This review was written prior to the Switch 2 upgrade.

Here's the thing.

I wanted to give this a chance now that it was free from the terrible Wii U and having to use the controller gimmick for maps.  So I bought it - and it's part of the full collection.

I got farther this time than I'd got the last time I tried this game.  But up to (not completing) Chapter 12 is about all I can tolerate.  Maybe when I'm bored I'll get back to it, but highly unlikely unless they do some DLC that helps this.  Not holding out hope since Xenoblade Chronicles DE (the first game) got none.

TL;DR: The problem with this game is simple.  It's catering to one segment of the audience.  Even if I ignore "Xenoblade" in its name, it's simply not a good game at all.

What I Liked

✅ The size of the world of Mira is generally impressive - though it feels smaller than Bionis/Mechonis for some reason and lacks the general visual appeal of "Tales of Aionios" (aka Xenoblade Chronicles 3), it's at least generally well designed with impressive verticality.

✅ A decent amount of voice acting, done well.

✅ For what little story is there, it's C-level good.

✅ No fall damage.

...no, seriously, that's about it.

What I Didn't Like

👎 Repetitious, generally unappealing music.  Songs with lyrics are nonsensical - "Anyway, let's move on!" "Is this thing on?" - just not good.  That's not even just NLA, it's just generally not good music.  This is where Future Connected, Future Redeemed, Torna and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 shined.

👎 Literally a bunch of fetch quests AND mandatory side quests (which some claimed weren't here - you literally can't advance the story without doing mandatory sidequests.  It's the same thing as Torna, but they claim they're better here? Yeah...let's talk about that...

👎 The story.  Not just the main story but the side stories too.  I get what they were trying to do, but they didn't flesh things out to make you care.

For example, one NPC is seen outside of the cathedral with one of your playables; this then turns into an affinity quest that results in that NPC taking an action that should make you empathize with your playable, but because it didn't build up to it in any way, it's a popcorn fart compared to the exact same type of sequence as that seen in "Tales of Aionios" with one of your playables.

But there, it's fully fleshed out (almost too much) to where the impact is truly felt.  (Setting aside of course that the character in question has a TERRIBLE voice actor choice.  We digress.)

👎 Situations where entire squads are wiped yet because you don't spend time in the field with the squad, it just doesn't resonate.

👎 Meeting alien species and doing one "save us" quest and they just get invited into NLA with no real depth other than boring sidequests.

👎 Exploration.  While the world is vast and actually logically laid out, it's annoying to navigate overall, even when you get the flight module.  Part of the problem is the way the lockon works and enemy detection - if an enemy detects you that you don't want to fight, it's a pain to shake them off, and the game suffers from the same thing that afflicts every entry: you can get hit regardless of evasion or distance, which is more annoying here.

One segment has you trying to kill some creatures on a slim bridge high in the sky, but certain of your attacks do Knockback which knocks them down to the ground below.  Problem is they then despawn and end up right back at the top while you proceed to get assaulted by unrelated enemies.  It's annoying and happens way too often.

👎 Difficulty. Many people complained about the difficulty sliders in the others of the series.  The thing is this. Older folks who actually have a job and really just want to experience the story don't have time to grind or sneak or any of that nonsense.  We also understand that there are a LOT of enemies who hit like bricks despite being 10 levels beneath you.  Many of us just want to breeze through and enjoy a good story especially given....

👎 No New Game Plus (apparently).  This is a HUGE miss.  It's the one reason Future Redeemed is not #1 in the series (that's Torna).  It's baffling, truly baffling.

👎 The "Yardley Bug".  If you don't know what that is, I have a post about it on the board.  In summary: some items that are picked up will alert you that they're related to a quest, and some will not.  If you check the item into Collectapedia, the game will not update the quest requirement; so it will give you the impression that you can finish the quest when you cannot.  This was an issue on the Wii U version and absolutely should have been fixed, because it's the only one in the series with this issue.

👎 Graphics.  There's little-to-no detail to anything up close - people claiming this looks good aren't looking at the boxy NPC faces or the completely muddy cliff walls.  Anything other than water are simply nowhere near as good looking as every other game except XBC2.  Future Redeemed shined in this category as did Future Connected.

👎 I'm not suggesting it's a terrible game, it isn't.  But those claiming it's the best of the series? Absolutely not.  But frankly, it's worse than "Tales of Aionios" in every category except story. Even the graphics aren't as good and that's just a shame.

Those who enjoy this game, are ones who played with Voltron and Transformers and like the robots, plus like to explore, and probably like MMOs.  That's it.  Character development means nothing to them.  It can't mean anything to them. Because it's simply not here.  And no, "Affinity quest, doot doot doot!" is not character development any more than it was in Torna.