This is going to be more of a rant rather than a well thought out review, so please bear with me here.
I really wanted to like this game. I really did. I like the main cast, I liked chapter 1 and I cried my eyes out with that chapter 5 cutscene. You know the one. The music is also very great and the interlink mechanic is cool and fun.
Very sadly, that's where the positive things I have to say about this game end.
Starting with the gameplay, it is just not good. There are, like what, 30 classes? And none of them are deep to play as at all. It's just a button masher. And I don't hate button mashers, but the game lacks the OOMPH to make that button mashing feel good. This problem is further compounded by the fact that there are 6 active characters on the screen at once, which makes whatever you do feel so... meaningless.
Then, there's the story. I complimented the cast and some chapters earlier (I would also note that I think the ending is very good!), but once you get past chapter 1, the big problems I have with the plot start showing.
First of all: Nothing interesting happens. Very rarely in those chapter 2 to 5 cutscenes was I actually interested in what was going on. The characters mainly talk to each other about the nature of their world (which is great for the themes this game is preaching about, but sadly they don't resonate with me enough to overlook the complete nothingness what the cutscenes are without them), and it gets boring quick.
None of the characters besides the Noah and Mio duo (And Lanz, somewhat) is relevant to the plot at all and can be written out with very little changing. The most outrageous example is Eunie: They tease her having a breakdown about her actually having being reincarnated and her having ptsd from Dirk... but Dirk only shows up 3 times the whole game, she only develops this after the first meeting, she drops this aspect after the second meeting and she and Dirk don't even develop any sort of dynamic or relationship from it. What was the point exactly? To foreshadow the later plot twist about the world?
I don't need to talk about Sena in regards to this. Everyone who's played the game knows how bad she gets shafted.
And concerning Taion, he gets a surprising amount of development in the third chapter... But afterwards it stops and the character he's associated with is a side quest character that is completely plot irrelevant. This is something I'll go back on later.
I also have problems with Noah and Mio's relationship, since I thought they went from having crushes on each other to being very much in love in the span of a chapter? Especially more so on Mio's case. This is a VERY BAD thing considering N and M are pretty much the core of the story and symbolise all the games' themes, so when I have trouble believing the love story between the two main characters...
I have heard that this is mostly a dub thing and Mio is a lot more warm and kind in the original japanese version, so I won't take this criticism into consideration that much.
Going back to the ''nothing happens'' critique I had earlier, Ethel is a good example of what I'm trying to say. She shows up and acts as the boss of the chapter until the consul takes the role, joins the party mainly as a way of showcasing what heroes are, leaves, appears once more in chapter 4... And then dies. She did not have the required screentime for me to start caring about her. And this is what I mean by the sidequest problem I was ranting about in Taion's bit. The devs (if memory serves me right) deliberately said that they focused more on the gameplay this time around (Which is still bad, mind you) which is also why there are so many hero cutscenes and heroes in general. Why did they waste so much dev time on one note characters that aren't important to the plot when the main story so, so desperately needed more chapters or more time?
I'm getting tired of ranting, so I'll finish this by saying that I think N is the best xenoblade villain and he should have showed up more. The consuls were fine but there should have been more reoccuring ones besides J and D. Taion and Sena best characters.