Okay, I just played for like six straight hours. whoops. I'm not even sure what to say but here goes
Xenoblade is a complicated game. There is so much going on. There are systems layered upon systems. The map is just staggeringly huge -- Dragon Quest 8 has nothing on this. It is extremely open-ended. There is an incredible amount of stuff to do. At first it is quite overwhelming. After a 15 minute opening sequence, you're just left in the middle of a huge field where you can fight as much as you want and go whatever way you want.
They explain the battle mechanics but it isn't immediately clear what the best course of action is. It's more about experimentation, and you slowly figure things out as you go. Every ten minutes you get a new tutorial explaining how to do something - techs, skills, chain attacks, quests, everything. If this were FF13, it would take like a hundred hours before you had access to everything.
Towns are absolutely massive. I think I triggered 20 quests before hitting the second trigger point. Quests are your standard fetch quests or collect xx items things, but they're streamlined: you don't have to trigger them to get the item and you don't have to return to the person in order to cash in your reward. Oh, and before the sheer size of the towns sounds like a negative, you can warp to any area of the game whenever you want. There's about ten warp points in the first town alone. You can also save anywhere and death just sends you back to the last warp point. No penalty. Towns remind me of Shadow Hearts 2 but I don't know why. I think it's the music.
The exploration is what makes it so far. I find myself just wandering all over doing nothing but fighting enemies and collecting loot. Enemies are everywhere but they don't really attack you unless you provoke them. Some do, but for the most part it's just a bunch of monsters chilling. It took me a good while before I realized that it's futile to fight everything you see. You'll come across 10-15 monsters in certain spots, move a screen and find 10 more. You're not supposed to fight them all. In addition to monsters, there are items scattered around the fields to pick up. They're literally everywhere - you can see 4-5 items on a field at once usually, and if you're like me, you have to go get them all. While doing so you'll get quest items for rewards. There are also rare monsters scattered around that are like mini-bosses. You'll get cool rewards from killing them, either gear or money or things you need to finish quests. I find these all over the place.
The coolest thing I've had happen was when I was playing around with the jump. I missed a jump and fell about a mile off a bridge into a body of water. I had no idea there was even water below me. I look around and find all these rare items along with all these tough monsters. I get a few of the items and run for my life. Battles had been super easy up to that point. Just stumbling across something like that was amazing. Another moment i had was during a climactic scene where I needed to hurry to get somewhere. I started out hurrying but got distracted by the scenery. I spent a good 15 minutes floating around the water until I made it to a foreign place. I looked around and found some level 70 monsters. I smiled and went back to where I was supposed to go, but not before getting sidetracked again and collecting more loot.
Story and characters are good so far, but not really the focus. My favourite character so far is this Vanderkaum wannabe with a handlebar mustache. The story is progressing pretty slowly so far -- though really that's my fault because I keep getting sidetracked into an hour of doing dumb stuff.
I think my biggest complaint so far is the equipment system. It kinda reminds me of Mass Effect 1 but not as dumb. It's just cumbersome to navigate through the menus and there's so much stuff that you collect.
so far it's really good though. rpg of the generation blah blah blah
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xyzzy