestly it didn't hit as hard as I thought
I don't think it's a bad game but it will never be my favorite, and I don't plan on replaying it at all
I also fucking hated the game dickriding Juna, it was tolerable in CS3 (it wasn't) but god all that talk about being the SSS' voice and representative and being "the bridge between Class VIIs" when she's an absolute bitch all the time is just awful

Xenoblade 2 is complicated. In some ways it's better than the original, and in other ways, it's one of the most frustrating games I've experienced in a while.
This game absolutely nails its world building. Learning about Alrest as you play, the different cultures, environments, the conflicts between kingdoms, the relationship between humans and blades, it's all super interesting stuff, and had me way more invested than the first game.
While I love the Bionis and Mechonis in the original, the titans here are so much more fun to explore, and they look really pretty too. Unfortunately though, that's all brought down by field skills. Having your exploration halted constantly because you don't have the right blades in your party, or maybe their skills just aren't leveled up enough, it sucks. I don't understand why this was necessary at all.
The cast of characters here is amazing, and while not all of them are my favorites in the series, Tora and Morag come to mind as pretty underutilized characters, they're all fun to watch and play as, and there's not a single character in this game that I hate, which is more than I can say for the other games. The issue comes with the character designs though. It is so distracting how every female character in this game is designed to arouse the audience, and it a lot of the time, kills the tension of a scene when the camera decides to focus on a character's revealing outfit when something important is happening in the story. On top of that is the gacha system and I don't think I need to explain why it's terrible.
Combat in this game is more fun than the original...once you actually figure it out. This game is terrible at teaching the player how anything works, and not only that, the game really limits you in the beginning hours. Rex and Nia only get one extra blade each, and chain attacks just aren't allowed for a while, and it makes the beginning of this game feel really slow and tedious. Bosses are also designed horribly in this game. They're not fun to fight, they're just frustrating, and often rely on trial and error as you mess around with your party for the 5th time wondering why Malos is able to wipe the floor with you at seemingly random.
I was really enjoying the combat later on, but unfortunately, by the time I was really getting the hang of it and having a lot of fun with it, the game was basically over.
I'm sure I'd enjoy this much more on a second playthrough, but that doesn't change the fact that there are just too many issues here for me to consider this better than the original, even with all of its elements that are an improvement.

An overall improvement from the first game, virtually better in almost every aspect. It's bigger, better and more fun to play than XB1 by miles.

But man mandatory field skill skills to progress in an area were a PAIN! Hope i won't have to see that shit again.

Oh yea and Jin... says it all really.

XC1 review: https://www.backloggd.com/u/DGunz_on_Twitch/review/796085/

After attempting to play XC1 on 3DS and dropping it after 8 hours due to various reasons, I thought heck, why not try the sequel. It looks cool.

Well, it is cool! This was a great Switch game - plenty of reason to grind things out while playing in handheld mode. It felt like a game that really made sense on Switch.

I found the battle system interesting and appreciated the sense of scale. I liked some of the characters, but some were very over-acted and awkward, for sure. Pyra/Mythra, Rex, and ESPECIALLY that weird bunny creature thing were low points.

I'm glad I tried this after discarding XC1. XC3 really interests me but I can't bring myself to invest another 100 hours in to a game like this. It's just too much.

All of these games are absolutely bloated/too long.